THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON:NARRATED IN CONNEXION WITH THE POLITICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND LITERARY HISTORY OF HIS TIME. VOL. III. 1643-1649. 

BY DAVID MASSON, M. A. , LL. D. 

CONTENTS. 

BOOK I. 

JULY 1643--MARCH 1643-4. 

_HISTORY_:--FIRST EIGHT MONTHS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: CIVILWAR AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT CONTINUED. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON STILL IN ALDERSGATE STREET: HIS MARRIAGEMISFORTUNE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. 

CHAP. 

I. The Westminster Assembly in Session--The Solemn League and Covenant:Scottish Commissioners in the Assembly--Debates on Church-Government:_Apologetical Narration_ of the Independents--ParliamentaryProceedings--Scottish Auxiliary Army in England

II. Milton unhappy in his Marriage: His First Divorce Tract: Two Editionsof it

BOOK II. 

MARCH 1644-MARCH 1645. 

_HISTORY_:--THE YEAR OF MARSTON MOOR: CIVIL WAR, LONG PARLIAMENT, AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED--STRUGGLE OF INDEPENDENCY WITHPRESBYTERIANISM: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY: ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES--PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES: HIS SECOND DIVORCE PAMPHLET, _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, _AREOPAGITICA_, _TETRACHORDON_, AND _COLISTERION_. 

CHAP. 

I. Inactivity of the Scottish Auxiliaries--Spread of Independency andMultiplication of Sects--Visitation of the University of Cambridge--Battle of Marston Moor--Fortnight's Vacation of the Westminster Assembly(July 23-August 7, 1644), --Principle of Toleration and State of theToleration Controversy: Synopsis of English Sects and Sectaries in 1644. --Resumption of Assembly's Proceedings: Denunciation of Picked Sectariesand Heretics--Cromwell's Interference for Independency: AccommodationOrder of Parliament--Presbyterian Settlement voted--Essex beaten and theWar flagging: Self-denying Ordinance and New Model of the Army--Parliamentary Vengeances: Death of Laud

II. Milton among the Sectaries, and in a "World of Disesteem": Story ofMrs. Attaway--Samuel Hantlib, John Durie, and John Amos Comenius: Schemesof a Reformed Education, and Project of a London University--Milton's_Tract on Education_, and Method with his Pupils--His Second DivorceTract, or Compilation from Bucer--Mr. Herbert Palmer's Attack on Miltonfrom the Pulpit--Milton and the Stationers' Company: Their Accusation ofhim in a Petition to the Commons--His _Areopagitica_, or Speech forthe Liberty of Unlicensed Printing--Anger of the Stationers, and theirComplaint against Milton to the Lords: Consequence of the Complaint--TheDivorce Question continued: Publication of Mr. Herbert Palmer's Sermon, and farther Attacks on Milton by Prynne, Dr. Featley, and an AnonymousPamphleteer--_Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_: Their Replies tothe Assailants. 

BOOK III. 

APRIL 1645-AUGUST 1646. 

_HISTORY_:--SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONGPARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED. --BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITSCONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THESCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR. --PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATIONCONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THEINDEPENDENTS. --LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATESTREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS:CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OFTHE POWELL FAMILY. 

CHAP. 

I. Composition of the New Model, and View of the Work lying before it--First Actions of the New Model--Cromwell retained in Command: Battle ofNaseby: Other Successes of the New Model--Poor Performance of theScottish Auxiliary Army--Episode of Montrose in Scotland--Fag-end of theWar in England, and Flight of the King to the Scots--Fallen and RisenStars. 

II. Work in Parliament and the Westminster Assembly during the SixteenMonths of the New Model--The two continued Church Controversies--Independency and Sectarianism in the New Model: Toleration Controversycontinued: Cromwell's part in it: Lilburne and other Pamphleteers: SionCollege and the Corporation of London: Success of the Presbyterians inParliament--Presbyterian Frame of Church Government completed: Details ofthe Arrangement--The Recruiting of the Commons: Eminent Recruiters--Effects of the Recruiting: Alliance of Independency and Erastianism:Check given to the Presbyterians: Westminster Assembly rebuked andcurbed--Negotiations round the King at Newcastle--Threatened Rupturebetween the Scots and the English: Argyle's Visit to London: The NineteenPropositions--Parliament and the Assembly reconciled: Presbyterianizingof London and Lancashire: Death of Alexander Henderson. 

III. Effects of Milton's _Areopagitica_--His Intention of anotherMarriage: His Wife's Return and Reconciliation with him--Removal fromAldersgate Street to Barbican--First Edition of Milton's Collected Poems:Humphrey Moseley the Bookseller--Two Divorce Sonnets and Sonnet to HenryLawes--Continued Presbyterian Attacks on Milton: His Anti-PresbyterianSonnet of Reply--Surrender of Oxford: Condition of the Powell Family--ThePowells in London: More Family Perplexities: Birth of Milton's firstChild. 

BOOK IV. 

AUGUST 1646--JANUARY 1648-9. 

_HISTORY_:--THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. :--

I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND FAILURE OFHIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS;

II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ENGLISHPARLIAMENT AND THE ENGLISH ARMY;

III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM;

IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR;

V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN. --PRIVATE ANDPUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE SONNETS, AND TRANSLATION OF NINEPSALMS: OTHER WORKS IN PROGRESS: LETTERS TO AND FROM CARLO DATI. 

CHAP. 

I. Charles in his Captivity First Stage of the Captivity: Still with theScots at Newcastle: Aug. 1646--Jan. 1646-7. --Balancings of Charlesbetween the Presbyterians and the Independents--His Negotiations in thePresbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots--HisAttempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will Murray in London--Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's Mission to Newcastle--The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal Treaty offered--Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament--TheirAdjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charlesto the English--Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of thePresbyterian Settlement

Second Stage of the Captivity: At Holmby House: Feb. 1646-7--June 1647. --The King's Manner of Life at Holmby--New Omens in his favour from theRelations of Parliament to its own Army--Proposals to disband the Armyand reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland--Summary of IrishAffairs since 1641--Army's Anger at the Proposal to disband it--View ofthe State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it. Passion forToleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers--Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, andVotes in Parliament to that effect--Resistance of the Army: Petitions andRemonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators--Cromwell'sEfforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous--Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army--The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce'sAbduction of the King from Holmby--Westminster Assembly Business: FirstProvincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of OxfordUniversity

Third Stage of the Captivity: The King with the Army: June-Nov. 1647. --Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: theirDenunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarmsand Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliamentmobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the twoSpeakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of theArmy upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of theKing by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--TheArmy's _Heads of Proposals_, and Comparison of the same with the_Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--The King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals_, but playing themoff publicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney--Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re-application to the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise--Intrigues at Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissionersthere: King immoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell underSuspicion: New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of LevellingDoctrines among the Soldiers: _Agreement of the People_--Cromwell breaksutterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: ProposedConcordat between the Army and Parliament--The King's Escape to the Isleof Wight

Fourth Stage of the Captivity: In the Isle of Wight: Nov. 1647-Nov. 1648. --Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence--Parliament'sNew Method of the _Four Bills_--Indignation of the Scots: theirComplaints of Breach of the Covenant--Army Rendezvous at Ware:Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment ofthe Concordat with Parliament--Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle ofWight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of theFour Bills--Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No FartherAddresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance--_TheEngagement_, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in the Isleof Wight--Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: His Habits inhis Imprisonment--First Rumours of _The Scottish Engagement_: RoyalistProgramme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR--Beginnings of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR:Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in the Southeast: Siege ofColchester--Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among the Royalist Exilesabroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey--Invasion of England byHamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales off theSoutheast Coast: Blockade of the Thames--Consternation of the Londoners:Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of the Presbyterians: theirOrdinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: their Leanings to the King:Independents in a struggling minority: Charge of Treason against Cromwellin his absence--The Three Days' Battle of Preston and utter Defeat of theScots by Cromwell: Surrender of Colchester to Fairfax: Return of thePrince of Wales to Holland: Virtual End of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR--Parliamentary Treaty with the King at Newport: Unsatisfactory Results--Protests against the Treaty by the Independents--Disgust of the Army withthe Treaty: Revocation of their Concordat with Parliament, and Resolutionto seize the Political Mastery: Formation of a Republican Party--Petitions for Justice on the King: The _Grand Army Remonstrance_--Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration of the Argyle Government there:Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter to Hammond--The King removed from theIsle of Wight to Hurst Castle--The Army again in possession of London

II. Troubles in the Barbican Household: Christopher Milton's CompositionSuit: Mr. Powell's Composition Suit: Death of Mr. Powell: His Will: Deathof Milton's Father--Sonnet XIV. And Ode to John Rous--ItalianReminiscences: Lost Letters from Carlo Dati of Florence: Milton's Replyto the last of them--Pedagogy in the Barbican: List of Milton's knownPupils: Lady Ranelagh--Educational Reform still a Question: Hartlibagain: The Invisible College: Young Robert Boyle and William Petty--Removal from Barbican to High Holborn--Meditations and Occupations in theHouse in High Holborn: Milton's Sympathies with the Army Chiefs and theExpectant Republicans--Still under the Ban of the Presbyterians:Testimony of the London Ministers against Heresies and Blasphemies:Milton in the Black List--Another Letter from Carlo Dati: Translation ofNine Psalms from the Hebrew--Milton through the Second Civil War: Hispersonal Interest in it, and Delight in the Army's Triumph: His Sonnet toFairfax--Birth of Milton's Second Child: Another Letter from Carlo Dati

III. The Two Houses in the Grasp of the Army: Final Efforts for the King:Pride's Purge and its Consequences--The King brought from Hurst Castle toWindsor: Ordinance for his Trial passed by the Commons alone:Constitution of the Court--The Trial in Westminster Hall: Incidents ofthe Seven successive Days: The Sentence--Last Three Days of Charles'sLife: His Execution and Burial

BOOK I. 

JULY 1643--MARCH 1643-4. 

 _HISTORY_:--FIRST EIGHT MONTHS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: CIVILWAR AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT CONTINUED. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON STILL IN ALDERSGATE STREET: HIS MARRIAGEMISFORTUNE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. 

CHAPTER I

THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN SESSION--THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT:SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS IN THE ASSEMBLY--DEBATES ON CHURCH-GOVERNMENT:_APOLOGETICAL NARRATION_ OF THE INDEPENDENTS--PARLIAMENTARYPROCEEDINGS--SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY IN ENGLAND. 

The Westminster Assembly held its first formal meeting in Henry theSeventh's Chapel on Saturday, July 1, 1643, after the impressive openingceremonial of a sermon preached before a great congregation in the AbbeyChurch by the appointed Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, on the text John xiv. 18, "_I will not leave you comfortless_!" About 69 of the members werepresent at that first meeting, many who attended afterwards not havingyet come up from the country. Among the 69 were the few of "the Episcopalpersuasion" who afterwards dropped off; and these were conspicuous bytheir canonical dresses among the bulk of the members in all sorts ofplain Puritan suits. The average attendance subsequently seems to havebeen from 60 to 80. The place of meeting for some time continued to beKing Henry the Seventh's Chapel; but this was changed, when the weathergrew colder, for the celebrated Jerusalem Chamber, also in the closevicinity of the Houses of Parliament. [Footnote: The Ordinance ofParliament authorizing the change of the place of meeting to theJerusalem Chamber is dated Sept. 23, 1643 see Lords Journals for thatday] None but members of the Assembly were allowed to be present, andthere was no deviation from this rule except on the very rarest occasionsand by special authority from Parliament. The Assembly sat commonly fromnine in the morning till one or two P. M. The Prolocutor sat at one end ofthe room on a raised chair; his two Assessors were near him; and a tableran through the whole length of the room, at one end of which sat theScribes, close to the Prolocutor, while the members were seated in tiersat the sides and other end. The forms of debate and voting were very muchthose of the House of Commons. Besides the meetings of the Assembly assuch, there were afternoon meetings of Committees for the preparation ofbusiness for the Assembly. There were three such chief StandingCommittees, to one or other of which every member belonged. [Footnote:Lightfoot's Notes of Assembly Works (ed. 1824), Vol. XIII, pp. 4, 5; andBaillie, II. 107-109]

FIRST BUSINESS OF THE ASSEMBLY: REVISION OF THE ARTICLES. 

Not till Thursday, July 6, or indeed Saturday, July 8, was the Assemblyconstituted for actual business. On the first of these days theRegulations which had been drawn up by the two Houses of Parliament forthe procedure of the Assembly were duly received; and on the second allthe members of Assembly present took the solemn Protestation which hadbeen settled for them by the Commons with the concurrence of the Lords. It was in these terms: "I, A. B. , do seriously and solemnly protest, inthe presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, wherein I am amember, I will not maintain anything in matters of Doctrine but what Ithink in my conscience to be truth, or in point of Discipline but what Ishall conceive to conduce most to the glory of God and the good and peaceof His Church. " So sworn, the members were ready for their first work. That also had been rigidly prescribed for them by Parliament. On July 5the Commons had ruled and the Lords had agreed "that the Assembly, intheir beginning, in the first place shall take the ten first Articles ofthe Church of England into their consideration, to vindicate them fromall false doctrine and heresy. " In other words, it was the pleasure ofParliament that the first business of the Assembly should consist in arevision and amendment of the Thirty-nine Articles, and that, by way of acommencement in this business, or specimen to Parliament of the manner inwhich it might be done, they were to confine themselves at first to thefirst Ten of the Articles. Accordingly, the Assembly at once addressedthemselves to this business. It was with a view to it that they firstadopted that machinery of Committees which was to be employedsubsequently, with so much effect, in all the deliberations. The Divinesof the Assembly were distributed, in the order in which their names stoodin the Ordinance calling the Assembly, into three Committees forpreparatory revision of the said Articles in such a manner that the wholeAssembly might more clearly exercise its final judgment on them; while afourth Committee, in which the lay-members were included, was to assistthe others by procuring the most correct copies of the text of theArticles. To the first revising Committee, of which Dr. Burges wasappointed chairman, were entrusted the first four Articles; to thesecond, of which Dr. Stanton was chairman, the fifth, sixth, and seventhArticles; and to the third, which had Mr. Gibbon for chairman, theeighth, ninth, and tenth. 

Imagine the Assembly collectively in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and itsCommittees distributively there or in other places of meeting, busy dayafter day, through the rest of the hot month of July, and then intoAugust, over its appointed revision of the Articles. "_I. Of Faith inthe Holy Trinity; II. Of the Word, or Son of God, which was made veryMan; III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell; IV. Of the Resurrectionof Christ; V. Of the Holy Ghost; VI. Of the Sufficiency of the HolyScriptures for Salvation; VII. Of the Old Testament; VIII. Of the ThreeCreeds; IX. Of Original or Birth Sin; X. Of Free Will_;" imagine theArticles under these headings discussed successively, sentence bysentence and clause by clause, most of the sentences and clauses allowedto pass without change as perfectly satisfactory, but here and there atintervals a phrase modified or omitted, or a slight addition made, so asto bring the meaning more sharply into accord with the letter ofScripture or the Calvinistic system of doctrine. Such mere imagination ofthe general process will suffice, and it is unnecessary to take accountof the actual changes proposed in the phraseology of particular Articles. For, in fact, these first weeks of the Assembly's pains over the Articlesof the Church were to be labour wasted. Before the end of August, andwhile they were still probing through the first Ten Articles, events hadtaken such a course that the Assembly was called upon to co-operate withthe Parliament in matters of greater urgency. 

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS TO THE ASSEMBLY. 

The war, which had been on the whole in the King's favour hitherto, wasgoing more and more against Parliament. In the north, Lord Fairfax hadbeen beaten at Atherston Moor by the Earl of Newcastle (June 30); SirWilliam Waller, the hitherto unconquered, had been beaten twice in thesouth-west (at Lansdowne, July 5, and at Roundway Down, July 13); theQueen, coming from the north, had joined the King in his quarters, amidgreat rejoicing, after their seventeen months of separation; and Bristol, inefficiently defended by Nathaniel Fiennes, was on the point of yieldingto Prince Rupert. It was time, in short, to do what it had long been inthe mind of Parliament to do--call in once more the aid of the Scots. 

On this the Parliament had already resolved. As it was judged likely, however, that the Scots would listen more readily to the application forarmed aid if it were accompanied with some distinct proof of a desire for"uniformity of religion" between the two kingdoms, the Assembly wasrequired to assist Parliament in pleading with the Scots. The ScottishConvention of Estates was then sitting (it had met, by express call, June22); and the Scottish General Assembly was to meet on the 2nd of August. Let there be Commissioners from both the English Parliament and theWestminster Assembly to these two bodies; let the Assembly write lettersto the Scottish Assembly, backing the political application withreligious arguments; let every exertion be made to secure a new alliancewith the Scottish nation! Accordingly, while the Assembly was pursuingits revision of the Articles, or occupying itself with such incidentalmatters as the appointment of ministers to preach before the two Houses, and the recommendation of a Fast Day extraordinary in London, theirthoughts, like those of Parliament, were chiefly fixed on the issue oftheir joint embassy to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes for July1643; and my MS. Chronology of events]

The Scots had foreseen the application. Three courses were before them. They might remain neutral; they might interfere as "redders, " ormediators between the King and the English Parliament; or they mightopenly side with the Parliament and help it in the war. Great efforts hadbeen made by the King to induce the Scots to the first course. [Footnote:Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton (ed. 52), pp. 279-298] Five or six of theScottish noblemen who were with the King at Oxford had been sent backamong their countrymen to labour for this end. All in vain. It had becomeclear to Argyle, Loudoun, Warriston, and the other Scottish leaders, thatneutrality would be ruinous. Things were in this state when theCommissioners from the English Parliament and the Westminster Assemblyarrived in Edinburgh (Aug. 7). The Scottish Convention of Estates wasthen still sitting; and the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, withAlexander Henderson again its Moderator (the third time he had beenraised to this Presidency), was in the middle of its annual fortnight orso of Scottish ecclesiastical business--one item of the business thistime being, I find, "the late extraordinar multiplying of witches, "especially in Fifeshire. Both the Convention and the Assembly had beenanxiously waiting for the English Commissioners, and were delighted whenthey arrived. They were six in all--Sir William Armyn, Sir Harry Vane theyounger, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley, from the Parliament; and StephenMarshall and Philip Nye from the Westminster Divines. And what movingletters they brought with them--official letters from the Parliament andthe Westminster Assembly to the Scottish Convention of Estates andGeneral Assembly, and also a more private letter signed by about seventyEnglish Divines! And how the Scots were impressed by the letters! Theprivate letter of the seventy Divines in especial was "so lamentable"that, when it was read in the General Assembly, "it drew tears frommany. " And how all were struck by the ability and gravity of young SirHarry Vane, and liked him and Stephen Marshall, but did not take so muchto Mr. Nye, because of his known Independency! In short, in conferencesbetween the English Commissioners and Commissioners appointed by theScottish Convention and General Assembly to meet them, it was allarranged. There was, indeed, still some lingering question at first amongthe Scottish leaders whether it might not do to "go as redders or friendsto both, without siding altogether with the Parliament;" but Warristonalone "did show the vanity of that notion and the impossibility of it. "And so Vane and the other Commissioners could write to England that theirmission had been successful, and that the armed aid of the Scottishnation might be expected. 

Ay, but there was a special condition. The Commissioners had come totreat about "Scottish assistance to Parliament and a uniformity ofreligion, " and it was the prospect held out in the second phrase thatmost reconciled the Scots to all that was involved in the first. Theextension of Scottish Presbyterianism over all England and Ireland, or, at all events, the union of the two kingdoms in some common form ofChurch-government not essentially differing from ScottishPresbyterianism--for that object the Scots _would_ strike in; forthat object they _would_ shed their blood, as fellow-soldiers withEnglishmen, in the fields of England! Now the English Commissioners, likewary men, and probably in accordance with their instructions, would fainhave avoided any too definite a pledging of England to a particularecclesiastical future. Nye, in especial, as an Independent, must havedesired to avoid this; and Vane, as a man who did not know how far fromhis present opinions continued reasoning might carry him, may have feltwith Nye. Hence, on the religious question, they tried to get off withgeneralities. If there were a league between the two kingdoms for theircivil liberties, would not a uniformity in Church matters naturallyfollow? But this was not quite satisfactory to the ScottishCommissioners. "The English were for a civil league, we for a religiouscovenant, " says Baillie; and the event has made the sentence memorablehistorically. Let England and Scotland unite first in subscribing one andthe same document, swearing one and the same oath, which should basetheir alliance on a certain amount of mutual engagement in the matter ofReligion! To such oaths of mutual allegiance the Scots, among themselves, had long been accustomed. They called them "Covenants. " This agency of"Covenanting" had been a grand agency in Scottish History. Was not thepresent liberation of Scotland, the destruction of Episcopacy root andbranch within its borders, the result of the "National Covenant" sworn toonly five years and a half ago--that Covenant being but the renewal, withslight additions, of a document which had done not unimportant work in aformer age? Why not have another Covenant for the present emergency--notthat National or purely Scottish Covenant, but a Covenant expresslyframed for the new purpose, and fit to be a religious pact between thetwo kingdoms? So argued the Scots with the English Commissioners; and, that the English Commissioners might see what was meant, AlexanderHenderson, who was probably the author of the idea, and to whom, at anyrate, the preparation of any extremely important document was alwaysentrusted, produced a draft of the proposed Covenant. The EnglishCommissioners did not altogether like this draft; but, after a good dealof discussion, and apparently some suggestions from Vane tending tovagueness in the religious part and greater prominence of the civil, thedraft was modified into a shape in which it was agreed to unanimously. Onthe 17th of August it was reported by Henderson to the General Assembly, and passed there not only unanimously and with applause, but with a mostunusual show of emotion among old and young; and on the same day itpassed the Scottish Convention. "This seems to be a new period and criseof the most great affair, " writes Baillie, recording these facts. [Footnote: Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1644; Baillie's Letters, II. 81-90; Burnet's Hamiltons, 298-307. ]

Baillie was right. THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, as Henderson's amendeddocument of August 1643 was called (not the same thing at all, it is tobe remembered, as the SCOTTISH NATIONAL COVENANT of 1638, thoughgenerally confounded therewith), became a most potent instrument inEngland. This, however, could not be foreseen at first. It remained to beseen whether the English Parliament would adopt the document which hadbeen agreed to by their Commissioners in Edinburgh. In the faith thatthey would, or that they might be induced to do so, the Scottish GeneralAssembly, before its rising (Aug. 19), not only sent cordial andsympathetic answers to the letters received from the Parliament and theWestminster Divines, but also complied with that request of theParliament which desired the nomination of some Scottish ministers to bemembers of the Westminster Assembly. The ministers nominated wereHenderson, Mr. Robert Douglas, Baillie, Mr. Samuel Rutherford, and Mr. George Gillespie; but it was thought right, if only to accustom theEnglish to the principle of lay-eldership, to associate with theseministers the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Johnstone ofWarriston. Of the eight Commissioners so appointed three were to be aquorum. Accordingly, Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord Maitland sailed forLondon at once (Aug. 30), leaving the others to follow more at leisure. [Footnote: Acts of Scottish Assembly of 1643; and Baillie's Letters, II. 96-98. ]

When Henderson reached London, he found his "Covenant" the universaltopic. The Parliament had lost no time in referring the document to theWestminster Divines for their consideration; and there had been three orfour days of debate over it in that Assembly (Aug. 28 and onwards). Somemembers, especially Dr. Cornelius Burges, took exceptions. On the whole, however, the feeling of the Assembly decidedly was that the Covenant wasa splendid invention, might be adopted with a few verbal changes, andmight lead to fine results. This was reported to Parliament Aug. 31; andDr. Burges, continuing in his captiousness against this judgment of theAssembly, found himself in disgrace. The two Houses then proceeded toexamine the Covenant for themselves. They also proposed somemodifications of the document, and referred it back, with these, to theAssembly (Sept. 14). The arrival of Henderson and his two colleagues atthis nick of time accelerated the conclusion. On the 15th of September, when they first appeared among the Westminster Divines, and Hendersonfirst opened his mouth in the Assembly and expounded the whole subject ofthe relations between the two kingdoms, all opposition came to an end. The document passed, with only the modifications that had already seemedreasonable, and to which the Scots Commissioners had assented; and, "after all was done, "Mr. Prolocutor, at the desire of the Assembly, gavethanks "to God for the sweet concurrence of us in the Covenant. " Thewords are Lightfoot's; who adds that, to make the joy complete, Dr. Burges came in radiant and repentant, expressing his completesatisfaction now with the Covenant, and begging to be forgiven. [Footnote: Burges had actually been suspended by Parliament from being amember of the Assembly for his contumacy in this affair, Sept. 2, 1643;but he was restored on his own humble petition, Sept. 15, the very day ofhis repentant reappearance in the Assembly. He had already on that daybeen called in before the Commons and had explained "that it was verytrue he had unhappily taken exception to some things in the Covenant, "but that "he hears there had been a review of this Covenant, " and such analteration "as will give him satisfaction. " See Commons Journals of thetwo dates named. ] The Covenant having thus been finally adjusted, the twoHouses of Parliament were swift in enacting it. On the 21st of September, they ordered that it should be printed and published, and subscribed andsworn to by the whole English realm; and, on Monday the 25th, to set theexample, there was a solemn meeting of the members of the two Houses andof the Divines of the Assembly in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, atwhich 220 of the Commons and all the Divines then present swore to thenew pact, and signed it with their names. --This was but the beginning. The Covenant was thenceforth the Shibboleth of Parliamentarianism. InLondon first, and then gradually through England, in towns, parishes, andparish churches, wherever Parliament prevailed, all had to sign it orswear to it if they would be considered friends to the cause ofParliament and allowed action and standing-room as true Englishmen. Oliver Cromwell, as a member of the House of Commons, signed it--if notamong the 220 of the Commons who signed it originally on the 25th ofSeptember (at which time there is proof that he was absent from London), at least in due course; and Milton must have signed it, as a Londonhouseholder. But, in fact, the signing went on for months and months, theRoyal Proclamation from Oxford forbidding the Covenant (Oct. 9) onlyincreasing the zeal for it. From Sept. 1643, onwards for some years, thetest of being a Parliamentarian in England was "Have you signed theCovenant?" and the test of willingness to _become_ a Parliamentarian, andof fitness to be forgiven for past malignancy or lukewarmness, was "Willyou _now_ sign the Covenant?" Such was the strange fortune of the hurriedpaper drawn up by Henderson's pen in some room in the High Street ofEdinburgh. --In Scotland, it need hardly be said, the Covenant was swornto with alacrity. As the document was, in its very nature, a pact betweenthe two kingdoms, proposed by the Scots, it was useless for them to swearuntil they had seen whether the English would accept the pact. But, assoon as it was known in Scotland that the Covenant had been adopted bythe English and that the swearing in England had begun, the Scots didtheir part. There was some little grumbling at first over the verbalchanges that had been made by the English in the text of the Covenant;but this ceased, and it was even agreed that the changes were for thebetter. Accordingly, on the 13th of October, 1643, most of the Scottishnobles in Edinburgh, including 18 of the Privy Council, swore solemnly tothe Covenant in one of the city churches; and from that day on, for weeksand months, there was a general swearing to the Covenant by the wholepeople of Scotland, as by the Parliamentarians in England, district bydistrict, and parish by parish. Thus the Scots came now to have twoCovenants. There was their own _National Scottish Covenant_, peculiar tothemselves; and there was the _Solemn League and Covenant_, in which theywere joined with the English Parliamentarians. [Footnote: Lightfoot, XIII. 10-16; Baillie, II. 98, 99, and 102; Neal, III. 65-70; Stevenson, 515, 516; Parl. Hist. III. 172-174; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 137, 138. ]

And what was this _Solemn League and Covenant_, the device ofHenderson and the Scots for linking the Scottish and English nations in apermanent civil and religious alliance? The document is not nearlyHenderson at his best, and it has not the deep ring, the fervour andfierceness, of the old Scottish Covenant. For its purpose, however, itwas efficient enough, and not so very illiberal either, the necessity ofsuch a league being allowed, and the time and other things considered. Here are the essential parts:--

We, Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministersof the Gospel, arid Commons of all sorts, in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland ... With our hands lifted up to the most high God, do swear:--

I. That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace ofGod, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the preservation ofthe Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, against our common enemies; [also] theInformation of Religion in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, inDoctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, according to the Word ofGod and the example of the best Reformed Churches: and we shall endeavourto bring the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms to the nearestconjunction and uniformity in Religion, Confession of Faith, Form ofChurch-Government, Directory for Worship and Catechising, that we and ourposterity after us may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lordmay delight to dwell in the midst of us. 

II. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavourthe extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (_i. E. _ Church-government byArchbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deansand Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical Officersdepending on that Hierarchy), Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and thepower of godliness; lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby bein danger to receive of their plagues, and that the Lord may be one andhis Name one in the three Kingdoms. 

III. We shall with the same sincerity, reality, and constancy, in ourseveral vocations, endeavour with our estates and lives mutually topreserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the libertiesof the Kingdoms, and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's personand authority, in the preservation and defence of the true Religion andLiberties of the Kingdoms; that the world may bear witness with ourconsciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions todiminish his Majesty's just power and greatness. 

IV. We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the discovery of allsuch as have been or shall be Incendiaries, Malignants, or evilInstruments, by hindering the Information of Religion, dividing the Kingfrom his People, or one of the Kingdoms from another, or making anyfaction or parties among the People contrary to the League and Covenant;that they may be brought to public trial, and receive condign punishmentas the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supremejudicatories of both Kingdoms respectively, or others having power fromthem for that effect, shall judge convenient. 

V. And, whereas the happiness of a blessed Peace between these Kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is by the good Providence ofGod granted unto us, and hath been lately concluded and settled by bothParliaments, we shall, each one of us, according to our places andinterest, endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm Peace andUnion to all posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilfulopposers thereof in manner expressed in the precedent Article. 

VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this commoncause of Religion, Liberty, and Peace of the Kingdoms, assist and defendall those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining andpursuing thereof, and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or terror, to be divided andwithdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to makedefection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a detestableindifferency and neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth theglory of God, the good of the Kingdoms, and the honour of the King; butshall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue thereinagainst all opposition, and promote the same according to our poweragainst all lets and impediments whatsoever; and what we are not ableourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known, that itmay be timely prevented or removed: all which we shall do as in the sightof God... [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 478-9, and Lords Journals, Sept. 18, 1643. --"Not so very illiberal either, " I have said of the League andCovenant in the text; and reader of the Second Article, pledging to"endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness, " will naturally demur. This Article, however, wasbut a repetition of what all, of both nations, who might sign theCovenant, including the English Parliament, were, by past actions andresolutions, already pledged to, neck-deep or more. The illiberality isto be charged not upon this particular League and Covenant, but upon theentire British mind of the time, with individual theorists excepted. Itbelonged to the Royalists equally with the Parliamentarians; the onlydifference being that the objects for "extirpation" in _their_policy were and had been the Calvinisms and Presbyterianisms that werenow exulting in the power of counter-extirpation. --The most importantArticle of the six is the First, pledging to a recognition and defence ofthe Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and to an endeavour after aReformation of Religion in England and Ireland "according to the Word ofGod, " with a view to uniformity in the three Kingdoms. The insertion ofthe caution "according to the word of God" is said to have been owing toVane, who did not want to pre-commit the English too much to exactScottish Presbytery. The few other changes made by the English Parliamentand Westminster Assembly in Henderson's original Edinburgh draft of theCovenant may be traced by a diligent reader in the proceedings of theLords and Commons on this subject as recorded in their Journals betweenAug. 31 and Sept. 15. The parenthetical definition of Prelacy in Art. II. Was a suggestion of the Assembly's; the bringing in of Ireland into theCovenant seems to have been a notion of the Commons. ]

Ono effect of the Solemn League and Covenant was to clear away from theWestminster Assembly the few Anglicans who had till then tried to hang onto it. Dr. Featley alone, of this party, persisted in keeping his placefor some time longer; but, on the discovery that he was acting as a spyin the King's interest and corresponding with Usher, he was expelled bythe Parliament, sequestrated from his livings, and committed to prison(Sept. 30). On the other hand, the Assembly had now an accession ofstrength in the Commissioners deputed to it from the Kirk of Scotland. Two of these, Mr. Douglas and the Earl of Cassilis, never made theirappearance; but the other six duly took their places, though not all atonce. They were admitted by warrant of the Parliament, entitling them "tobe present and to debate upon occasion"; but, as Commissioners from theChurch of another nation, they declined being considered "members" in theordinary sense. Practically, however, this was a mere formality; and thereader has now therefore to add to the list of the Assembly the followingScotchmen:--

DIVINES. 

ALEXANDER HENDERSON: since 1639 one of the ministers of Edinburgh, andsince 1640 Rector of the University of Edinburgh (annually re-elected). _ętat. _ 60. --As Henderson has appeared again and again in thisHistory, I have only to add here that my researches have more and moreconvinced me that he was, all in all, one of the ablest and best men ofhis age in Britain, and the greatest, the wisest, and most liberal, ofthe Scottish Presbyterians. They had all to consult him; in every straitand conflict he had to be appealed to, and came in at the last as the manof supereminent composure, comprehensiveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish Presbyterian rule was that no churchman should haveauthority in State affair's, it had to be practically waived in his case:he was a Cabinet Minister without office. The tradition in Scotland isperfectly just which recollects him as the second founder of the ReformedChurch in that part of the island, its greatest man after Knox. Such isthe tradition; and yet you may look in Encyclopędias and such-like worksof reference published of late years in Scotland, and not findHenderson's name. The less wonder that he has never received justice ingeneral British History! I undertake, however, that any free-mindedEnglish historian, investigating the course of even specially EnglishHistory from 1638 to 1646, will dig up the Scottish Henderson for himselfand see reason to admire him. --Henderson, it will be remembered, had beenin London, on the Anglo-Scottish business, before. But his stay then hadbeen for but seven months (Nov. 1640-June 1641). Now, as ScottishCommissioner to the Westminster Assembly, he was to remain in England forthe best part of three years (Aug. 1643--Aug. 1646). It was the easierfor him to give this service to English Parliamentarianism because he wasan unmarried man. His Edinburgh congregation and Edinburgh University hadto endure his absence as well as they could. Letters between Edinburghand London could go and come by sea in ten or twelve days. 

GEORGE GILLESPIE: one of the ministers of Edinburgh (formerly minister ofthe parish of Wemyss in Fifeshire): _ętat. _ 3l. --He had flashed intonotice in Scotland in 1637, when he was only four-and-twenty years ofago. He was then but tutor in the household of the Earl of Cassilis; buthe had written "_A Dispute against the English--Popish Ceremoniesobtruded upon the Church of Scotland_;" and the publication of thistreatise, happening opportunely in the crisis of the Scottish revoltagainst Laud's novelties, attracted immediate attention to him, andcaused him to be regarded as one of the young hopes of ScottishPresbyterianism. Hence his appointment to the parish of Wemyss (1638);and hence his previous mission to London, in company with Henderson, Baillie, and Blair (1640-41). Returning from that mission, he had beentranslated from Wemyss to Edinburgh; but hardly had he settled inEdinburgh when he was again sent off to London on this new business. Hiswife and family joined him in London. He took a very active part in thebusiness of the Assembly. He died in 1648, soon after his return toScotland, aged only 35, leaving various writings besides his first one. Among these were Notes of the Proceedings of the Assembly, chiefly during1644. They were first published from the MSS. In 1846. 

ROBERT BAILLIE: Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow(formerly minister of Kilwinning in Ayrshire): _ętat. _ 4l. --Bailliealso had been on the former Scottish Commission to London; and it waysorely against his will that he was appointed on this second one. Hefollowed Henderson and Gillespie in November 1643, leaving his wife andfamily in Glasgow. He also remained fully three years in London, attending the Assembly punctually, but not speaking much. Fortunately, however, he kept up his habit of jotting down in his note-books and hiscorrespondence all he saw and heard, Baillie's _Letters and Journals_(first properly edited by Mr. David Laing in 1842) are among the mostgraphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any language. Hisfaculty of narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short ofgenius. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of anything he saw orwas present at, it is worth all other accounts put together for accuracyand vividness. So in his account of Stratford's trial; and so in hisaccount of his first impressions of the Westminster Assembly. 

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD: one of the ministers of St. Andrews, and alsoProfessor of Divinity in the University there (formerly minister ofAnwoth, Kirkcudbright): _ętat_. 43. --Of him, as of the others, wehave had to take note before. Much of his celebrity in Scottishecclesiastical history and in the history of Scottish theology had yet tobe acquired; but for sixteen years he had been known as one of the mostfervid spirits and most popular preachers in all Scotland. In what moodhe accepted his commission to the Westminster Assembly may be judged froma private letter of his from St. Andrews, Oct. 20, 1643. "My heartbeareth me witness, " he there says, "and the Lord who is greater knoweth, my faith was never prouder than to be a common rough barrowman in Anwoth, and that I could not look at the honour of being ane mason to lay thefoundations for many generations, and to build the waste places of Sionin another kingdom, or to have ane hand in the carved work in the cedarand almug trees in that new Temple. " He went to London along with Bailliein November 1643, his wife and family either accompanying him orfollowing him. He also remained in London three years or more, buryingtwo of his children there. He was a much more frequent speaker in theAssembly than Baillie. 

LAY COMMISSIONERS. 

JOHN, LORD MAITLAND (eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale), _ętat_. 27. --This young nobleman, who had a long and strange career before him, was now one of the most zealous of the Scottish Covenanters, and wasselected by the Scottish Kirk, as one of the lay-elders to be sent to theWestminster Assembly, on account of his great ability and learning. Heaccompanied Henderson and Gillespie, and took his place in the Assemblyin August 1645; and, from his first arrival in London, he was muchcourted by the Parliamentary leaders. Baillie and the rest were proud oftheir young noble. This was hardly, however, on account of his personalappearance; for he was a large-bodied young fellow, red-haired, ofboisterous demeanour, and with a tongue too big for his mouth, so that hespluttered and frothed when he spoke. Ah! could the Scots but haveforeseen, could the young fellow himself but have foreseen, what yearswould bring about!

SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, Knt. : one of the Judges of theScottish Court of Session (hence by courtesy "Lord Warriston"'): _ętat. Circ_. 35. --He had been, as we know, a leader among the ScottishCovenanters since 1637, and his knighthood and judgeship, conferred onhim by the King in Edinburgh in 1641, had been the reluctant recognitionof his activity during the four preceding years. --Beside Henderson andArgyle there is no man of the Scottish Presbyterians of that time moreworthy of mark than Warriston. He had prodigious powers of work, requiring but three hours of sleep out of the twenty-four: and he wasmutually crafty and long-headed, always ready with lawyer-likeexpedients. Bishop Burnet, who was his nephew, adds, "He went into veryhigh notions of lengthened devotions, in which he continued many hours aday: he would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had anunexhausted copiousness that way. What thought soever struck his fancyduring these effusions, he looked on it as an answer of prayer, and waswholly determined by it. " Such descriptions, and even parts of his owncorrespondence, might picture him as a kind of fanatical Machiavelli; buthe seems to have been much liked and trusted by all who knew him. Baillie, for instance, addresses him familiarly and heartily as"Archibald" in his more private letters. He had much of his career stillbefore him. --His judgeship and other business in Edinburgh prevented himfrom going to London along with the other Commissioners; but he took hisplace in the Westminster Assembly Feb. 1, 1643-4, and was for some timeafterwards in England. 

[Besides Lord Maitland and Lord Warriston, there were admitted into theWestminster Assembly from time to time other Scottish lay-commissioners, either to make up for the absence of the Earl of Cassilis originallyappointed, or for other reasons. Thus in September 1643, when Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord Maitland took their places, ROBERT MALDRUM, aconfidential agent of the Scots in London, was admitted along with them;and the EARL OF LOUDOUN, LORD BALMERINO and even ARGYLE himself, sat inthe Assembly at various times subsequently. ]

Every respect was paid to the Scottish Commissioners in London. They hadWorcester House in the City assigned, or rather re-assigned, them for aresidence, with St. Antholin's church again made over to them for theirpreachings; [Footnote: Memoir of Baillie, by David Laing, in Baillie'sLetters and Journals, p. Li. In Cunningham's "London, " and else where, Worcester House in the Strand, on the site of the present BeaufortBuildings, afterwards Lord Clarendon's house is mad the residence of theScottish Commissioners; but Mr. Laing points out that it was WorcesterHouse or Worcester Place in the City, which had been the mansion of JohnTiptoft, Earl of Worcester. ] and they had a special bench of honour inthe Assembly. And from that bench, day after day, week after week, monthafter month, they laboured to direct the Assembly, and, to a greatextent, did direct it. For, as the mainly Presbyterian character andcomposition of the Assembly at its first meeting had been the result ofthe influence of Scottish example and of continued Scottish action inEngland for a year or two, so it was to Henderson's Covenant, and to thepresence of the Scottish Commissioners in London, that the Assembly, while yet in its infancy, was indebted (if it was a debt) for a newimpulse or twist in the strict Presbyterian direction. EnglishPresbyterianism might be willing, but it was vague and uninformed;whereas here, in the Scottish Commissioners, were men who knew all aboutPresbyterianism, had every detail of it at their fingers' ends, hadstudied it nearly all their lives, and had worked it practically for fiveyears. What a boon to England to be able to borrow for a year or two sucha group of Scottish instructors! It was as if a crowd of Volunteers, right-minded and willing to learn, had secured a few highly-recommendedregulars to be their drill-sergeants. 

DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY: PRESBYTERIANISM AND INDEPENDENCY: THE_APOLOGETIC NARRATION_ OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 

It was not till October 12, 1643, that the real debating in the Assemblybegan. Till then they had been occupied with matters in which they couldbe pretty nearly of one mind, including their revision of the Thirty-nineArticles. In that business, where we left them at the Tenth Article(_antč_, p. 6), they had crawled on through five Articles more: viz. -"_XI. Of Justification by Faith_"; "_XII. Of Good Works_"; "_XIII. OfWorks before Justification_"; "_XIV. Of Works of Supererogation_"; "_XV. Of Christ alone without Sin_"; and on the 12th of October they were busyover Article XVI. "_Of Sin after Baptism. _" But on that day they receivedan order from the two Houses (and Scottish influence is here visible) toleave for the present their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, andproceed at once to the stiffer questions of the new form of Church-government and the new Directory of Worship for England. [Footnote:Lightfoot's Notes, p. 17. ] Of these questions the Assembly chose thefirst to begin with. On what a sea of troubles they were then launched!

(1) CHURCH OFFICERS AND OFFICES. --Under this heading alone they haddebates extending over nearly three months (Oct. 1643--Jan. 1643-4), andlabouring successively through such topics as these--Christ's Priesthood, Prophetship, and Kingship, with the nature of his Headship over theChurch; the Church officers under Christ mentioned in Scripture(Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Doctors or Teachers, Bishops or Overseers, Presbyters or Elders, Deacons, and Widows), with the nature of theirfunctions respectively, and the proper discrimination between those ofthem that were extraordinary and temporary and those that were to beordinary and permanent in the Church; the settling therefrom of theofficers properly belonging to each modern Christian congregation, andespecially whether there should be ruling lay-elders along with thepastor or minister, and, if so, what should be their exact duties. Gradually, in the course of this long discussion, carried on day afterday in the slowest syllogistic way, the differences of the Independentsand the Erastians from the Presbyterian majority of the Assembly cameout. On the question of lay-eldership, indeed, there was a more extensivecontest. Such English Presbyterians as Mr. Vines, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Gataker, joined with the Erastian Divines, Lightfoot and Coleman, andwith the Independents, in wholly or partially opposing lay-eldership, against the advocacy of their brethren, Marshall, Calamy, Newcomen, Young(four of the Smectymnuans), Seaman, Herle, Walker, Whitaker and others, hacked by the Scottish Commissioners. On the whole, however, the voteswere decidedly in favour of the Scottish Presbyterian arrangement ofchurch offices. Henderson occasionally waived a point for the sake ofaccommodation. 

(2) ORDINATION:--This subject and its adjuncts occupied the Assemblyduring some fourteen sittings in January 1643-4. Ordination having beendefined to be "the solemn setting apart of a person to some public churchoffice, " it was voted, not without opposition, that such ordination isalways to be continued in the church, and consequently that there shouldnot be promiscuous preaching by all and sundry, but only preaching byauthorized persons. But then who were to ordain? What were to be thequalifications for being ordained to the pastoral office? How far werethe congregations or parishioners to have a voice in the election oftheir pastors? What was to be the ceremonial of ordination? On thesepoints, or on some of them, the Independents fought stoutly, beingcarefully on their guard against anything that might endanger their mainprinciple of the completeness of every congregation of believers withinitself. Selden also interposed with perturbing Erastian arguments. On thewhole, however, in this matter also the drift of the Assembly was as thePresbyterians wished. While it was agreed that "in extraordinary casessomething extraordinary may be done until a settled order can be had, " itwas voted that even in such cases there should be a "keeping as near aspossibly may be to the rule;" which rule was indicated, so far at least, by the resolution that "preaching Presbyters may ordain, " or that Bishopsare not required for the act. But, before this subject of Ordinationcould be carried farther, it melted into a larger one. 

(3) PRESBYTERIAL GOVERNMENT OR CONGREGATIONALISM:--This controversy, which had been underlying the whole course of the previous debating, emerged in express terms before the end of January 1643-4. Then began thereal tug of the verbal war. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the itemsof the controversy. The battle was essentially between two principles ofchurch-organization. Was every individual assembly, or association ofChristians (it might be of hundreds of persons, or it might be of as fewas seven persons, voluntarily drawn together), to be an independentecclesiastical organism, entitled to elect its own pastor and otherofficers, and to exercise the powers of admonition and excommunicationwithin itself--any action of surrounding congregations upon it being anaction of mere observation and criticism, and not of power orjurisdiction; and no authority to belong to meetings of the office-bearers of congregations of the same city or neighbourhood, or to generalsynods of office-bearers, however useful for various purposes suchoccasional meetings and synods might be? This was what the Independentsmaintained; and to this the Presbyterians vehemently said Nay. It was notdesirable, they said in the first place, that congregations themselvesshould be mere gatherings of Christians drawn together by chanceaffinities. That would be to put an end to the parochial system, with allthe advantages of orderliness and effective administration that belongedto it. Let every congregation consist, as heretofore, mainly of theinhabitants of one parish or definitely marked ecclesiastical territory. Then let there be a strict inter-connectedness of all these parochialcongregations over the whole land by means of an ascending series ofchurch-judicatories. Let the congregations of the same town or districtbe connected by a Presbyterial Court, consisting of the assembledministers and the ruling lay-elders of all the congregations, periodically reviewing the proceedings of the said congregationsindividually, or hearing appeals from them; and let these Presbyteries orPresbyterial Courts be in like manner under the authority and review ofSynods, embracing many Presbyteries within their bounds, and, finally, ofNational Assemblies of the whole Church. Fierce and hot waxed the warbetween the two systems. Much turned on the practice of the apostolicchurches or primitive Christian communities of Jerusalem Ephesus, Antioch, Corinth, &c. , as it could be gathered from various passages ofScripture: and great was the display of learning, Hebraic andHellenistic, over these passages on both sides. Goodwin as the chiefspeaker for the Independents; but he was aided by Nye, Burroughs, Bridge, and Simpson; and Selden struck in, if not directly for Congregationalism, at least so as to perplex the Presbyterians. On the other side Marshalland the other Smectymnuans were conspicuous, with Vines, Seaman, Burges, Palmer, Herle, and Whitaker. Henderson looked on and assisted whenrequired. But no one on this side was more energetic than Henderson'syoung colleague, Gillespie. His countryman Baillie was in raptures withhim, and in writing to Scotland and to Holland could not praise himenough. "Of a truth" he says in one letter, "there is no man whose partsin a public debate I do so admire. He has studied so accurately all thepoints that ever yet came to our Assembly, he has got so ready, soassured, so solid a way of public debating, that, however there be in theAssembly divers very excellent men, yet, in my poor judgment, there isnot one who speaks more rationally and to the point than that brave youthhas done ever. " On one occasion Gillespie, on a question of sheerlearning, dared to grapple even with the great Selden, and with sucheffect, according to tradition (Scottish!), that even Selden reeled. Andso on and on, from January 1643-4, through February, March, and April, the debate proceeded, and there seemed to be no likely end to it. For, though Congregationalism was maintained but by a small knot of men in theAssembly, they fought man fully, inch by inch, and there were variousreasons why the majority, instead of overwhelming them by a conclusivevote or two, allowed them to struggle on. For one thing, though Bailliethought there was a "woful longsomeness" in the slow English forms ofdebating at such a time, it was felt by the English members that, in soimportant a business as the settling of a new constitution for theNational Church, hurry would be unbecoming. But, besides this, theAssembly was not a body legislating in its own right. It had been calledonly to advise the Parliament; and, though its deliberations were withclosed doors, was not all that it did from day to day pretty well known, not only in Parliament, but in London and throughout the country? Mightnot the little knot of Independents fighting within the Assemblyrepresent an amount of opinion out of doors too large to be trifled with?[Footnote: In Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly and Gillespie's similarNotes, the proceedings which I have endeavoured to summarize in thisparagraph and the two preceding may be traced in detail--Lightfoot'sNotes traversing, with great minuteness, the whole of the time undernotice; and Gillespie's beginning at Feb. 2, 1643-4. Prefixed toGillespie's Notes, as edited by Meek in 1846, there is, however, a veryuseful set of official minutes of the proceedings from Oct. 17, 1643, onwards, by the Scribes of the Assembly; which may be compared withLightfoot's more extensive jottings. There are excellent and luminousnotices of the Assembly's proceedings during most of the time indicatedin Baillie, II. 106-174. Neal is very confused in his account of theAssembly, and does not seem to have studied its proceedings well. InHetherington's _History of the Westminster Assembly_ there is afairish popular account, compiled from Lightfoot and Gillespie, butcharged with the author's strong personal Presbyterianism. Thetraditional part of the story of Gillespie's fight with Selden (which hadcome down, I believe, through the careful Scottish Church antiquary, Wodrow) is given by Mr. Hetherington in his History of the Assembly, butmore fully and interestingly in his Memoir of Gillespie, prefixed toMeek's Edition of Gillespie's Notes. ]

None knew this better than the little knot of Independents in theAssembly itself. They had already acted on the knowledge. Foreseeing thatthe determination of the great question in the Assembly would inevitablybe against them, they had taken the precaution, before the question cameon in its final form, to record an appeal from the Assembly to Parliamentand public opinion. This they had done in a so-called _ApologeticalNarration_, presented to Parliament, and published and put incirculation not later than the beginning of January 1643-4. [Footnote: Ifind it registered at Stationers' Hall, Dec. 30, 1643. ] It is a tract ofsome thirty quarto pages, signed openly by the five writers--ThomasGoodwin, Sidrach Simpson, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughs, and WilliamBridge. Having explained first that they had been in no haste to presstheir peculiar opinions, and would have preferred to disclose themgradually, but that recent experience had left them no option but toappeal to Parliament as "the supreme judicatory of this kingdom, " and"the most sacred refuge and asylum for mistaken and misjudged innocence, "they proceed to a historical sketch of their doings while they had beenin Holland, and an exposition of their differences from theirPresbyterian brethren. Three principles of practical conduct, they say, had taken firm hold of them--_first_, that their supreme rule inchurch-matters, out of themselves, should be the pattern of the primitiveor apostolic churches; _secondly_, that they would not bind themselvesby their present judgment in any matter against a possible future changeof judgment; and, _thirdly_, that they would study accommodation, asfar as they could, to the judgments of others. Acting on theseprinciples, but foreseeing the condemnation of their Congregationalism bythe Assembly, they hoped at least that the issue would be so regulatedfinally by Parliament that they might not be driven into exile again, butmight be permitted "to continue in their native country, with theenjoyment of the ordinances of Christ, and an indulgence in some lesserdifferences, " so long as they continued peaceable subjects. [Footnote:Neal, III. 131-133, _Narration_ itself, also Hanbury's _HistoricalMemorials relating to the Independents_, Vol. II. (1841), pp. 221-230. ]

This appeal to Cęsar by the five leading Independents had by no meanspleased the rest of the Assembly. Though they acknowledged the greatability and even the moderation of the dissentients, they thought it anunfriendly stroke of policy on their part to have thus shelteredthemselves by anticipation under the power outside. But, indeed, it wasmore than a stroke of personal policy. The five knew that they werespeaking not for themselves only, but for all that might adhere to them. Their act reminded the Assembly of what was otherwise becoming apparent--to wit, that the Assembly was after all but an imperfect representationof contemporary English opinion. It was an ark floating on a troubledsea, with its doors and windows well pitched, and perhaps with Noah onboard, but not all Noah's family, and certainly not specimens of all theliving creatures, even of non-episcopal kinds, that were to survive intothe new order of things. What if, on the subsidence of the waters, thesurvivors in this ark should find themselves confronted with anotherpopulation, which, having survived somehow on chance spars and rafts, must be included in the new community, and yet would insist thatquestions should be kept open in that community that had been settled byvotes passed within the ark? That such was likely to be the case thePresbyterians already had proof. 

What, then, were they to do? In the first place, as they believed Noah tobe within _their_ ark, they were to trust to his power, and theveneration that would be accorded to him, when he should re-emerge. Inother words, they were to press on the Presbyterian theory in theAssembly, allowing "the Five Dissenting Brethren, " as they were nowcalled, the most prolix liberty of speech and reasoning, but alwaysbeating them in the final vote so as to secure a thoroughly Presbyterianreport to Parliament at the last. But, in the second place, as theIndependents had appealed to public opinion against such a contingency, it was necessary not only to carry Presbyterianism within the Assembly, but also to argue for it out of doors. Hence, through the year 1644, among the shoals of pamphlets that came from the London press (includingFast-day Sermons, Sermons before the Lords and Commons, &c. , by the mosteminent members of Assembly) there were not a few pleas for Presbytery, intended to counteract the effects of the _Apologetical Narration_and other pleas for Congregationalism. Rutherford's _Temperate Plea forPaul's Presbytery in Scotland, or Modest Dispute touching Independency ofparticular Congregations_, and the same author's _Peaceable Plea for theGovernment of the Church of Scotland_, had preceded the _ApologeticalNarration_; but the express answers to the _Narration_ were numerous. Oneof the most celebrated of these was a pamphlet entitled _SomeObservations and Annotations upon the Apologetical Narration, _ addressedto the Parliament and the Assembly by a writer who signs himself merely"A. S. , " but is known to have been a certain Dr. Adam Steuart, a Scotresiding in London, but who soon afterwards received a call to Leyden. Tothis pamphlet there were replies on the part of the Independents, especially one entitled _M. S. To A. S. _ (a title changed in a secondedition into "_A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S. _"); again "A. S. "responded; and so the controversy went on, pamphlets thickening onpamphlets. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibl. Manual, by Bohn, Article "Steuart, Adam;" Baillie, II. 216; and Hanbury's _Hist. Memorials relating to theIndependents_, II. 251 _et seq. _, and 341 _et seq. _, where there are fullaccounts of the pamphlets, with extracts. ]

PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT TO FEB. 1643-4: STATE OF THE WAR: THE SCOTTISHAUXILIARY ARMY. 

Meanwhile, notwithstanding this ominous difference in the Assembly on thegreat question of Church-government, all parties in the Assembly were co-operating harmoniously with each other and with Parliament in otherimportant items of the general "Reformation" which was in progress. Thechief of these items may be grouped under headings:--

_Simplification of Church Service, and Suppression of unpopular Ritesand Symbols_. --This process, which had been going on naturally fromthe beginning of the Parliament, and more violently and riotously in someplaces since the beginning of the war, had been accelerated by recentParliamentary enactments. Thus, in May 1643, just when Milton waspreparing to leave London on his marriage holiday, there had been atearing down, by authority, with the sound of trumpets and amid thehuzzas of the citizens, of Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other suchstreet-monuments of too Popish make. At the same time the anti-Sabbatarian "Book of Sports" had been publicly burnt. Then followed (Aug. 27) an ordinance for removing out of churches all "superstitious images, crucifixes, altars, " &c. ; the effect of which for the next few months wasa more or less rough visitation of pickaxing, chipping, and chiselling inall the parish-churches within the Parliament's bounds that had notalready been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, on the 20th ofNovember, the House of Commons recommended to the consideration of theAssembly a new English Version of the Psalms, which had been recentlyexecuted, and put into print, by the much-respected member for Truro, Mr. Francis Rous. Ought not Sternhold and Hopkins's Version to be disusedamong other lumber; and, if so, might not Rous's Version be adoptedinstead, for use in churches? It would be a merited compliment and also asource of private profit to the veteran Puritan--whom the Parliament, atany rate, were about to appoint to the Provostship of Eton College (worth800_l_ a year and more), instead of the Malignant, Dr. Stewart, thenwith his Majesty. The Assembly did actually take up Rous's Psalter, hisfriends pressing it on the old gentleman's account, but others notthinking it good enough; and we find Baillie regretting, Scot-like, whenthe subject was first brought up, that he had not with him a copy ofanother version of the Psalms then in MS. , by his friend and countryman, Sir William Mure of Rowallan. This version he liked best of any he hadseen, and thought decidedly better than Rous's; and; if he had had acopy, he might have been able to do his friend a good turn! [Footnote:Common Journals, Nov. 20, 1643; Baillie, II. 101 (and note), and 120-121. Baillie, at the very time he was privately wishing he had his friendRowallan's Psalms to pit against Rous's, was becoming acquainted withRous; to whom in a month or two he dedicated a sermon of his preachedbefore the Commons. He there calls Rous his "much honoured friend. "Rowallan's Psalms remain in MS. To this day; but specimens of them havebeen published. See Baillie's Letters, pp. 535-6 of Appendix, Vol. III. ;where there is an interesting and curious history of English Versions ofthe Psalms, by the editor, Mr. David Laing. ] The adoption of Rous'sPsalter was not immediately voted by the Assembly, but lay over alongwith the general business of the new Directory for Worship. In thisbusiness too they were making some private progress in Committee, thoughretarded by the debates on Church-government; and there was everylikelihood of substantial agreement here. Independents and Erastians werepretty sure to agree with Presbyterians on the subjects of the Liturgy, Sabbath-observance, abolition of Festival-days, and the recommendation ofa plain and Puritan church-service generally. There were significantproofs of this. Actually on Christmas-day 1643 (who would have thoughtit?) the Lords and Commons met for business as usual, thus showing theexample of contempt of the great holiday--all the more to the delight ofthe Scottish Commissioners, and of the zealous Puritans of the Assemblyand the City, because the Assembly was still weak-hearted enough as awhole to adjourn for that day. It was the Scottish Commissioners, indeed, that had contrived this rebuke to the weaker spirits. And within a weekor two thereafter there was this farther Puritan triumph--also thecontrivance of the Scottish Commissioners through their friends inParliament, --that the use of the Liturgy was discontinued in the twoHouses, in favour of extempore prayers by Divines appointed for the dutyby the Assembly. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 120 and 130. ]

_Ejection of Scandalous and Malignant Ministers_. --A somewhatwholesale process, described in such terms by the winning side, had beengoing on, everywhere within the sway of Parliament, for several months. It was part, indeed, of a more general process, for the sequestration tothe use of Parliament of the estates of notorious Delinquents of allkinds, which had been the subject of various Parliamentary ordinances. [Footnote: Commons Journals from March 1612-3 onwards. For sequence ofproceedings and dates, see Index to Journals, Vol III. _sub cocc. _"Delinquents. " See also the main sequestrating ordinances (March 31 andAug. 19, 1643) in Scobell's collection. ] By these ordinances a machineryfor the work of sequestration had been established, consisting of acentral committee in London, and of committees in all the accessiblecounties. The special application of this machinery to clericaldelinquents had come about gradually. From the very beginning of theParliament (Nov. 1640) there had been a grand Committee of the Commons, of which Mr. White, member for Southwark, was chairman, for inquiringinto the scandalous immoralities of the clergy, and an acting Sub-committee, of which Mr. White also was chairman, for considering howscandalous ministers might be removed, and real preaching ministers putin their places. By the action of these committees month after month--receiving and duly investigating complaints brought against clergymen, either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions andpractices--a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the blackbooks, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now theParliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers"--_i. E. _ for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonagesin various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock intoLondon, with their families, for refuge and subsistence. A specialCommittee of the Commons had been appointed (Dec. 1642) to devise waysand means for the relief of these "godly and well-affected ministers;"and, as was natural, the proceedings of this Committee had become inter-wound with those of the Committee for the ejection of scandalousministers--Mr. White at the head of the whole agency. And so, in theCommons, we hear ultimately of such determinations as these respecting"scandalous ministers:"--July 3, 1643: "Ordinance to be prepared to enablethe Committees (for sequestration) in the several counties to sequestertheir livings;"--July 27: "the Committee for plundered Ministers toconsider of informations against them and to put them to the proof;"--Sept. 6: "Deputy Lieutenants and Committees in the counties empowered toexamine witnesses against them. " The result was the beginning of that"great and general purgation of the clergy in the Parliament's quarters"about which there was such an outcry among the Royalists at the time, andwhich, after having been a rankling memory in the High Church heart forseventy years, became the main text of Walker's famous folio of 1714 on"The Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England in the GrandRebellion. " According to that book, and to Royalist tradition, it was aruthless persecution and spoliation of all the best, the most venerable, and the most learned of the clergy of England. Fuller, however, writingat the time, and corroborated by Baxter, represents the facts morefairly. Not a few of the clergy first ejected, he admits, were really menof scandalous private character, and were turned out expressly on thataccount; others, who were turned out for what was called their "falsedoctrine, " or obstinate adherence to that Arminian theology andceremonial of worship which the nation had condemned, might regardthemselves as simply suffering in their turn what Puritan ministers hadsuffered abundantly enough under the rule of Laud; and, if gradually thesequestration extended itself beyond these two categories of "scandalousministers" and "ministers of unsound faith, " and swept in among"malignants" generally, or those whose only fault was that they wereprominent adherents to the King, what was that but one of the harshnatural vengeances of a civil war? At the beginning of the purgation, atall events, Parliament professed carefulness and even leniency in itschoice of victims. A fifth of the income of every ejected minister wasreserved to his wife and family; and, in order that the public, and eventhe Royalists, might judge of the equity with which Parliament hadproceeded in so odious a business, Mr. White, the chairman of thecommittees on clerical delinquency, put forth in print (Nov. 19, 1643)his "First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests, " or statement of thecases of one hundred of the sequestered clergy, chiefly in London and theadjacent counties, with the reasons of their ejection. At the time whenMr. White (thenceforward known as "Century White") put forth thispamphlet, the number of the ejected must have already considerablyexceeded one hundred, or perhaps even three hundred; and, as the war wenton, and sequestration became more and more co-extensive with"malignancy, " the number swelled till, as is calculated, some 1, 500 or1, 600 clergymen in all, or about a sixth part of the total clergy ofEngland, were thrown out of their livings. [Footnote: Commons Journals ofdates July 3, July 27, and Sept. 6, 1643; White's _First Century_, Fuller's Church History (ed. 1842), III. 458, 460; Neal's Puritans, III. 23-34. Sec also Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed. ), II. 164-166. ]

_Filling up of Vacant Livings by the appointment of NewMinisters_. --For the sequestered livings there were, of course, numerous candidates. Not only were there the "plundered" Puritanministers, most of them congregated in London, to be provided for; butthere were the young Divinity scholars growing up, for whom, even in astate of war, or at least for such of them as took the side ofParliament, it was necessary to find employment. Obviously, however, someorder or method had to be adopted in the exercise of the large patronageof vacant livings which had thus come suddenly into the hands ofParliament. The plundered ministers could not be thrust promiscuously, orby mere lottery, into such livings as were vacant. They had all, certainly, the qualification of being already ordained; but there weredifferent sorts of persons among them, and some with very little torecommend them except their distress. It was essential that there shouldbe some examination or re-examination of all such petitioners for newlivings, in order that the unfit should not be appointed, and that theothers might be provided for according to their degrees of fitness. Accordingly, at the request of the two Houses, the Westminster Assembly(Oct. 1643) appointed two-and-twenty of its Divines to be a committee forexamining and reporting on the qualifications of all such petitioners forlivings as might be referred to it by Parliament. About the same time aprovisional arrangement was made for the more difficult matter ofordaining new candidates for the Ministry. The whole question ofOrdination having yet to be argued and settled in the Assembly (see_antč_, p. 20), it was felt on all hands that some temporaryarrangement was imperative. Accordingly, by the advice of the Assembly, the whole business of deciding who were fit to be ordained, and of dulyordaining such, was entrusted by Parliament to certain committees orassociations of godly ministers, themselves already ordained, appointedfor certain centres and districts. The chief Ordaining Committee was, ofcourse, that for London and the country round. This committee, to whichwas assigned not only the ordination of new ministers for its importantdistrict, but also the ordination of all chaplains for the army and navy, consisted of twenty-three associated Presbyters (ten Divines of theAssembly and thirteen parish-ministers of London not in the Assembly), ofwhom seven were to be a quorum. Whosoever, not already ordained, shouldpresume to preach publicly or otherwise exercise the ministerial officewithout having been ordained by this association, or one of the others, or at least without a certificate of having been approved by theExamining Committee of the Assembly, was to be reported to Parliament forcensure and punishment. The London Divines were enjoined to be carefulwhom they admitted into their pulpits. In short, it was the object ofboth the Parliament and the Assembly to proclaim their determinationthat, while the question of Church-government was being considered, somedecent rule of practical order should be carefully observed, and Englandshould not be allowed to lapse, as the loyalists were giving out, into amere anarchy of ranters, preaching cobblers, and every fool his ownparson. [Footnote: Neal, III. 88-90, and 138-141. ]

_Visitation of the University of Cambridge_. --While the scandalousand malignant among the parish clergy were being sequestered and ejected, it was not to be expected that Parliament would spare the Universities. Oxford, for the present, was beyond reach; but Cambridge was withinreach. Was it to be endured that, while the town of Cambridge was thevery centre of the Associated Eastern Counties, the most zealouslyParliamentarian region in all England, the University should be afortress of malignancy, with many of its Heads of Houses and Fellowsnotoriously disaffected to Parliament, and showing their disaffection bysermons, publications from the University press, continuance of theforbidden usages and symbolisms in the College chapels, and such otheracts of contumacy? For a long time Parliament had been asking itself thisquestion. As early as June 10, 1643, the subject of "some effectual meansof reforming" the University of Cambridge, "purging it from all abuses, innovations, and superstitions, " and dealing with conspicuous malignantsin it, had been under discussion in the Commons. There had been areluctance, however, to proceed too rapidly, or so as to incur theRoyalist reproaches of "invasion of University rights" and "ruin of agreat seat of learning. " Hence, whatever dealings with the University hadbeen necessary had been left very much to the discretion of the ordinaryagencies representing Parliament in the Associated Counties, at the headof which, since Aug. 1643, had been the Earl of Manchester. There waseven a Parliamentary ordinance (Jan. 6, 1643-4) explaining that, whateversequestration there might be of the revenues of individual delinquents inthe University, every regard was to be paid to the property of theUniversity as such, and not an atom of _it_ should be alienated. Bythis time, however, it was felt that the malignancy of the Universitymust be dealt with more expressly. Accordingly, on the 22nd of Januarythere was passed "an Ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridgeand for removing of scandalous Ministers in the several AssociateCounties. " By this ordinance it was provided that, "whereas manycomplaints are made by the well-affected inhabitants of the associatedcounties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, andLincoln, that the service of the Parliament is retarded, the enemystrengthened, the people's souls starved, and their minds diverted fromany care of God's cause, by their idle, ill-affected and scandalousclergy of the University of Cambridge and the Associated Counties" andwhereas "many that would give evidence against such scandalous ministersare not able to travel to London, " therefore the Earl of Manchestershould be commissioned to take the necessary steps in the University andthe Counties themselves. He was to appoint Committees who were to have"power to call before them all Provosts, Masters, and Fellows ofColleges, all students and members of the University, and all ministersin any county of the Association, and all schoolmasters;" and, after dueinquiry by these Committees, he was to have power "to eject such as heshall judge unfit from their places, and to sequester their estates, means and revenues, and to place other fitting persons in their room, such as shall be approved of by the Assembly of Divines. " A veryimportant ordinance, as we shall see in due time. [Footnote: CommonsJournals, June 10, 1643, and Jan. 20, 1643-4; Lords Journals, Jan. 6 andJan. 22, 1643-4; and Neal, III. 105-107. ]

The reader need hardly be reminded by what authority all these acts andchanges in the system of England were decreed and carried into effect. Since the beginning of the war the government of England, except wherethe King's troops were in possession, had been in the two Houses ofParliament sitting at Westminster; but since July 1643 it may be saidrather to have been in these two Houses of Parliament _with_ theAssembly of Divines. What the reader requires, however, to be reminded ofis the smallness numerically of this governing body. The House of Lords, in particular, though still retaining all its nominal dignity and keepingup all its stately forms, was a mere shred of its former self. About 29or 30 persons, out of the total Peerage of England, as we reckoned (Vol. II. Pp. 430-31), had avowed themselves Parliamentarians; so that, had allthese been present, the House of Lords would have been but a very smallgathering. But, as a certain number even of these were always absent onmilitary duty or on other occasions, it was seldom that more than 14 or15 Peers were present in the House around Lord Grey of Wark on thewoolsack as elected Speaker. Sometimes, when the business was merelyformal, the number sank to 4 or 5; and I do not think the Lords Journalsregister, during the whole time with which we are now concerned, a largerattendance than 22. That was the number present on the 22nd of January, 1643-4, when the ordinance for visiting Cambridge University was passed. [Footnote: As the Lords Journals give the names of the Peers present eachday, very accurate information on this subject is obtainable from them. ]In the Commons, of course, the attendance was much larger. When a "whip"was necessary, between 200 and 300 could be got together. Thus on the25th of September, 1643, which was the day of inaugurating the Covenant, 220 were present; and on the above-mentioned 22nd of January, 1643-4--animportant day for various reasons--as many as 280 made their appearance, while it was calculated that 100 were absent in the Parliamentaryservice. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 199. ] Usually, however, theattendance was much less numerous. On a vote taken Nov. 26, 1643, thedivision showed 59 against 58, or 117 present; and this appears to berather above the mark of the attendance in general. --On the whole, onemay say that the business of the nation in the interest of Parliament wascarried on habitually during those important months by some 12 or 15Parliamentarian Peers, and some 100 Commoners, keeping up the forms ofthe two Houses, and having for their assessors, and in part for theirspurs and tutors, the 60 or 80 Puritan Divines who sat close at hand inthe Jerusalem Chamber. 

Was all this to last? Whether it was to last or not depended not a littleon the conduct of the Parliament itself, but greatly more on the conductof the generals and armies that held up its banners in various parts ofEngland. And how, since our last glimpses of the state of the war in thedark month of Hampden's death and the month following that (June and July1643), had the war been going on? Much as before. What do we see? A siegehere and a siege there, a skirmish here and a skirmish there, endingsometimes for the Parliament, but as often for the King; amid all thesesieges and skirmishes no battle of any magnitude, save the first Battleof Newbery (Sept. 20, 1643), where Lord Falkland, weary of his life, wasslain, and also the Royalist Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland, butotherwise the damage to the King was inconsiderable; Essex still heavyand solemn, an excellent man, but a woful commander-in-chief; little SirWilliam Waller still the favourite and set up against Essex, butconfidence in him somewhat shaken by his recent defeats; the Fairfaxes inthe north, and others in other parts, doing at best but respectably;Cromwell, it is true, a marked man and always successful wherever heappeared, but appearing yet only as Colonel Cromwell! "For the presentthe Parliament side is running down the brae, " wrote the sagaciousBaillie, Sept. 22, 1643; and again, more pithily, Dec. 7, "They may tig-tag on this way this twelvemonth. " The only remedy, Baillie thought--theonly thing that would change the sluggish "tig-tagging" of Essex and theEnglish into something like what a war should be--was the expectedcoming-in of the Scots. For this event the English Parliamentarians alsolonged vehemently. "All things are expected from God and the Scots" isBaillie's description of the feeling in London in the winter of 1643-4. For, though the bringing in of a Scottish force auxiliary to the Englisharmy had been arranged for in the autumn--though it was for that end thatthe English Parliament had sent Commissioners to Edinburgh, had acceptedHenderson's "Solemn League and Covenant, " and had admitted ScottishCommissioners into the Westminster Assembly--yet the completing of thenegotiations, and the getting together and equipping of the Scottish armyfor its southward march, had been a work of time. About Christmas 1643 itwas understood that the Scots were in readiness to march; but the precisetime when they might be expected to cross the border was yet in anxiousconjecture. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 83, 99, 104-5, and 114-15. ]

It was an unusually severe winter, cold and snowy. The Londoners, inespecial, deprived of their coal from Newcastle, felt it severely. Baillie particularly mentions the comfortable hangings of the JerusalemChamber, and the good fire kept burning in it, as "some dainties inLondon" at that date, and duly appreciated by the members of theAssembly. [Footnote: Ibid. II. 106. ] Among the printed broad-sheets ofthe time that were hawked about London, I have seen one entitled"_Artificial Fire; or, Coal for Rich and Poor: this being the offer ofan excellent new Invention_. " The invention consists of a proposal tothe Londoners of a cheap substitute for coal, devised by a "Mr. RichardGesling, Ingineer, late deceased. " Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if youtake brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up pasteballsthereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and withstable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coalitself. But, though this is the practical proposal of the fly-sheet, itsmain interest lies in its lamentation over the lack of the normal fuel. "Some fine-nosed city dames, " it says, "used to tell their husbands, 'Ohusband! we shall never be well, we nor our children, whilst we live inthe smell of this city's sea-coal smoke! Pray, a country-house for ourhealth, that we may get out of this sea-coal smell!' But how many ofthese fine-nosed dames now cry, 'Would to God we had sea-coal! Oh! thewant of fire undoes us! O the sweet sea-coal fires we used to have! howwe want them now: no fire to your sea-coal!'... This for the rich: aword for the poor! The great want of fuel for fire makes many a poorcreature cast about how to pass over this cold winter to come; but, finding small redress for so cruel an enemy as the cold makes, some turnthieves that never stole before--steal posts, seats, benches from doors, rails, nay, the very stocks that should punish them; and all to keep thecold winter away. " [Footnote: Folio sheet dated 1644 (_i. E. _ winterof 1643-4), in British Museum Library: Press-mark, 669, f. ]--If on noother account than the prospect of a re-opening of the coal-trafficbetween Newcastle and London, what joy among the Londoners when the newscame that, on Friday the 19th of January, 1643-4, the expected Scottisharmy had entered England by Berwick! They had entered it, toiling throughdeep snow, 21, 500 strong, and were already--God be praised!--spreadingthemselves over the winter-white fields of the very region where the coallay black underground. At their head who but old Field-marshall Leslie, now Earl of Leven, Scottish commander-in-chief for the third time, andtolerably well acquainted already with the North of England? Second incommand to him, as Lieutenant-general of the Foot, was William Baillie, of Letham, in this post for the second time; and the Major-general, withcommand of the horse was David Leslie, a third Gustavus-Adolphus man, and, though a namesake of the commander-in-chief, only distantly relatedto him. The marquis of Argyle accompanied the invaders, nominally asColonel of a troop of horse; and among the other colonels of foot orhorse were the Earls of Cassilis, Lindsay, Loudoun, Buccleugh, Dunfermline, Lothian, Marischal, Eglinton, and Dalhousie. The expenses ofthe army, averaging 1, 000_l. _ per diem (6_d. _ a day for eachcommon foot-soldier, 8_d. _ for a horse-soldier, and so on upwards)were, by agreement, to be charged to England. [Footnote: Rushw. V. 604-7;Parl. Hist. III. 200, 201; Baillie, II. 100 and 137. ]

The condition on which the Scots had consented thus to aid the EnglishParliament must not be forgotten. It was the agreement of the two nationsin one and the same religious Covenant. In all the negotiations that hadbeen going on between London and Edinburgh, the Scots had always assumedthe fulfilment of this condition on the part of the English. And, so far, we have seen, it had already been fulfilled. Since September 1643, whenHenderson's Covenant had first been proposed to the English Parliamentand the Westminster Assembly, and the Commons and the Westminster Divineshad set the example by swearing to it collectively in one of the Londonchurches, "the Covenant" had been a phrase familiar to the English mouth. In all the miscellaneous activity of the Parliament for the detection anddisabling of "Malignants, " there had been no instrument more effective ormore commonly used. There were other tests and oaths by which the"malignants" might be distinguished from the "well-affected"; but thetaking or not taking of the Solemn League and Covenant was the testparamount. Wherever the Parliament had power it had been in operation. Since December 20, for example, it had been the law that no one could bea Common Councilman of the City of London who had not subscribed to theCovenant. Still, in this matter of subscription to the Covenant, theEnglish, both as the larger nation and as the less accustomed toCovenants, had remained considerably in arrear of the Scots; and, whenthe Scots actually did make their appearance in England, there was asudden refreshing of the memory of the English Parliament on the subject, and a sudden exertion to make up the arrears. "The Scots are among us onthe supposition that we have all taken the Covenant; and lo! we have notyet all taken it, " was virtually the exclamation of the Parliament. Accordingly, that all might be brought in, that there might be no escape, and that there might remain to all time coming a vast register of thenames of the Englishmen then living who had entered into this solemnleague with their Scottish neighbours, there was passed, on the 5th ofFebruary, 1643-4, a new and conclusive ordinance on the subject. By thisordinance it was enacted that true copies of the Covenant should be sentto the Earl of Essex and other commanders of the army, and to allgovernors of towns, &c. , to the intent that it might be sworn to by everyman in the army; also that copies should be sent into all the counties, so that they should punctually reach every parish and every parish-minister--the instructions being that every minister should, the nextLord's day after the certified copy of the Covenant reached him, read italoud to his congregation, discourse and exhort upon it, and then tenderit to all present, who should swear to it with uplifted hands, andafterwards sign it with their names or marks. All men over eighteen yearsof age, whether householders or lodgers, were to take it in the parishesin which they were resident; and the names of all refusing, whetherministers or laymen, were to be reported. [Footnote: See Ordinance inLords Journals, Feb. 5, 1643-4. ] Nay, by an arrangement about the sametime, the action of the Covenant was made to extend to English subjectsabroad. Notwithstanding all this stringency, there is reason to believethat not a few soldiers in the army, and not a few ministers and others, contrived, in one way or another, to avoid the Covenant, without beingcalled to account for the neglect. Where a minister otherwiseunexceptionable, or an officer or soldier of known zeal and efficiency, had scruples of conscience against signing, the authorities, both civiland military, appear in many places to have exercised a discretion andwinked at disobedience or procrastination. --The case of the Earl ofBridgewater may here be of some interest, on its own account, and asillustrating what went on generally. The Earl, known to us so long as"the Earl of Milton's _Comus_" had been living in retirement as aninvalid during the war, his wishes on the whole being doubtless with theKing, but his circumstances obliging him to keep on fair terms with theParliament. The test of the Covenant seems to have sorely perplexed thepoor Peer. "He says some things in the Covenant his heart goes along withthem, and other things are doubtful to him; and therefore desires sometime to consider of it. " Such was the report to the Lords, Wednesday Feb. 7, 1643-4, by the Earls of Rutland and Bolingbroke, who had beenappointed to deal with him and other absent Peers in the matter. "Heshall have time till Friday morning next, " was the entry ordered to bemade. On the Friday named there is no mention of the subject in the LordsJournals; but on Saturday the 10th Lords Rutland and Bolingbroke wereable to report that it was all right. Two days had convinced the Earlthat signing would be best for him. [Footnote: Lords Journals of datescited. ]

Besides this universal imposition of the Covenant by Parliamentaryordinance upon all who had hitherto neglected to take it, there wasanother immediate effect of the presence of the Scots in England. The twonations being now in arms for the same cause, the fortunes of each nationdepending largely on the conduct of the other, and the two nationalarmies indeed having to co-operate strategically, there required to besome common directing power, intermediate between the English Parliamentin Westminster and the Scottish Estates in Edinburgh, representing both, and acting for both in all matters of military concern. The Scots, ontheir part, had made provision accordingly. Besides appointing astationary Committee of the Estates to manage matters from Edinburgh, andanother Committee to be with the Scottish army as a kind of Council tothe Earl of Leven, they had nominated (Jan. 9, 1643-4) a SpecialCommission of four persons to go to London with full powers to representthe views and interests of Scotland in the enterprise in which it was nowconjoined with England. These were--the EARL OF LOUDOUN, High Chancellorof Scotland; LORD MAITLAND (already in London as Scottish Commissioner tothe Westminster Assembly); SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON (due inLondon at any rate as a Commissioner to the Assembly); and MR. ROBERTBARCLAY, Provost of Irvine in Ayrshire. These Commissioners havingpresented their Commission to the English Parliament, Feb. 5, theParliament were moved to appoint some of its trustiest men from the twoHouses to be an English Committee of Consultation with the ScottishCommissioners, and in fact to form, along with them, a joint "Committeeof the Two Kingdoms. " Such an institution was not at all to the taste ofLord General Essex, inasmuch as it trenched on his powers as commander-in-chief. Some opposition was therefore offered. On the whole, however, the argument that the two kingdoms ought to be "joined in their counselsas well as in their forces" proved overpowering; and on the 16th ofFebruary an ordinance was passed appointing the following persons (7Peers and 14 Commoners) to be a Committee for the purpose named--the EARLOF NORTHUMBERLAND, the EARL OF ESSEX, the EARL OF WARWICK, the EARL OFMANCHESTER, VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE, LORD WHARTON, LORD EGBERTS, WILLIAMPIERREPOINT, SIR HENRY VANE, Senr. , SIR PHILIP STAPLETON, SIR WILLIAMWALLER, SIR GILBERT GERRARD, SIR WILLIAM ARMYN, SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG, SIRHENRY VANE, Junr. , JOHN CREWE, ROBERT WALLOP, OLIVER ST. JOHN, SAMUELBROWNE, JOHN GLYNN, and OLIVER CROMWELL. Six were to be a quorum, alwaysin the proportion of one Lord to two Commoners, and of the ScottishCommissioners meeting with them two were to be a quorum. There can be nodoubt that the object was that the management of the war should be lessin Essex's hands that it had been. [Footnote: Lords Journals of datesFeb. 5 and 16, 1643-4; and Baillie, II. 141, 142]

The name of JOHN PYM may have been looked for in the Committee. Alas! nolonger need his name be looked for among the living in this History. Hehad died on the 8th of December, 1643, when the Scots were expected inEngland, but had not yet arrived. He was buried magnificently inWestminster Abbey, all the Lords and Commons attending, and StephenMarshall preaching the funeral sermon. England had lost "King Pym, " hergreatest Parliamentary man. No one precisely like him was left. But, indeed, he had done his work to the full; and, had he lived longer, hemight have been loved the less! [Footnote: Rushworth V. 376; Parl. Hist. III. 186-7; and Baillie, II. 118. ]

CHAPTER II. 

MILTON UNHAPPY IN HIS MARRIAGE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TRACT: TWO EDITIONS OFIT. 

We left Milton in his house in Aldersgate Street in or about 1643, waiting for the promised return of his recently-wedded wife atMichaelmas, and meanwhile comfortable enough, with his books, his pupils, and the quiet companionship of his old father. We are now seven or eightmonths beyond that point in our general History. What had happened in theAldersgate household in the interval? A tremendous thing had happened. Milton had come to desire a divorce from his wife, and had written andpublished a Tract on Divorce, partly in the interest of his own privatecase, but really also with a view to suggest to the mind of England, thenlikely to be receptive of new ideas, certain thoughts on the wholesubject of the English law of Marriage which had resulted from reflectionon his own experience. Here is the story:--

"Michaelmas [Sept. 29, 1643] being come, " says Phillips, "and no news ofhis wife's return, he sent for her by letter, and, receiving no answer, sent several other letters, which were also unanswered; so that at lasthe despatched down a foot-messenger [to Forest Hill] with a letter, desiring her return. But the messenger came back not only without ananswer, at least a satisfactory one, but, to the best of my remembrance, reported that he was dismissed with some sort of contempt. Thisproceeding, in all probability, was grounded upon no other cause butthis--viz. : that, the family being generally addicted to the Cavalierparty, as they called it, and some of them possibly engaged in the King'sservice, who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford and was in someprospect of success, they began to repent them of having matched theeldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion, and thought it would be a blot on their escutcheon whenever that Courtshould come to flourish again. However, it so incensed our author that hethought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again, after such arepulse; so that he forthwith prepared to fortify himself with argumentsfor such a resolution, and accordingly wrote, " &c. Here Phillips goes onto enumerate Milton's various Divorce Tracts, the first of which in orderof time was his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. Aubreycorroborates Phillips, but has little on the subject but what he may havepicked up from gossip. "She was a ... Royalist, and went to her mothernear Oxford: he sent for her after some time, and I think his servant wasevilly entreated, "--such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts; afterwhich come his own reflections on the rupture: "Two opinions do not wellon the same bolster;" and "What man, especially contemplative, would liketo have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and thoseof the enemy party?" Finally Wood, in his _Fasti_, does little morethan repeat Aubrey: "Though he sent divers pressing invitations, yet hecould not prevail upon her to come back;" whereupon "he, being not ableto bear this abuse, did therefore, upon consideration, after he hadconsulted many eminent authors, write the said book of Divorce, withintentions to be separated from her. " [Footnote: Phillips's Memoir;Aubrey's Lives; and Wood's Fasti Oxon. I. 482-3. ]

On all grounds Phillips's authority is the best. And yet there aredifficulties in his account. According to that account, it was the non-return of Milton's wife at or about Michaelmas (Sept. 29) 1643, and notonly her non-return then, but her obstinate and repeated refusal toreturn after that date, and the insulting conduct of her family to themessenger he finally sent to urge her return, that roused Milton'sindignation, put the thought of divorce into his mind, and induced him towrite his first Divorce Tract. If so, the tract could hardly have beenready till some weeks after Michaelmas 1643--say, till about Christmas ofthe same year. There is proof, however (and I do not think it has beenobserved before), that Milton's first Divorce Tract was already publishedand in circulation two months _before_ the Michaelmas in question. The proof is not, where we might expect it, in the books of theStationers' Company; for the Tract, like all Milton's previous pamphlets, was published by him, rather defiantly, without the required legalformalities of licence and registration. But there is a precious copy ofit in Thomason's great collection of pamphlets, called "the King'sPamphlets, " in the British Museum. The title in that copy is as follows:"_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restor'd, to the good of bothSexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes, to ChristianFreedom, guided by the Rule of Charity; wherein also many places ofScripture have recovered their long-lost meaning: seasonable to be nowthought on in the Reformation intended. _" Underneath this title therefollows on the title-page the quotation "Matth. Xiii. 52. Every Scribeinstructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house whichbringeth out of his treasurie things old and new;" and at the foot of thetitle-page is the legend "_London, Printed by T. P. And M. S. InGoldsmiths' Alley_: 1643. " [Footnote: Copy in British Museum LibraryPress mark, 12. G. F. 17 119. ] This printed legend alone would all butdetermine the publication to have been prior to Christmas 1643; but thequestion is set at rest by a manuscript note on the title-page, "_Aug. 1st_. " The note was put there by, or by the direction of, thecollector, Thomason, to indicate the day on which the copy came into hishands, and is to be relied on implicitly. The Tract, it will be observed, was anonymous; but the words "_Written by J. Milton_, " penned on thetitle-page by the same hand that penned the date "_Aug. 1st_, " showthat the authorship was no secret from the all-prying Thomason. In short, on evidence absolutely conclusive, Milton's first Divorce Tract was inprint and on sale in London on the 1st of August, 1643, or two monthsbefore Phillips's fatal Michaelmas. [Footnote: This may be the place fora word or two about the collector of those Pamphlets in the BritishMuseum among which I have had so frequently to range for the purposes ofthis work, and to which, like other inquiries into English History from1610 to 1660, I owe more items of information than I can count. --GeorgeThomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place ofbusiness being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was ofRoyalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all thepamphlets, broad-sheets, &c. , that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also allpublished abroad that bore on current English questions. He began thislabour in 1641, and pursued it indefatigably till after the Restoration;so that, at his death in or about 1666, he left a collection of about33, 000 pamphlets, &c. On English affairs, published between 1638 and1662. The making of this collection had been the delight of his life; ithad been his anxiety that no single tract, or printed scrap of anyinterest, should escape him. When he began to collect in 1641, he hadtaken pains to obtain copies of publications of the immediately precedingyears; and after that his work had been facilitated by the notoriety ofhis passion for collecting. Booksellers and authors (Milton for one) seemoccasionally to have sent copies of their pamphlets to Thomason. "Exactcare hath been taken, " he himself tells us in the Introduction to a MS. Catalogue of his treasures, "that the very day is written upon most ofthem that they came out;" and this care of his has fixed the dates ofmany publications that would else have been unknown or but vaguelyknown. --For farther particulars of this interesting person, an account ofthe shifts to which he was put to save his collection from the chances ofParliamentarian pillage, and a history of the fortunes of his collectiontill it came to be part of the Library of King George III. , and so of theBritish Museum, see Edwards's _Memoirs of Libraries_ (1859), Vol. Ipp, 456-460. --I may add that I have seen a pencil jotting in Thomason'shand on one of the fly-leaves of his collection as fresh and legible, after 220 years, as if it had been written yesterday. ]

One of two suppositions therefore:--(1. ) If Phillips is right in hisstatement that Milton's first Divorce Tract was caused by the obstinaterefusal of his wife to return to him, and the insulting conduct of herfamily in detaining her and laughing at his letters and messages, thenPhillips's dates in the whole matter of the marriage must be a littlewrong. "About Whitsuntide it was (May 21, 1643) that my uncle left us inAldersgate Street, on what turned out to be his marriage journey; inabout a month's time he returned, bringing his wife, and some of herrelations, with him (June 1643); the relations stayed about a week, during which there was much feasting and merriment; for about a monthafter they were gone the newly-married wife remained with my uncle; butthen (late in July or early in August 1643), tired of a philosophicallife, and pining for the society of home, she contrived a request fromher family to have her with them during the rest of the summer--to whichmy uncle consented, on the understanding that she was to come hack aboutMichaelmas (Sept. 29, 1643). " Such, re-expressed in words for the nonce, is Phillips's account as we have already given it. But, as the DivorceTract was published August 1, 1643, it is clear that, if the cause ofthat Tract was the persistent, protracted, and contemptuous absence ofhis wife, then Phillips's memory must have been at fault, and he musthave somewhat post-dated the marriage itself. The marriage in that casemust have been before Whitsuntide 1643; and the return of the wife to herrelations, her refusal to come hack, and Milton's chagrin and anger sooccasioned, must have been matters not of after Michaelmas 1643, but ofat least a month or two before the August of that year. This is quite atenable supposition; for there are other inaccuracies in Phillips, andthe register of the place and date of Milton's marriage with Mary Powellhas not been found. (2) On the whole, however, Phillips's recollectionsabout the marriage are so circumstantial, and there is such a likelihoodof their being true, that, until contradictory records shall be produced, it seems right to accept his dating. But then his explanation of thecause of his uncle's speculations about divorce must be wrong. The causein that case cannot have been the obstinate refusal of his wife toreturn; for the Divorce Tract must have been written and ready for thepress while she was still with him in the Aldersgate Street house (July1643), and it was actually out (Aug. 1) before she can have reached herfather's house at Forest Hill on her granted two months of leave tillMichaelmas. What are we to make of this discrepancy? One is puzzled. Thata man should have occupied himself on a Tract on Divorce ere hishoneymoon was well over--should have written it perseveringly day afterday within sound of his newly-wedded wife's footsteps and the very rustleof her dress on the stairs or in the neighbouring room--is a notion allbut dreadful. And yet to some such notion, if Phillips's dating iscorrect, we seem to be shut up. But, if so, more is involved thanPhillips knew. The cause of Milton's thoughts about divorce, in thatcase, must have been the agony of a deadly discovery of his wife's utterunfitness for him when as yet she had not been two months his wife. Itmust have been the unutterable pain of the dis-illusioned bridegroom, thegnawing sense of his irretrievable mistake, The vision must then passbefore our minds of scenes in the Aldersgate Street house, the reverse ofthe happily connubial, _before_ that sudden departure of the brideback to her father's home, and leading to that incident perhaps ratherviolently. One seems to hear the sound of differences, of conflictingopinions about this and that, of weeping girlish wilfulness opposed tosteady and perhaps too austere prohibitions. "Well, then, I will go backto my mother: I am sure I wish I had never----": "Go": And so the partingmay have come about, not wholly by her arrangement, but harshly and withsome quarrel on his part. There are not wanting subsequent facts thatmight lend a plausibility to this version of the story. [Footnote:Milton's mother-in-law, having occasion, seven years afterwards (1651), to advert to her daughter's return home so soon after her marriage, distinctly attributed it to Milton himself. The words are, "He havingturned away his wife heretofore for a long space upon some otheroccasion. " I do not think Mrs. Powell was a very accurate lady, and shehad no fondness for Milton; but the words seem to imply more than a merepassive consent of Milton to his wife's proposal to revisit her family. ]Yet it is the other that one would wish to be true, and that would fit inmost naturally with the facts as a whole. That version is that Milton, good-naturedly and perhaps taken by surprise, allowed his wife to go homefor two months at her own request, or the request of her relatives, before he had been three months married, and that it was the insult ofher nonreturn that revealed to him his mistake in her, and drove him intohis speculations about divorce. Only, then, we repeat, Phillips's datingof the marriage and its incidents requires amendment. 

In any case the first edition of Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce_ was out in London on the 1st of August, 1643. [Footnote: Thesupposition is always open that, by some oversight, Thomason misdated hiscopy, putting "Aug. " for a much later month. But this is the unlikeliestthing of all. ] It was a pamphlet of forty-eight small quarto pages, withan extra page supplying two omitted passages. The text was printedcontinuously, without division into chapters; at the end. 

Both in matter and in manner the Tract was one of the boldest that hadever been submitted to the reading of England. Its thesis is laid downnear the beginning in these terms: "_That indisposition, unfitness, orcontrarity of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugalsociety, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce thannatural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there bemutual consent. _" This thesis Milton sets himself to argue in allsorts of ways--from natural reason and expediency; from the Scripturedoctrine of marriage as it might be gathered from the Mosaic Law and theright interpretation of texts in the Old and New Testaments, notwithstanding one or two individual texts (like that of Matth. V. 31, 32) that had been hackneyed and misunderstood by mere literalists; andfrom opinions or indications of opinion on the subject that might befound in the works of some of the Protestant Reformers, and other eminentwriters. His conclusion was that the notion of the indissolubility ofmarriage, or even the modified law of England and of other countries, authorizing divorce only for certain gross reasons, were mere relics ofsuperstitious tradition, the concoction of the Canonists andSacramentalists in the ages of sacerdotal tyranny, unworthy of moreenlarged views of justice and liberty, and a canker and cause ofincalculable misery in the heart of modern society. Again and again heindicates his consciousness that in announcing this conclusion, andtrying to rouse his fellow-countrymen to the necessity of at onceincluding a revision of the Marriage Law in the general Reformation thenin progress, he is performing a great public service. Thus, at the veryopening: "By which [the precedent of certain liberal hints on the subjectby Hugo Grotius], and mine own apprehension of what public duty each manowes, I conceive myself exhorted among the rest to communicate suchthoughts as I have, and offer them now, in this general labour ofReformation, to the candid view both of Church and Magistrate; especiallybecause I see it the hope of good men that those irregular andunspiritual courts have spun their utmost date in this land, and somebetter course must now be constituted. He, therefore, that by adventuringshall be so happy as with success to ease and set free the minds ofingenuous and apprehensive men from this needless thraldom; he that canprove it lawful and just to claim the performance of a fit and matchableconversation no less essential to the prime scope of marriage than thegift of bodily conjunction, or else to have an equal plea of divorce aswell as for that corporal deficiency; he that can but lend us the cluethat winds out this labyrinth of servitude to such a reasonable andexpedient liberty as this--deserves to be reckoned among the publicbenefactors of civil and human life, above the inventors of wine andoil. " [Footnote: This passage is from the first edition; it is not nearlyso full in the second. ] As such a benefactor, such a champion of aneglected truth and a suppressed human liberty, the anonymous writeroffers himself. He knows that he stands alone at present, but he truststo the power of demonstration addressed to the mind of England, thennewly awakened and examining all institutions to their roots. 

There is not a word of avowed reference to his own case throughout; andyet from first to last we are aware of young Mary Powell in thebackground. Inability for "fit and matchable conversation": this is thatsupreme fault in a wife on which the descant is from first to last, andfrom which, when it is plainly ingrained and unamendable, the right ofdivorce is maintained to be, by the law of God and all civil reason, thedue deliverance. Hopeless intellectual and spiritual incompatibilitybetween husband and wife: it is on this, though not in these exact words, that Milton harps again and again as in his view the clearestinvalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divineends of the institution; an essentially worse frustration, he dares tosay in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which "a gross andboorish opinion, how common soever, " would alone resent or recognise. Itis marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to thereader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whomhe can hold no rational or worthy conversation. "A familiar and co-inhabiting mischief"; "spite of antipathy to fudge together and combineas they may, to their unspeakable weariness and despair of all sociabledelight"; "a luckless and helpless matrimony"; "the unfitness andeffectiveness of an unconjugal mind"; "a worse condition than theloneliest single life"; "unconversing inability of mind"; "a mute andspiritless mate"; "that melancholy despair which we see in many weddedpersons"; "a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper"; "ill-twistedwedlock"; "the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit society"; "one thatmust be hated with a most operative hatred"; "forsaken and yetcontinually dwelt with and accompanied"; "a powerful reluctance andrecoil of nature on either side, blasting all the content of their mutualsociety"; "a violence to the reverend secret of nature"; "to force amixture of minds that cannot unite"; "two incoherent and uncombiningdispositions"; "the undoing or the disheartening of his life"; "thesuperstitious and impossible performance of an ill-driven bargain";"bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and phlegm"; "shut up together, the one with amischosen mate, the other in a mistaken calling"; "committing twoensnared souls inevitably to kindle one another, not with the fire oflove, but with a hatred irreconcilable, who, were they severed, would bestraight friends in any other relation"; "two carcases chainedunnaturally together, or, as it may happen, a living soul bound to a deadcorpse"; "enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit and sink him toa low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in all his actions": such are a fewspecimens of the phrases with which the tract abounds. [Footnote: Some ofthe phrases quoted occur in passages added in the second edition; but itis not worth while to distinguish those. Most of the phrases, and thoseof the same, occur in the third edition. ] But one passage may be quotedentire:--

"But some are ready to object that the disposition ought seriously to beconsidered before. But let them know again that, for all the wariness canbe used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best-governed men areleast practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashfulmuteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and naturalsloth which is really unfit for conversation? Nor is there that freedomof access granted or presumed as may suffice to a perfect discerning tilltoo late; and, where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual thanthe persuasion of friends that acquaintance, as it increases, will amendall? And, lastly, it is not strange though many who have spent theiryouth chastely are in some things not so quick-sighted while they hastetoo eagerly to light the nuptial torch: nor is it therefore that for amodest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitablemeans to release him; since they who have lived most loosely, by reasonof their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so manydivorces to teach them experience; whenas the sober man, honouring theappearance of modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue under thatveil, may easily chance to meet ... Often with a mind to all other dueconversation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superiorpurposes of matrimony useless and almost lifeless; and what a solace, what a fit help, such a consort would be through the whole life of a manis less pain to conjecture than to have experience. "

Oh! and is it come to this? Then, as now, nothing so common as that suchmischances of marriage, heard of by the world, and the rather ifpublished by the sufferers or one of them, should be received only asexcellent amusement for people round about. It is as if the one thingintrinsically and unceasingly comic in the world, for most people, werethe fact that it consists of man and woman, as if the institution onwhich human society is built and by which the succession of earth'sgenerations is maintained, were the one only subject, with most people, for nothing else than laughter. Even now perhaps our disposition tojocosity on this subject, not sufficiently entertained by incidents ofour own day, will range back to that case of Milton and Mary Powell twohundred and twenty-eight years ago, and join in the gossip which it thenbegan to circulate through the town. In the lobby of the House of Commonsit must have been heard of: it may have given a relish to the street-talkof reverend Presbyterian gentlemen talking home together from theAssembly "Only a month or two married; his wife gone home again; and now, instead of proper reticence about what can't he helped, all thishullaballoo of a new doctrine about Divorce! Just like him!" This andsuch-like is what we seem to overhear; this and such-like is what Miltondid overhear; not much more than this and such-like are most of usprepared to say even now when we read the story. And yet the story issurely worth more. One fails to see, after all, that it yields onlymatter for jest and the repetition of commonplaces. What are the facts?Two human beings, long dead and gone, but then alive and with the, expectation of many years of life before them, had hardly been bandedtogether in church when they found, or thought they found, that theirunion was for their mutual misery. The one was a poor country-girl in herteens, ruing the fate to which she had committed herself, but with noweapons for her relief but her tears, her terror, and the mitigation ofrefuge in her father's house. _Her_ case is to be pitied; shame ifit is _not_! The other was a man extraordinary--so extraordinarythat even now we try to follow him in fancy in his walks through theLondon streets, and any bit of old wall his arm may have touched is asacred antiquity, and we regard the series of thoughts that was in hismind through any month, or series of months, as something of primeinterest in the spirit of the past, a prize that we would give gold torecover. Well, here was one series of thoughts that was in this man'smind for months and months, and that left effects, indeed, to his life'send. He was moody in his house; he walked moodily in the streets; we canhear him muttering to himself, we can see his teeth clenched. Morning andevening, day after day, he is in a great despair. And why? Because he hasmade the most fatal mistake a man can make, and is gazing on, morning andevening, day after day, into the consequences. Lo! into that life whichhe had hoped to make worthy of the God who gave it, a pattern life, agreat poem within hose azure fitness other poems should arise to spintheir gleaming courses--into this life what had he imported? Not thesolace and bliss of a kindred soul's society, which had been his intentand dream; but a darkness, a disturbance, a marring melancholy, a dailyand hourly debasement, a coinhabiting mischief! It was enough, he says, to drive a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts ofAtheism. " But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting thisquestion lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshiregirl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolveit intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were nonecessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage oncecontracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were nodecree of God, no real requirement of religion or of social well-being, but a mere superstitious and fallacious tradition, a stupid andpernicious convention among men? Once on this track, there was light forMilton. Out of his own private mishap there came the suggestion of agreat enterprise. He would thunder, if not the mishap itself, at leastits public significance, out upon the world. He would rouse hiscountrymen on the whole subject of the Law of Marriage. Who knew but hisvoice might be heard? Who knew but that, were it loud enough, there wouldbe a response of assent from the whole land, and his new idea of Divorce, albeit the proclamation of only one man, might be carried, with otherthings, in the current Reformation? There ran a touch of this sanguinetemper, this faith that any ideal might easily be made actual, throughall Milton's life; and it appeared now most conspicuously. His idea, hewas aware, was new; but only let his demonstration be sufficientlythorough, only let him succeed in disturbing the existing apathy andsetting the thoughts of the nation astir on the subject, "and then, "what?--"then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking to wipe away tenthousand tears out of the life of men. " [Footnote: This phrase is in oneof the inserted passages in the second edition. ] Alas! after thehurricane of two hundred years the tear-drops still hang, multitudinousas ever, amid the leaves of that poor forest!

"Just like him" I have imagined to have been a comment on this newappearance of Milton by some gossip of the day who may have known alittle of him personally. Really, though not as intended, the commentwould have been just. This whole action of Milton, consequent on hisunhappy marriage, was deeply characteristic. And yet there was perhaps noone then living from whom such a course of action could less have beenexpected. From all that we know of the youth and early manhood of Milton, we should certainly have predicted of him, with whatever heterodoxy inother matters, yet a life-long orthodoxy on the subject of marriage. Think of him as we have seen him heretofore, the glorious youth, cherishing every high ethical idealism, walking as in an ether of moralviolet, disdaining customary vice, building up his character consciouslyon the principle that he who would be strong or great had best beimmaculate. Think of him as the author of _Comus_; or think of himas he had described himself some years later in one of his ItalianSonnets:--

 "Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer, Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly, Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I Offer devoutly: and, by tokens sure, I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure, In its conceptions graceful, good, and high. When the world roars, and flames the startled sky, In its own adamant it rests secure, As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting. "

When he wrote thus, to what did he look forward, and to what might othershave looked forward for him? A career, it was probable, of speculativedissent from his contemporaries in many things, and of undaunted couragein the vindication of such dissent, but hardly of dissent from theestablished moralities of the marriage-institution. Had he been happilymarried, had he found himself united at last to one such as his dreamshad figured, who so likely to have persevered fondly in the traditionaldoctrine of marriage, to have maintained the mystic sanctity and thenecessary permanence of the marriage-bond, and to have launcheddenunciations against all who dared to tamper with this article of theestablished ethics? But, as it had chanced otherwise, it was not the lesscharacteristic that he himself had been the audacious questioner, thechampion of a heresy. Driven by his own experience to investigate, hisspeculative boldness had brought him at once to a conclusion the noveltyof which would have made others hesitate, but had no terrors for him. For(and here was his difference from most men, here was what may be called aMiltonic peculiarity) he would take no benefit from such privatedispensation as a man might pass for his own relief in such a case, hisneighbours winking at it so long as he did not disturb the forum. He_would_ disturb the forum! What "Milton" did should be done openly, should be avowed, should be lawful! Others, circumstanced as he now was, might, if they liked--and there were examples all round, and especiallyin that Bohemian world of wits and men of letters with which he might beclassed, though he abjured the brotherhood--others might, if they liked, adopt a policy of silence and acquiescence, hypocritically bowing totheir fate, but taking out their protest in secret consolations! No suchpolicy for him! The word "illicit" and his name should never be broughtinto conjunction! Whatever _he_ did should be according to a rule ofright, clear to his own conscience, and held aloft in his hand under thewhole roof of Heaven! And, if such a rule, ratified between himself andHeaven, should chance to conflict with one of the moralities of theexisting code of men, there was but one course for him. He would assailthe so-called "morality"; he would blast it out of the beliefs of men; hewould perform for his fellows the service of their liberation, along withhimself, from a useless and irrational thraldom! Or, if that work shouldprove too hard and toilsome, at least he should have published his ownrule in opposition to the general superstition, and should walk on, as hehad resolved always to walk, unabashed in the daylight. 

It was in August 1643, as we have seen, that Milton put forth anonymouslyhis _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. From that time, on throughthe rest of the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4, we are to fancyhim in his house in Aldersgate Street, with his father and his pupils forhis companions, and his thoughts much occupied, like those of otherEnglishmen, with the course of public events. On the whole, theParliament had no greater admirer than Milton; and there were particularmen in the Parliament that were after his own heart. From the WestminsterAssembly, too, he seems to have expected good. So far as he had formedviews as to the desirable form of Church-government for England, theseviews, as we have seen (Vol. II. Pp. 376-382), might be described as anexpectant Presbyterianism, not positively fixed and determined at allpoints, but kept conveniently fluid. Accordingly, his sympathies, atfirst, may well have been with the Presbyterians of the Assembly; amongwhom he could reckon, at any rate, his old tutor Young, and his otherfriends and fellow-labourers in the Smectymnuan controversy. Or, if somethings among the tenets of the small Independent minority had begun togain upon him, he seems still, through the winter of 1643-4, to havelooked forward to some compromise that should be acceptable to Englandand yet tend to that conformity between the two kingdoms which the Scotsdesired, and to the furtherance of which they had pledged England byHenderson's international League and Covenant. At all events, Milton did, some time after September 1643, subscribe to this League and Covenantwith the rest of his Parliamentarian countrymen. There are words of hisown which vouch the fact. [Footnote: In the dedication to Parliament ofhis _Tetrachordon_, published March 1644-5, he uses these words, "That which I saw and was partaker of, your vows and solemn covenants. "]

A moody time though the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4 must havebeen for Milton, there was some relaxation for him in society moregeneral than that of his wife-deserted household. "Our author, " saysPhillips, "now as it were a single man again, made it his chief diversionnow and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Ley, daughter tothe--Ley, Earl of Marlborough, Lord High Treasurer of England, andPresident of the Privy Council to King James the First. This lady, beinga woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honour for him, andtook much delight in his company; as likewise her husband, CaptainHobson, a very accomplished gentleman. " Phillips seems to be sufficientlyaccurate in this account, but a few details may be added:--

A man still well-remembered in England, though he had been dead fifteenyears, was James Ley, first Earl of Marlborough, he had attained to thatdignity only in his old age, having advanced to it through a longprevious career. Born about 1552, the younger son of a Wiltshire squire, he had passed from Oxford to the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, and hadattained to high eminence in his profession before the death ofElizabeth. Emerging from her reign, aged about fifty, he had beenappointed by James to an Irish Chief Judgeship (1604); then brought backto England, knighted (1609), baroneted (1620), and made Chief Justice ofthe Court of King's Bench (1621); and finally raised by the same King tothe great office of Lord High Treasurer of England, and to a peerage withthe title of Baron Ley of Ley in Devonshire (1624). In recognition of hislong services, Charles, in the first year of his reign (Feb. 5, 1626-7), had created for him, when he was almost seventy-four years of age, theEarldom of Marlborough in his native Wiltshire. While thus promoting him, however, Charles appears not to have found him a minister such as he andBuckingham wanted. He had accordingly removed him from the HighTreasurership in 1628, on the ground of his old age, but in reality tomake way for the more compliant Lord Weston, and had shelved him into theless important office of Lord President of the Council. He had died atLincoln's Inn, March 14, 1628-9, exactly four days after that ominousdissolution of Charles's third Parliament which announced hisdetermination to have done with Parliaments and begin the reign of"Thorough. " The death of the old peer at such a juncture had apparentlythe less been forgotten by reason of a tradition that the politicalanxieties of the juncture had had something to do with it. Now, at allevents, in the days of the Long Parliament and the Civil War, there wasstill some respectful recollection of the old Earl of Marlborough as oneof the best-liked ministers of James's reign and of the first years ofCharles's. "He was a person of great gravity, ability, and integrity;and, as the Caspian Sea is observed neither to ebb nor flow, so his minddid not rise or fall, but continued the same constancy in allconditions. " The words are Fuller's, and they probably express thecharacter of the Earl that had come down among his countrymen. [Footnote:Dugdale's Baronage (1676), Vol. II. Pp. 451, 452; Wood's Athenę, II. 441, 443; Clar. Hist. (one vol. Ed. 1843), p. 20; Fuller's Worthies, _Wiltshire_ (ed. 1840), III. 328-9. ]

The Earl had been three times married; but he had left a family only byhis first wife--Mary, daughter of John Petty, of Stoke-Talmage, co. Oxon. , Esq. Eleven children had been the issue of this marriage:--to wit(according to Dugdale), "three sons--_Henry, James_, and _William_; andeight daughters--_Elizabeth_, married to Morice Carant, of Looner, incom. Somers. , Esq. ; _Anne_, to Sir Walter Long, of Draycot-Cerne, in com. Wilts. , Knight; _Mary_, to Richard Erisy, of Erisy, in com. Cornw. , Esq. ;_Dionysia_, to John Harington, of Kelneyton, in com. Somers. , Esq. ;_Margaret_, to ... Hobson, of ... In the Isle of Wight, Esq. ; _Hesther_, to Arthur Fuller, of Bradfield, in com. Hertf. , Esq. ; _Martha_, diedunmarried; and _Phoebe_, to ... Biggs, of Hurst, in com. Berks. , Esq. "[Footnote: Dugdale, _vt. Supra_. ] All these children, it would appear, had been born, and most of them married and settled in life, before theirfather's promotion to the peerage, and while he was yet only James Ley, or Sir James Ley, the eminent lawyer. Indeed, his promotion to theEarldom in his old age had been, in part, a compliment to his third wife--Jane, daughter of Lord Butler of Bramfield, whose mother was a sister ofthe Duke of Buckingham; and it had been specially provided, in the patentof the Earldom, that it should descend, by preference, to his heirs bythat lady. That lady having failed, however, to produce heirs, thebenefits of the Earldom had reverted to the Earl's family by his firstwife, Mary Petty. His eldest son by that wife, Henry Ley, had, accordingly, succeeded him in the title. But this Henry, second Earl ofMarlborough, had died in 1638; and the actual Earl at the time with whichwe are now concerned (1643) was _his_ son, James, a youth of only somethree-and-twenty years, but already serving as a general officer ofartillery in the army of the King. He seems, indeed, to have been one ofthe finest young fellows on that side; and he had a career before himwhich was to entitle him, at his death in 1665, to this notice in asummary of his character by Clarendon: "He was a man of wonderful partsin all kinds of learning, which he took more delight in than his title. "[Footnote: Clar. Life, ed. 184 p. 1141. ] For the present, however, it iswith the good ladies his aunts, the surviving daughters of the firstEarl, that we have to do; or rather only with the fifth of them--the LadyMargaret Ley, the friend of Milton. The husbands of at least two of hersisters (Long of Wilts. , and Erisy of Cornwall) being among theParliamentarians of the Long Parliament, it can hardly be doubted thatthis lady's husband--Dugdale's "... Hobson of ... In the Isle of Wight, Esq. , " and Phillips's "Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman"--was also a Parliamentarian, though of less wealth and note, and not inParliament. Otherwise, Lady Margaret's house in London could hardly havebeen one of Milton's evening resorts. What kind of "Captaincy" herhusband held, compatible with his being domiciled in London in 1643-4, itmight be difficult now to ascertain. Suffice it that he _was_ sodomiciled, and that his wife could receive guests not merely as Mrs. Hobson, "a woman of great wit and ingenuity, " but as Lady Margaret Ley, the daughter of a well-remembered Earl. 

It is not from Phillips alone that we hear of Milton's friendship withthe Lady Margaret. Milton has himself commemorated it in one of hisSonnets:--

 "TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY. 

 Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury, Who lived in both unstained by gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till the sad breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chęronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent: Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise That all both judge you to relate them true And to possess them, honoured Margaret. "

The "old man eloquent" is Isocrates, the Athenian orator, whosepatriotism made him refuse to survive the defeat of the Athenians andThebans by Philip of Macedon at Chęroncia, This comparison of the lady'sfather to the famous Greek is perhaps the most poetical turn in theSonnet. For the rest, it tells us something about the lady herself. Shemust have been somewhat, if not considerably, older than Milton; for, though Milton had been twenty years old at the time of the good Earl'sdeath, and might therefore well remember his Treasurership and Presidencyof the Council, he speaks of knowing the days wherein the old peer hadflourished chiefly through the Lady Margaret's talk about him and them. Her conversation, it would therefore seem, ran much upon her father andhis private and political virtues; and Milton listened respectfully, seeing much in the lady herself of what she praised in her sire. PerhapsMilton would talk to her freely in return of his own concerns. The LadyMargaret Ley, and her husband, Captain Hobson, were probably in hisconfidence on the subject of his marriage misfortune. The Sonnet wasunquestionably written in 1643 or 1644. [Footnote: It was printed in thefirst or 1645 edition of Milton's Poems, and it is placed last in theseries of Sonnets there contained. The draft of it in the Cambridge Bookof Milton's MSS. Is in Milton's own hand--the title "To the Lady MargaretLey" being likewise his hand. ]

A younger and unmarried lady must then also have been among Milton'sacquaintances. How else can we account for this other Sonnet?

 "Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen That labour up the hill of heavenly truth, The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, Chosen thou hast; and they that overween, And at thy glowing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure. "

This Sonnet, to which the heading "_To a Virtuous Young Lady_" isnow prefixed in the editions of Milton, had no such heading prefixed inhis own copy. [Footnote: In the Cambridge MSS. There is a draft inMilton's own hand immediately before the draft of the Sonnet to LadyMargaret Ley. In the edition of 1645 the Sonnet was printed in the sameorder and without a heading. In the MS. Draft there are several erasuresand corrections. Thus Milton had originally written "_bloomingvirtue_" in as if with reference to the personal appearance of theyoung lady; but in the margin he substitutes the present reading, "_growing virtues_. "] Who the young lady was that so won upon Miltonat this critical time, and seemed to him so superior to the morecommonplace of her sex, we are left uninformed. There is a conjecture onthe subject, which may afterwards appear. It is clear, meanwhile, thatthe poor absent Mary Powell may have suffered not only from her owndefects, but also from the opportunity of some such contrast. 

The Divorce subject continued to occupy Milton. His tract had beenrapidly bought, and had caused a sensation. Through the cold winter of1643-4, while the Parliament and the Assembly were busy, and theauxiliary Scottish army was expected, a good many people had leisure toread the strange production, or at least to look into it, and be properlyshocked. It seems to have been about this time, for example, that JamesHowell, the letter-writer, came, upon a copy. Or rather the copy musthave come upon him; for the poor man, now past fifty years of age, andousted from his clerkship to the Privy Council, was in the Fleet Prisonfor debt, and dependent for his subsistence there on translations, dedications and poems to friends, and all sorts of literary odds andends. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 745, and Cunningham's London Article_Fleet Prison_. ] In one of his rambling pieces, afterwards publishedin the form of Letters, mostly without dates, and addressed to friendsfrom feigned places, he thus gives what I take to be his impression ofMilton's tract when it first reached him in the Fleet: "But that opinionof a poor shallow-brained puppy, who, upon any cause of dissatisfaction, would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiatethem, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tendmore to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world:therefore that wiseacre deserves, " &c. [Footnote: Howell's FamiliarLetters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight, " (pp453-457 of edit. 1754. ) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan. , " no yeargiven; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letterswere published in successive batches. ] As Mr. Howell's own notions aboutmarriage and its moralities were of the lightest and easiest, his severevirtuousness here is peculiarly representative. More interesting on itsown account is the opinion of another contemporary--no other thanMilton's late antagonist Bishop Hall. In Hall's _Cases of Conscience_(not published till 1649) he thus describes the impression which Milton'sDivorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymousform: "I have heard too much of, and once saw, a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times in the defence and encouragement ofDivorces (not to be sued out; that solemnity needed not; but) to bearbitrarily given by the disliking husband to the displeasing and unquietwife, upon this ground principally, That marriage was instituted for thehelp and comfort of man: where, therefore, the match proves such as thatthe wife doth but pull down aside, and, by her innate peevishness andeither sullen or pettish and froward disposition, bring rather discontentto her husband, the end of marriage being hereby frustrate, why should itnot, saith he, be in the husband's power, after some unprevailing meansof reclamation attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off thisclog, and to provide for his own peace and contentment in a fitter match?Woe is me! to what a pass is the world conic that a Christian, pretendingto Information, should dare to tender so loose a project to the public! Imust seriously profess that, when I first did cast my eyes upon the frontof the book, I supposed some great wit meant to try his skill in themaintenance of this so wild and improbable a paradox; but, ere I couldrun over some of those too well-penned pages, I found the author was inearnest, and meant seriously to contribute this piece of good counsel, inway of reformation, to the wise and seasonable care of superiors. Icannot but blush for our age wherein so bold a motion hath been, amongstothers, admitted to the light. What will all the Christian Churchesthrough the world, to whose notice these lines shall come, think of ourwoeful degeneration, &c. "? [Footnote: Hall's Works (edit. 1837), VII. 467. ] Hall, it will be seen, had noted the literary ability of thepamphlet, while amazed by its doctrine. 

Neither Howell's nor Bishop Hall's opinion can have reached the author ofthe pamphlet till long after the date now in view. But other opinions tothe same effect had been reaching him. Especially, it seems, the pamphlethad caused a fluttering among the London clergy. The consequence had bestbe told by himself. "God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether Idurst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, andfound I durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should swaythe reader either for me or against me. But, when I was told that thestyle (which what it ails to be so soon distinguishable I cannot tell)was known by most men, and that some of the clergy began to inveigh andexclaim on what I was credibly informed they had not read, I look it thenfor my proper season both to show a name that could easily contemn suchan indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a moreaccurate diligence, that, if any of them would be so good as to leaverailing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdomas will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a namelesspamphlet. " [Footnote: This passage, fitting in here with chronologicalexactness, occurs in Milton's _Judgment of Martin Bucer concerningDivorce_, published in July 1644. ] In other words, he resolved to abandonthe anonymous. His pamphlet, easily traced to him from the first by itsMiltonic style, had been sold out, or nearly so; people generally, butclergymen especially, were saying harsh things about it, and about him asits author; but some of these critics, he authentically knew, had neverread the pamphlet, and others were making a point of the fact that it hadappeared without its author's name. Well, there should be an end ofthat! He would put forth a second edition of the pamphlet, and avow theauthorship! And this he would do rather because, since the publication ofthe first edition, he had been looking farther into the literature of thequestion, and could now fortify his own reasoned opinion with authoritieshe had been but dimly aware of, or had altogether overlooked. 

Accordingly, on the 2nd of February, 1643-4, there did come forth asecond edition of Milton's first Divorce Tract, with this new title:"_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Restor'd to the good of bothSexes, from the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to the truemeaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compar'd. Wherein are set downthe bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which theLaw of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not. Now the second time revis'dand much augmented. In Two Books: to the Parliament of England with theAssembly. The Author J. M. _" Underneath this title, the text Matthxiii. 52 is repeated from the title-page of the first edition; with thisnew text added, Prov. Xviii. 13: "He that answereth a matter before heheareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. " Then follows the imprint, "_London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1644. " In the copy in the BritishMuseum which is my authority, the collector Thomason has put his penthrough the final figure 4, and has annexed, in ink, the date "Feb. 2, 1643. " [Footnote: Brit, Mus. Press-mark, 12. E. E. 5/141. ] This fixes theexact date of publication as above, Feb. 2, 1643-4. 

This second edition is a great enlargement and improvement of the first. The 48 small quarto pages of the first swell into 88 pages; the text isdivided into Two Books, each of which is subdivided into Chapters, withcarefully-worded headings; and, on the whole, the treatise is made moreinviting in appearance. The bold Introductory Letter, addressed "_Tothe Parliament of England, with the Assembly_, " consists of six pages, and is signed not with the mere initials "J. M. " which appear on thetitle-page, but fully "John Milton. " The additions in the text consistsometimes of a few words inserted, sometimes of expansions of merepassages of the first edition into two or three pages: in the Second Bookthey attain to still larger dimensions, so that much of that Book istotally new matter. Thus Chapters I. , II. , and III. , of this Book, forming ten pages, come in lieu of a single paragraph of two pages in thefirst edition; Chapters IV. , V. , VI. , and VII. , forming together sixpages, are substituted for about a single page of the first edition; andChapter XXI. , consisting of nearly five pages, is an expansion of about apage and a half in the first edition. The additions and expansions appearto have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that apassage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and toprove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, butof an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance inpoint in Chap. VI. Of Book I. , where there is interpolated a gratuitouslygorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled _Eros and Anteros, _ or_Love and Its Reciprocation_. The passage is characteristic and maybe quoted:--

Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forcedcohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeignedlove and peace. And of matrimonial love no doubt but that was chieflymeant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled: That Love, if he benot twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whomwhile he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false andfeigning desires that wander singly up and down in his likeness. By themin their borrowed garb Love, though not wholly blind as poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that eye notthe quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's propersphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native tohim, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious andsuborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so hethinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the hightower of his Apogęum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out thedirect rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures andtrim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not hisgenuine brother, as he imagined, he has no longer the power to holdfellowship with such a personated mate. For straight his arrows loosetheir golden heads and shed their purple feathers; his silken braidsuntwine and slip their knots; and that original and fiery virtue givenhim by Fate all on a sudden goes out and leaves him undeified anddespoiled of all his force; till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles andrepairs the almost faded ammunition of his Deity by the reflection of acoequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me; and, by theleave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mereamatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters menheretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highestarcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassysea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showingus that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual. 

Unless more is meant than meets the eye by _Anteros_ here inMilton's own case, this interpolation [Footnote: The manner of theinterpolation is so curious that it deserves a note. Milton, perceivingthat such a poetic Fable might be objected to as fitter for a "mereamatorious novel" than for a controversial treatise, insinuates anapology for its introduction. The apology is that some of the wisest andgreatest men had allowed the use on occasion of those "highest arcs thathuman contemplation, circling upwards, can make from the glassy seawhereon she stands. " In this phrase Milton furnished his critics with aweapon which they might have used against himself. Even now the mostgeneral objection to his prose writings would be that they contain toomany of those gratuitous grandeurs, those upward arcs and circlings fromthe glassy sea. But, in fact, he had his own theory of prose-writing asof other things, and it was not Addison's, nor any other that has beencommon since. ] was for literary effect only. Very frequently, however, the additions are of new reasonings, or farther interpretations ofScripture. Above all, we have in the second edition the results ofMilton's ranging in the literature of the question since he had publishedthe first. In that first edition he had been able to make some referenceto Hugo Grotius, having fortunately at the last moment come upon somenotes of Grotius on Matth. V. Which he thought reasonable. But since thenhe had lighted on a more thorough-going authority on his side in one ofthe German theologians of the Reformation period--Paul Fagius (1504-1550). "I had learnt, " he says, "that Paulus Fagius, one of the chiefdivines in Germany, sent for by Frederic the Palatine to reform hisdominion, and after that invited hither in King Edward's days to beProfessor of Divinity in Cambridge, was of the same opinion touchingDivorce which these men so lavishly traduced in me. What I found Iinserted where fittest place was, thinking sure they would respect sograve an author, at least to the moderating of their odious inferences. "[Footnote: This explanation, referring to the second edition of the_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, does not occur in thattreatise itself, but in the _Judgment of Martin Bucer_, publishedsome months afterwards. ] Accordingly, in the second edition, considerable use is made of Fagius, as well as of Grotius, while, asbefore, other theologians of historical note--Calvin, Beza, Pareus (1548-1622), Perkins (1558-1602), Rivetus (1572-1651)--are respectfully cited, sometimes as furnishing a favourable hint, but sometimes as requiringreply and correction. Not the least interesting perhaps of the addedpassages is this in the last chapter: "That all this is true [_i. E. _that Divorce is not to be restricted by Law] whoso desires to know atlarge with least pains, and expects not here overlong rehearsals of thatwhich is by others already judiciously gathered, let him hasten to beacquainted with that noble volume written by our learned Selden, '_Ofthe Law of Nature and of Nations_;' a work more useful and more worthyto be perused, whosoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity andjustice, than all those Decretals and sumless Sums which the Pontificalclerks have doted on. " The particular work of Selden's here referred tois his folio, _De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta DisciplinamHebręorum_, published in 1640. His work more expressly on Divorce, entitled _Uxor Hebraica, sive De Nuptiis ac Divortiis_, did notappear till 1646--_i. E. _ it _followed_ Milton's publications onthe subject, and in the main backed the opinion they had propounded. Itseems to me not improbable that in 1643-4, when Milton paid Selden thecompliment we have quoted, he had just made Selden's personalacquaintance. Selden was then in his sixtieth year; Milton in his thirty-sixth. 

After the description given of the second edition of the _Doctrine andDiscipline of Divorce_ and its differences from the first, it seemsnecessary to quote only some passages from Milton's opening address in itto the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly:--

... Error supports Custom, Custom countenances Error; and these twobetween them would persecute and chase away all truth and solid wisdomout of human life, were it not that God, rather than man, once in manyages, calls together the prudent and religious counsels of men deputed torepress the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots andobscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of Error andCustom: who, with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers, makeit their chief design to envy and cry down the industry of freereasoning, under the terms of "humour" and "innovation"; as if the wombof teeming Truth were to be closed up if she presume to bring forth aughtthat sorts not with their unchewed notions and suppositions. Againstwhich notorious injury and abuse of man's free soul to testify, andoppose the utmost that study and true labour can attain, heretofore theincitement of men reputed grave hath led me among others; and now theduty and the right of an instructed Christian calls me through the chanceof good or evil report to be the sole advocate of a discountenancedtruth: a high enterprise, Lords and Commons, a high enterprise and ahard, and such as every seventh son of a seventh son does not ventureon.... You it concerns chiefly, worthies in Parliament, on whom, as onour deliverers, all our grievances and cares, by the merit of youreminence and fortitude, are devolved: me it concerns next, having withmuch labour and diligence first found out, or at least with a fearlessand communicative candour first published to the manifest good ofChristendom, that which, calling to witness everything mortal andimmortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true.... Mark then, Judges andLawgivers, and ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will nowutter a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or not understood, yet of great and powerful importance to the governing of mankind. He whowisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds mustfirst himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extendsof just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that whichGod hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignoranceand mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all themisery that hath been since Adam. In the Gospel we shall read asupercilious crew of Masters, whose holiness, or rather whose evil eye, grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limitsto obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put agarrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts: and we shallread our Saviour never more grieved and troubled than to meet with such apeevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expecthim to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall befound yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands?The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremoniesin the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greaterweakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, weshall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not!When things indifferent shall be set to overfront us, under the bannersof Sin, what wonder if we be routed, and, by this art of our Adversary, fall into the subjection of worst and deadliest offences! Thesuperstition of the Papist is "Touch not, taste not!" when God bids both;and ours is "Part not, separate not!" when God and Charity both permitsand commands. "Let all your things be done with charity, " saith St. Paul;and his Master saith "She is the fulfilling of the Law. " Yet now a civil, an indifferent, a sometime dissuaded Law of Marriage must be forced uponus to fulfil, not only without Charity, but against her. No place inHeaven or Earth, except Hell, where Charity may not enter; yet Marriage, the ordinance of our solace and contentment, the remedy of ourloneliness, will not admit now either of Charity or Mercy to come in andmediate or pacify the fierceness of this gentle ordinance, the unremediedloneliness of this remedy. Advise ye well, Supreme Senate, if charity bethus excluded and expulsed, how ye will defend the untainted honour ofyour own actions and proceedings. He who marries intends as little toconspire his own ruin as he that swears allegiance; and, as a wholepeople is in proportion to an ill Government, so is one man to an illmarriage.... Whatever else ye can enact will scarce concern a third partof the British name; but the benefit and good of this your magnanimousexample [should they restore liberty of Divorce] will easily spread farbeyond the banks of Tweed and the Norman Isles. It would not be the firstnor the second time, since our ancient Druids, by whom this Island as thecathedral of philosophy to France, left off their Pagan rites, thatEngland hath had this honour vouchsafed from Heaven--to give outreformation to the world. Who was it but our English Constantine thatbaptized the Roman Empire? Who but the Northumbrian Willibrod andWinifrid of Devon, with their followers, were the first Apostles ofGermany? Who but Alcuin and Wicklif, our countrymen, opened the eyes ofEurope, the one in Arts, the other in Religion? Let not England forgether precedence of teaching nations how to live.... 

Milton's idea of the greatness of his enterprise, it will be seen fromthese passages, had grown and grown the more he had brooded on it. Whatif in this Doctrine of Divorce he were to be the discoverer or restorerof a new liberty, not for England alone, but actually for allChristendom? Meanwhile what opposition he would have to face, what stormsof scurrilous jest and severer calumny! Might it not have been better tohave written his treatise in Latin? This thought had occurred to him. "Itmight perhaps more fitly have been written in another tongue; and I haddone so, but that the esteem I have for my country's judgment, and thelove I bear to my native language, to seive it first with what Iendeavour, made me speak it thus ere I assay the verdict of outlandishreaders. " Yet there might have been a propriety, he feels, in addressingsuch an argument in the first place only to the learned. 

And what, after all, and in precise practical form, _was_ thistremendous proposition of Milton respecting Divorce? Reduced out of largeand cloudy terms, it was simply this, --that marriage, as it respected thecontinued union of the two married persons, was a thing with which Lawhad nothing whatever to do; that the two persons who had contracted amarriage were the sole judges of its convenience, and, if they did notsuit each other, might part by their own act, and be free again; at allevents, that for husbands the Mosaic Law on the subject was still inforce: viz. (Deut. Xxiv. 1) "When a man hath taken a wife and marriedher, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because hehath found some uncleanness in her [interpreted as including any moral orintellectual incompatibility, any unfitness whatever], then let him writeher a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out ofhis house. " Milton avoids as much as possible such reductions of hisproposition to harsh practical form, and would have disowned such briefpopular summaries of his doctrine as _Divorce at pleasure_, or_Divorce at the Husband's pleasure_; but, in reality, it came tothis. The husband, in modern times, had still, he maintained, the oldMosaic right of giving his wife a "bill of divorcement, " if she did notsatisfy him, and sending her back to her father's house. The right was apurely personal one. Friends, indeed, might interfere with their goodoffices; nay it would be fitting, and perhaps necessary, that thereshould be a solemn formality "in presence of the minister and other graveselected elders, " who should admonish the man of the seriousness of thestep he was about to take. But, if he persisted in taking it--if "heshall have protested, on the faith of the eternal Gospel and the hope hehas of a happy resurrection, that otherwise than thus he cannot do, andthinks himself and this his case not contained in that prohibition ofdivorce which Christ pronounced (Matth. V. 31-32), the matter not beingof malice, but of nature, and so not capable of reconciling"--then theChurch had done her part to the full, and the man was to be left to hisown liberty. This passage, proposing a kind of public oath on the man'spart, as a formality to be required in every case of dissolution ofmarriage, occurs near the end of the treatise in both editions; and itindicates, I think, Milton's recoil from any rough or free and easyversion of his doctrine, and his desire to temper it as much as he could. Essentially, however, the proposal mattered little. The husband was stillleft sole judge of his wife's fitness or unfitness for him, and whetherhe should exercise his right of putting her away was a matter finally forhis private conscience. 

With reference to Milton's own case, it is worth observing that thecauses of divorce on which he still rings the changes throughout thesecond edition of his treatise, as throughout the first, are theunmatchableness of dispositions, the unfitness of the wife for rationalconversation, her intellectual and moral insufficiency or perverseness. There is no word of _desertion_. I cannot but think that thisconfirms the view that it was not the absence of Milton's wife thatcaused his dissatisfaction with his marriage, but that thedissatisfaction preceded the absence and had helped to occasion it. 

Narration, rather than criticism, is my business in this work; and wehave not yet done with Milton's Divorce speculation. At this point, however, I may venture on three remarks:--

(1. ) What is most noticeable in Milton, underneath his whole conducthere, as in so many other matters, is his intellectual courage. Among menof thought there are, I should say, two grades of honesty. There ispassive honesty, or the honesty of never saying, or appearing to say, what one does _not_ think; and it is a rare and high merit to haveattained to this. But there is the greater honesty of always saying, orindeed asserting and proclaiming, whatever one _does_ think. Theproportion of those who have disciplined themselves to this positive oraggressive honesty, and are at the same time socially sufferable byreason of the importance of what they have to say, has always beenwonderfully small in the world. Now, Milton was one of this band ofintellectual Ironsides. Even within the band itself he belonged to theextremest section. For he dared to question not only the speculativedogmas and political traditions of his time, which others round him werequestioning, but even some of the established "moralities, " which few ofthem were questioning. It is not at all uncommon for men the most free-thinking in matters of religious belief to be immoveably and evenfanatically orthodox in their allegiance to all customary moralities. They abide by tradition, and think with the multitude, in ethicalquestions, if in nothing, else. But on Milton, it appears from hisAddress to the Parliament and the Assembly, there had dawned the ideathat, as there had come down in the bosom of society misbeliefs inscience, imperfect views of theology, and conventions of politicaltyranny, so there had come down things even worse, in the form ofcobwebbed sacramentalisms and sanctities for private life, factitiousrestrictions of individual liberty pretending themselves to be Christianrules of holiness. Among the greatest burdens and impediments in man'slife, he says, were such pseudo-moralities, such "imaginary and scarecrowsins, " vaunting themselves as suckers and corollaries from the TenCommandments. This was a daring track to be upon, but Milton was upon it. He did not believe that the world had arrived at a final and perfectsystem of morals, any more than at a perfect system of science. Hebelieved the established ethical customs of men to be subject to revisionby enlarged and progressive reason, and modifiable from age to age, equally with their theories of cosmology, their philosophical creeds, oranything else. There was no terror for him in that old and ever-repeatedoutcry about "sapping the foundations of society. " He believed that thefoundations of society had taken, and would still take, a great deal of"sapping, " without detriment to the superstructure. He believed that, aswe may read in Herodotus of ancient communities established on all sortsof principles, or even whim-principles, and yet managing to get on, andas these crude polities had been succeeded by other and better ones, tothe latest known in the world, so these last need not look to bepermanent. Of a tendency to this state of feeling Milton had givenevidences from early youth; but I do not think I am wrong in fixing onthe year 1643 as the time when it became chronic, nor in tracing thesudden enlargement of it then beyond its former bounds to the wrench inhis life caused by his unhappy marriage. At all events, henceforwardthroughout his career we shall see the continuous action of this nowavowed Miltonism among others. We shall see him henceforward continuallyacting on the principle that, in addition to the real sins forbidden toman by an eternal law of right and wrong, revealed in his own conscienceand authenticated by the Bible (for Milton did believe in such an eternallaw, and, however it is to be reconciled with what we have just beensaying, was a transcendental or _a priori_ moralist at his heart'score), the field of human endeavour was overstrewn by a multiplicity ofmere "scarecrow sins, " one's duty in respect of which was simply to marchup to them, one after another, and pluck them up, every stick of themindividually, with its stuck-on old hat and all its waving tatters. 

(2. ) One notes in Milton's first Divorce Tract, as in much else of hiscontroversial writing, a preference for the theoretical over what may becalled the practical style of argument. The neglect of practical detailsin his reasoning throughout this particular Tract amounts to what mightbe called greenness or innocence. What are the questions with which anopponent of the "practical" type would have immediately tried to poseMilton, or which such an one would now object to his doctrine? No one canmiss them. In a case where divorce is desired by the man only, what is tobecome of the divorced wife? Is not the damage of her prospects by thefact that she has once been married, if but for a month, something to betaken into account? It is not in marriage as it may be in otherpartnerships. The poor girl that has been once married returns to herfather or her friends an article of suddenly diminished value in thegeneral estimation. What provision is to be made for this? Then, shouldthere be children, what are to be the arrangements? Or again, suppose thecase, under the new Divorce Law, of a man who has a weakness for asuccession of wives--a private Henry the Eighth. He marries No. 1, and, after a while, on the plea that he does not find that she suits him, hegives her a bill of divorcement; No. 2 comes and is treated in likemanner; and so on, till the brutal rascal, undeniably free from all legalcensure, may be living in the centre of a perfect solar system of hisdiscarded wives, moving in nearer or farther orbits round him, accordingto the times when they were thrown off, and each with her one or twosatellites of little darlings! To be sure, there is the public oathwhich, it is supposed, might have to be taken in every case of divorce;but what would such a blackguard care for any number of such oaths?Besides, you put it to him by his oath to declare that in his consciencehe believes the incompatibility between himself and his wife to beradical and irremediable, and that he does not find that he comes withinChrist's meaning in that famous passage of the Sermon on the Mount inwhich he Christianized the Mosaic Law of Divorce. What does such a fellowknow of Christ's meaning? He will swear, and according to your new Law heneed only swear, according to his own standard of fitness; which may bethat variety is a _sine quā non_ for him, or that No. 2 is intolerablewhen No. 3 is on the horizon. How, in the terms of the new Law, is suchlicence to sheer libertinism to be avoided? These and other suchquestions are suggested here not as necessarily fatal to Milton'sdoctrine: in fact, in certain countries, since Milton's time, the mostthorough practical consideration of them has not impeded modifications ofthe Marriage Law in the direction heralded by Milton. They are suggestedas indicating Milton's rapidity, his impatience, or, if we choose so tocall it, his dauntless faith in ideas and first principles. It isremarkable how little, in his first Divorce Tract, he troubles himselfwith the anticipation of such-like objections of the practical kind. Thereason may partly be that, in his own case, some of them, if not all, were irrelevant. There were no children in his case to complicate theaffair; Mary Powell was probably as willing to part from him as he topart from Mary Powell; and, if she were to relapse into Mary Powell againand he to be free as before, the social expense of their two or threemonths' mismatch would hardly be appreciable! Doubtless, however, Miltonforesaw many of the practical objections. He foresaw cases, that would besure to arise under the new law, much more complicated than that ofhimself and Mary Powell. That he did not discuss such cases may have, therefore, been partly the policy of a controversialist, resolved toestablish his main principle in the first place, and leaving the detailsof practical adjustment for a future time or for other heads. On thewhole, however, the inattention to those practical details which wouldhave formed so much of the matter of most men's reasonings on the samesubject was very characteristic. 

(3. ) My last remark is that Milton, in his tract, writes wholly from theman's point of view, and in the man's interest, with a strange oblivionof the woman's. The Tract is wholly a plea for the right of a man to givehis wife a bill of divorcement and send her home to her father. There isno distinct word about any counterpart right for a woman who has marriedan unsuitable husband to give him a bill of divorcement and send him backto his mother. On the whole subject of the woman's interests in theaffair Milton is suspiciously silent. There is, indeed, one passage, inChap. XV. Of the Tract, bearing on the question; and it is very curious. Beza and Paręus, it seems, had argued that the Mosaic right ofdivorcement given to the man had been intended rather as a mercifulrelease for afflicted wives than as a privilege for the man himself. Onthis opinion Milton thinks it necessary to comment. He partly maintainsthat, if true, it would strengthen his argument for the restoration ofthe right of divorce to husbands; but partly he protests against itstruth. "If divorce wore granted, " he says, "not for men, but to releaseafflicted wives, certainly it is not only a dispensation, but a mostmerciful law; and why it should not yet be in force, being wholly asneedful, I know not what can be in cause but senseless cruelty. But yetto say divorce was granted for relief of wives, rather than for husbands, is but weakly conjectured, and is manifest the extreme shift of a huddledexposition ... Palpably uxorious! Who can be ignorant that woman wascreated for man, and not man for woman, and that a husband may be injuredas insufferably in marriage as a wife. What an injury is it after wedlocknot to be beloved, what to be slighted, what to be contended with inpoint of house-rule who shall be the head, not for any parity of wisdom(for that were something reasonable), but out of a female pride! 'Isuffer not, ' saith Saint Paul, 'the woman to usurp authority over theman. ' If the Apostle could not suffer it, into what mould is he mortifiedthat can? Solomon saith that 'a bad wife is to her husband as rottennessto his bones, a continual dropping: better dwell in a corner of thehouse-top, or in the wilderness, than with such a one: whoso hideth herhideth the wind, and one of the four mischiefs that the earth cannotbear. ' If the Spirit of God wrote such aggravations as these, and, as itmay be guessed by these similitudes, counsels the man rather to divorcethan to live with such a colleague, and yet, on the other side, expressesnothing of the wife's suffering with a bad husband, is it not most likelythat God in his Law had more pity towards man thus wedlocked than towardsthe woman that was created for another?" [Footnote: This passage occursin the second edition. There is but the germ of it in the first sentence, "If Divorce were granted ... Senseless cruelty. " The inference is thatMilton, when he wrote the first edition, was rather pleased with the ideaof Beza and Paręus that divorce had been given for the relief of thewife, and that his dissatisfaction with the idea, as promoting the womantoo much at the man's expense, came afterwards. ] Here was doctrine with avengeance. Man being the superior being, and therefore with the greatercapacity of being pained or injured, God had pitied him, if unhappilymarried, more than the woman similarly situated. For him, therefore, andnot for the woman, there had been provided the right of divorce! This isnot positively asserted, but it seems to be implied. The woman's relief, in the case of a marriage unhappy for her, consisted apparently, according to Milton, not in her power to cut the knot, but in thelikelihood that her husband, finding the marriage unhappy also for him, would desire for his own sake to cut the knot, or might be driven by hermanagement to that extremity. In short, we have here, as anotherconsequence of Milton's unfortunate marriage, the beginning of thatpeculiarly stern form of the notion of woman's natural and essentialinferiority to man which ran with visible effects through his wholesubsequent life. If not his ideal of woman, at least his estimate of whatwas to be expected from actual women, and what was on the average to beaccorded to them, had been permanently lowered by a bad first experience. 

All this while, what of the poor girl whose hard fate it was to occasionthis experience in the life of a man too grandly and sternly hersuperior? One is bound to think also of her, and to remember, in sothinking, how young she was at the time when her offended husband firsttheorized his feeling of her defects, and published his theorizings, withher image and memory, though not with her name, involved in them, to thetalkative world. She had not been seventeen years and a half old when shehad married Milton; she was of exactly that age when she left him, andthe first edition of his Divorce Treatise was ready; she was justeighteen when the second and fuller edition appeared. Surely, but forthat fatal visit back to Forest Hill, contrived by her or her relatives, matters would have righted themselves. As it was, things could not beworse. Restored to her father's house at Forest Hill, amid her unmarriedbrothers and sisters, and all the familiar objects from which she hadparted so recently on going to London, the young bride had, doubtless, _her_ little pamphlets to publish in that narrow but sympathisingcircle. In particular, her grievances would be poured into the confidingears of her mother. That lady, as we can see, at once takes the lead inthe case. Never with her will shall her daughter go back to that dreadfulman in Aldersgate Street! Mr. Powell acquiesces; brothers and sistersacquiesce; Oxford Royalism near at hand acquiesces, so far as it isconsulted; the bride herself acquiesces, happy enough again in theroutine of home, or perhaps beginning to join bashfully again in suchgaieties of officers' balls, and the like, as the proximity of the King'squarters to Forest Hill made inevitable. And is not the King's cause onthe whole prospering, and is not that in itself another reason for beingat least in no hurry to make it up with Milton? What if it never be madeup with him? It is some time since his letters to Forest Hill by thecarrier ceased entirely, and since the foot-messenger he sent downexpressly all the way from London with his final letter was met at thegate by Mrs. Powell and told her mind in terms which were doubtless dulyreported. And now, they hear, he is going about London as usual, andvisiting at Lady Margaret Ley's, and giving his own version of hismarriage story, and even printing Tracts in favour of Divorce! Peoplegenerally, they say, are not agreeing with him on that subject; but thereis at least one respectable English family that _is_ tempted toagree with him and to wish him all success!

BOOK II. 

MARCH 1644-MARCH 1645. 

_HISTORY_:--THE YEAR OF MARSTON MOOR: CIVIL WAR, LONG PARLIAMENT, AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED--STRUGGLE OF INDEPENDENCY WITHPRESBYTERIANISM: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY: ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES--PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES: HIS SECOND DIVORCEPAMPHLET, _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, _AREOPAGITICA TETRACHORDON_, AND _COLASTERION_. 

CHAPTER I. 

INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARIES--SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY ANDMULTIPLICATION OF SECTS--VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE--BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR--FORTNIGHT'S VACATION OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY(JULY 23-AUGUST 7, 1644). --PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION AND STATE OF THETOLERATION CONTROVERSY: SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES IN 1644. --RESUMPTION OF ASSEMBLY'S PROCEEDINGS: DENUNCIATION OF PICKED SECTARIESAND HERETICS--CROMWELL'S INTERFERENCE FOR INDEPENDENCY: ACCOMMODATIONORDER OF PARLIAMENT--PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--ESSEX BEATEN AND THEWAR FLAGGING: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY--PARLIAMENTARY VENGEANCES. 

The English Parliamentarians hoped great things from the Scottishauxiliary army. The Royalists, on the other hand, were both angry andalarmed. In anticipation, indeed, of the coming-in of the Scots, the Kinghad ventured on a very questionable step. He had summoned what may becalled an ANTI-PARLIAMENT to meet him at Oxford on the 22nd of January1643-4, to consist of all members who had been expelled from the twoHouses in Westminster, and all that might be willing, in the new crisis, to withdraw from those rebellious Houses. On the appointed day, accordingly, there had rallied round the King at Oxford 49 Peers and 141Commoners; which was not a bad show against the 22 Peers and 280Commoners who met on the same day in the two Houses at Westminster. Butlittle else resulted from the convocation of the ANTI-PARLIAMENT. Infact, many who had gone to it had done so with a view to negotiations forpeace. Such negotiations were at least talked of. In addition to vehementdenunciations of the doings of the Parliament, there were some abortiveattempts at friendly intercourse. All which having failed, the ANTI-PARLIAMENT was prorogued April 16, 1644, after having sat nearly threemonths. Parliaments, even when they were loyalist Parliaments, were notthe agencies that Charles found pleasantest. He trusted rather to thearbitrament of the field. 

INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY: SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY INENGLAND: MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS. 

No sudden blow was struck by the Scots. They had fastened themselves, inproper military fashion, on the north of England, and their presencethere was useful; but that was all. It was a great disappointment toBaillie. He had expected that the appearance of his dear countrymen inEngland would put an end to the mere military "tig-tagging, " as he hadcalled it, of Essex and Waller, and quicken immediately the tramp ofaffairs. His belief all along had been that what was needed in Englandwas an importation of Scottish impetuousness to animate the heavyEnglish, and teach them the northern trick of carrying all things at thedouble with a hurrah and a yell. It was a sore affliction, therefore, tothe good man that, from January 1643-4, on through February, March, April, May, and even June, the 21, 000 Scots under Leslie should be inEngland, and yet be stirring so little. Instead of fighting their waysouthwards into the heart of the country, they were still squatting inthe Northumbrian coal-region, and sticking there, not without some badbehaviour and disorder. Doubtless, it was all right in strategy, andLeslie knew what he was about; but oh, that it could have been otherwise!For of what use a great Scottish victory would have been at that time tothe cause of Presbyterianism? Faster, more massively, more resistlesslythan all the argumentations of Henderson, Gillespie, and Rutherford, aided by those of the Smectymnuans, with Vines, Palmer, Burges, and therest of the English Presbyterians, such a victory would have crushed downthe contentiousness of the Five Dissenting Brethren, and swept thepropositions of complete Scottish Presbytery through the WestminsterAssembly. Parliament, receiving these propositions, would have passedthem with alacrity; and what could the English nation have done butacquiesce? But, alas! as things were! The Five Dissenting Brethren andthe other "thraward wits" in the Assembly could still persevere in theirstruggle with the Presbyterian majority, debating every proposition thatimplied a surrender of Congregationalism, and conscious that in soimpeding a Presbyterian settlement they were pleasing a growing body oftheir fellow-countrymen. What, though London was staunchly and all butuniversally Presbyterian? Throughout the country, and, above all, in theArmy, the case was different. The inactivity of the Scots was affordingtime for the spirit of Independency to spread, and was giving rise toawkward questions. It began actually to be said of the WestminsterAssembly, that it "did cry down the truth with votes, and was an Anti-Christian meeting which would erect a Presbytery worse than Bishops. " Inthe Army especially such Anti-Presbyterian sentiments, and questioningsof the infallibility of the Scots, had become rife. "The Independentshave so managed matters, " writes Baillie, April 26, "that of the officersand sojers in Manchester's army, certainly also in the General's(Essex's), and, as I hear, in Waller's likewise, more than two parts arefor them, and these of the far most resolute and confident men for theParliament party. " As regarded Essex's army and Waller's, Baillieafterwards found reason to think that this was a great exaggeration; butit appears to have been true enough respecting Manchester's. By that timethere was no doubt either who was at the head of these Army Independents. It was Cromwell--now no longer mere "Colonel Cromwell, " but "Lieutenant-general Cromwell, " second in command in the Associated Counties underManchester. As early as April 2 Baillie speaks of him as "the greatIndependent. " With such a man to look up to, and with patrons also in thetwo Houses of Parliament, little wonder that the Independents in the Armybegan to feel themselves strong, and to regard the drift of theWestminster Assembly and the Londoners towards an absolutePresbyterianism as a movement innocent enough while it consisted in talkonly, but to be watched carefully and disowned in due time. 

All might be retrieved, however! What hope there might yet be in a greatScottish success! With this idea Baillie still hugged himself. "We areexceeding sad and ashamed, " he had written, April 19, "that our army, somuch talked of, has done as yet nothing at all. " But again, May 9, "Wetrust God will arise, and do something by our Scots army. We areafflicted that, after so long time, we have gotten no hit of our enemy;we hope God will put away that shame. Waller, Manchester, Fairfax, andall, gets victories; but Leslie, from whom all was expected, as yet hashad his hands bound. God, we hope, will loose them, and send us matter ofpraise also. " The victories of Waller, Manchester, and Fairfax, herereferred to by Baillie, had been nothing very considerable--mere fightsin their several districts, heard of at the time, but counting for littlenow in the history of the war; but they contrasted favourably with whatcould be told of the Scots. What was that? It was that they had summonedNewcastle to surrender, but had advanced beyond that town, leaving ituntaken. When Baillie wrote the last-quoted passage, however, they weremore hopefully astir. Fairfax, with his northern-English force, hadjoined them at Tadcaster in Yorkshire; the Earl of Manchester had beensummoned northwards to add what strength he could bring from theAssociated Counties; and the enterprise on which the three conjoinedforces were to be engaged--the Scots, Fairfax's men, and Manchester's--was the siege of York. It was a great business on all grounds; and onthis amongst others, that the Marquis of Newcastle was shut up in thecity. Might not the Scots retrieve their character in this business? Itwas Baillie's fervent prayer. But a dreadful doubt had occurred to him. What if the Scots, mixed as they now were with the EnglishParliamentarian soldiers before York, and in contact with theIndependents among them under Manchester and Cromwell, should themselvescatch the prevailing distemper? Writing, May 19, to his friend Mr. Blair, a chaplain in the Scottish army, Baillie gives him a warning hint on thesubject. "We hear, " he says, "that their horse and yours are conjoined, and that occasions may fall out wherein more of them may join to you. Weall conceive that our silly simple lads are in great danger of beinginfected by their company; and, if that pest enter in our army, we fearit may spread. " [Footnote: Baillie, Vol. II. From p. 128 to p. 197. ]

Here there must come in an explanation:--The Army-Independency which wasalarming the Presbyterians, and of which they regarded Cromwell as thehead, was a thing of much larger dimensions, and much more compositenature, than the mild Independency of Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Nye, Simpson, and Bridge, within the Westminster Assembly. The Independency ofthese five Divines consisted simply in their courageous assertion of theCongregationalist principle of church-organization in the midst of theoverwhelming Presbyterianism around them, and in their claim that, shouldtheir reasonings for Congregationalism prove in vain, and should thePresbyterian system be established in England, there should be at allevents "an indulgence" under that system, for themselves and theiradherents, "in some lesser differences. " The "lesser differences" forwhich they thus prospectively craved an indulgence had not beenspecifically stated; but it is pretty clear that they were not, to anygreat extent, differences of theological belief, but were rather thosedifferences which would arise from the conscientious perseverance of aminority in Congregationalist practices after a Presbyterian rule hadbeen established nationally. "You know that we do not differ from you intheological doctrines" is what the Five Dissenting Brethren virtuallysaid to the Presbyterians; "your teaching is our teaching, and what youcall errors we call errors: our difference lies wholly, or all butwholly, in the fact that _we_ hold every particular congregation ofChristians to be a church within itself, whereas _you_ maintain theinterconnectedness of congregations, and the right of courts of office-bearers from many congregations to review and control what passes withineach: now, as you, being undoubtedly in the majority, are about toestablish Presbytery in England, but as we cannot in conscience abandonour Congregationalism, could you not manage at least to allow in the newnational system such a toleration of Congregationalist practices as wouldsatisfy us, the minority, and prevent us from going again into exile?"Such was the Independency of the Dissenting Five in the WestminsterAssembly. But, as we know, from our previous survey of the history ofIndependency in England, in Holland, and in America, the word"Independency" had come to have a much larger meaning than that in whichit had originated. It had come to mean not merely the principle ofCongregationalism, or the Independency of Congregations, but also allthat had in fact arisen from the action of that principle, in England, Holland, or America, in the shape of miscellaneous dissent andheterodoxy. It had come to mean the Congregationalist principle_plus_ all its known or conceivable consequences. From policy it wasin this wide sense that the Presbyterians had begun to use the termIndependency. "You are certainly Independents, " the Presbyterians of theAssembly virtually said to Messrs Goodwin, Burroughs, and the rest of theFive; "but you are the best specimens of a class of which the varietiesare legion: were all Independency such as yours, and were Independency toend with you, we might see our way to such a toleration as you demand--which, on personal grounds, we should like to do: but the principle ofCongregationalism has already generated on the earth--in England, inHolland, and in America--opinions beyond yours, and some heresies atwhich even you stand aghast; and it is of these, as well as of you, thatwe are bound to think when we are asked to tolerate Independency. " Now itwas of this larger and more terrible Independency that the Presbyterianshad begun to see signs in the Parliamentary Army and through Englandgenerally. In other words, sects and sectaries of all sorts and sizes hadbegun to be heard of--some only transmissions or re-manifestations ofoddities of old English Puritanism, others importations from Holland andNew England, and others products of the new ferment of the English mindcaused by the Civil War itself. In especial, it was believed, _Anabaptists_ and _Antinomians_ had begun to abound. Now, though, inpoliteness, the Presbyterians were willing occasionally to distinguishbetween the orthodox Independents and the miscellaneous Sectaries, yet, as the Congregationalist principle, which was the essence ofIndependency, was credited with the mischief of having generated all thesects, and as it was for this Congregationalist principle that tolerationwas demanded, it was quite as common to huddle all the Sects and theorthodox Congregationalists together under the one name of Independents. Nor could the Congregationalists of the Assembly very well object tothis. True, they might disown the errors and extravagancies of the sects, and declare that they themselves were as little in sympathy with them asthe Presbyterians. They might also argue, as indeed they anxiously did, that due uniformity in the essentials of Christian belief and practicewould be as easily maintained in a community organized ecclesiasticallyon the Congregationalist principle as in one organized in thePresbyterian mariner. Still, in arguing so, they must have had somelatitude of view as to the amount of uniformity desirable. If everycongregation were to be independent within itself, and if moreovercongregations might be formed on the principle of elective affinities, orthe concourse of like-minded atoms, it was difficult to see whyCongregationalism should not be expected to evolve sects, and whytherefore this progressive evolution of sects should not be accepted as alaw of religious life. Had not the Five Independents of the Assemblyavowed it as one of their principles that they would not be too sure thatthe opinions they now held would remain always unchanged? Reserving thisliberty of going farther for themselves, how could they refuse tolerationfor those who had already gone farther? Claiming for themselves atoleration in all such differences as did not affect their character asgood subjects, they could not but extend the benefit of the same plea toat least a proportion of the Sectaries. But to what proportion? Where wastoleration to stop? At what point, in the course of religious dissent, did a man become a "bad subject?" To these questions no definite answerswere given by the Five Dissentients of the Assembly; but they could notbut entertain the questions. Hence their Independency, though mild andmoderate so far as they were themselves concerned, was really in organicconnexion with the larger Independency that had begun to manifest itselfin the Army and elsewhere. "The Congregationalist principle and Libertyof Religious Difference to a certain extent, " said the Independents ofthe Assembly. "Yes, Liberty of Religious Difference!" said the ArmyIndependents, simplifying the formula. 

Throughout the first half of 1644, therefore, we are to think of thePresbyterian majority in the Westminster Assembly as not only fightingagainst the Independency or Congregationalism proper which wasrepresented within the walls of the Assembly by men whom they could notbut respect, though complaining of their obstinacy, but also bent onsaving England from that more lax or general Independency, nameable asArmy-Independency, which they saw rife through the land, and whichincluded toleration not merely of Congregationalism, but also ofAnabaptism, Antinomianism, and other nondescript heresies. Baillie'sgroanings in spirit over the multiplication of the sectaries, and thegrowth of the Toleration notion, are positively affecting. "Sundryofficers and soldiers in the army, " he writes, April 2, "has fallen fromtheir way [_i. E. _ from Independency proper] to Antinomianism andAnabaptism. " Again, later in the same month, "The number and evil humourof the Antinomians and Anabaptists doth increase;" and more fully, on the19th, "They [the Independents] over all the land are making up a factionto their own way, the far most part whereof is fallen off to Anabaptismand Antinomianism: sundry also to worse, if worse needs be--the mortalityof the soul, the denial of angels and devils; and cast off allsacraments; and many blasphemous things. All these are from New England. "By May 9 he had begun to despair of the English altogether: "The humourof this people is very various and inclinable to singularities, to differfrom all the world, and one from another, and shortly from themselves: nopeople had so much need of a Presbytery. " According to Baillie, it wasprecisely owing to the absence of a well-organized Presbyterian system inEngland that all those wild growths of opinion had been possible; and, while they increased the difficulty of establishing Presbyterianism inEngland, they were the best demonstration of its necessity. Therefore, hewould not despair. There was yet a faint hope that the IndependentDivines in the Assembly might be made ashamed of the tag-rag ofAnabaptists, Antinomians, and what not, that hung to their skirts, and somight be brought to an accommodation with the Presbyterians. But, failingthat, the Presbyterians must stand firm, must face Independency and allits belongings both in Parliament and in the Army, and try at length tobeat them down. --Of course, Baillie and his Scottish brethren were doingtheir best to assist the English Presbyterians in this labour. Anti-Toleration pamphlets had appeared, and more were in preparation. But helpwas particularly desired from the Reformed Churches abroad, and mostparticularly from Holland. Had not Holland nursed this very Independencywhich was troubling England, and was not the example of Holland thegreatest argument with the Independents and others for a toleration ofsects? Representing all this to his correspondent, William Spang, Scottish preacher at Campvere, Baillie urges him again and again to dowhat he can to get any eminent Dutch divines of his acquaintance to writetreatises against Independency, Heresy, and Toleration. He names severalsuch, as likely to do this great service if duly importuned. There couldbe no more helpful service to England--except one! Oh if there could yetbe a great Scottish victory on English soil! _That_ would be worthall the pamphlets in the world! [Footnote: Baillie, II. 146, 157, 168, 177, 179, 181, 183-4, 191-2, 197, &c. --Several manifestoes againstIndependency, such as Baillie wanted, did come, in due time, from Divinesin Holland and elsewhere on the Continent, and were much made of by thePresbyterians of the Assembly, and put in circulation through England. ]

VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE: BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. 

Notwithstanding all this anarchy of ecclesiastical opinion, the practicalor political mastery of affairs remained in the hands of Parliament, andwas firmly exercised by Parliament in a direction satisfactory to theWestminster Assembly as a whole. For, whatever might be the ultimatesettlement between Independency and Presbyterianism, there was a certaingeneral course of "Reformation" to which meanwhile all were pledged, Independents and Sectaries no less than Presbyterians; and on this courseall could advance unanimously, even while battling with each other on theecclesiastical questions which the Independents desired to keep open. Forexample, during those very months of 1644 in which Independency had beentaking such increased dimensions, there had been fully executed thatgreat Visitation and purgation of the University of Cambridge which hadbeen entrusted to the Earl of Manchester by Parliamentary Ordinance inJanuary. 

The Earl, going to Cambridge in person in February 1643-4, with his twochaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work throughthe months of March and April, summoning refractory Heads of Colleges andFellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting themin most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete(which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one half of the _Fellows_ of the various Colleges ofCambridge collectively, and of eleven out of the sixteen _Heads ofHouses_, and the appointment of persons of Parliamentarian principlesto the places thus made vacant. --Of the crowd of those who were turnedout of Cambridge _Fellowships_, and the crowd of those who were putin to succeed them, we can take no account in this History. Yet a processwhich presents us with the vision of about 150 rueful outgoers fromcomfortable livelihoods in one University, met at the doors by as manyradiant comers-in, can have been no unimportant incident, even in anational revolution. What became of all the rueful outgoers is a questionthat might interest us yet. It interested Fuller ten years after theevent. Even then he could give no other answer, he said, than thatproverbial one which the survivors of Nicias's unfortunate expeditionagainst the Sicilians used to give at Athens when they were asked aboutthe fate of such or such a comrade who had never returned, [Greek: "Etethnęken hę didaskei grammata"] "He is either dead or teaching a schoolsomewhere. " Schoolmastering, according to Fuller, was the refuge of mostof the ejected Cambridge Fellows of 1644-5. --More conspicuous persons, and with resources that probably exempted them from the prospect of sopainful a fate, were the ejected _Heads of Houses_. Most of thesewere ejected at once in March and April 1644; and, apart from ouracquired interest in Cambridge University, there are reasons forremembering them individually, and noting those who came in theirplaces:--Of the sixteen Heads of Houses, it is to be premised, one--Dr. Richard Love, of Bennet or Corpus Christi--was a member of the Assembly, and therefore all right; while four others managed, by taking theCovenant, or by other "wary compliance" during the Visitation, to stayin. Among these four, it does not surprise us to learn, was Dr. ThomasBainbrigge of Christ's, Milton's old _durus magister_, with whom hehad had that never-forgotten tiff in his under-graduateship (Vol. I. Pp. 135-141); the others were Dr. Eden of Trinity Hall, Dr. Rainbow ofMagdalen, and Dr. Batchcroft of Caius. The ejections were as follows:--

TRINITY COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. THOMAS CUMBER (_ob. _ 1654);Master put in, Mr. THOMAS HILL, one of the Assembly Divines. 

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. WILLIAM BEALE (died at Madrid, 1651); Master put in, Mr. JOHN ARROWSMITH, one of the Assembly Divines. 

EMANUEL COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. RICHARD HOLDSWORTH (_ob. _1649); Master put in, Dr. ANTHONY TUCKNEY, one of the Assembly Divines. 

QUEEN'S COLLEGE:--There was a complete sweep of this College, not aFellow or Foundationer of any kind being left. President ejected, Dr. EDWARD MARTIN (survived the Restoration and was made Dean of Ely);President put in, Mr. HERBERT PALMER, one of the Assembly Divines. 

CLARE HALL:--Master ejected, Dr. THOMAS PASKE (survived the Restorationand had his reward); Master put in, RALPH CUDWORTH, B. D. , afterwards thecelebrated author of the "Intellectual System. " He was of Somersetshirebirth, and, though now only 27 years of age, had acquired a highCambridge reputation, as Fellow and Tutor of Emanuel College, where hehad been educated. 

PETERHOUSE:--Master ejected, Dr. JOHN COSINS (already under the ban ofParliament and a refugee in France: he survived the Restoration andbecame Bishop of Durham); Master put in, Mr. LAZARUS SEAMAN, one of theAssembly Divines. 

PEMBROKE COLLEGE;--Master ejected, Dr. BENJAMIN LANEY (survived theRestoration and held several Bishoprics in succession); Master put in, Mr. RICHARD VINES, one of the Assembly Divines. 

KING'S COLLEGE;--Provost ejected, Dr. SAMUEL COLLINS (see Vol. I. Pp. 92, 93); Provost put in, Mr. BENJAMIN WHICHCOT, _ętat. _ 34. He had beena Fellow of Emanuel College, and was a friend of Cudworth's. Apeculiarity in his case was that he was dispensed from taking theCovenant on his appointment, and succeeded, by his interest with theruling powers, in obtaining a like dispensation for most of the Fellowsof the College. He survived the Restoration, conformed then, and is stillremembered as one of the chiefs of the English Latitudinarians. 

SIDNEY-SUSSEX COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. SAMUEL WARD (see Vol. I. P. 95); Master put in, Mr. RICHARD MINSHULL, a Fellow of the College, regularly elected to the Mastership by the other Fellows. He survived theRestoration, conformed then, and retained the Mastership till his death. 

JESUS COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. RICHARD STERNE (great-grandfather ofLaurence Sterne, the novelist). He was a strong Laudian and Royalist, andhad already been in prison on that account. He lived in retirement tillthe Restoration; after which he was made successively Bishop of Chester, and (1664) Archbishop of York. Master put in, Mr. THOMAS YOUNG, one ofthe Assembly Divines, Milton's old preceptor, and the chief of the"Smectymnuans. " It was a special compliment to Young that he, not anEnglish University man at all, but a naturalized Scot, had been chosenfor a Cambridge Mastership. 

CATHERINE HALL:--Master ejected (not till 1645, however, and then on afresh occasion), Dr. RALPH BROWNRIGGE, nominal Bishop of Exeter since1642 (_ob. _ 1659); Master put in, Mr. WILLIAM SPURSTOW, one of theAssembly Divines, and one of the "Smectymnuans. " [Footnote: Authoritiesfor this account of Manchester's Visitation of Cambridge and its resultsare Fuller's History of the University of Cambridge (edit 1340), pp. 233-239, and Neal's Puritans, III. 107-119. ]

Thus began, in 1644, a new era in the history of Cambridge University, which extended to the Restoration. Episcopalian principles weredischarged out of the government of the University; and, under the fiveretained Masters and the eleven new ones, there was inaugurated a systemof rule and teaching in accordance, more or less in the differentColleges, with the ascendant State-policy of the Puritans. With theexception of Cudworth, Whichcot, and Minshull, it will have been noted, all the newly-appointed Masters were members of the Westminster Assembly, and leading men among the Presbyterian majority of that body. They do notappear to have ceased attendance on the Assembly in consequence of theirappointments, but only to have divided their time thenceforward as wellas they could between the Assembly and Cambridge. It is also to be notedthat some of them, including Thomas Young, retained their former livingsalong with their new Masterships. [Footnote: The following is a notefurnished to Mr. David Laing by the Rev. John Struthers of Prestonpans, one of an acting Committee recently appointed by the Church of Scotlandfor transcribing and editing the original Minutes of the WestminsterAssembly, preserved in Dr. William's Library, London:--"1643-4, March15. --A letter read from the Earl of Manchester, stating that he cast outDrs. Beale, Cosins, Sterne, Martin, Laney, masters, from theirMasterships in Cambridge University, and, subject to the Assembly'sapproval, nominated Mr. Palmer, Mr. Arrowsmith, Mr. Vines, Mr. Seaman, and Mr. Young in their places. The Assembly offered theircongratulations, but desired that their brethren should meanwhile not bewithdrawn from the Assembly. " Mr. Struthers adds that, though Dr. Lightfoot, in his Notes of the Assembly, states that Mr. Vines and Mr. Young desired to be excused from the new appointments, there is no noticeof any such declinature in the MS. Minutes. --See _Biographical Noticesof Thomas Young, S. T. D. , Vicar of Stowmarket, Suffolk_, by Mr. DavidLaing (Edin. 1870), p. 39. --These accurate and valuable "Notices" of aman who figures so interestingly in Milton's Biography had not appearedtill Vol. II. Of this work was quite printed, or they might have saved mesome research for that volume as well as for its predecessor. Prefixed tothem Mr. Laing gives a portrait of Young, after a photograph taken fromthe original picture long preserved in the Vicarage of Stowmarket, butnow in the possession of H. C. Mathew, Esq. Of Felixstow, near Ipswich. The portrait represents Young with hair not at all of the short Puritancut, but long, and flowing fully on both sides to his shoulders; and theface is really fine, with handsome features, and a rich and mild look. Another interesting insertion in Mr. Laing's little volume is a facsimileof Young's handwriting, from a Latin inscription in a presentation copyof his _Dies Dominica_, still extant. The hand is neat and careful;and, what is rather curious, it has a resemblance to Milton's. ] Therewere similar instances of retention of livings among those appointed toFellowships, and to other offices throughout the country under thepatronage of the Parliament. The excuse was the dearth for the time offully qualified ministers of the right Parliamentarian strain; but thefact did not escape comment. Was Plurality one of the very fewinstitutions of Prelacy which Presbyterian godliness was willing topreserve?

Fresh from his energetic Visitation of Cambridge, the Earl of Manchesterwas away, as we have seen, in May 1644, with his Lieutenant-general, Cromwell, to add the force of the Associated Eastern Counties to theforces of the Scots and Fairfax, then about to besiege the Marquis ofNewcastle in York. The joint forces, numbering some 25, 000 men in all, were hopefully conducting the siege when the approach of Prince Rupertout of Lancashire, with a Royalist army of over 20, 000, compelled them toraise it, in order to oppose him (June 30). He avoided them, relievedYork, and then, having added the Marquis's garrison to his own force, risked all for a great victory. The result was the BATTLE OF MARSTONMOOR, about seven miles to the west of York, fought on the evening ofJuly 2, 1644. It was "the bloodiest battle of the whole war, " the numberactually slain on the field on both sides in three hours being no fewerthan 4, 150. But of these by far the most were on the King's side, and thebattle was a disastrous rout for that side, and a victory for theParliamentarians incalculably greater than any they had yet had. Rupert, with a shred of his army, escaped southwards; the Marquis of Newcastle, making his way to the sea-coast, embarked for the Continent, with his twosons, his brother Sir Charles Cavendish, General King, Lord Fauconberg, the Earl of Carnwath, Bishop Bramhall, and about eighty other Royalistsof distinction, and was no more seen in England till the Restoration. York surrendered to the victors, July 5; and, save that Newcastle andsome other towns remained to be taken, the whole North of England waslost to the King and brought within the sway of Parliament. Seldom hadthere been such consequences from a battle of three hours. [Footnote:Clar. Hist. 490-492; Parl. Hist. III. 277, 278; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 151-154; Markham's Fairfax, 151-178, for a detailed modern account. ]

When the news of the battle reached London (July 5), there was nothingbut joy. Within a few days, however, the joy passed into a questionbetween the Independents and the Presbyterians, or at least the Scotsamong them. Which part of the conjoint army had behaved best in thebattle, and to which general did the chief honours of the day belong?Glad would Baillie have been to welcome Marston Moor as at last thatgreat success of the Scots for which he had been longing and praying. Nosuch pleasure could he have. More and more, as detailed accounts of thebattle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a littleof the merit of the victory--that the mass of them had behaved ratherill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had desertedhim, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, orbeen of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse and worse forBaillie's feelings, not only did it appear that the victory had beengained by the English of the joint army rather than by the Scottishcontingent, but gradually the rumour was confirmed, which had been firstborne to London on the wings of the wind, that the Englishman by whoseconduct, if by that of any one man, the fate of the battle had beendecided, was Lieutenant-general Cromwell. "The left wing, which Icommanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat allthe Prince's horse. God gave them as stubble to our swords. We chargedtheir regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. " Thesesentences of Cromwell's own, written on the third day after the battle ina letter to his brother-in-law, Colonel Valentine Walton, are his privatestatement of the truth which became public. In vain it was represented inLondon that Cromwell's paramount prowess in the battle was a fiction ofhimself and the Independents; in vain did the Presbyterians try todistribute the merit among Fairfax, David Leslie, and Major-generalCrawford--another Scot, not in the Scottish contingent, but serving inManchester's army as next in command under Cromwell, and already known asrepresenting Presbyterianism in that army in opposition to Cromwell'sIndependency; in vain did this Crawford, when he came to London, asseverate that Cromwell, having been slightly wounded in the neck, hadretired before the crisis, and that the real work in Cromwell's part ofthe battle had devolved on David Leslie and himself. It was a comfort toBaillie to believe all this; but London was persuaded otherwise. ForLondon and for all England Cromwell stood forth as the hero of MarstonMoor. The victory to which Baillie had looked forward as a triumph forPresbyterianism had been gained mainly by the "great Independent" of theEnglish army, and went to the credit of Independency. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 201, 203-4, 209, and 211; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 152-3 and 146-150;Fuller's Worthies, _Yorkshire_; Holles's Memoirs (1699), 15-17. ]

Three weeks after the battle of Marston Moor (July 23, 1644) theWestminster Assembly, with permission of Parliament, adjourned for afortnight's vacation. We will share this vacation, and make it theopportunity for some farther inquiry, on our own account, into the twosubjects which were of paramount interest at that moment. They were thesubjects, if I may so say, that had for some time past been chalked up onthe black board for the consideration of all England, and to thediscussion of which the Assembly and the Parliament were to addressthemselves with fresh fervour when the Assembly came together again aftertheir vacation. These were:--

I. The Principle of Toleration. 

II. The English Sects and Sectaries. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION: STATE OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY IN 1644. 

The history of the modern idea of TOLERATION could be written completelyonly after a larger amount of minute and special research than I am ablehere to bestow on the subject. Who shall say in the heads of what strayand solitary men, scattered through Europe in the sixteenth century, _nantes rari in gurgite vasto_, some form of the idea, as a purelyspeculative conception, may have been lodged? Hallam finds it in the"Utopia" of Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), and in the harangues of theChancellor l'Hospital of France (1505-1573); [Footnote: Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th edit. ), T. 122, Note. ] and there may have been others. Butthe history of the idea, as a practical or political notion, lies withina more precise range. Out of what within Europe in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries was the practical form of the idea bred? Out ofpain, out of suffering, out of persecution: not pain inflicted constantlyon one and the same section of men, or on any two opposed sectionsalternately; but pain revolving, pain circulated, pain distributed tillthe whole round of the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the onlyprinciple of its prevention gradually dawned on the common consciousness!In every persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towardsthe birth of this great principle. Every persecuted cause claimed atleast a toleration for itself from the established power; and so, by akind of accumulation, the cause that had been last persecuted had more ofa tendency to toleration in it, and became practically more tolerant, than the others. This, I think, might be proved. The Church of Englandwas more tolerant than the Church of Rome, and Scottish Presbyterianismor Scottish Puritanism was more tolerant (though the reverse is usuallyasserted) than the Church of England prior to 1640. Not to the Church ofEngland, however, nor to Scottish Presbyterianism, nor to EnglishPuritanism at large, does the honour of the first perception of the fullprinciple of Liberty of Conscience, and its first assertion in Englishspeech, belong. That honour has to be assigned, I believe, to theIndependents generally, and to the Baptists in particular. 

The principle of religious liberty is almost logically bound up with thetheory of the Independency of particular churches. Every particularchurch being a voluntary concourse of like-minded atoms, able to declarethemselves converts or true Christians, it follows that the world, orcivil society, whether called heathen or professedly Christian, is onlythe otherwise regulated medium or material in which these voluntaryconcourses or whirls take place. It follows that there must be largeexpanses or interspaces of the general material always unabsorbed intothe voluntary concourses, and that for the secular power, which governsthe general medium, to try to stimulate the concourses, or to bring allinto them, or to control any part of the procedure of each or any ofthem, would be a mingling of elements that are incompatible, of necessaryworldly order with the spiritual kingdom of Christ. And so it wasmaintained, against the Roman Catholics, and against the Confessions ofall the various established Protestant Churches, that there could be, andought to be, no Imperial or National Church. This being the principle ofsome of the early Protestant movements that went beyond Luther, Zuinglius, or Calvin, and perplexed these Reformers, little wonder thatflashes of the fullest doctrine of Liberty of Conscience should be foundamong the records of those movements, whether on the Continent or inEngland. [Footnote: See notices of such flashes, among English Baptists ofthe reign of Henry VIII. , and among the continental Anabaptists, in Mr. Edward Bean Underhill's "Historical Introduction" to the Reprint of OldTracts on _Liberty of Conscience_ by the "Hanserd Knollys Society"(1846). Mr. Underhill writes as a zealous Baptist, but with judgment andresearch. ] Little wonder, either, that the principle of Toleration shouldbe discernible in the writings of Robert Brown, the father of the crudeEnglish Independency of Elizabeth's reign. [Footnote: Baillie(_Dissuasive_, Part I. 31) expressly makes it a reproach againstBrown that he held the Toleration doctrine. ]

But it is one thing to hold a principle vaguely or latently as implicatedin a principle already avowed, and another thing to extricate the impliedprinciple and kindle it, as on the top of a lighthouse, on its ownaccount. It is found, accordingly, that the early English Separatistscollectively were much slower in this matter than Brown himself had been. They wanted toleration for themselves, and perhaps a general mildness inthe administration of religious affairs; but they could not ridthemselves of the notion, held alike by all the established churches, whether Prelatic or Presbyterian, that it is the duty of the prince, orthe civil power, in every state to promote true religion and suppressfalse. Passages which we have already had occasion to quote (Vol. II. 569, 570) from the writings of Barrowe, Greenwood, and even of theliberal Robinson, the father of Congregationalism proper, prove beyondall dispute that these chiefs of the Separatists and Semi-Separatists whofollowed Brown in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign and in the reignof James had not worked out Toleration into a perfect or definite tenet. They did want something that they called a Toleration; but it was alimited and ill-defined Toleration. --There was, however, _one_ bodyor band of Separatists in James's reign who had pushed farther ahead, andgrasped the idea of Liberty of Conscience at its very utmost. Strangelyenough, as it may seem at first sight, they were the Separatists of themost intense and schismatic type then known, the least conciliatory intheir relations to other churches and communions. They were the poor anddespised Anglo-Dutch Anabaptists who called John Smyth (Vol. II. 539, 540)their leader. In a Confession, or Declaration of Faith, put forth in 1611by the English Baptists in Amsterdam, just after the death of Smyth, thisarticle occurs: "The magistrate is not to meddle with religion, ormatters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of religion;because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the Church and Conscience. " Itis believed that this is the first expression of the absolute principleof Liberty of Conscience in the public articles of any body ofChristians. Contact with the Dutch Arminians may have helped Smyth'speople to a perception of it; and it certainly did not please the EnglishPędobaptist Independents of Holland when it appeared among them. Robinson, for example, objected to it, as he was bound to do by the viewsof the civil magistrate's power which he maintained. He attributed theinvention of such an article to the common inability of ignorant men todistinguish between the use of an ordinance and its abuse. In otherwords, he thought the remnant of Smyth's Baptists had been rather sillyin leaping to the conclusion that, because there had been much abuse ofthe interference of the civil power in matters of religion, and it hadled to all sorts of horrors, there was nothing left but to set up theprinciple of absolute non-interference. 

The principle of the Anglo-Dutch Baptists, with the same exact differencebetween the Baptists and the rest of the Independents on the Tolerationpoint, was imported into England. It is supposed that the person who hadthe chief hand in drawing up the Confession of the English Baptists ofAmsterdam, after Smyth's death, was Smyth's successor in the Baptistministry there, Thomas Helwisse (Vol. II. 540-544). Now, this Helwisse, returning to England shortly after 1611, drew round him, as we saw, thefirst congregation of General or Arminian Baptists in London; and thisobscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depositary for allEngland of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience expressed inthe Amsterdam Confession, as distinct from the more stinted principleadvocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only didHelwisse's folk differ from the Independents generally on the subject ofInfant Baptism and Dipping; they differed also on the power of themagistrate in matters of belief and conscience. It was, in short, fromtheir little dingy meeting-house, somewhere in Old London, that thereflashed out, first in England, the absolute doctrine of ReligiousLiberty. "_Religious Peace: or, A Plea for Liberty of Conscience_"is the title of a little tract first printed in 1614, and presented toKing James and the English Parliament, by "Leonard Busher, citizen ofLondon. " This Leonard Busher, there is reason to believe, was a member ofHelwisse's congregation; and we learn from the tract itself that he was apoor man, labouring for his subsistence, who had had his share ofpersecution. He had probably been one of Smyth's Amsterdam flock who hadreturned with Helwisse. The tract is, certainly, the earliest knownEnglish publication in which full liberty of conscience is openlyadvocated. It cannot be read now without a throb. The style is simple andrather helpless; but one comes on some touching passages. Thus:--

"May it please your Majesty and Parliament to understand that by fire andsword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one true religionof the Gospel is wholly against the mind and merciful law of Christ. ""Persecution is a work well pleasing to all false prophets and bishops, but it is contrary to the mind of Christ, who came not to judge anddestroy men's lives, but to save them. And, though some men and womenbelieve not at the first hour, yet may they at the eleventh hour, if theybe not persecuted to death before. And no king nor bishop can or is ableto command faith. That is the gift of God, who worketh in us both thewill and the deed of his own good pleasure. Set him not a day, therefore, in which, if his creature hear not and believe not, you will imprison andburn him.... As kings and bishops cannot command the wind, so theycannot command faith; and, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so isevery man that is born of the Spirit. You may force men to church againsttheir consciences, but they will believe as they did before when theycome there. "

"Kings and magistrates are to rule temporal affairs by the swords oftheir temporal kingdoms, and bishops and ministers are to rule spiritualaffairs by the word and Spirit of God, the sword of Christ's temporalkingdom, and not to intermeddle one with another's authority, office, andfunction. "

"I read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated in Constantinople, and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If thisbe so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another toreligion! And how much more ought Christians to tolerate Christians, whenas the Turks do tolerate them! Shall we be less merciful than theTurks? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute Christians? It is notonly unmerciful, but unnatural and abominable, yea monstrous, for oneChristian to vex and destroy another for difference and questions ofreligion. "

Busher's tract of 1614 was not the only utterance in the same strain thatcame from Helwisse's conventicle of London Baptists. In 1615 thereappeared in print "_Objections answered by way of Dialogue, wherein isproved, by the Law of God, by the Law of our Land, and by His Majesty'smany testimonies, that no man ought to be persecuted for his Religion, sohe testifie his allegeance by the oath appointed by Law. _" Theauthor, or one of the authors, of this Dialogue, which is even moreexplicit in some respects than Busher's tract, is pretty clearlyascertained to have been John Murton, Helwisse's assistant (Vol. II. 544, 581). Helwisse himself is not heard of after 1614, and appears tohave died about that time. But his Baptist congregation maintained itselfin London side by side with Jacob's congregation of Independents, established in 1616 (Vol. II. 544). As if to signalize still farther thediscrepancy of the two sets of Sectaries on the Toleration point, therewas put forth, as we saw, in that very year, by Jacob and theIndependents, a Confession of Faith, containing this article: "We believethat we, and all true visible churches, ought to be overseen and kept ingood order and peace, and ought to be governed, under Christ, bothsupremely and also subordinately, by the civil magistrate; yea, in causesof religion, when need is. "

The year 1616 was the year of Shakespeare's death. Who that has read hisSonnet LXVI. Can doubt that he had carried in his mind while alive someprofound and peculiar form of the idea of Toleration? In Bacon's brain, too, one may detect some smothered tenet of the kind; and even in thetalk of the shambling King James himself there had been such occasionalspurts about Liberty of Conscience that, though he had burnt two of hissubjects for Arianism, Helwisse's poor people were fain, as we have justseen, to cite "His Majesty's many testimonies" for the Toleration theycraved. And yet not to any such celebrity as the king, the philosopher, or the poet, had the task of vindicating for England the idea of Libertyof Conscience been practically appointed. To all intents and purposesthat honour had fallen to two of the most extreme and despised sects ofthe Puritans. The despised Independents, or semi-Separatists of theschool of Robinson and Jacob, and the still more despised Baptists, orthorough Separatists of the school of Smyth and Helwisse, were gropingfor the pearl between them; and, what is strangest at first sight, it wasthe more intensely Separatist of these two sects that was groping withmost success. How is this to be explained? Partly it may have been thatthe Baptists were the sect that had been most persecuted--that they werethe ultimate sect, in the English world, in respect of the necessaryqualification of pain and suffering accumulated in their own experience, while the Hobinsonian Independents might rank as only the penultimatesect in this respect. But there is a deeper reason. Paradoxical as thestatement may seem, there was a logical connexion between the extremeSeparatism of the Baptists, the tightness and exclusiveness of their ownterms of communion, and their passion for religious freedom, Thisrequires elucidation:--It was on the subject of the Baptism of Infantsthat the ordinary Congregationalists and the Baptist Congregationalistsmost evidently stood aloof from each other. There had been vehementcontroversies between them on the subject. Independent congregations hadejected and excommunicated such of their members as had taken to thedoctrine of Antipędobaptism; and Smyth's rigid Baptists, in turn, wouldnot hold communion with Pędobaptist Independents. We are apt now to dwellon the narrow-mindedness, the unseemliness, of those bickerings of thetwo sects over the one doctrine on which they differed. It is to beobserved, however, that even here they illustrated their faith in theprinciple which was the essence of their common Congregationalism: towit, that the true security for sound faith and good government in theChurch of Christ lay in the power lodged in every particular congregationof judging who were fit to belong to it, and of constant spiritualsupervision of each of the members of it by all, so that the erring mightbe admonished, and the unfit ejected. It was the supreme virtue, the all-sufficient efficacy, of this power of merely spiritual censure, as itmight be exercised by congregations or particular churches, each withinitself, that both sects were continually trying to demonstrate toPrelatists and Presbyterians. Their very argument was that truth andpiety would prosper best in a system of Church-government which trustedall to the vigilance of the members of every particular congregation overeach other, their reasonings among themselves, their practice of mutualadmonition, and, in last resort, their power of excommunicating theunworthy. Hence perhaps even the excess of the controversial activity ofthe two sects against each other, and the frequency of their mutualexcommunications, are not without a favourable significance. Here, however, it was the Baptists, rather than the Independents collectively, that had pushed their theory of the all-sufficiency of congregationalcensure to its finest issue. To both sects the world or civil societypresented itself as a medium in which there might be Christian vortices, concourses of true Christian souls, that should constitute, when numberedtogether and catalogued unerringly in the books of heaven, the Church orKingdom of Jesus. To both sects it seemed a thing to be striven for thatas much of civil society as possible should be brought into thesevortices or concourses; nay, the aspiration of both was that the wholeworld should be Christianized. But, looking about them, they knew, infact, that the vortices or concourses did and could involve but a smallproportion of the society in which they occurred. They knew that theremust be large tracts of unbelief, profanity, and false worship in everyso-called Christian nation, left utterly unaffected by any of the trueassociations of Christ's real people; besides the huge wilderness ofheathenism and idolatry lying all round in the dark lands of the world. It was on the platform of this contemplation that the Independentsgenerally and the Baptist section of them had parted company. TheIndependents generally held that it was the duty of the civil power in aState to promote the formation of churches in that State, and to see, insome general way, that the churches formed were not wrong in doctrine orin practice. They held that the civil authority might lawfully compel allits subjects to some sort of hearing of the Gospel with a view to theirbelonging to churches or congregations, and might even assist thepreacher by some whip of penalties on those who remained obstinate aftera due amount of hearing. They held, in fact, that every State is bound touse its power towards Christianizing all its subjects, and may alsoinstitute missions for the propagation of true Christianity in idolatrousor heathen lands. To all this the Baptists, or some of their leaders, hadlearnt to oppose an emphatic "No. " They held that the world, or civilsociety, and the Church of Christ, were distinct and immiscible. Theyheld that the sword of the Temporal Power must never, under anycircumstances, aid the sword of the Spirit. They held that the formationof churches in any State must be a process of the purest spontaneity. They held that, while every person in a civilized State is a subject ofthat State in all matters of civil order, it ought to be at the option ofthat person, and of those with whom he or she might voluntarily consort, to determine whether he or she should superadd to this general characterof subject the farther character of being a Christian and a member ofsome particular church. The churches formed spontaneously in any Statewere to be self-subsisting associations of like-minded units, believingand worshiping, arid inflicting spiritual censures among themselves, without State-interference; and Christianity was to propagate itselfthroughout the world by its own spiritual might and the missionary zealof apostolic individuals. [Footnote: Among my authorities for this sketchof the history of the idea of Toleration as far as 1616, I ought tomention Hanbury's _Historical Memorials relating to theIndependents_, Vol. I. , and more particularly Chapters XIII, --XV. ;Fletcher's _History of Independency in England_ (1848), Vol. III. , Chapters I. And II. ; and the Reprint of Old Tracts on _Liberty ofConscience_ by the Hanserd Knollys (Baptist) Society, with theIntroductory Notices there prefixed to Busher's tract and Murton's by Mr. Edward Bean Underhill. ]

From 1616 onwards this Baptist form of the idea of Liberty of Consciencehad been slumbering somewhere in the English heart. Even through thedreadful time of the Laudian terrorism it might be possible for researchto discover half-stifled expressions of it. Other and less extreme formsof the Toleration idea, however, were making themselves heard. Hollandhad worked out the speculation, or was working it out, through thestruggle of her own Arminians for equal rights with the prevailingCalvinists; and it was the singular honour of that country to have, atall events, been the first in Europe to exhibit something like apractical solution of the problem, by the refuge and freedom of worshipit afforded to the religious outcasts of other nations. Then among theso-called Latitudinarian Divines of the Church of England--Hales, Chillingworth, and their associates--there is evidence of the growth, even while their friend Laud was in power, of an idea or sentiment ofToleration which might have made that Prelate pause and wonder. Not, ofcourse, the Baptist idea; but one which might have had a greater chancepractically in the then existing conditions of English life. Might therenot be a Toleration _with_ an Established or State Church? While itmight be the duty of the civil magistrate, or at least a State-convenience, to set up one Church as the Church of the nation, and so toafford to all the subjects the means of instruction in that theology andof participation in that worship which the State thought the best, mightnot State-interference with religion stop there, and might not those whorefused to conform be permitted to hold their conventicles freely outsidethe Established Church, and to believe and worship in their own way? Somesuch idea of Toleration, but still with perplexing limitations as to the_amount_ of deviation that should be tolerated, was, I believe, theidea that had dawned on the minds of men like the loveable Hales and thehardy Chillingworth. It is much the sort of Toleration that accreditsitself to the average British mind yet. But how greatly the history ofthe Church of England might have been altered had such a Toleration beenthen adopted by the Church itself! As it was, it remained the half-uttered _irenicon_ of a few speculative spirits. Nowhere on earthprior to 1640, unless it were in Holland, was Toleration in any effectiveform whatsoever anything more than the dream of a few poor persecutedsectaries or deep private thinkers. Less even than in the Church ofEngland is there a trace of the idea in the Scottish Presbyterianism thathad then re-established itself, or in the English Presbyterianism thatlonged to establish itself. Scottish Presbyterianism might indeed plead, and it did plead, that it was so satisfactory a system, kept the souls ofits subjects in such a strong grip, and yet without needing to resort, except in extreme cases, to any very penal procedure, that wherever_it_ existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as therewould be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiasticof his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callousindifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, that characterizedthe English Church-rule of Laud. But Henderson, though the best of thePresbyterians, was still, _par excellence, _ a Presbyterian; andtherefore the Toleration that lay in his disposition had not translateditself into a theoretical principle. As for the English Presbyterians, what _they_ wanted was toleration for themselves, or the liberty ofbeing in the English Church, or in England out of the Church, withoutconforming; or, if some of them went farther, what _they_ wanted wasthe substitution of Presbytery for Prelacy as the system established withthe right to be intolerant. Finally, even in the New England colonies, where Congregationalism was the rule, there were not only spiritualcensures and excommunications of heretics, but whippings, banishments, and other punishments of them, by the civil power. [Footnote: Hallam'saccount of the rise and progress of the Toleration idea in England (Hist, of Europe, 6th ed. II. 442, &c. ) is very unsatisfactory. He actuallymakes Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying" (1647), the firstsubstantial assertion of Liberty of Conscience in England--an injusticeto a score or two of preceding champions of it, and to one or two entirecorporate denominations. ]

And so we arrive at 1640. Then, immediately after the meeting of the LongParliament, Toleration rushed into the air. Everywhere the word"Toleration" was heard, and with all varieties of meanings. A certainboom of the general principle runs through Milton's Anti-Episcopalpamphlets, and through other pamphlets on the same side. But this is notall. The principle was expressly argued in certain pamphlets set forth inthe interest of the Independents and the Sectaries generally, and it wasargued so well that the Presbyterians caught the alarm, foresaw thecoming battle between them and the Independents on this subject ofToleration, and declared themselves Anti-Tolerationists by anticipation. It was in May 1641, for example, that Henry Burton published hisanonymous pamphlet called _The Protestation Protested_ (Vol. II. 591-2). The main purpose of the pamphlet was to propound Independency inits extreme Brownist form, as refusing any National or State Churchwhatever; but, on the supposition that this theory was too much inadvance of the opinion of the time, and that some National Church mustinevitably be set up, a toleration of dissent from that Church was prayedfor. "The Parliament now being about a Reformation, " wrote Burton, "whatgovernment shall be set up in this National Church, the Lord strengthenand direct the Parliament in so great and glorious a work. But let it bewhat it will, so as still a due respect be paid to those congregationsand churches which desire an exemption, and liberty of enjoying Christ'sordinances in such purity as a National Church is not capable of. " Thisis the Toleration principle as it had been transmitted among theIndependents generally, or perhaps it is an advance on that. Such as itwas, however, Burton's plea for Toleration roused vehement opposition. Itwas attacked ferociously, as we saw, by an anonymous Episcopalantagonist, believed to be Bishop Hall (Vol. II. P. 593). It was attackedalso by Presbyterians, and notably by their champion, Mr. Thomas Edwards, in his maiden pamphlet called "_Reasons against the IndependentGovernment of particular Congregations_" (Vol. II. P. 594). ButEdwards did not go unpunished. His pamphlet drew upon him that thrashingfrom the lady-Brownist, Katharine Chidley, which the reader may remember(Vol. II. P. 595). This brave old lady's idea of Toleration outwent evenBurton's, and corresponded more with that absolute idea of Tolerationwhich had been worked out among the Baptists. For example, Edwards havingupbraided the Independents with the fact that their Toleration principlehad broken down even in their own Paradise of New England, what is Mrs. Chidley's answer? "If they have banished any out of their Patents thatwere neither disturbers of the peace of the land, nor the worshippractised in the land, I am persuaded it was their weakness, and I hopethey will never attempt to do the like. " Clearly, from whomsoever in 1641the Parliament and the people of England heard a stinted doctrine ofToleration, they heard the full doctrine from Mrs. Chidley. TheParliament, however, was very slow to be convinced. Petitions ofIndependent congregations for toleration to themselves were coollyreceived and neglected; the Presbyterians more and more saw theimportance of making Anti-Toleration their rallying dogma; more and morethe call to be wary against this insidious notion of Toleration rangthrough the pulpits of England and Scotland. [Footnote: Hanbury's_Historical Memorials relating to the Independents_, Vol. II. Pp. 68-ll7; where ample extracts from the pamphlets mentioned in thisparagraph are given. Fletcher gives a good selection of them in his_History of Independency_, Vol. III. Chap. VI. ]

The debates in 1643 and 1644 between the five Independent or DissentingBrethren of the Westminster Assembly and the Presbyterian majority of theAssembly brought on a new stage of the Toleration controversy. A notionwhich might be scorned or ridiculed while it was lurking in Anabaptistconventicles, or ventilated by a she-Brownist like Mrs. Chidley, or bypoor old Mr. Burton of Friday Street, could compel a hearing whenmaintained by men so respectable as Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Bridge, Simpson, and Nye, whom the Parliament itself had sent into the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament intheir famous _Apologetical Narration_ of January 1643-4 gave suddendignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It putthe question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowedin the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church ofEngland?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to thisquestion it would depend whether the Apologists and their adherents couldremain in England or should be driven again into exile. Care must betaken, however, not to credit the Apologists at this period with anynotion of absolute or universal Toleration. They were far behind Mrs. Chidley or the old Baptists in their views. They were as yet but learnersin the school of Toleration. Indulgence for _themselves_ "in somelesser differences, " and perhaps also for some of the more reputable ofthe other sects in _their_ different "lesser differences, " was thesum of their published demand. They too, no less than the Presbyterians, professed disgust at the extravagances of the Sectaries. It was not somuch, therefore, the Toleration expressly claimed by the Five DissentingBrethren for themselves, as the larger Toleration to which it wouldinevitably lead, that the Presbyterians continued to oppose and denounce. As far as the Five Brethren and other such respectable Dissentients wereconcerned, the Presbyterians would have stretched a point. They wouldhave made arrangements. They would have patted the Five DissentingBrethren on the back, and said, "It shall be made easy for _you_; wewill yield all the accommodation _you_ can possibly need; only don'tcall it Toleration. " The Dissenting Brethren were honest enough andclear-headed enough not to be content with this personal compliment. Nor, in fact, could the policy have been successful. For there were nowchampions of the larger Toleration with voices that resounded through theland and were heard over those of the Five Apologists. Precisely thatmiddle of the year 1644 at which we have stopped in our narrative was thetime when the principle of absolute Liberty of Conscience was proclaimed, for the benefit of all opinions whatsoever, in tones that could nevermore be silenced. 

About the middle of 1644 there appeared in London at least threepamphlets or books in the same strain. One of these, "_The CompassionateSamaritan unbinding the Conscience_, " need be remembered by its nameonly; but the other two must be associated with their authors. One borethe striking title "_The Bloudy Tenent_ [i. E. _Bloody Tenet] ofPersecution for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference betweenTruth and Peace_, " (pp. 247); the other bore, in its first edition, thesimple title, "_M. S. To A. S. _, " and, in its second edition, in the sameyear, this fuller title "_A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S. , &c. ;with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience for the Apologists' Church-way, against the Cavils of the said A. S_. " Though both were anonymous, theauthors were known at the time. The author of the first was thatAmericanized Welshman, ROGER WILLIAMS, whose strange previous career, from his first arrival in New England in 1631, on to his settlement amongthe Narraganset Bay Indians in 1638, and his subsequent vagaries ofopinion and of action, has already been sketched (Vol. II. 560-563, and600-602). He had been over in England, it will be remembered, since June1643, in the capacity of envoy or commissioner from the Rhode Islandpeople, to obtain a charter for erecting Rhode Island and the adjacentProvidence Plantation into a distinct and independent colony. He had beengoing about England a good deal, but had been mostly in London, in thesociety of the younger Vane, and in frequent contact with other leadingmen in Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly. The _Bloody Tenent_was an expression, in printed form, of opinions he had been ventilatingfrankly enough in conversation, and was intended as a parting-gift toEngland before his return to America. The title must have at onceattracted attention to it and given it an advantage over the other tract. The author of that other tract was our other well-known friend Mr. JOHNGOODWIN, Vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, whom the Presbyterianshad put in their black books as an Arminian, Socinian, and what not (Vol. II. 582-584). Goodwill's piece may have been out first, for it is heardof as in circulation in May 1644, while Williams's book is not heard of, I think, till June or July. But, on all grounds, Williams deserves thepriority. [Footnote: For statements in this paragraph authorities are--_Apologetic Narration_ (1644); Hanbury's Historical Memorials, II. 341_et seq. _; Reprint of _The Bloody Tenent_ by the Hanserd Knollys Society(1848), with Mr. Underhill's "Biographical Introduction, " pp. Xxiii. -iv. ;Jackson's _Life of John Goodwin_, p. 114 _et seq. _; Baillie's Letters, II. 180, 181, and 211, 212, and Commons Journals, Aug. 9, 1644. ]

Well may the Americans be proud of Roger Williams. His _BloodyTenent_ is of a piece with all his previous career. It is a rapid, hurried book, written, as it tells us, during the author's stay inEngland, "in change of rooms and corners, yea sometimes in variety ofstrange houses, sometimes in the fields in the midst of travel. " Oneparticularly notes the frequent "&c. " in its sentences, as if muchcrowded on the writer's mind from moment to moment which he couldindicate only by a contraction. But there is dash in the book, thekeenest earnestness and evidence of a mind made up, and every now andthen a mystic softness and richness of pity, yearning towards avoluptuous imagery like that of the Song of Solomon. The plan isstraggling. First there is a list of twelve positions which the bookproves, or heads under which its contents may be distributed. Then thereis an address or dedication to "the Right Honourable Both Houses of theHigh Court of Parliament, " followed by a separate address "To everyCourteous Reader. " Then there comes a copy of" Scriptures and Reasonswritten long since by a Witness of Jesus Christ, close prisoner inNewgate, against Persecution in cause of Conscience"--in fact, an extractfrom a tract on Liberty of Conscience by Murton, or some other LondonBaptist, in 1620. A copy of those Scriptures and Reasons againstPersecution had, it seems, been submitted in 1635 to Mr. Cotton of Bostonfor his consideration; and Mr. Cotton had drawn up a Reply, defendingfrom Scripture, past universal practice, and the authority of Calvin, Beza, and others of the Reformers, the right of the civil magistrate toprosecute and punish religious error. This Reply of Cotton's in favour ofpersecution is printed at length by Williams; and the first part of thereal body of his own book consists of a Dialogue between Truth and Peaceover the doctrine which so respectable a New England minister had thusespoused. When this Dialogue is over; there ensues a second Dialogue ofTruth and Peace over another New England document in which the same"bloody tenet" of persecution had been defended-to wit a certain "Modelof Church and Civil Power" drawn up by some New England ministers inconcert, and in which Mr. Cotton had had a hand, though Mr. RichardMather appears to have been the chief author. [Footnote: Some particularsin this description of the treatise are from Mr. Underhill's Introductionto the Hanserd Knolly's Society's Reprint of it, but the description inthe main is from the _Bloody Treatment_ itself. ]

The texture of Williams's treatise, it will be thus seen, is loose andcomposite. But a singular unity of purpose and spirit runs through it. Here is the opening of the first Dialogue:--

_Truth_. In what dark corner of the world, sweet Peace, are we twomet? How hath this present evil world banished me from all the coasts andcorners of it! And how hath the righteous God in judgment taken thee fromthe earth: Rev. Vi. 4. 

_Peace_. It is lamentably true, blessed Truth: the foundations ofthe world have long been out of course; the gates of Earth and Hell haveconspired together to intercept our joyful meeting and our holy kisses. With what a wearied, tired wing have I flown over nations, kingdoms, cities, towns, to find out precious Truth!

_Truth_. The like inquiries in my flights and travels have I madefor Peace, and still am told she hath left the Earth and fled to Heaven. 

_Peace_. Dear Truth, what is the Earth but a dungeon of darkness, where Truth is not?

_Truth_. And what is the Peace thereof but a fleeting dream, thineape and counterfeit?

_Peace_. Oh! where is the promise of the God of Heaven, thatRighteousness and Peace shall kiss each other?

_Truth_. Patience, sweet Peace! These Heavens and Earth are growingold, and shall be changed like a garment: Psalm cii. They shall meltaway, and be burnt up with all the works that are therein; and the MostHigh Eternal Creator shall gloriously create new Heavens and new Earth, wherein dwells righteousness: 2 Pet. Iii. Our kisses then shall havetheir endless date of pure and sweetest joys. Till then both thou and Imust hope, and wait, and bear the fury of the Dragon's wrath, whosemonstrous lies and furies shall with himself be cast into the lake offire, the second death: Rev. Xx. 

_Peace_. Most precious Truth, thou knowest we are both pursued andlaid for. Mine heart is full of sighs, mine eyes with tears. Where can Ibetter vent my full oppressed bosom than into thine, whose faithful lipsmay for these few hours revive my drooping, wandering spirits, and herebegin to wipe tears from mine eyes, and the eyes of my dearest children. 

_Truth_. Sweet daughter of the God of peace, begin. 

And so Truth and Peace hold their long discourse, evolving very much thatdoctrine of the absolute Liberty of Conscience, as derivable from, orradically identical with, the idea of the utter distinctness of theChurch of Christ from the world or civil society, which had beenpropounded first by the Brownists and Baptists, and had come down as atradition from them. But it is evolved by Williams more boldly andpassionately than by any before him. There is a fine union throughout ofwarmth of personal Christian feeling with intellectual resoluteness inaccepting every possible consequence of his main principle. Here are afew phrases from the marginal summaries which give the substance of theDialogue, page after page:--"The Church and civil State confusedly madeall one"; "The civil magistrates bound to preserve the bodies of theirsubjects, and not to destroy them for conscience sake"; "The civil swordmay make a nation of hypocrites and anti-Christians, but not oneChristian"; "Evil is always evil, yet permission of it may in case begood"; "Christ Jesus the deepest politician that ever was, and yet hecommands a toleration of anti-Christians"; "Seducing teachers, eitherPagan, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian, may yet be obedient subjectsto the civil laws"; "Christ's lilies may flourish in his Church, notwithstanding the abundance of weeds in the world permitted"; "Theabsolute sufficiency of the sword of the Spirit"; "A National Church notinstituted by Christ Jesus"; "The civil commonweal and the spiritualcommonweal, the Church, not inconsistent, though independent the one onthe other"; "Forcing of men to godliness or God's worship the greatestcause of breach of civil peace"; "Master of a family under the Gospel notcharged to force all under him from their consciences to his"; "Fewmagistrates, few men, spiritually and Christianly good: yet divers sortsof goodness, natural, artificial, civil, &c. "; "Persons may with less sinbe forced to marry whom they cannot love than to worship where theycannot believe"; "Christ Jesus never appointed a maintenance of ministersfrom the unconverted and unbelieving: [but] they that compel men to hearcompel men also to pay for their hearing and conversion"; "The civilpower owes _three_ things to the true Church of Christ--(l)Approbation, (2) Submission [i. E. Interpreted in the text to be personalsubmission of the civil magistrate to church-membership, if he himselfbelieves], (3) Protection"; "The civil magistrate owes _two_ thingsto false worshippers--(1) Permission, (2) Protection. "--Whoever has readthis string of phrases possesses the marrow of Williams's treatise. Atthe end of it there is an interesting discussion of the question whetheronly church-members, or "godly persons in a particular church-estate, "ought to be eligible to be magistrates. To Williams, who was a puredemocrat in politics, and was founding the new State of Rhode Island onthe basis of the equal suffrages of all the colonists, this was animportant practical question. He decides it with great good sense, andclearly in the negative. Without denying that the appointment of godlypersons to civil offices was a thing to be prayed for, and, whereverpossible, peaceably endeavoured, he points out that the principle thatonly Christian persons should be entrusted with civil rule is practicallypreposterous. Five-sixths of the world had never heard of Christ, and yetthere were lawful enough civil states in those parts of the world. Then, in a Christian monarchy, what a convulsion, what a throwing away of thebenefits of hereditary succession, if it had to be inquired, whenever thethrone became vacant, whether the next heir was of the right sortreligiously. Finally, in any Christian colony or town, would it not be aturning of everything upside down, and a premium upon hypocrisy, to makechurch-membership a necessary qualification for magistracy, and so, whena magistrate lapsed into what was thought religious error, and had to beexcommunicated by his church, to have to turn him out of his civil officealso?

Williams, it is to be remembered, had held these views while he was yetonly a Congregationalist generally, and before he had become a Baptist. Though he found them among the Baptists, therefore, he may be said tohave recovered them for Independency at large, and to have been the firstto impregnate modern "Independency" with them through and through. Nay, as he had himself gone out of the camp of the mere BaptistCongregationalists when he published his treatise, --as he had begun toquestion whether there was any true Visible Church in the world at all, any perfect pastorate in any nation, anything else under the sun of aChristian kind than a chance-medley of various preaching and effort intowhich God might sooner or later send new shafts of light and directionfrom heaven--in the view of all this, Williams has to be regarded as thefather of a speculation that cannot be contained within the name ofIndependency, even at its broadest. If we were forced to adopt a moderndesignation for him, we should call him. The father of all that, sincehis time, has figured, anywhere in Great Britain, or in the UnitedStates, or in the British Colonies, under the name of _Voluntaryism_. This involves a restriction on the one hand. Since his time, there hasbeen an abundance of speculation in the world as to the true duties andlimits of the power of a State even in civil matters; and the prevailingeffect of these speculations has been to hand over more and more of thecare of human well-being and human destinies, in everything whatsoever, to the liberty of individuals, the pressure of their competing desires, and their powers of voluntary association, and so to reduce the functionof the magistrate or any power of corporate rule to a thing becomingsmall by degrees and beautifully less. Of late, this tendency, victoriousalready in many matters, has tried to assert itself in the question ofEducation. It has been maintained that there should be no attention onthe part of the State to the education of the citizens, but that, in thematter of learning to read and write and of all farther learning ormental training, the individuals horn into a community should be left totheir hereditary chances, the discretion or kindness of those about them, and their own power of gradually finding out what they need, and buyingit or begging it. Now with this direction of modern speculation theintentions of Roger Williams had nothing to do. He was a democrat inpolitics, and, as such, he might have gone on to new definitions of what, in secular matters, should be left to the individual, and what should bestill regulated by the majority; but what these definitions would havebeen must be left to inference from the records of his farther politicallife in Rhode Island. Respecting Schools and Universities he did, indeed, hold that they were not to be regarded as the nurseries of a clergy, theappendages of a Church, or the depositaries and supports of any religiouscreed. "For any depending of the Church of Christ on such schools, " hewrote, "I find not a tittle in the Testament of Christ Jesus. " He wouldcertainly, therefore, have been for no expenditure of public money on the_religious_ education of the young, and he would have been for theextraction of all theological teaching out of existing schools anduniversities. But he "honoured schools, " he says, " for tongues and arts, "and I have found no trace in him of a notion that State support ofschools and universities for such secular learning is illegitimate. His_Voluntaryism_, so far as it was declared, or, I believe, intended, waswholly Voluntaryism in the matter of Church and Religion. In that sphere, however, his Voluntaryism was absolute, and went as far as anythingcalling itself Voluntaryism that has since been heard of in the English-speaking world. 

Williams's _Bloody Tenent_, as I have said, was his parting gift to theEnglish nation before his return to America. It was out in June or July1644; and in September of the same year Williams, after a stay of aboutfifteen months in and near London, was on his way back to New England. Hehad succeeded in the immediate object of his mission. For, during hisstay in England, the management of the Colonies, till then in the handsof Commissioners under the Crown, was transferred (Nov. 2, 1643) to aParliamentary Commission of Lords and Commoners, at the head of which wasthe Earl of Warwick as Lord High Admiral, and among the members of whichwere Lord Saye and Sele, Pym, the younger Vane, Sir Arthur Haselrig, andOliver Cromwell. Before such Commissioners, with Vane as his personalfriend. Williams had had little difficulty in making out his case; and hehad obtained from them a Patent, dated March 14, 1643-4, associating "thetowns of Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, " into one body-politic bythe name of "the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in NarragansetBay in New England. " This Patent gave a _carte blanche_ to the coloniststo settle their own form of government by voluntary consent, or vote, among themselves; and, having it in his pocket, Williams might hope, onhis return to America, to set up, in the polity of Rhode Island and itsadjacencies, such an example of complete civil democracy combined withabsolute religious individualism as the world had never yet seen. The_Bloody Tenent_ might be left in England as an exposition of his theoryin the sphere of Religion until this practical Transatlantic example ofit should be ready! He had shrewdly taken care, however, to have thePatent in his pocket before issuing the _Bloody Tenent_. Had that bookbeen out first, he might have had some difficulty in obtaining the Patenteven from such Commissioners for the Colonies as he had to deal with. Possibly, however, they granted it with full knowledge of Williams, andwere willing, through him, to try a bolder experiment in the Americanwilds than it was possible to promote or to announce in England. [Footnote: Palfrey's New England, I. 633-4, and II. 215; and Gammell'sLife of Williams, 119, 120. ]

While we have been so long with Roger Williams, his colleague in theToleration heresy, John Goodwill, has been waiting. He was fifty-oneyears of age, or six or seven years older than Williams. Rather late inlife, he had begun to find himself a much-abused man in London. For, though he had sided with the Parliamentarians zealously from the first, and had even, it appears, taken the Covenant, [Footnote: That Goodwin hadtaken the Covenant appears from words of his own in a tract of 1646quoted in Fletcher's Hist, of Independency, IV. 47. ] his theology wasthought to be lax, [Footnote: The suspicion of Goodwin's Socinianism wasas early as November 1613, when he got into trouble with the Assembly onthat and other grounds (see Baillie's Letters, II. III, and Lightfoot'sNotes, Nov. 8 and 9, 1643). ] and the interpretation he was putting on theCovenant was not the common one. He thought that the oath to seek"reformation of religion" and to "endeavour to bring the Church of God inthe three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity, " did notnecessarily imply acceptance of the Presbyterian system which theAssembly were bent upon bringing in. Therefore, when the Five DissentingBrethren of the Assembly appealed to Parliament in their _ApologeticalNarration_, they found a champion outside in Goodwin. His championshiptook the form of that answer to "A. S. " (_i. E. _ the Scotsman, AdamSteuart, author of the first printed attack on the _ApologeticNarration_) which we have mentioned as appearing with the brief title _M. S. To A. S. _, and again, in a second edition, with the fuller title _AReply of Two of the Brethren to A. S. , &c. ; with A Plea for Liberty ofConscience, &c_. As the second title implies, Goodwill had associates inthe work; but it was principally his, and the part on Toleration whollyhis. So far as the tract concerns itself with the question betweenPresbytery and Congregationalism, Goodwin avows himself aCongregationalist. And yet he was not at one in all points with the fiveAssembly-men. "I know I am looked upon, " he afterwards wrote, "by reasonpartly of my writings, partly of my practice, as a man very deeplyengaged for the Independents' cause against Presbytery. But the truth is, I am neither so whole for the former, nor yet against the latter, as Iam, I believe, generally voted in the thoughts of men to be. " [Footnote:Quoted, from the Preface to Goodwin's _Anapologesiastes Anapologias_, byFletcher, IV. 46. ] This was written in 1616; but even in 1644 he foughtso much for his own hand that the Independents of the Assembly may havebut half liked his partnership. His Toleration doctrine, at all events, though uttered in their behalf, was too strong doctrine even for them. Hear what Baillie writes to his friend Spang, at Campvere, in Holland, just after the appearance of Goodwin's tract for the Independents: "_M. S. Against A. S. _, is John Goodwin of Coleman Street: he names you expressly, and professes to censure the letter of Zeeland. He is a bitter enemy toPresbytery, and is openly for a full liberty of conscience of all sects, even Turks, Jews, Papists, and all to be more openly tolerate than withyou [_i. E. _ than even in Holland]. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 180, 181. Goodwin's mention of Spang, referred to by Baillie, is as follows:--"There is a Scottish Church, of which one Spang is a very busy agent, atTrevere [Campvere]... Whence the Letter [_i. E. _ the Zeeland Letter infavour of Presbytery] came. "] Baillie's representation of Goodwin'sToleration doctrine is fair enough. It is not so deep, so exceptionless, and so transcendentally reasoned as Roger Williams's; and indeed therewas none of the sap and mystic richness of nature in Goodwin that we findin Williams, but chiefly clear courage, and strong cool sense. For mostpractical purposes, however, Goodwin's Toleration was thorough. He wasfor tolerating not merely the orthodox Congregationalists and such moreheterodox sects as might be thought respectable, but all religions, sects, and schisms whatsoever, if only the professors of them wereotherwise peaceable in the State. Not, of course, that they were not tobe reasoned with and proved false publicly; or that heretics incongregations were not to be admonished, and, if obdurate, excommunicated; or that a whole church tainted with a great heresy oughtnot to be put under a ban by all other churches, and communion with itrenounced. All this was assumed in the theory of Church-Independencywhich was common to Goodwin and Williams. True, Williams, now that he hadpassed beyond the Baptists and saw no true Church anywhere on earth, musthave begun to doubt also the efficacy and validity of even spiritualcensures, as exercised by the so-called churches, to regard as a mereagency of troublesome moonshine that incessant watchfulness of eachother's errors on which Independency relied, and so to luxuriate in amood of large charity, sighing over all, and hoping more from prayer andlonging and pious well-doing all round than from censures anddisputations. To Goodwin, on the other hand, troubled with no suchvisionary ideas, and fully convinced that a very good model of a Churchhad been set up in Coleman Street, the right and efficacy of disputationagainst error, and of ministerial vigilance against error in particularchurches, seemed more important, or at least more worth insisting on in apublic plea for Toleration. Williams and Goodwill did not differtheoretically, but only practically, over this item in the exposition oftheir doctrine. The sole difference, of theoretical import, was thatGoodwin, in dwelling on the duty of disputation by Christian ministersagainst false religions and dangerous opinions in society round aboutthem, and of vigilance against minor heresies in their own congregations, talked vaguely of a right on the part of the civil magistrate to admonishministers in this respect should they be negligent or forgetful of theirduty. This, as we know, would have grated on Williams. Perhaps, however, Goodwin, even here, was only throwing a sop to Cerberus. At all events, he comes out finally a thorough Tolerationist. Whatever minister ormagistrate may do towards confuting and diminishing error, there is apoint at which they must both stop. There is not to be a suppression offalse religions, sects and schisms, by fining, imprisoning, disfranchising, banishment, death, or any civil punishment whatsoever;and, when it comes to that, they are all to be tolerated. [Footnote:Jackson's Life of Goodwin. Pp. 110, 117; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 341-365. ]

We are now prepared to classify the various forms in which the TolerationDoctrine was urged on the English mind in the year 1644. There were threegrades of the doctrine:--

I. _Absolute Liberty of Conscience, and No National Church, or State-interference with Religion, of any kind whatsoever. _ This was, infact, more than Toleration, and Toleration is hardly the fit name for it. The advocates of this idea were Roger Williams, perhaps the Baptistsgenerally, also Burton in a certain way; but, above all, Roger Williams. He did not think there could be Liberty of Conscience, in the perfect andabsolute sense, where there was a National Church, even if free dissentwere allowed from that Church. For, by the establishment of a Church, heheld, a substantial worldly premium was put on certain religious beliefs, and an advantage conferred on a portion of the community at the expenseof all; and to be compelled to pay for, or even to acknowledgepolitically, a Church which one did not approve, was in itselfinconsistent with true Liberty of Conscience, whatever freedom ofnonconformity might be left to individuals. Accordingly, if RogerWilliams, at that crisis, had been a statesman of England, instead of amere commissioner from an infant colony in America, his advice would havebeen in this strain:--"It is agreed that the Episcopal or PrelaticChurch, called hitherto the Reformed Church of England, is no longer toexist. That is settled; and the question is, What Church Reformationshall there now be? My answer is sweeping and simple. Let there be noNational Church, no Church of England, at all, of any kind or formwhatsoever. Let England henceforth be a civil State only, in whichChristianity shall take care of itself, and all forms of Christianity andall other religions shall have equal rights to protection by the police. Confiscate for the use of the State all the existing revenues of thedefunct Church and its belongings, giving such compensation for life-interests therein as may seem reasonable; but create no new Church, norstump of a Church, round which new interests may gather. Do not evenimplicate the State so far in the future of Religion as to indicate tothe subjects any form of Church as esteemed the best, or any range ofoption among Churches as presumably the safest. Leave the formation andthe sustentation of Christ's Church in the English realm, and everywhereelse, entirely to the unseen power of the Spirit, and the free action ofthose whom the Spirit may make its instruments. "--For nothing like thiswas the Long Parliament, or any other legislature in the world, thenprepared; and Williams knew it. But he had faith in the future of hisspeculation. In America, whither he was to carry it back, he hoped to beable to exhibit it in practice on a small scale in the new colony he wasfounding; and there could be no harm, he thought, in leaving the leavento ferment in the denser society of England. 

II. _Unlimited Toleration round an Established National Church. _ Sowe may express a form of Tolerationism in which there was a concurrenceof persons, and perhaps of bodies of persons, who yet differed from eachother in the motives for their concurrence. Williams, of course, acceptedthis form of Tolerationism, as next best to his own absoluteVoluntaryism, Individualism, and universal Liberty of Conscience. "Ifthere is to be in England a National or State Church of some kind (whichI think wrong, and so wrong that I will take no part in the debate whatkind of National Church would be best, whether a Prelatic, Presbyterian, or any other), at least, when you have set up such a Church, let there bea perfect toleration for all subjects of the realm round about thatChurch, no compulsion on any of them to belong to that Church, no painsand penalties for any profession of belief or disbelief, or any form ofworship or no-worship, out of that Church. " These are not Williams's ownwords, but they exactly express his meaning; and, in fact, he intendedhis _Bloody Tenent_ to be a plea for toleration in this practicalsense, if it should fail in winning people to his higher and morepeculiar idea of real Liberty of Conscience. And a most eloquent plea itwas. He insists again and again on the necessity that there should be nolimits to the toleration of Religious Difference in a state. He arguesexpressly that not only orthodox or slightly heterodox dissenters shouldhave the benefit of such toleration, but all kinds of dissentientswithout exception, Papists, Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, or Infidels. Heknew what a hard battle lie was fighting. "I confess I have little hope, "he said, "till those flames are over, that this discourse against thedoctrine of persecution for cause of conscience should pass current, Isay not amongst the wolves and lions, but even amongst the sheep ofChrist themselves. Yet, _liberavi animam meam_: I have not hidwithin my breast my soul's belief. " He trusted, doubtless, that histreatise might have some effect, if not for its highest purpose, at leastas a practical plea for unlimited toleration round the new NationalChurch of England that was to be. And here most of the Baptists were inthe same predicament with Williams. They would have preferred no NationalChurch at all; but, as there was to be a National Church, they wanted theamplest toleration round it. Burton also was pretty nearly in the samecategory. He too doubted the lawfulness of a State Church of any kind, but was earnest that, if such must be established, it should not becoercive. He did not formally demand unlimited toleration, and indeedconceded something in words to the effect that in cases of "known heresy, or blasphemy, or idolatry, " offenders would have to be "obnoxious to theCivil Power;" but I rather think that the concession was prudential, andthat his heart did not go with it. I will retain him therefore among theUnlimited Tolerationists. Far outshining him in this class, however, wasJohn Goodwin. --Well, but were the advocates of unlimited toleration inconnexion with an Established Church exclusively persons who would haveprevented the formation of such a Church if they could, or doubted itsrighteousness and propriety, and who only insisted on Toleration_with_ such a Church as a practical necessity to which they weredriven? Were there no theorists in that time who positively desired anEstablished Church on its own account, and for the general good of thecommunity, but who had worked out the conclusion that such a Church mightconsist, and ought to consist, with universal Religious Toleration, orthe freest liberty of Nonconformity and Dissent? In view of the fact thatthis is the theory of Establishments evolved by some of the bestecclesiastical spirits in our own later times, the question isinteresting. My researches do not enable me to give a very precise answerto it applicable to the exact year 1644. If there were such theorists, however, they were, I should say, among those wiser and younger sons ofthe Episcopal Church of England who would fain have preserved thatEpiscopal Church, but had privately made up their minds that Laud's basisfor that Church was untenable, and that a very different basis must besubstituted. One thinks of Chillingworth, Hales, and the rest of that"Latitudinarian" brotherhood; one thinks of Jeremy Taylor; one thinks ofthe candid Fuller; one thinks even of the Calvinistic Usher. Chillingworth had died at Chichester, Jan. 30, 1643-4, at the age offorty-one, an avowed Royalist, and indeed a Royalist prisoner-at-war, tended on his death-bed by Presbyterians. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 93, 94; and Life of Chillingworth prefixed to the Oxford edition of hisWorks. ] Whatever hardy cogitations had been in his mind, pointing to arevived Episcopal Church of England with an ample toleration within itand round about it, had gone prematurely to the grave. The others werestill alive, also pronounced Royalists, and acting or suffering more orless on that side; and whatever thoughts they had in the direction undernotice were irrelevant to their immediate duty and opportunities, and hadto wait for utterance at a more convenient season. [Footnote: Yet there_had_ been one recent utterance of Hales relating to the idea ofToleration. It was in the form of _A Tract concerning Schism andSchismatics_, which he had prepared in 1636, partly for the use of hisfriend Chillingworth then engaged on his "Religion of Protestants, " butwhich, in deference to Laud's private objections and remonstrances, hehad kept unpublished. In 1642, when Laud was in prison and the state ofthings wholly changed, the Tract was brought out at the Oxford UniversityPress. It is vague in its conception and expression; but that it isdecidedly in favour of toleration and free inquiry will appear from theopening sentences: "Heresy and Schism, as they are in common use, are twotheological [Greek: Mosmos], or scarecrows, which they who uphold a partyin religion use to fright away such as, making inquiry into it, are readyto relinquish and oppose it if it appear either erroneous or suspicious. For, as Plutarch reports of a painter who, having unskilfully painted acock, chased away all cocks and hens, that so the imperfection of his artmight not appear by comparison with nature, so men, willing for ends toadmit of no fancy but their own, endeavour to hinder an inquiry into it, by way of comparison of somewhat with it, peradventure truer, that so thedeformity of their own might not appear. " Wood's Ath. III. 413, 414, andTract itself with letter to Laud, Vol. I. Pp. 114-144 of "The Works ofthe ever memorable Mr. John Hales, " Glasgow, 1765. ] On the whole, however, I judge that any such thoughts in their minds (even in JeremyTaylor's as yet) fell considerably short of the Unlimited Tolerationadvocated by Williams and John Goodwin, and, if they could have beenascertained and measured, would have referred their owners rather to thenext category than to the present. 

III. _A Limited Toleration round an Established National Church. _This would probably have sufficed the thoughtful Anglicans of whom wehave just been speaking. Their ideal probably was a revived EpiscopalChurch of England, liberally constituted within itself, and with atoleration of all respectable forms of Dissent round about itself, butstill with a right reserved for the Civil Power of preventing andpunishing gross errors and schisms. We are more concerned, however, withanother set of Limited Tolerationists, then much more conspicuous inEngland. They were those who had given up all thoughts of the retentionof a Prelatic Establishment, and who indeed regarded the deliverance ofEngland from such an Establishment as the noblest accomplished fact ofthe time. What they were anxious about was the nature of the new NationalChurch, if any, that was to be substituted, and especially the degree ofconformity to that Church that was to be required. The chiefrepresentatives of this state of feeling in its more moderate form werethe Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, Messrs. Thomas Goodwin, Bridge, Nye, Simpson, and Burroughs. They were not, I think, distinctlyadverse to a National Church on theoretical grounds, as Williams andBurton were; and probably what they would have liked best would have beena National Church on the Congregationalist principle, like that of NewEngland. For, though Congregationalism and a National Establishment ofReligion may seem radically a contradiction in terms, yet in fact thecase had not been quite so in America. There may be a State Churchwithout public endowments, or rather there may be endowments andprivileges that are not pecuniary. The New England Church, thoughconsisting of a few scores of congregations, mutually independent, self-supporting, and scattered stragglingly over an extensive territory, wasreally a kind of State Church collectively, inasmuch as the Staterequired, by rule or by custom, membership of some congregation as aqualification for suffrage and office, and also kept some watch andcontrol over the congregations, so as to be sure that none were formed ofa very heretical kind, and that none already formed lapsed into decidedheresy. How had Mr. Cotton of Boston, the great light of the New EnglandChurch, expounded its principle in respect of the power of the civilmagistrate in matters of Religion? "We readily grant you, " he hadwritten, "liberty of conscience is to be granted to men that fear Godindeed, as knowing they will not persist in heresy or turbulent schismwhen they are convinced in conscience of the sinfulness thereof. But thequestion is whether an heretic, after once or twice admonition, and soafter conviction, or any other scandalous and heinous offender, may betolerated, either in the Church without excommunication, or in theCommonwealth without such punishment as may preserve others fromdangerous and damnable infection. " [Footnote: From Cotton's Answer to theold Tract of "Scriptures and Reasons against Persecution" (see_antč_, p. 114). The Answer is printed by Williams in his _BloodyTenent_: See Hanserd Knollys Society edition (1848), p. 30. ]

Clearly, with such a principle, and with all the particulars of practicewhich it implied, the Congregationalist Church of New England was, afterall, a State Church, and a pretty strict State Church too. Now, it wasprobably such a National Congregationalist Church, but with an allowanceof toleration somewhat larger than Cotton's, that the Five Independentsof the Assembly would have liked to see set up in England. That, however, being plainly out of the question, and the whole current of dominantopinion in Parliament and the Assembly being towards a Presbyteriansettlement, what remained for the Five? In the first place, to delay thePresbyterian settlement as long as they could, and to criticise itsprogramme at every stage so as to liberalize its provisions as much aspossible; in the second place, to put in a plea for Toleration forDissent under the settlement when it should be enacted. They hadperformed, and were performing, both duties. They were fighting thepropositions of strict Presbytery inch by inch in the Assembly, if notwith success, at least so as to impede progress; and in their_Apologetical Narration_ (Jan. 1643-4) they had lodged withParliament and the country a demand for Toleration under the comingPresbytery. What they had thus expressed in print they had continued toexpress in speech and in every other possible way. They were, in acertain sense, the most marked Tolerationists of the time; Toleration wasidentified with them. And yet it was but a limited Toleration, a verylimited Toleration, that they demanded. Indulgence for themselves inCongregationalist practices after Presbytery should be established, andindulgence for other respectable sects and persons in "lesserdifferences:" that was all. Nothing like Williams's or John Goodwill'stoleration: no liberty, or at least none avowedly, for such glaringheresies as Antinomianism, Socinianism, and Arianism, not to mention openInfidelity. Here, I believe, they represented the mass of the ordinaryIndependents. Whatever more a few strong spirits among the Independents, and especially among the lay Independents, desired, the mass of them werecontent for the present to be Limited Tolerationists. 

Such were the three forms of the Toleration Doctrine in England in 1644. They were of unequal strengths and confusedly mixed, but constitutedtogether a powerful and growing force of opinion. And what was theopposition? ANTI-TOLERATION, OR ABSOLUTE AND ENTIRE CONFORMITY OF THEWHOLE NATION TO THE ONE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: this was the category of theopposition. 

In this category, now that Prelacy was done with, and it was certain thatthe new National Church was to be on the Presbyterian model, thePresbyterians had succeeded the Laudians. As a body, the Presbyterians of1644 and subsequent years were absolute Anti-Tolerationists. The proofsare so abundant, collectively they make such an ocean, that it passescomprehension how the contrary could ever have been asserted. From thefirst appearance of the Presbyterians in force after the opening of theLong Parliament, it was their anxiety to beat down the rising idea ofToleration; and, after the meeting of the Westminster Assembly, and thepublication of the _Apologetical Narration_ of the Independents, theone aim of the Presbyterians was to tie Toleration round the neck ofIndependency, stuff the two struggling monsters into one sack, and sinkthem to the bottom of the sea. In all the Presbyterian literature of thetime, --Baillie's Letters, Rutherford's and Gillespie's Tracts, thepamphlets of English Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly, the pamphletsof Prynne, Bastwick, and other miscellaneous Presbyteriancontroversialists out of the Assembly, --this antipathy to Toleration, limited or unlimited, this desire to pinion Independency and Tolerationtogether in one common death, appears overwhelmingly. Out of scores ofsuch Presbyterian manifestoes, let us select one, interesting to us forcertain reasons apart. 

Of all the Divines in London, not members of the Assembly, none had cometo be better known for his Presbyterian acrimony than the veteran Mr. Thomas Edwards, of whose maiden pamphlet of 1641, called _Reasonsagainst the Independent Government_, with Mrs. Chidley's Reply to thesame, we have had occasion to take notice (_antč_, p. 110). The spiritedverbosity, as we called it, of that pamphlet of Edwards had procured hima reputation among the Presbyterians, which he felt himself bound tojustify by farther efforts. The appearance of the _ApologeticalNarration_ of the Five Independents in Jan. 1643-4 gave him a famousopportunity. Various answers were at once or quickly published to thatIndependent manifesto--not only that by _A. S. _ or Adam Steuart (_antč_, p. 25), but various others. When it became known, however, that Mr. Edwards also was preparing an Answer, it was expected to beat them all. There was a flutter of anticipation of it among the Presbyterians; but itwas rather slow in coming. "There is a piece of 26 sheets, of Mr. Edwards, against the Apologetick Narration, near printed, which willpaint that faction [the Independents] in clearer colours than yet theyhave appeared, " writes Baillie, June 7, 1644; in a later letter, July 5, he says it is expected "within two or three days, " but "excresced to near40 sheets;" and it is not till Aug. 7 that he speaks of it as fairly out:"Mr. Edwards has written a splendid confutation of all the Independents'Apology. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 190, 201-2, and 215. ] In fact, itappeared in the end of July, just at the time when the Assembly adjournedfor their fortnight's vacation, and almost contemporaneously with JohnGoodwin's _M. S. To A. S. _ and Williams's _Bloody Tenent_. Baillie'smeasure of "sheets" must have been different from ours, or he had beenunder some mistake; for the treatise, though long enough, consisted butof 367 small quarto pages, with this title: "_Antapologia: or, A FullAnswer to the Apologetical Narration of Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Bridge, members of the Assembly of Divines. Wherein many of the controversies of these times are handled: viz. [&c. ]. Humbly also submitted to the Honourable Houses of Parliament. By ThomasEdwards, Minister of the Gospel_. " [Footnote: Hanbury's Memorials, II. 366. Mr. Hanbury gives a summary of the _Antapologia_ with extracts (366-385); but I have before me the book itself in a reprint, of 1646, "byT. R. And E. M. For Ralph Smith, at the signe of the Bible in Cornhill neerthe Royall Exchange. " It consists of 259 pages of text, besidesintroductory epistle, and table of contents at the end. ]

It was a most remarkable treatise, and ran through London at once. Forthe style, though slovenly, was fluent and popular, and Edwards, havingplenty of time on his hands, and having a taste for personalities, hadmade minute inquiries into the antecedents of the Five Independents inHolland and in England, and had interwoven the results of these inquirieswith his arguments against Independency itself. The Five, he tells us ina preliminary epistle, were among his personal acquaintances. "I cantruly speak it, " he says, "that this present _Antapologia_ is so farfrom being written out of any malice or ill-will to the Apologists that Ilove their persons and value them as brethren, yea some of them abovebrethren; and, besides that love I bear to them as saints, I have apersonal love, and a particular love of friendship for some of them; andI can truly speak it, that I writ not this book, nor any part of it, outof any personal quarrel, old grudge, or former difference (for to thisday there never was any such difference or unkindness passed between us);but I have writ it with much sorrow, unwillingness, and some kind ofconflict. " This explanation was certainly necessary; for Mr. Edwards doesnot spare his friends. He tells all he has found out about them; hequotes their conversations with himself; he gives them the lie direct, and appeals to their consciences whether he is not right in doing so. _They_ martyrs! _they_ poor exiles in Holland, and now whining toParliament that they would have to go into exile again if Presbyterianismwere established without a Toleration! Why, they had been in clover inHolland; they had been living there "in safety, plenty, pomp, and ease, "leaving the genuine Puritans at home to fight it out with Prelacy; and, after the battle was won, they had slunk back to claim the rewards theyhad not earned, to become pets and "grandees" in English society, tosecure good appointments and assume leading parts, and to be electedmembers of the venerable Westminster Assembly! They had not even had thecourage to go to New England, though some of them had talked of doing so!And then their prate of this emigration to New England, which they hadthemselves declined, as the greatest undertaking for the sake of pureReligion, next to Abraham's migration out of his own country, that theworld had ever seen! Why, the emigration to New England was no such greataffair after all! There had been mixed motives in it; all New Englandwould not make a twentieth part of London; it had but two or threeDivines in it worth naming in the same breath with the worthies of OldEngland, and was on the whole but a kind of outlandish mess; the"Reformation in Church-government and worship" then going on in OldEngland would be a wonder "to all generations to come far beyond that ofNew England!" But in Holland, where the cowardly Apologists had preferredto stay, what had they been doing? Quarrelling among themselves, goinginto all kinds of conceits, anointing people with oil, and the like;respecting all which Edwards had obtained from Rotterdam and Arnheim abudget of information! Then that lie of the Apologists, that they had, since their return to England, been careful not to press their peculiarCongregationalist opinions, or endeavour to make a party, but had waitedin patience to see what course affairs would take! Not press theirpeculiar opinions--not endeavour to make a party! Why, Mr. Edwards couldaver (and cite dates, places, and witnesses to prove it) that they hadbeen doing nothing else, since they came to England, than press theirpeculiar opinions and endeavour to make a party! "Suffer me to dealplainly with you: I am persuaded that, setting aside the Jesuits' actingfor themselves and way, you Five have acted for yourselves and way, bothby yourselves and by your instruments, both upon the stage and behind thecurtain, considering circumstances and laying all things together, morethan any five men have done in so short a time this sixty years. And, ifit be not so, whence have come all these swarms and troops ofIndependents in Ministry, Armies, City, Country, Gentry, and amongst theCommon People of all sorts, men, women, servants, children?"

So, on and on, Edwards goes, decidedly more readable than mostpamphleteers of the time, because he writes with some spirit, and mixes acontinual pepper of personalities with his arguments against the tenetsof the Independents. With these arguments we shall not meddle. Theirpurpose was to hold up "a true glass to behold the faces of Presbyteryand Independency in, with the beauty, order, strength, of the one, andthe deformity, disorder, and weakness of the other. " In other words, thepamphlet is a digest of everything that could be said againstIndependency and in favour of Presbyterianism. But the grand tenet ofPresbyterianism in which Mr. Edwards revels with most delight, and whichhe exhibits as the distinguishing honour of that system, and its fitnessbeyond any other for grappling with the impiety of men in general and thedisorderliness of that age in particular, is its uncompromising Anti-Toleration. Throughout the whole pamphlet there runs a vein ofdeclamation to this effect; and at the close some twenty pages areexpressly devoted to the subject, in connexion with that claim for aLimited Toleration which the Apologists had advanced. Eight Reasons arestated and expounded why there should not be even this LimitedToleration, why even Congregationalist opinions and practice should notbe tolerated in England. It would be against the rule of Scripture as tothe duty of the civil magistrate; it would be against the Solemn Leagueand Covenant; it would be against the very nature of a nationalReformation, for "a Reformation, and a Toleration are diametricallyopposite;" it would be "against the judgment of the greatest lights inthe Church, both ancient and modern;" it would be an invitation andtemptation to error and "an occasion of many falling who otherwise neverwould;" &c. &c. Wherever Presbytery and strict Anti-Toleration hadprevailed since the Reformation had there not been a marvellousorderliness and freedom from error and heresy? All over the map of Europewould it not be found that error and heresy had been rank precisely inproportion to the deviation of a country from Presbytery or to therelaxation of its grasp where it was nominally professed? What, inparticular, had made Scotland the country it was, pure in faith, unitedin action, and with a Church "terrible as an army with banners"? What butPresbytery and Anti-Toleration? O then let Presbytery and Anti-Tolerationreign in England as well! And, while they were proceeding to the greatwork of establishing Presbytery, let them beware of such an inconsistencyas granting the least promise beforehand of a Toleration! On this pointMr. Edwards addresses the Parliament in his own name, telling them thatToleration is the device of the Devil. "I humbly beseech the Parliament, "he says, "seriously to consider the depths of Satan in this design of aToleration; how this is now his last plot and design, and by it wouldundermine and frustrate the whole work of Reformation intended. 'Tis hismasterpiece for England; and, for effecting it, he comes and moves, notin Prelates and Bishops, not in furious Anabaptists, &c. , but in holymen, excellent preachers; moderate and fair men, not for a toleration ofheresies and gross opinions, but an 'allowance of a latitude to somelesser differences with peaceableness. ' This is _Candidus ille Diabolus_[that White Devil], as Luther speaks, and _meridianus Diabolus_ [mid-dayDevil], as Johannes Gersonius and Beza express it, coming under themerits of much suffering and well-deserving, clad in the white garmentsof innocency and holiness. In a word, could the Devil effect aToleration, he would think he had gained well by the Reformation and madea good exchange of the Hierarchy to have a Toleration for it. I amconfident of it, upon serious thoughts, and long searching into thispoint of the evils and mischief of a Toleration, that, if the Devil hadhis choice whether the Hierarchy, Ceremonies, and Liturgy should beestablished in this kingdom, or a Toleration granted, he would choose andprefer a Toleration before them. "

Did Mr. Thomas Edwards in all this represent the whole body of thePresbyterians of his time? I am afraid he did. In _his_ very sense, with the same vehemency, and to the same extent, they were all Anti-Tolerationists. 

Was there no exception? Had no one Presbyterian of that day worked out, in the interest of Presbytery, a conclusion corresponding to that whichwe have seen reason to think some of the wiser Anglicans then within theRoyalist lines were quietly working out in the interest of Episcopacy, incase Episcopacy should ever again have a chance? Was no one Presbyterianprepared to come forth with the proposal of a Toleration in England, either limited or unlimited, round an Established National Church on thePresbyterian model? That there may not have been some such person amongthose Erastian laymen who favoured Presbytery on the whole for generaland political reasons, one would not assert positively. None such, however, is distinctly in historical view; and it is certain that amongthe real or dominant Presbyterians, the _jure divino_ Presbyterians, English or Scottish, there was no one upon whom the idea in question hadclearly dawned or who dared to divulge it. Perhaps it was the belief inthe absolute _jus divinum_ of Presbytery that made the idea impossible tothem. Yet why should it have been impossible in consistency even withthat belief? It may be _jure divino_ that the square on the hypothenuseof a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on thesides, that he is a blockhead who believes otherwise, and that apermanent apparatus should be set up in every land for teaching thismathematical faith; and yet it may be equally _jure divino_ that no oneshall be compelled to avail himself of that apparatus, or be punished fordoubting or denying the proposition. But the Presbyterians of 1644 didnot so refine or argue. They stood stoutly to the necessary identity ofPresbyterianism and absolute Anti-Toleration. And so Presbyterianismmissed the most magnificent opportunity she has had in her history. Hadher offer to England been "Presbytery with a Toleration, " who knows whata different shaping subsequent events might have assumed? What ifHenderson, in whose natural disposition one sees more of room andaptitude for the idea than in that of any other Presbyterian leader, hadactually become possessed with the idea and had proclaimed it? Would hehave carried the mass of the Presbyterians with him? or would they havedeposed him from the leadership? It is useless to inquire. The idea neveroccurred even to Henderson; and that it did not occur to him constitutedhis unfitness for leadership, out of Scotland, in the complex crisiswhich had at last arrived, and was the one weakness of his career nearits close. 

MULTIPLICATION OF HERESIES: SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES IN1644. 

It was all very well, the Presbyterians argued, to propound the principleof Toleration in the abstract. Would its advocates be so good as to thinkof its operation in the concrete? The society of England was no longercomposed merely of the traditional PAPISTS, PRELATISTS, PRESBYTERIANS, and CONGREGATIONALISTS or ORTHODOX INDEPENDENTS. Beyond these last, though sheltering themselves under the unfortunate principle of Church-Independency, there was now a vast chaos of SECTS and SECTARIES, some ofthem maintaining the most dangerous and damnable heresies andblasphemies! Would the Tolerationists, and especially the LimitedTolerationists, take a survey of this chaos, and consider how theirprinciple of Toleration would work when applied to _its_ ghastlybulk and variety?

This matter, of the extraordinary multiplication of Sects and Heresies inEngland, had been in constant public discussion since the opening of theLong Parliament. It had figured constantly in messages and declarationsof the King; who had first charged the fact of the sudden appearance andboldness of the Sects and Sectaries to the abrogation of his Kinglyprerogative and Episcopal government by the Parliament, and had thenattributed the origin of the Civil War to the lawless machinations ofthese same Sects and Sectaries. It had figured no less, though with verydifferent interpretations and comments, in the proceedings and appeals ofthe Parliament. Now, however, the SECTS and SECTARIES had become theobjects of a more purely scientific curiosity. Without a survey and studyof _them_ as well as of the PAPISTS, the PRELATISTS, the PRESBYTERIANS, and the ORTHODOX INDEPENDENTS, there could, it was argued, be no completeNatural History of Religious Opinion in England in the year 1644. ThePresbyterians, for reasons of their own, were earnest for such a surveyand study; and they recommended it ironically to the OrthodoxIndependents in their character of Tolerationists. Not the less did thePresbyterians, with some Prelatists among them, undertake it themselves. --Coming after these authorities, and availing myself of their inquiries, but with other authorities to aid me, and as much of fresh investigation, and of criticism of my authorities, as I can add, I shall attempt what, even for our own forgetful and self-engrossed time, ought to be a notuninteresting portion of the history of bygone English opinion. 

This is a case in which the authorities should be mentioned formally atthe outset. They are numerous. They include the Lords and CommonsJournals, Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly, Baillie's Letters, Pamphletsof the time _passim_, and even the Registers of the Stationers'Company. Certain particular publications, however (all of the year 1645or the years immediately following), are of pre-eminent interest, asbeing attempts at a more or less complete survey of the huge medley ortumult of opinions on religious subjects that had by that time arisen inEnglish society, with some classification of its elements. 

The reader will remember Dr. DANIEL FEATLEY, Rector of Lambeth and Acton, the veteran Calvinist who had persisted in attending the Assembly inspite of his disapproval of the Covenant and his adhesion to the theoryof a modified Episcopacy, but who had at length (Sept. 30, 1643) beenejected for misdemeanour. His misdemeanour had consisted in maintaining acorrespondence with Usher, reflecting on the Assembly and the Parliament, and divulging secrets in the King's interest. For this he had not onlybeen ejected from the Assembly by the Commons, and sequestered from histwo livings, but also committed to custody in "the Lord Petre's house inAldersgate Street, " then used by Parliament as a prison for suchculprits. To beguile his leisure here, he had occupied himself inrevising his notes of a dispute he had held, in Oct. 1642, with aConventicle of Anabaptists in Southwark, where he had knocked over acertain "Scotchman" and one or two other speakers for the Conventicle. But this revision of his notes of that debate had suggested variousextensions and additions; so that, in fact, he had written in prison acomplete exposure of Anabaptism. It was ready in January 1644-5, and waspublished with this title: "_The Dippers Dipt; or, The Anabaptists Duck'dand Plung'd over Head and Ears_, " &c. It is a virulent tractate of about186 pages, reciting the extravagances and enormities attributed to theGerman Anabaptists, and trying to involve the English Baptists in theodium of such an original, but containing also notices of the EnglishBaptists themselves, and their varieties and ramifications. It became atonce popular, and passed through several editions. [Footnote: CommonsJournals, Sept. 30 and Oct 3, 1613; Wood's Athenę, III. 156 _et seq. _;and Featley's Epistle Dedicatory to his treatise. The copy of thetreatise before me at present is one of the sixth edition, published in1651, six years after the authors death. It contains a portrait ofFeatley by W. Marshall, and, among other illustrations, a coarse _adcaptandum_ print by the same engraver, exhibiting the "dipping" of menand women naked together in a river. ]

A well-known personage in London, of humbler pretensions than Featley, was a certain EPHRAIM PAGET (or PAGIT), commonly called "Old FatherEphraim, " who had been parson of the church of St. Edmund in LombardStreet since 1601, and might therefore have seen, and been seen by, Shakespeare. Besides other trifles, he had published, in 1635, a bookcalled "_Christianographia_" or a descriptive enumeration of thevarious sorts of Christians in the world out of the pale of the RomanCatholic Church. Perhaps because he had thus acquired a fondness for thestatistics of religious denominations, it occurred to him to write, byway of sequel, a "_Heresiography; or, A Description of the Hereticksand Sectaries of these latter times_. " It was published in 1645, soonafter Featley's book, from which it borrows hints and phrases. There isan Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City ofLondon, very senile in its syntax and punctuation, and containing thistouching appeal: "I have lived among you almost a jubilee, and seen yourgreat care and provision to keep the city free from infection, in theshutting up the sick and in carrying them to your pest-houses, in settingwarders to keep the whole from the sick, in making of fires and perfumingthe streets, in resorting to your churches, in pouring out your prayersto Almighty God, with fasting and alms, to be propitious to you. Theplague of Heresy is greater, and you are now in more danger than when youburied five thousand a week. " Then, after an Epistle to the Reader, signed "Old Ephraim Pagit, " there follows the body of the treatise inabout 160 pages. The Anabaptists are taken first, and occupy 55 pages;but a great many other sects are subsequently described, some in a fewpages, some in a single paragraph. There is an engraved title-page to thevolume, containing small caricatures of six of the chief sorts ofSectaries--Anabaptism being represented by one plump naked fellow dippinganother, much plumper, who is reluctantly stooping down on all fours. Thebook, like Featley's, seems to have sold rapidly. In the third edition ofit, however, published in 1646, there is a postscript in which the poorold man tells us that it had cost him much trouble. The sectaries amonghis own parishioners had quarrelled with him on account of it, andrefused to pay him his tithes; nay, as he walked in the streets, he washooted at and reviled, and somebody had actually affirmed "DoctorFeatley's devil to be transmigrated into Old Ephraim Paget. " This seemsto have cut him to the quick, though he avows his sense of inferiority inlearning to the great Doctor. In short, we can see Father Ephraim as agood old silly body, of whom people made fun. [Footnote: Wood's Athenę, III. 210 _et seq. _; and Paget's own treatise. ]

Another writer against the Sectaries was the inexhaustible WILLIAMPRYNNE, That grand scripturient paper-spiller, That endless, needless, margin-filler, So strangely tossed from post to pillar. 

There was, indeed, something preternatural in the persistent vitality andindustry of this man. Only forty years of age when the Long Parliamentreleased him from his second imprisonment and restored him to society, aghoul-like creature with a scarred and mutilated face, hiding the loss ofhis twice-cropped ears under a woollen cowl or nightcap, and mostlysitting alone among his books and papers in his chamber in Lincoln's Inn, taking no regular meals, but occasionally munching bread and refreshinghimself with ale, he had at once resumed his polemical habits and mixedhimself up as a pamphleteer with all that was going on. As many as thirtyfresh publications, to be added to the two-and-twenty or thereaboutsalready out in his name, had come from his pen between 1640 and 1645, bringing him through about one-fourth part of the series of some 200books and pamphlets that were to form the long ink-track of his totallife. In these recent pamphlets of his he had appeared as a strenuousParliamentary Presbyterian, an advocate of the Scottish Presbyterianismwhich was being urged in the Assembly, but with more of Erastianism inhis views than might have pleased most of his fellow-Presbyterians. Noman more violent against Independency of all sorts, and the idea ofToleration. And so, after various other pamphlets against Independency ingeneral, and this or that Independent in particular, there came from him, in July 1645, [Footnote: Date from my notes from Stationer's Registers. ]a quarto of about 50 pages, with this title: "_A Fresh Discovery of someProdigious new Wandering-Blazing-Stars and Firebrands, styling themselvesNew Lights, firing our Church and State into new Combustions. _" Thepamphlet was dedicated to Parliament; and its purpose was to exhibit allthe monstrous things that lay in the bosom of what called itselfIndependency. Hence "Independency" is used by Prynne as a common name forall the varieties of Sectarians as well as for the Congregationalistsproper; and his plan is to shock the public and rouse Parliament toaction, by giving a collection of specimens, culled from pamphlets of theday, of the "scurrilous, scandalous, and seditious" views put forth, withimpunity hitherto, by some of the "Anabaptistical Independent Sectariesand new-lighted Firebrands, " Accordingly his tract contains a jumble ofthe most wild and extravagant sayings against the Assembly, the Scots, and the Parliament itself, that Prynne could pick out from thecontemporary pamphlets of the Anabaptists and other Sectaries. [Footnote:Wood's Athenę, III. 844 _et seq. _; Aubrey's Lives (for a notice ofPrynne's habits); and the _Fresh Discovery_ itself. The edition before meis the second, dated 1646, and swollen by added matter at the end to over80 pages. ]

Much cleverer and more spirited than Featley, old Ephraim Paget, orPrynne, as a describer and opponent of the Sectaries, was our friend, Mr. Thomas Edwards, of the _Antapologia_ (_antč_, pp. 130-135). That"splendid confutation" of Independency and Tolerationism had so increasedMr. Edwards's fame that the Presbyterians of London had erected a weeklylectureship for him at Christ Church in the heart of the City, that hemight "handle these questions and nothing else before all that would cometo hear. " Thus encouraged, he ranged beyond Independency proper, andemployed himself in collecting information respecting the EnglishSectaries generally; and in about eighteen months, or before the end of1645, he had ready a treatise (his third in order) entitled "_Gangręna:or, a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time_. "This treatise, consisting of more than 60 pages, he dedicated toParliament, in an Epistle of twelve pages, hinting at the remissness ofParliament in its dealings with the Sectaries up to that time, andreminding it of its duty. There is all Edwards's fluency of language inthe pamphlet, and some real literary talent; so that not only wasEdwards's _Gangręna_ a popular Presbyterian book at the time, but it isstill valued by bibliographers and antiquarians. As it has come down tous, however, it is not a pamphlet merely, but a concretion of pamphlets. For it was enlarged by the author, in the course of 1646, to eight ornine times its original bulk, by the addition of a Second Part and then aThird Part, containing "New and Farther Discoveries" of the Sectaries, and their opinions and practices. This was because Mr. Edwards hadsolicited fresh information from all quarters, and it was poured in uponhim superabundantly by Presbyterian correspondents. The First Part, asthe skimming of the cream by Mr. Edwards himself, is perhaps the richestessentially. The others consist mainly of verifications and additionaldetails, rumours, and anecdotes. Altogether, the Three Parts of Edwards's_Gangręna_ are a curious Presbyterian repertory of facts and scandalsrespecting the English Independents and Sectaries in and shortly afterthe year of Marston Moor. The impression which they leave of Mr. Edwardspersonally is that he was a fluent, rancorous, indefatigable, inquisitorial, and, on the whole, nasty, kind of Christian. [Footnote:Wood's Fasti, I. 413; Baillie's Letters, II. 180, 193, 201, 215, 251: and_Gangręna_ itself--the copy of which before me consists of the thirdedition of Parts I. And II. (1646) and the first edition of Part III, (1646) bound in two volumes. ]

With Featley, Paget, Prynne, and Edwards, as authorities full of detail, though also full of prejudice on the subject of the English Sects andSectaries of 1644, we may finally name Baillie. We name him now, however, not on account of his "Letters, " but on account of two publications ofhis dealing expressly with this subject. One of these, published inNovember 1645, in a quarto of 252 pages, was his "_Dissuasive from theErrours of the Time: wherein the Tenets of the Principall Sects, especially of the Independents, are drawn together in one Map, for themost part in the words of their own Authors_;" the other, published inDecember 1646, in about 180 pages quarto, and intended as a Second Partof the "Dissuasive, " was entitled "_Anabaptism, the True Fountain ofIndependency, Brownisme, Antinomy, &c_. " In both publications, butespecially in the former, we see Baillie's characteristic merits. Hewrites, of course, polemically and with strong Presbyterian prejudice;but in clearness of arrangement and statement he is greatly superior toeither the senile Paget, or the fluent and credulous Edwards. His_Dissuasive_, indeed, is, in its way, a really instructivebook. [Footnote: Both the _Dissuasive_ and its continuation were publishedin London (by "Samuel Gellebrand at the Brazen Serpent in Paul'sChurchyard"), and dedicated to "The Right Honourable the Earle ofLauderdaile, Lord Metellane"--_i. E. _ to Baillie's Scottish colleague inthe Assembly, Lord Maitland, then become Earl of Lauderdale. ]

The information from these and other sources may be summed up, from thePresbyterian point of view, under two headings, as follows:--

I. MISCELLANEOUS BLASPHEMIES AND ENTHUSIASMS. --The very air of England, it seemed, was full of such. There had broken loose a spirit of inquiry, a spirit of profanity and scoffing, and a spirit of religious ecstasy anddreaming; and the three spirits together were producing a perfect Babelof strange sayings, fancies, and speculations. From a catalogue of nofewer than 176 miscellaneous "errors, heresies, and blasphemies"collected by Edwards, and which he professes to give as nearly aspossible in the very words in which they had been broached by theirauthors in print, or in public or private discourse, take the followingsamples:--

"That the Scriptures are a dead letter, and no more to be credited thanthe writings of men. "

"That the holy writings and sayings of Moses and the Prophets, of Christand his Apostles, and the proper names, persons, and things containedtherein, are allegories. "

"That the Scriptures of the Old Testament do not concern nor bindChristians" (in which belief, says Edwards, some Sectaries had ceased toread the Old Testament, or to bind it with the New). 

"That right Reason is the rule of Faith. "

"That God is the author not of those actions alone in and with which sinis, but of the very pravity, ataxy, atomy, irregularity, and sinfulnessitself, which is in them. "

"That the magistrate may not punish for blasphemies, nor for denying theScriptures, nor For denying that there is a God. "

"That the soul dies with the body, and all things shall have an end, butGod only. "

"That there is but one Person in the Divine Nature. "

"That Jesus Christ is not very God: no otherwise may he be called the Sonof God but as he was man. "

"That we did look for great matters from one crucified at Jerusalem 1600years ago, but that does us no good; it must be a Christ formed in us:Christ came into the world to live 32 years, and do nothing else that he[Thomas Webb, of London, ętat. 20] knew. "

"That the Heathen who never heard of Christ by the Word have the Gospel, for every creature, as the sun, moon, and stars, preach the Gospel tomen. "

"That Christ shall come and live again upon the earth, and for a thousandyears reign visibly as an earthly monarch over all the world. "

"That the least truth is of more worth than Jesus Christ himself. "

"That the Spirit of God dwells not nor works in any; it is but ourconceits and mistakes to think so; 'tis no spirit that works but ourown. "

"That a man baptized with the Holy Ghost knows all things even as Godknows all things; which point is a deep mystery and great ocean, wherethere is no casting anchor, nor sounding the bottom. "

"That, if a man by the Spirit knew himself to be in the state of grace, though he did commit murder or drunkenness, God did see no sin in him. "

"That the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to no man. "

"That the moral law is of no use at all to believers. "

"That there ought to be no fasting days under the Gospel. "

"That the soul of man is mortal as the soul of a beast, and dies with thebody. "

"That Heaven is empty of the Saints till the resurrection of the dead. "

"That there is no resurrection at all of the bodies of men after thislife, nor no Heaven nor Hell after this life, nor no Devils. "

"That there shall be in the last day a resurrection from the dead of allthe brute creatures, all beasts and birds that ever lived upon theearth. "

"That many Christians in those days have more knowledge than theApostles. "

"That there ought to be in these times no making or building of churches, nor use of church-ordinances; but waiting for a church, being in areadiness upon all occasions to take knowledge of any passenger, of anyopinion or tenet whatsoever: the Saints, as pilgrims, do wander as in atemple of smoke, not able to find Religion, and therefore should notplant it by gathering or building a pretended supposed House. "

"That, in points of Religion, even in the Articles of Faith andprinciples of Religion, there's nothing certainly to be believed andbuilt on; only that all men ought to have liberty of conscience andliberty of prophesying. "

"That 'tis as lawful to baptize a cat, or a dog, or a chicken, as tobaptize the infants of believers. "

"That the calling and making of ministers are not _jure divino_, buta minister comes to be so as a merchant, bookseller, carter, and suchlike. "

"That all settled certain maintenance for ministers of the Gospel isunlawful. "

"That all days are alike to Christians, and they are bound no more to theobservation of the Lord's day, or first day of the week, than of anyother. "

"That 'tis lawful for women to preach; and why should they not, havinggifts as well as men?" ("And some of them, " adds Edwards, "do actuallypreach, having great resort to them. ")

"That there is no need of humane learning, nor of reading authors, forpreachers; but all books and learning must go down: it comes from thewant of the Spirit that men writ such great volumes. "

"That 'tis unlawful to preach at all, sent or not sent, but only thus: aman may preach as a waiting disciple, _i. E. _ Christians may notpreach in a way of positive asserting and declaring things, but all theymay do is to confer, reason together, and dispute out things. "

"That all singing of Psalms is unlawful. "

"That the gift of miracles is not ceased in these times. "

"That all the earth is the Saints', and there ought to be a community ofgoods. "

"That 'tis unlawful to fight at all, or to kill any man, yea to kill anyof the creatures for our use, as a chicken, or on any other occasion. "[Footnote: _Gangręna_, Part I. Pp. 15-31. ]

From this little enumeration it will be seen that we have not, even inthe nineteenth century, advanced so far as perhaps we had thought beyondEnglish notions of the seventeenth. But there must be added arecollection of the scurrilities against the Covenant, the Assembly as abody, its chief Presbyterian members, and the whole Scottish nation andits agents. These had not reached their height at the time with which weare at present concerned (Aug. 1644); so that the richest specimens ofthem have to be postponed. But already there were popular jokes about"Jack Presbyter" the "black coats" of the Assembly, and their fourshillings a day each for doing what nobody wanted; and already a veryrude phrase was in circulation, expressing the growing feeling among theEnglish Independents and Sectaries that England might have managed herReformation better without the aid of the Scots and their Covenant. HadEngland come to such a pass, it was asked, that it was necessary to setup a Synod in her, to be "guided by the Holy Ghost sent in a cloak-bagfrom Scotland"? The author of this profanity, according to Prynne, was apamphleteer named Henry Robinson. It was, in fact, an old joke, originally applied to one of the Councils of the Catholic Church; andRobinson had stolen it. [Footnote: Prynne's _Fresh Discovery_, p. 27and p. 9; and _Gangręna_, Part I. P. 32]

II. RECOGNISED SECTS AND THEIR LEADERS. --In the general welter or anarchyof opinion there were, of course, vortices round particular centres, forming sects that either had, or might receive, definite names. Edwards, when systematizing his chaos of miscellaneous errors and blasphemies, apportions them among sixteen recognisable sorts of Sectaries; but oldEphraim Paget, who had preceded Edwards had been much more hazy. Byjumbling the English Sectaries with all he could recollect of the GermanSectaries of the Reformation and all he could hear of the Sects of NewEngland, he had made his list of Sects and subdivisions of Sects mount upto two or three scores. Using Edwards and old Ephraim, with hints fromFeatley, Prynne, and Baillie, but trying to ascertain the facts forourselves, we venture on the following synoptical view of English Sectsand Sectaries in 1644-5:--

BAPTISTS, OR ANABAPTISTS:--These were by far the most numerous of theSectaries. Their enemies (Featley, Paget, Edwards, Baillie, &c. ) werefond of tracing them to the anarchical German Anabaptists of theReformation; but they themselves claimed a higher origin. Theymaintained, as Baptists do still, that in the primitive or ApostolicChurch the only baptism practised or heard of was that of adultbelievers, and that the form of the rite for such was immersion in water;and they maintained farther that the Baptism of Infants was one of thosecorruptions of Christianity against which there had been a continuedprotest by pure and forward spirits in different countries, in ages priorto Luther's Reformation, including some of the English Wycliffites, although the protest may have been repeated in a louder manner, and withwild admixtures, by the German Anabaptists who gave Luther so muchtrouble. Without going back, however, upon the Wycliffites, or even onthe Anabaptists that were scattered through England in the reigns ofHenry VIII. , Edward VI. , Mary, and Elizabeth, one may date the Baptistsas we have now to do with them from the reign of James. ----The firstLondon congregation of _General Baptists_, or Baptists who favouredan Arminian theology, had been formed, as we have seen (Vol. II. P. 544), in 1611 out of the wrecks of John Smyth's English congregation ofAmsterdam or Leyden, brought back into their native land by Smyth'ssuccessor Thomas Helwisse, assisted by John Murton. Although there aretraces of this congregation for several years after that date, it seemsto have melted away, or to have been crushed into extinction by thepersecution of its members individually; so that the Baptists of whom wehear as existing in London, or dispersed through England, after theopening of the Long Parliament, appear to have been rather of the kindknown as _Particular Baptists_, holding a Calvinistic theology, andgenerated out of the Independent congregations that had been establishedin London and elsewhere after Helwisse's and on different principles(Vol. II. Pp. 544 and 585). In some of these congregations, includingthat taught by a certain very popular Samuel Howe, called "Cobbler Howe"from his trade, who died in prison and excommunicated some time before1640, Pędobaptism appears to have become an open question, on which themembers agreed to differ among themselves. On the whole, however, thetendency was to the secession of Antipędobaptists from congregations ofordinary Independents, and to the formation of the seceders into distinctsocieties. Thus we hear of a Baptist congregation in Wapping formed in1633 by a John Spilsbury, with whom were afterwards associated WilliamKiffin and Thomas Wilson; of another formed in Crutched Friars in 1639 byMr. Green, Paul Hobson, and Captain Spencer; and of a third, formed inFleet Street, in 1640, by the afterwards famous Praise-God Barebone:these three congregations being all detachments from Henry Jacob'soriginal Independent congregation of 1616 during the ministries of hissuccessors, Lathorp and Henry Jessey. In spite of much persecution, continued even after the Long Parliament met, the Baptists of thesecongregations propagated their opinions with such zeal that by 1644 thesect had attained considerably larger dimensions. In that year theycounted seven leading congregations in London, and forty-seven in therest of England; besides which they had many adherents in the Army. Although all sorts of impieties were attributed to them on hearsay, theydiffered in reality from the Independents mainly on the one subject ofBaptism. They objected to the baptism of infants, and they thoughtimmersion, or dipping under water, the proper mode of baptism: except inthese points, and what they might involve, they were substantially at onewith the Congregationalists, This they made clear by the publication, in1644, of a Confession of their Faith in 52 Articles--a document which, byits orthodoxy in all essential matters, seems to have shamed the morecandid of their opponents. Even Featley was struck by it, and called it"a little ratsbane in a great quantity of sugar, " and became somewhatmore civil in consequence. It was signed for the seven Baptistcongregations of London by these seven couples of persons--Thomas Gunnand John Mabbit; John Spilsbury and Samuel Richardson; Paul Hobson andThomas Goare; Benjamin Cox and Thomas Kilcop; Thomas Munden and GeorgeTipping; William Kiffin and Thomas Patience; Hanserd Knollys (Vol. II. 557 and 586) and Thomas Holmes. These fourteen, accordingly, with Praise-God Barebone, were in 1644 the Baptist leaders or chief Baptist preachersin London. We hear, however, of other Baptist preachers and pamphleteers--John Tombes, B. D. (accounted the most learned champion of the sect, andits intellectual head), Francis Cornwall, M. A. , Henry Jessey, M. A. (aconvert to baptism at last), William Dell, M. A. , Henry Denne, EdwardBarber, Vavasour Powell, John Sims, Andrew Wyke, Christopher Blackwood, Samuel Oates, &c. Several of these leading Baptists--such as Tombes, Cornwall, Jessey, Cox, and Denne--were University men, who had takenorders regularly; one or two, such as Patience and Knollys, had beenpreachers in New England; but some were laymen who had recently assumedthe preaching office, or been called to it by congregations, on accountof their natural gifts. The Presbyterians laid great stress on theilliteracy of some of the Baptist preachers and their mean origin. Barebone was a leather-seller in Fleet Street; and, according to Edwardsor his informants, Paul Hobson was a tailor from Buckinghamshire, who hadbecome a captain in the Parliamentary Army; Kiffin had been servant to abrewer; Oates was a young weaver; and so on. The information may becorrect in some cases, but is to be received with general caution; asalso Edwards's stories of the extravagant practices of the Baptists intheir conventicles and at their river-dippings. Any story of the kind waswelcome to Edwards, especially if it made a scandal out of some dippingof women-converts by a Baptist preacher. Baillie, who took more troublein sifting his information, and who distinctly allows that theAnabaptists, like other people, ought to have the benefit of theprinciple "Let no error be charged upon any man which he trulydisclaims, " and that the errors of some of the sect ought not to becharged upon all, yet maintains that the Confession of the seven BaptistChurches of London was but an imperfect and ambiguous declaration of theopinions of the English Baptists. He attributes to them collectively thefollowing tenets, in addition to those of mere Antipędobaptism and rigidSeparatism:--"They put all church-power in the hand of the people;" "Theygive the power of preaching and celebrating the sacraments to any oftheir gifted members, out of all office;" "All churches must bedemolished: they are glad of so large and public a preaching place asthey can purchase, but of a steeple-house they must not hear;" "Alltithes and all set stipends are unlawful; their preachers must work withtheir own hands, and may not go in black clothes. " According to Baillie, also, the Baptists outwent even the Brownists in the power in churchmatters they gave to women. There were many women-preachers among them;of whom a Mrs. Attaway, "the mistress of all the she-preachers in ColemanStreet, " was the chief. [Footnote: Crosby's _History of the EnglishBaptists_ (1738), Vol. I. Pp. 215-382; Ivimey's _Baptists_, I. 113 _etseq. _; Featley's _Dippers Dipt_, and _Animadversions on the Anabaptists'Confession_; _Gangręna passim_; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. P. 47_et seq. _; Neal's Puritans, III. 147-152, with Toulmin's Supplement tothat Vol. , 517-530. The Confession of the Baptists is given in Neal;Appendix to the whole work; also in Crosby, Appendix to Vol. I]

OLD BROWNISTS:--By this name may be called certain adherents of thatvehement Independency, more extreme than mere Congregationalism, whichhad been propagated in Elizabeth's reign by Robert Brown himself. Brown'swritings, we learn from Baillie, had totally disappeared in England; sothat the so-called _Brownists_ can hardly have been his directdisciples, but must have been persons who had arrived at some of hisopinions over again for themselves. Briefly, without being Baptists, theywere more violent Separatists, more fierce in their rejection of thediscipline, worship, and ordination of the Church of England than theIndependents proper. Henry Burton, minister of Friday Street church, nowbetween fifty and sixty years of age, was one of the chief of them, andhis _Protestation Protested_ (Vol. II. 591-2) may be regarded as amanifesto of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disownedthese views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that bookgross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" andEdwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, andhis quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" aboutprophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards namesprominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, a youngBrownist, a pragmatical fellow, " who preached in London, and occasionallywent on circuit into the country. Edwards characterizes Mrs. Chidley as"a brazen-faced audacious old woman;" but we know the motive. He had notforgotten the thrashing in print he had received from Mrs. Chidley in1641 (Vol. II. 595). [Footnote: Paget's _Heresiography_, pp. 55-82 (agreat deal about the Brownists; but with next to no real information);Edwards's _Gangręna_, Part I. Pp. 62-64 and Part III. 242-248 (gossipabout Burton); and Part III. 170, 171 (about Chidley); Baillie's Letters, II. 184 and 192; Hanbury's Historical Memorials, II. 108 _et seq. _]

ANTINOMIANS:--The origin of this heresy is attributed to Luthercontemporary and fellow townsman, John Agricola, of Eisleben in Saxony(1492-1566); but the Antinomians of New England, and their chief Mrs. Hutchinson, had recently been more heard of. The story of poor Mrs. Hutchinson, the chief of these New England Antinomians, has already beentold by us (Vol. II. 371-7), as far as to the beginning of 1643, when weleft her, a widow with a family of children, including a married daughterand that daughter's husband, beyond the bounds of New England altogether, and seeking rest for her wearied mind, and a home for her little ones, inthe Dutch plantations somewhere near what is now New York. The sad endhas now to be told. The Indians and the Dutch of those parts were then atfeud; and in September 1643, in an inroad of the Indians into theplantation where Mrs. Hutchinson was, she and all her family weremurdered, with the exception of a little daughter eight years of age, whowas carried into captivity among the Indians, and not recovered till fouryears afterwards. The news of this tragic end of Mrs. Hutchinson had beenbrought across the Atlantic, and had added to the interest of pioushorror with which her previous career of heresy in Massachusetts had beenheard of by the orthodox in England. Mrs. Hutchinson and herAntinomianism, in fact, were already the subjects of a dreadful popularmyth. Here, for example, is old Father Ephraim's account of the NewEngland Antinomians, as he had compiled it from information receiveddirect from America:--"Some persons among those that went hence to NewEngland being freighted with many loose and unsound opinions, which theydurst not here, they there began to vent them ... Working first uponwomen, traducing godly ministers to be and preach under Covenant ofWorks, dropping their baits by little and little and angling yet furtherwhen they saw them take, and fathering their opinions on those of thebest quality in the country; and, by means of Mrs. Hutchinson's doubleweekly lecture at Boston, under pretence of repeating Mr. Cotton'ssermons, these opinions were quickly dispersed before authority wasaware. " But at length, when the infant church in America had been thus"almost ruinated, " the judgments of God overtook the prime fomenters ofthe heresy in a notorious manner. "As, first, Mistress Hutchinson, theGeneralissimo, the high-priestess of the new religion, was delivered atone time of 30 monstrous births, or thereabouts, much about the number ofher monstrous opinions; some were bigger, some less, none of them havinghuman shape, but shaped like her opinions: Mistress Dyer also, another ofthe same crew, was delivered of a large--" [here follows a minutedescription of a feminine monster that would have made the fortune of anytravelling showman, so complexly-horrible was its physiology]. Thus Godpunished those monstrous "wretches, " But the civil authorities of NewEngland, as we know, had punished them too. "God put it into the heartsof the civil magistrates to convent the chief leaders of them; and, afterfruitless admonitions given, they proceeded to sentence: some theydisfranchised, others they excommunicated, and some they banished. Aseditious minister, one Mr. Wheelwright, was one, and Mrs. Hutchinsonanother; who, going to plant herself on an island, called Rhode Island, under the Dutch, where they could not agree, but were miserably dividedinto sundry sects, removed from thence to an island called _Hell-gate_ [_Hebgate_, according to Cotton Mather], where the Indiansset upon her, and slew her and her daughter, and her daughter's husband, children, and family. "--Notwithstanding this dreadful fate of theAntinomians in America, the heresy had broken out in England. Nothing waspublicly said of the younger Sir Henry Vane in connexion with it; though, on his return from his Massachusetts governorship, he may have broughtback in his speculative head some of the Hutchinsonian ideas. Accordingto Paget, the first Antinomian in London had been "one Master JohnEaton, " who had been a scholar of his own (_i. E. _ at Trinity College, Oxford), and was afterwards curate of a parish near Aldgate. In fact, aswe learn from Wood, he became a minister in Suffolk, was "accounted byall the neighbouring ministers a grand Antinomian, " and suffered troubleaccordingly. But this Eaton had died in 1641, aged about 66, and leavingbut an Antinomian book or two, including "_The Honeycomb of FreeJustification_;" and the leading Antinomians were new men. One of themwas Mr. John Saltmarsh, a Cambridge graduate, and minister in Kent, afterwards well-known as an, army-preacher and pamphleteer; another was"one Randall who preaches about Spittal Yard. "--The nature of theAntinomian doctrines, "opening such a fair and easy way to heaven, " madethem very popular, it appears, in London and elsewhere. Many ran aftertheir preachers, "crowding the churches and filling the doors andwindows, " for "Oh, it pleaseth people well, " adds old Father Ephraim, "tohave heaven and their lusts too. " Notwithstanding this imputation, andillustrative scandals in Edwards, it really appears that Antinomianismtook itself out in high mystic preaching of justification by faith, thedoctrine of assurance, and the privileges of saintship. The wild phrasesthat came in such preaching were the chief offence. [Footnote: CottonMather's _Magnalia_, Book VII. P. 19; Palfrey's Hist. Of New England, I. 609, Note; Paget, 105-118; Wood's Athenę, III. 21 (for more about Eaton);_Gangręna_ in several places, for references to Saltmarsh and Randall. Baillie in his _Dissuasive_ (pp. 57-64) has much the same story as Pagetabout Mrs. Hutchinson and the New England Antinomians, and attributes therise of that heresy to the evil influence of Independency. --The idioticand disgusting myth of the monstrous _accouchements_ of the twoAntinomian women seems to have found great favour with the orthodox: andit figures in many pious books of the time and afterwards. It seemsactually to have originated in America, and to have been widely believedthere, while Mrs. Hutchinson was alive; for Cotton Mather, repeating it, with the most abject good faith, and in great detail, as late as 1702(_Magnalia_, VII. 20), quotes a letter of Mr. Thomas Hooker, to theeffect that at the very time of one of the diabolic _accouchements_, Mrs. Dyer's (Oct. 17, 1637), the house in which her and his wife were sittingwas violently shaken, as if by an earthquake, for the space of seven oreight minutes. Mather also avers that there was an investigation of theaffair by the magistrates at the time. ]

FAMILISTS:--Probably because there had been a continental sect of thisname in the sixteenth century, founded by a David George of Delft, Edwards includes _Familists_ among his leading English sorts ofSectaries, and Paget devotes ten pages to them. Paget, however, admitsthat they were "so close and cunning that ye shall hardly ever find themout. " If there really was such an English sect, their main principleprobably was that every society of Christians should be a kind of family-party, jolly within itself in confidential love-feasts and exchanges ofsentiment, and letting the general world and its creeds roar aroundunquestioned and unheeded. Baillie, however, in an incidental notice ofFamilism in the Second Part of his _Dissuasive_, gives a somewhatdifferent account. It was, according to him, a wild development ofAnabaptism, of which not a few once "counted zealous and gracious" weresuspected--including "a great man, a peer of the land. " It had a publicrepresentative in Mr. Randall, who had "for some years preached peaceablyin the Spital" (already mentioned among the Antinomians), and of whomBaillie had heard that he entertained such ideas as these, thoughreserving them probably as esoteric mysteries for the highest class ofthe Family of Love--"that all the resurrection and glory which Scripturepromises is past already, and no other coming of Christ to judgment, orlife eternal, is to be expected than what presently in this earth thesaints do enjoy; that the most clear historic passages of Scripture aremere allegories; that in all things, Angels, Devils, Men, Women, there isbut one spirit and life, which absolutely and essentially is God; thatnothing is everlasting but the life and essence of God which now is inall creatures;" &c. We should now call this a kind of Pantheism; butprobably it was coupled with that disposition to privacy, andindifference to creeds and controversies, which has been mentioned as thepeculiarity of Familism. Even the _Familists_, however, it seems, had their subdivisions. One John Hetherington, a box-maker, had been akind of Familist, but had recanted. [Footnote: Paget, 92 102, and137, 138; _Gangręna_, Part I. 13; Baillie's _Dissuasive_ PartII. Pp. 99-104]

MILLENARIES OR CHILIASTS:--"An Heresy, " says old Father Ephraim, "frequent at this time. This sect look for a temporary [temporal] kingdomof Christ, that must begin presently and last 1, 000 years. Of thisopinion are many of our Apocalyptical men, that study more future eventsthan their present only. " This is substantially all we have from Paget. In fact, however, the Chiliasts or Millenarians were hardly a mere sect. The expectation of a Millennium near at hand was very prevalent, or wasbecoming very prevalent, among the English Divines of the Assemblyitself. "Many of the Divines here, " wrote Baillie, September 5, 1645, "not only Independents, but others, such as Twisse, Marshall, Palmer, andmany more, are express Chiliasts. " In his _Dissuasive_, however, where he devotes an entire chapter to this heresy of Chiliasm, heattributes the grosser form of the heresy chiefly to the Independents. Akind of Chiliasm or Millenarianism, he says, had been held by some formerEnglish Divines, including Joseph Meade; but it had been reserved for twoIndependents--"Mr. Archer and his colleague at Arnheim, T. G. "(_i. E. _ Thomas Goodwin)--to invent new dreams on the subject; andthese had recently been adopted by Mr. Burroughs. The purport of theirdoctrine was that in the year 1650, or, at the furthest, 1695, Christ wasto reappear in human form at Jerusalem, destroy the existing fabric ofthings in a conflagration, collect the scattered Jews, raise martyrs andsaints from their graves, and begin his glorious reign of a thousandyears. [Footnote: Paget, 136, 137; Baillie's Letters, II. 313, and_Dissuasive_, 224-252. ]

SEEKERS:--"Many have wrangled so long about the Church that at last theyhave quite lost it, and go under the name of _Expecters_ and _Seekers_, and do deny that there is any Church, or any true minister, or anyordinances; some of them affirm the Church to be in the wilderness, andthey are seeking for it there; others say that it is in the smoke of theTemple, and that they are groping for it there--where I leave thempraying to God. "--So far Old Ephraim; and what he says, combined with oneof Edwards's miscellaneous blasphemies already quoted, enables us tofancy the _Seekers_. They were people, it seems, who had arrived at theconclusion that the Supernatural had never yet been featured forth to manin any propositions or symbols that could be accepted as adequate, andwho were waiting, therefore, for a possible "Church of the Future;"content, meanwhile, to dwell in a Temple of smoke, or (for there is thealternative figure) to see visions of the Future Church in the smoke ofthe present Temple. --"Mr. Erbury, that lived in Wales, " (but had come toLondon, and then settled in Ely, whence he made excursions, ) and "oneWalwyn, a dangerous man, a strong head, " who laboured somewhere else, arementioned by Edwards as men avowing themselves in this predicament. Baillie mentions also one Laurence Clarkson, who had passed fromAnabaptism to Seekerism, and he speaks of Mrs. Attaway, the Baptistwoman-preacher, and Mr. Saltmarsh, the Antinomian, as tending the sameway. ----But the chief of the _Seekers_, perhaps the original founder ofthe Sect, and certainly the bravest exponent of their principles, was aperson with whom we are already acquainted. "One Mr. Williams, " writesBaillie, June 7, 1644, "has drawn a great number after him to a singularIndependency, denying any true Church in the world, and will have everyman to serve God by himself alone, without any church at all. This manhas made a great and bitter schism lately among the Independents. " Again, on the 23rd of July, Baillie refers to the same person as "my goodacquaintance Mr. Roger Williams, who says there is no church, nosacraments, no pastors, no church-officers or ordinance, in the world, nor has been since a few years after the Apostles. " In short, the arch-representative of this new religion of Seekerism on both sides of theAtlantic was no other than our friend Roger Williams, the Tolerationist(Vol. II. 560-3, and _antč_, pp. 113-120). Through the variations of thisman's external adventures we have seen the equally singular series ofvariations of his mental condition. First an intense Separatist, orIndependent of the most resolute type, but conjoining with thisSeparatism a passion for the most absolute liberty of conscience and theentire dissociation of civil power from matters of religion, then aBaptist and excommunicated on that account by his former friends inAmerica, he had latterly, in his solitude at Providence, outgone Baptismor any known form of Independency, and, still retaining his doctrine ofthe most absolute liberty of conscience, had worked himself into thatstate of dissatisfaction with all visible church-forms, and of yearningquest after unattainable truth, for which the name _Seekerism_ wasinvented by himself or others. Though he did not propose that preachingshould be abandoned, he had gradually settled in a notion which he thusexpresses: "In the poor small span of my life, I desired to have been adiligent and constant observer, and have been myself many ways engaged, in city, in country, in court, in schools, in universities, in churches, in Old and New England, and yet cannot, in the holy presence of God, bring in the result of a satisfying discovery that either the begettingministry of the apostles or messengers to the nations, or the feeding andnourishing ministry of pastors and teachers, according to the firstinstitution of the Lord Jesus, are yet restored or extant. " It was whilehe was in this stage of his mental history that Williams came over on hisflying visit to England in the matter of the new charter for the RhodeIsland plantations. Some whiff of his strange opinions may have precededhim; but it must have been mainly by his intercourse with leadingLondoners during his stay in England, which extended over more than ayear (June 1643--Sept. 1644), that he diffused the interest in himselfand his Seekerism which we certainly find existing in 1644. He can havebeen no stranger to the chief Divines of the Westminster Assembly. Baillie, we see, was on speaking terms with him; and it is curious tonote in Baillie's and other references to him the same vein of personalliking for the man, running through amazement at his heresy, whichcharacterized the criticisms of him by his New England opponents andexcommunicants. Incidents of his visit, not less interesting now, weretwo publications of his in London, his "_Key into the Language ofAmerica_, " published in 1643, and his _Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, published in 1644. --At least the name of the sect of "The Seekers, " I mayadd, had struck Cromwell himself, and had some fascination for him, whether on its own account, or from his acquaintance with Williams. "Yoursister Claypole, " he wrote to his daughter Mrs. Ireton, some two yearsafter our present date (Oct. 25, 1646), "is, I trust in mercy, exercisedwith some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind, bewailing it: she seeks after (as I hope also) what will satisfy. Andthus to be a Seeker is to be of the best sect next after a Finder; andsuch an one shall every faithful humble Seeker be in the end. HappySeeker, happy Finder!" [Footnote: Paget, 150; _Gangręna_, Part I. P. 24, and p. 38; _Dissuasive_, Part II. Pp. 96, 97 and Notes; Baillie'sLetters, II. 191-2 and 212; Gammell's _Life of Roger Williams_ (Boston, 1846), and Memoir of Williams, by Edward B. Underhill, prefixed to therepublication of William's _Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, by the"Hanserd Knollys Society" (1848); Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 212. ]

DIVORCERS:--"These I term _Divorcers_" says Old Ephraim, "that wouldbe quit of their wives for slight occasions;" and he goes on to speak ofMILTON as the representative of the sect. Featley had previouslymentioned Milton's Divorce Tract as one of the proofs of the tendency ofthe age to Antinomianism, Familism, and general anarchy; and Edwards andBaillie followed in the same strain. Milton's Doctrine of Divorce, itthus appears, had attracted attention, and had perhaps gained somefollowing. Among the six caricatures of notable sects on the title-pageof Paget's _Heresiography_ is one of "THE DIVORCER"--_i. E. _ a man, in anadmonishing attitude, and without his hat, dismissing or pushing away hiswife, who has her hat on, as if ready for a journey, and is putting herhandkerchief to her eyes. We shall have more to say of Milton in thisconnexion. [Footnote: Paget, pp. 150, 151, p. 87, and Epistle Dedicatory, p. 4; Fentley's _Dippers Dipt_, Epistle Dedicatory, p. 3; Edward's_Gangręna_, Part I. P. 29. ]

ANTI-SABBATARIANS, AND TRASKITES:--These sects, though distinct, may benamed together. The _Anti-Sabbatarians_ were those who denied theobligation of any Lord's Day or Sabbath: they were pretty numerous, butwere distributed through the other sects. The _Traskites_, on theother hand, denied the obligation of the Christian Sunday or Lord's Day, but maintained the perpetual obligation of the Jewish Sabbath on theseventh day of the week. They were the followers of one John Traske, apoor eccentric who had been well known to Paget, but was now dead, andremembered only for his heresy, for which he had been whipt, pilloried, and imprisoned, about 1618. His opinions had been revived more ably incertain treatises and discourses, published in 1628 and 1632, byTheophilus Brabourne, a Puritan minister in Norfolk. Both Brabourne andTraske had been obliged to recant their opinions and return to orthodoxy;and indeed Traske had done so in a Tract written against himself, thoughhe again relapsed. Nevertheless the heresy had taken root, and one heardin 1644 of Traskites or Sabbatarians dispersed through England. The sectis continued still in the so-called "Seventh Day Baptists. " [Footnote:Paget, pp. 138-141; with more accurate particulars in Cox's _Literatureof the Sabbath Question_, I. 153-5, 157-8, and 162. ]

SOUL-SLEEPERS OR MORTALISTS:--Such was the odd name given to a sect, orsupposed sect, represented by the anonymous author of a, Tract called_Man's Mortality_. The Tract is now very scarce, if not utterlyforgotten; but, as it made a great stir at the time, and as we shall hearof it and its author rather particularly again in connexion with Milton'slife, I may here give some account of it from a copy which I have managedto see. The title in full is as follows: "Man's Mortallitie: or aTreatise wherein 'tis proved, both Theologically and Phylosophically, that whole Man (as a rationall creature) is a compound wholy mortall, contrary to that common distinction of Soule and Body; and that thepresent going of the Soule into Heaven or Hell is a meer fiction; andthat at the Resurrection is the beginning of our immortallity, and thenactual Condemnation and Salvation, and not before: With all doubtes andobjections answered and resolved both by Scripture and Reason;discovering the multitude of Blasphemies and Absurdities that arise fromthe fancie of the Soule: Also divers other mysteries, as of Heaven, Hell, Christ's humane residence, the Extent of the Resurrection, the NewCreation, &c. : opened and presented to the tryall of better judgments, ByR. O. Amsterdam: Printed by John Canne, Anno Dom. 1643. " In the BritishMuseum copy, which is the one I have seen, the word "Amsterdam" is erasedby the collector's pen, and "London" substituted, with the date "Jan. 19"added; whence I infer that, whatever Canne at Amsterdam had to do withthe printing of the tract, it was virtually a London publication, and outin January, 1643-4. On the title-page is quoted the text Ecclesiastesiii. 19, thus--"That which befalleth the sonnes of men befalleth Beasts;even one thing befalleth them all: as the one dyeth so dyeth the other;yea they have all one breath, so that man hath no preheminence above aBeast; for all is vanity. " This gives so far the key-note to the 57 pagesof matter of the Tract itself. It is a queer mixture of a sort ofphysiological reasoning, such as we should now call Materialism, with amystical metaphysics, and with odd whimsies of the author's own--such asthat Christ had ascended into the Sun. The leading tenet, however, isthat the notion of a soul, or supernatural and immortal essence, in man, distinct from his bodily organism, is a sheer delusion, contradicted bothby Scripture and correct physiological thinking, and that from thisnotion have arisen all kinds of superstitions and practical mischiefs. "The most grand and blasphemous heresies that are in the world, themystery of iniquity and the kingdom of Antichrist, depend upon it. " Sosays the Tract itself; and in the first of two pieces of verse prefixedto it by an admirer, and entitled "To His worthy Friend the Author, uponhis Booke, " there occur these lines:--

 "The hell-hatched doctrine of th' immortal soul Discovered makes the hungry Furies howl, And teare their snakey haire, with grief appaled To see their error-leading doctrine quailed, Hell undermined and Purgatory blown Up in the air. "

There are Latin quotations in the Tract; and some of the physiologicalarguments by which the author seeks to refute the opinion of "theSoulites, " as he calls them, are rather nauseous. On the whole, were itnot for the appended concession of a Resurrection, or New Creation, andan Immortality somehow to ensue thence, the doctrine of the Tract mightbe described as out-and-out Materialism. Possibly, in spite of theconcession, this is what the author meant to drive at. Among some of hisfollowers, however, a milder version of his doctrine seems to have beenin favour, not quite denying the existence of a soul, but asserting thatthe soul goes into sleep or temporary extinction at death, to be re-awakened at the Resurrection. [Footnote: Paget, pp. 148, 149; _Gangręna_, Part I. Pp. 22, 23; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 99 and 121; butmainly the Tract cited. ]

ARIANS, SOCINIANS, AND OTHER ANTI-TRINITARIANS:--Since 1614, when Legateand Wightman had been burnt for Arianism (Vol. I. P. 46), this and otherforms of the Anti-Trinitarian heresy had been little heard of in England. But in the ferment of the Civil War they were reappearing. A Thomas Webb, a young fellow of twenty years of age, had been shocking people in Londonand in country-places by awful expressions against the Trinity; oneClarke had been, doing the same; one Paul Best had been circulatingmanuscripts in which there were "most horrid blasphemies of the Trinity, of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost;" and John Biddle, of Gloucester, masterof the school there, and of whom, from his career at Oxford, high hopeshad been formed, had begun to be "free of his discourses in a Sociniandirection. " Baillie adds Mr. Samuel Richardson, one of the Baptistministers of London, to the number of those whose Trinitarianism wasquestionable, and charges the Baptists generally with laxity on thatpoint. In short, there was an alarm of Arianism, and other forms of Anti-Trinitarianism, as again abroad in England. Mr. Nye, the Independent, hadbeen heard to say that "to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity ofChrist was a growing opinion, and that there was a company of them metabout Coleman Street, a Welshman being their chief, who held thisopinion. " Coleman Street appears, indeed, to have been a very hotbed ofheresy. For here it was that JOHN GOODWIN (Vol. II. 582-4, and_antč_, pp. 120-122) had his congregation. He had not revealedhimself fully; but the public had had a taste of him in recent pamphlets. Baillie, on rumour, reports him as a Socinian; and Edwards, who came intoconflict with him in due time, and devotes many consecutive pages ofBillingsgate to him in the Second Part of his _Gangręna_, tells usthat he held "many wicked opinions, " being "an Hermaphrodite and acompound of an Arminian, Socinian, Libertine, Anabaptist, & c. " From thesame authority we learn that the Presbyterians had nicknamed him "thegreat Red Dragon of Coleman Street. " What he really was we have alreadyseen in part for ourselves, and shall yet see more fully. [Footnote:Paget, 132--136; _Gangręna_, Part I. Pp. 21, 22, 26, 33, Part II 19-39, and Part III. 111 and 87; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. P. 98; also Wood's Athenę, III. 593 (for Biddle); Baillie's Letters, II. 192, and Jackson's _Life of John Goodwin_ (1822), pp. 3 and 14. ]

ANTI-SCRIPTURISTS:--"One wicked sect, " says Old Ephraim, "denieth theScriptures both of the Old and New Testament, and account them as thingsof nought; yea, as I am credibly informed, in public congregations theyvent these their damnable opinions. " He gives no names; but Edwardsmentions "one Marshal, a bricklayer, a young man, living at Hackney, " whomade a mock of the Scriptures in his harangues, and asserted that hehimself "knew the mystery of God in Christ better than St. Paul. " Acompanion of this Marshal's told the people that "the Scripture was theirgolden calf and they danced round it. " A Priscilla Miles had beenspeaking very shockingly of the Scriptures at Norwich. But the most notedAnti-Scripturist seems to have been a Clement Wrighter, a Worcester man, living in London, of whom Edwards gives this terrible character--"Sometimes a professor of religion and judged to have been godly, who isnow an arch-heretic and fearful apostate, an old wolf, and a subtle man, who goes about corrupting, and venting his errors; he is often inWestminster Hall and on the Exchange; he comes into public meetings ofthe Sectaries upon occasions of meeting to draw up petitions for theParliament or other businesses. This man about seven or eight years ago(_i. E. _ about 1638) fell off from the communion of our churches toIndependency and Brownism; from that he fell to Anabaptism andArminianism, and to Mortalism, holding the soul mortal (he is judged tobe the author, or at least to have had a great hand in the Book of the_Mortality of the Soul_). After that he fell to be Seeker, and isnow an Anti-Scripturist, a Questionist and Sceptick, and I fear anAtheist. " Specimens of his sayings about the Bible are given; andaltogether one has to fancy Wrighter as an oldish man, sneaking about inpublic places in London on soft-soled shoes, and with bundles of papersunder his arm. I have seen a little thing printed by him in Feb. 1615-6, under the title of "_The Sad Case of Clement Writer_, " in which hecomplains of injustice, to the extent of 1, 500_l_. , done him by thelate Lord Keeper Coventry and other judges in some suit that had lastedfor twelve years. [Footnote: Paget, 149; _Gangręna_, Part I. Pp. 26--28; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 121. ]

SCEPTICS, OR QUESTIONISTS:--They were those who, according to Edwards, "questioned everything in matters of religion, holding nothing positivelynor certainly, saving the doctrine of pretended liberty of conscience forall, and liberty of prophesying. " Many besides Wrighter had reached thisstage through their anti-Scripturism, and were free-thinkers of the coldor merely rational order, distinct from the devout and enthusiasticSeekers. [Footnote: _Gangręna_, Part I. P. 13. ]

ATHEISTS:--Although Edwards charitably hints his fear that Mr. Wrighterhad at last sunk into this extreme category, it is remarkable thatneither he nor Paget ventures to reckon _Atheists_ among theexisting Sects. Probably, therefore, there was no body of persons towhom, with any pretext of plausibility, the name could be applied. But weare advised of individuals here and there whom their neighbours suspectedof Atheism; and, if Edwards is to be believed, there was alive a certainJohn Boggis, an apprentice to an apothecary in London, who, though atpresent only a young Anabaptist preacher, and disciple of Captain Hobson, was to go within a year or two to such unheard-of lengths about GreatYarmouth that even Wrighter must have disowned him. [Footnote: Ibid. PartII. 133, 134; and Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 99. ]

Such were the English Sects and Sectaries that had begun to be talked ofin 1644. Not that they were bounded off strictly from each other indivisions according with their names. On the contrary, they shaded offinto each other; and there were mixtures and combinations of some ofthem. Moreover, as the chief of them held by the Congregationalistprinciple in some form, and hoped to flourish by taking advantage of thatprinciple, it was not unusual for Presbyterian writers to include thesealong with the Congregationalists proper in the one lax designation ofIndependents. At all events, the Sects hung on to the Independentsthrough that principle of Toleration or Liberty of Conscience which theIndependents had propounded, at first mildly, but with a tendency to lessand less of limitation. All the Sects, less or more, were TOLERATIONISTS;the heresy of heresies in which they all agreed with each other, and withthe Independents, was LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. 

RESUMPTION OF PROCEEDINGS BY THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: DENUNCIATION OFPICKED SECTARIES AND HERETICS. 

The foregoing survey of English Sects and Sectaries and of the state ofthe Toleration Controversy in 1644 has been our employment, the readermust be reminded, during the fortnight's vacation of the WestminsterAssembly from July 23 to August 7 in that year. Something of the samekind was the vacation-employment of the members of that Assembly too, andespecially of the Presbyterian majority. For they had been driven out oftheir previous calculations by the battle of Marston Moor (July 2). Thatbattle had been won mainly by Cromwell, the head of the Army-Independents, and it went to the credit of Independency. All the morenecessary was it for the Presbyterians of the Assembly to bethinkthemselves of indirect means of argument against the Independents. Themeans were not far to seek. Let this horrible Hydra of Sects, all bredout of Independency, be dragged into light; and would not respectableIndependency itself stand aghast at her offspring? The word_Toleration_ had been mumbled cautiously within the Assembly, andhad made itself heard with some larger liking in Parliament, and stillgreater applause among the hasty thousands of the Parliamentary soldiersand the populace! Let it be shown what this monstrous notion reallymeant, what herds of strange creatures and shoals even of vermin it wouldpermit in England; and would England ratify the monstrosity, or theIndependency consociated with it, even for twenty Cromwells, or tenMarston Moors? So, in the fort-night's vacation, reasoned Messrs. Marshall, Lightfoot, Calamy, Palmer, Vines, Spurstow, Newcomen, Herle, Burges, and other English Presbyterians, incited rather than repressed bythe Scottish anxiety of Rutherford, Gillespie, Baillie, and (I am afraid)Henderson. 

Accordingly, when the Assembly resumed its sittings (Wednesday, Aug. 7, 1644), its first work was to fall passionately on the Sects and the arch-heresy of Toleration. "The first day of our sitting, after our vacance, "says Baillie, "a number of complaints were given in against theAnabaptists' and Antinomians' huge increase and insolencies intolerable. Notwithstanding Mr. Nye's and others' opposition, it was carried that theAssembly should remonstrate it to the Parliament. " [Footnote: Baillie'sLetters, II. 218; corroborated by Lightfoot's Notes on the very day (p. 299). ] And they did remonstrate it, without a day's delay. Friday, May 9, as we learn from the Lords Journals, it was represented to the House ofLords, through Mr. Marshall, by order of the Assembly, "That they havebeen informed of the great growth and increase of Anabaptists andAntinomians and other Sects; and that some Anabaptists have delivered inprivate houses some blasphemous passages and dangerous opinions: Theyhave acquainted the House of Commons therewith; and, &c. " [Footnote:Lords Journals, Aug. 9, 1644. ] Turning to the Commons Journals of thesame day we find, accordingly, a column and a half on the same subject, with many details. Dr. Burges and Mr. Marshall had appeared before theCommons on the same errand from the Assembly: had told the HonourableHouse that many ministers and gentry all through England had long desiredto petition it "to prevent the spreading opinions of Anabaptism andAntinomianism;" that they had been persuaded to forbear; but that now"these men have cast off all affection and are so imbitterated" thatfarther forbearance would be wrong, and the Assembly cannot but representto the House that "it is high time to suppress them. " That the Commonsmight not be left in the vague, a Mr. Picot in Guernsey, and a Mr. Knolles, recently in Cornwall (Hanserd Knollys?), of the Anabaptist sort, with a Mr. Randall, a Mr. Penrose, and a Mr. Simson, as of a worse sortstill (see Randall among the Antinomians and Familists in our synopsis), were denounced by name as proper culprits to begin with. What could thepoor House of Commons do? Agreeing with the Lords, they promised to dowhat they could. They would take the whole subject into their graveconsideration; they empowered the Committee for Plundered Ministers, witha certain addition to their number, to arrest and examine the particularculprits named; and, to prove their heartiness meanwhile, they resolved, on that very day, "That Mr. White do give order for the public burning ofone Mr. Williams his book, intituled, &c. , concerning the Tolerating ofall sorts of Religion. " [Footnote: Commons Journals, Aug. 9, 1644. ] This"one Mr. Williams, " as the reader will be aware, was Roger Williams, thenon his way back to America; and "his book" was _The Bloody Tenent_. There must have been much hypocrisy, and much cowardice, in the EnglishHouse of Commons on that day. Where was the younger Sir Harry Vane?Probably he was in the House while they passed the order, and wonderinghow far Roger Williams had got on his voyage, and meditatively twirlinghis thumbs. 

A good stroke of business by the Westminster Assembly in two days aftertheir vacation! But they followed it up. There were frequent SolemnFasts, by Parliamentary order, in those days, when all London wasexpected to go to church and listen to sermons by divines from theWestminster Assembly. Tuesday, the 13th of August, 1644, was one of thoseSolemn Fast-days--an "Extraordinary Day of Humiliation;" and theministers appointed by the Assembly to preach in chief--_i. E. _ topreach before the two Houses of Parliament, and the Assembly itself, inSt. Margaret's, Westminster--were Mr. Thomas Hill and Mr. Herbert Palmer. These two gentlemen, it seems, did their duty: They satisfied evenBaillie. "Mr. Palmer and Mr. Hill, " he says, "did preach that day to theAssembly two of the most Scottish and free sermons that ever I heardanywhere. The way here of all preachers, even the best, has been to speakbefore the Parliament with so profound a reverence as truly took all edgefrom their exhortations, and made all applications of them toothless andadulatorious. That style is much changed, however: these two good menlaid well about them, and charged public and Parliamentary sins strictlyon the backs of the guilty. " [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 220, 221. ]As the sermons themselves remain in print, we have the means of verifyingBaillie's description. It is quite correct. Not only in the "EpistleDedicatory" to his sermon when it was printed did Mr. Hill denounce theToleration doctrine, and make a marginal reference to Roger Williams's"_Bloody Tenent_" as a book not too soon burnt; but in the sermonitself, the subject of which was the duty of "advancing Temple-work"(Haggai i. 7, 8), he openly attacked two classes of persons as the chief"underminers of Temple-work. " First, he said, there were those who wouldallow nothing to be _jure divino_ in the Church, but held that allmatters of Church-constitution were to be settled by mere prudence andState-convenience--in other words, the Erastians, _They_ are lectured, but are let off more easily than the second sort of underminers: viz. "such who would have a toleration of all ways of Religion in thisChurch. " Parliament is reminded that all tendency to this way of thinkingis unfaithfulness to the Covenant, and is told that "to set the door sowide open as to tolerate all religions" would be to "make London anAmsterdam, " and would lead to--in fact, would certainly lead to--Amsterdamnation! So far Mr. Hill; but Mr. Palmer was even more bold. Preaching on Psalm xcix. 8, this delicate little creature laid about himmost manfully. Parliament are rebuked for eluding the Covenant, for toogreat tenderness in their dealings with delinquents, and for remissnessin the prevention and punishment of false doctrine. They are exhorted toextirpate heresy and schism, especially Antinomianism and Anabaptism, and, are warned at some length against the snare of Toleration. "Hearkennot--I earnestly exhort every one that intends to have any regard at allto his solemn Covenant and oath in this second article--to those thatoffer to plead for Tolerations; which I wonder how any one dare write orspeak for as they do that have themselves taken the Covenant, or knowthat _you_ have. The arguments that are used in some books, well worthyto be burnt, plead for Popery, Judaism, Turcism, Paganism, and all mannerof false religions, under pretence of Liberty of Conscience. " This isclearly an allusion to John Goodwin; and in the sequel Mr. Palmer makesanother personal allusion of still greater interest. In order to showwhat a social chaos would result from toleration of error on the plea ofLiberty of Conscience, he gives instances of some of the horribleopinions that would claim the benefit of the plea, and among these henames Milton's Divorce doctrine, then circulating in a book which theauthor had been shameless enough to dedicate openly to Parliament itself. The particulars will be given, and the passage quoted, in due time; thefact is enough at present. [Footnote: The title of Hill's sermon is "_TheSeason for England's Selfe-Reflection and Advancing Temple-work;discovered in a Sermon preached to the two Houses of Parliament atMargaret's, Westminster, Aug. 13, 1614; being an extraordinary day ofHumiliation. By, &c. , London: Printed by Richard Cotes, for John Bellamyand Philerion Stephens_ 1644. "--The title of Palmer's is "_The Glasse ofGod's Providence towards his Faithful Ones; Held forth in a Sermon, _ &c. [occasion and date as in Hill's]; _wherein is discovered the greatfailings that the best are liable unto, upon which God is provokedsometimes to take vengeance. The whole is applyed specially to a morecarefull observance of our late Convenant, and particularly against theungodly Toleration pleaded for under pretence of Liberty of Conscience. By, &c. , London: Printed by G. M. For Th. Underhill at the Bible in WoodStreet, _ 1644. " Neither sermon impresses one now very favourably inrespect of either spirit or ability. I expected Palmer's to be better. ]

Not content with direct remonstrance to Parliament on the subject of theincrease of sects and heresies, nor with the power of exhorting it on thesubject through the pulpit, the Presbyterians of the Assembly, I find, resorted to other agencies. They had great influence in the City, and itoccurred to them, or to some of them, to stir up the Stationers' Companyto activity in the matter. The Stationers, indeed, had a commercialinterest, as well as a religious interest, in the suppression of theobnoxious books and pamphlets, most of which were published without thelegal formalities of licence and registration. It is without surprisetherefore that we find this entry in the Commons Journals for Saturday, Aug. 24, 1644: "_Ordered_ that the Petition from the Company ofStationers be read on Monday morning next, " followed by this other as theminute of the first business (after prayers) at the next sitting, (Monday, Aug. 26): "The humble Petition of the Company of Stationers, consisting of Booksellers, Printers, and Bookbinders, was this day read, and ordered to be referred to the consideration of the Committee forPrinting, to hear all parties and to state the business, and to preparean Ordinance upon the whole matter and to bring it in with all convenientspeed; and they are, to this purpose, to peruse the Bill formerly broughtin concerning this matter. They are diligently to inquire out theauthors, printers, and publishers of the Pamphlets against theImmortality of the Soul and _Concerning Divorce_. " It had beendetermined, it seems, that Palmer's denunciation of Milton in his sermona fortnight before should not be a _brutum fulmen_. To the incident, asit affected Milton himself, we shall have to refer again. Meanwhile itbelongs to that stage of the action of the Westminster Assembly onEnglish politics which we are now trying to illustrate. 

The Assembly, we have shown, besides still carrying on within itself themain question between Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, had begun awider war against Schism, Sectarianism, the whole miscellany of Englishheresies, and especially the all-including heresy of Toleration. Theyopened the campaign, by private agreement among themselves, in August1644; and by the end of that month they had succeeded in rousingParliament to some action on the subject, and had directed attention toat least nine special offenders, deserving to be punished first of all. These were--the Anabaptists, Picot and Hanserd Knollys; the Antinomians, Penrose and Simson; the Antinomian and Familist, Randall; the Seeker andTolerationist, Roger Williams; the Independent, semi-Socinian, andTolerationist, John Goodwin; the Anti-Scripturist and Mortalist, ClementWrighter; and Mr. John Milton of Aldersgate Street, author of a Treatiseon Divorce. For, though the Committee of Parliament had been instructedto inquire out the author of the Divorce Treatise, this was but a form. The second edition, dedicated to the Parliament and the Assembly, andwith Milton's name to it in full, had been out more than six months. Ofthe nine persons mentioned, only Clement Wrighter, the Mortalist (ifindeed the tract on _Man's Mortality_ was from his pen), had to befound out. 

Was there to be no check to this Presbyterian inquisitorship? Whencecould a check come? The few Independents in the Assembly, just becausethey were fighting their own particular battle, had to be cautiousagainst too great an extension of their lines. Not from _them_, therefore, but from the freer Independency of the Army, which was in factby this time a composition of all or many of the sects, could the checkbe expected. Thence, in fact, it did come. In short, while thePresbyterians in London were in the flush of their first success againstthe Sectaries and the Tolerationists, in walked Oliver Cromwell. 

CROMWELL'S INTERFERENCE FOR TOLERATION: ACCOMMODATION ORDER OFPARLIAMENT. 

Events had been qualifying Cromwell more and more for the task. HisIndependency, or let us call it Tolerationism, had been long known. Asearly as March 1643-4, when he had just become Lieutenant-general in theEarl of Manchester's army, he had been resolute in seeing that theofficers and soldiers in that army should not be troubled or kept downfor Anabaptism or the like. This had been the more necessary because thenext in command under him, the Scottish Major-general Crawford, was anardent and pragmatic Presbyterian. "Sir, " Cromwell had written toCrawford on one occasion, when an Anabaptist colonel had been put underdisgrace, "the State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice oftheir opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, thatsatisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with men of different mindsfrom yourself: if you had done it when I advised you to it, I think youwould not have had so many stumbling-blocks in your way. It may be youjudge otherwise; but I tell you _my_ mind. " [Footnote: Carlyle, Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. P. 148. ] Ever since that time there had been avital difference between the Presbyterian Major-general Crawford and hissuperior, the Lieutenant-general. Gradually, according to Baillie, Manchester, who was "a sweet, meek man, " and greatly led by Cromwell, hadbeen brought over more to the Presbyterian way by Crawford's reasonings. It had come to be a question, in fact, whether Cromwell and comfort orCrawford and precision should prevail in Manchester's army. Marston Moor(July 2) had settled that. Cromwell, as the hero of Marston Moor, was nota man to be farther opposed or thwarted; the Independents, who had mainlywon Marston Moor, were not men to submit longer to Presbyterianascendancy in the regulation of the army, or to see their large-facedEnglish chief pestered and counterworked by a peevish Scot. Yes, but_was_ Cromwell the hero of Marston Moor, or _had_ Marston Moorbeen won mainly by the Independents? These were the questions whichCrawford, ever since the battle, had been trying to keep open. He hadbeen trying, as we have seen, to keep them open in London, though withbut small success; and in the Army his tongue had, doubtless, been louderand more troublesome. At last Cromwell made up his mind. Either Crawfordmust cease to be Major-general of Manchester's army, or _he_ must ceaseto be Lieutenant-general. It was on this business that, in September1644, he came up to London. There had been letters on the subject beforefrom both parties in the Army, the Independents pressing for Crawford'sdismissal, and the Presbyterians for retaining him. But now Manchester, Cromwell, and Crawford had, all three, come up personally to argue thematter out. Cromwell, it appears, was in one of those moods ofungovernable obstinacy which always came upon him at the right time. "Ourlabour to reconcile them, " writes Baillie, "was vain: Cromwell wasperemptor; notwithstanding the kingdom's evident hazard, and the evidentdispleasure of our [the Scottish] nation, yet, if Crawford were notcashiered, his [Cromwell's] colonels would lay down their commissions. "There was a plot in all this, Baillie thought. The real purpose of theIndependents was to bring Manchester out of the clutches ofPresbyterianism, or, if that could not be done, to get him to resign, sothat Cromwell might succeed to the chief command; in which case theIndependents would be able to "counterbalance" the Presbyterians, and"overawe the Assembly and Parliament both to their ends. "--It was a veryproper plot, too, as every day was proving. What was the last news thathad reached London? It was that Essex, the General-in-chief, had beentotally beaten by the King in Cornwall (Sept. 1)--Essex himself obligedto escape by ship, leaving his army to its fate; the horse, under SirWilliam Balfour, to fight their way out by desperate exertion; and thefoot, under Skippon, to think of doing the same, but at last to surrendermiserably. Waller's army, also, was by this time nowhere. It had perishedby gradual desertion. Evidently, it had become a question of some momentfor the Parliamentarians _who_ had won Marston Moor, and _who_ should bechief in Manchester's army. [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 229, 230;Rushworth V. 699 _et seq. _; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), I. 302, 303; Carlyle'sCromwell, (ed. , 1857), I. 158. ]

The special business which had brought Cromwell to London was, in fact, but a metaphor of the general business then occupying the English nation. Whether a pragmatical Presbyterian Scot should regulate the discipline ofan English Parliamentarian army, and whether the Westminster Assemblyshould establish a Presbyterian Inquisitorship over the whole mind ofEngland, were but forms of the same question. Little wonder, then, thatCromwell, finding himself in London on the smaller form of the business, resolved to move also in the larger. And he did. "This day, " writesBaillie on Friday the 13th of September 1644, "Cromwell has obtained anOrder of the House of Commons to refer to the Committee of both Kingdomsthe accommodation or toleration of the Independents--a high andunexpected Order!" Three days afterwards Baillie is still full of thesubject. "While Cromwell is here, " he says, "the House of Commons, without the least advertisement to any of us [Scottish Commissioners], orof the Assembly, passes an Order that the Grand Committee of both Houses, Assembly, and us, shall consider of the means to unite us and theIndependents, or, if that be found impossible, to see how they may betolerate. This has much affected us. " On turning to the Commons Journalswe find the actual words of the Order: "_Ordered_, That the Committee ofLords and Commons appointed to treat with the Commissioners of Scotlandand the Committee of the Assembly do take into consideration thedifferences in opinion of the members of the Assembly in point of Church-government, and do endeavour a union if it be possible; and, in case thatcannot be done, do endeavour the finding out some ways how far tenderconsciences, who cannot in all things submit to the common Rule whichshall be established, may be borne with, according to the Word, and asmay stand with the public peace, that so the proceedings of the Assemblymay not be so much retarded. " Mr. Solicitor St. John appears as thereporter of the Order. Cromwell, in fact, had quietly formed a littlephalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane wasone of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, hadto some extent aided in the contrivance, without consulting any of hisbrethren of the Assembly. 

The Order came upon the Presbyterians like a thunder-clap. For, as theyrightly interpreted, it was nothing less than a design to carry inParliament a Toleration-clause to be inserted in the Bill forestablishing Presbytery before that Bill was ready to be drafted. Of thisBaillie and his friends complained bitterly. Was it not unfair toPresbyterianism thus to anticipate so ostentatiously that there would bemany whom it would not satisfy? Was not this framing of a Toleration-clause, to be inserted into a Bill before the Bill itself was in being, like a solicitation to the English people to prefer the clause to thebody of the Bill, and so to continue dubious about Presbytery, instead ofcultivating faith in its merits? So argued Baillie and the Presbyterians. But, indeed, they saw more behind the Accommodation Order. The Tolerationit sought to provide might seem, from the wording, only a moderateToleration in the interest of the Independents of the Assembly and theirimmediate adherents. From what Baillie says, one infers that Mr. Solicitor St. John and Mr. Marshall had been drawing up the Order in thismoderate form, and that Cromwell and Vane would fain have had more. "Thegreat shot of Cromwell and Vane, " says Baillie, "is to have a liberty forall religions, without any exceptions. " And of Vane he distinctly saysthat he was "offended with the Solicitor" for putting only differencesabout Church-government into the Toleration Ordinance, and not alsodifferences "about free grace, including liberty to the Antinomians andto all Sects. " At all events, he had recently, in the presence of theScottish Commissioners themselves, been reasoning "prolixly, earnestly, and passionately" for universal Toleration. Probably Cromwell and Vanewere content in the meantime with what the long-headed Solicitor saw hecould pass. It could be stretched when necessary. The form was St. John's, but the deed was Cromwell's. [Footnote: The authorities for theinteresting facts related in this paragraph which seem to have slippedout of view of most modern writers on the history of the period areBaillie, II 226, 229, 231, and 236, 237, and Commons Journal, Sept 13, 1644. ]

After the check of this Accommodation Order of Sept. 13, 1644, thePresbyterians of the Assembly seem to have proceeded somewhat moretemperately. Not that they gave up the fight. Their preachers beforeParliament still followed in the strain of Hill and Palmer. In a Fast-daySermon before the two Houses on Sept. 12, the day before the Order, theSmectymnuan, Matthew Newcomen, had again had a slap at Toleration; onSept. 25 Lazarus Seaman was again at it, and actually named in his sermonfour dangerous books for Liberty of Conscience, including Goodwin's andWilliams's--the burning of which lest did not seem enough to the Rabbi, for "the shell is sometimes thrown into the fire when the kernel iseaten;" the respected Calamy, also a Smectymnuan, is at it again, Oct. 22, telling the Parliament that, if they do not put down Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and Tolerationism of all religions, then _they_ arethe Anabaptists, the Antinomians, the Tolerationists; Spurstow, a thirdof the Smectymnuans, is not done with it on Nov. 5. [Footnote: My notesfrom a volume of the Parliamentary Sermons of 1644, kindly lent me by Mr. David Laing] In the Assembly itself also the question of heresy, blasphemy, and their suppression, occasionally turned up. Oct. 17, forexample, there was officially before the Assembly the case of a JohnHart, who had been making a reputation for himself in Surrey by thishideous joke:--"Who made you? My Lord of Essex. --Who redeemed you? Sir W. Waller. --Who sanctified and preserved you? My Lord of Warwick. " This ledto a conversation in the Assembly on the increase of blasphemy, and to anew remonstrance to Parliament on the subject. [Footnote: Lightfoot'sNotes at date named] Again, on the 22nd of November, there was a reportto the Assembly of some fresh "damnable blasphemies, " more of thedoctrinal kind, and savouring of Mortalism and Clement Wrighter. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes at date named. ] Nor had the Assembly agreedto let even ordinary Anabaptism and Antinomianism alone; for they hadagain memorialized Parliament on the subject, and had had a rathersatisfactory response from the Commons, Nov. 15, in the form of a promiseto consider the whole matter, and an order meanwhile that no personshould be permitted to preach unless he were an ordained minister in theEnglish or some other Reformed Church, or a probationer intending theministry and duly licensed by those authorized by Parliament to give suchlicence. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 15, 1644. ] On the whole, however, from September 1644 onwards through October and November, to theend of the year, there was rather an abatement of the inquisitorial zealof the Assembly. 

PROGRESS OF THE ASSEMBLY'S MAIN WORK: PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED BYPARLIAMENT. 

In those months, indeed, the Assembly was unusually active over its mainwork. For, though we have seen chiefly the spray of its miscellaneousinterferences with affairs, it must be remembered that it had been calledtogether for a vast mass of substantial work, and that it had beensteadily prosecuting that work, in Committees, Sub-committees, and thedaily meetings of the whole body. The work expected by Parliament fromthe Assembly consisted of (1) the compilation of a _Confession of Faith_, or _Articles of Religion_, which should supersede the Thirty-nineArticles, and be the Creed of the new National Church of England about tobe established; (2) the composition of a _Catechism_ or _Catechisms_, which should be a manual or manuals for the instruction of the people, and especially the young, in the theology of the Articles; (3) thedevising of a _Frame of Discipline or Church-government_, to come in lieuof Episcopacy, and form the constitution of the new National Church; and(4) the preparation of a _Directory of Worship_, which should supplantthe Liturgy, &c. , and settle the methods and forms to be adopted inworship, and on such occasions as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Herewas a mass of work which, at the ordinary rate of business inecclesiastical councils, might well keep the Assembly together for two orthree years. What amount of progress had they made at the date at whichwe have now arrived?

Naturally, on first meeting, they had begun with the business of the newArticles, or Confession of Faith. The particular form in which, by theorder of Parliament, they had addressed themselves to this business, wasthat of a careful revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. With tolerableunanimity (_antč_, pp. 5, 6 and 18, 19), they had gone on in thislabour for three months, or till Oct. 12, 1643; by which time they hadCalvinized fifteen of the Articles. [Footnote: Whoever wants to comparethe Westminster Assembly's Calvinized Version of the first fifteenArticles with the original Articles will find the two sets printedconveniently in parallel columns in _History of the WestminsterAssembly of Divines_ (1842), published at Philadelphia, U. S. , by the"Presbyterian Board of Publication. "] Then, however, they had beeninterrupted in this labour. The Scottish League and Covenant having comeinto action, and the Scottish Commissioners having become an influence atthe back of the English Parliament, the Assembly had been ordered toproceed to what seemed the more immediately pressing businesses of thenew Model of Church-government and the new Directory of Worship. Thebusiness of a Confession of Faith thus lying over till it could beresumed at leisure, the Assembly had, for more than a year, been occupiedwith the Church-government question and the Directory. What tough andtedious work they had had with the Church-government question we haveseen. Still, even in this question they had made progress. Beating theCongregationalists by vote on proposition after proposition, thePresbyterian majority had, by the end of October 1644, carried all theessentials of Presbytery through the Assembly, and referred themconfidently to Parliament. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 232. ] Add to this thata new Directory of Worship had been drawn up. The CongregationalistBrethren had been far more acquiescent in this business; and, though manypoints in it had occasioned minute discussion, the Assembly were able, onthe 2lst of November, to transmit to Parliament, unanimously, aDirectory, in which everything in the shape of Liturgy or Prelaticceremonial was disallowed, and certain plain forms, like those of theScottish Presbyterian worship, prescribed instead. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 240 and 242-3] By the end of 1644, therefore, the WestminsterAssembly had substantially acquitted itself of two out of four of thepieces of work expected from it by Parliament--the _New Directory ofWorship_ and the _New Frame of Church-government_; and it onlyremained for Parliament to sanction or reject what the Assembly hadconcluded under these two heads. During November and December 1644, andJanuary 1644-5, accordingly, there was much discussion in both Houses ofall the points of Religion and Church-government which the new Directoryand the new Frame were to settle. The debates of the Houses during thesemonths, indeed, were very much those of the Assembly over again--theLords and Commons, though laymen, examining each proposition and eachclause for themselves, and insisting on proofs from Scripture and thelike. January 1644-5 was the great month. On the 4th of that month anOrdinance from the Commons passed the Lords, abolishing the use of thePrayer-book, adopting and confirming the new Westminster Directory, andordering it to be printed. On the 23rd of the same month, the followingResolutions were adopted by the Commons:--

"_Resolved_: That there shall be fixed Congregations--that is, acertain company of Christians to meet in one Assembly ordinarily forpublic worship: when believers multiply to such a number that they cannotconveniently meet in one place, they shall be divided into distinct andfixed Congregations, for the better administration of such ordinances asbelong to them, and the discharge of mutual duties. 

"_Resolved_: That the ordinary way of dividing Christians intodistinct Congregations, and most expedient for edification, is by therespective bounds of their dwellings. 

"_Resolved_: That the minister and other Church-officers in eachparticular Congregation shall join in the government of the Church insuch manner as shall be established by Parliament. 

"_Resolved_: That these officers shall meet together at convenientand set times for the well-ordering of the affairs of that Congregation, each according to his office. 

"_Resolved_: That the ordinances in a particular Congregation arePrayer, Thanksgiving, and Singing of Psalms; the Word read, though therefollow no immediate explication of what is read; the Word expounded andapplied; Catechising; the Sacraments administered; Collection made forthe Poor; Dismissing of the people with a Blessing. 

"_Resolved_: That many particular Congregations shall be under onePresbyterial government. 

"_Resolved_: That the Church be governed by Congregational, Classical, and Synodical Assemblies, in such manner as shall beestablished by Parliament. 

"_Resolved_: That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both ofProvincial and National Assemblies. "

Dry and simple as these Resolutions look, they were the outcome offifteen months of deliberation, and they were of immense significance. They declared it to be the will of Parliament that England thenceforthshould be a Presbyterian country, like Scotland. Just as Scotland was alittle country, with her 1, 000 parishes or so, the inhabitants of each ofwhich were understood to form a particular congregation, meeting statedlyfor worship, and taught and spiritually disciplined by one Minister andcertain other church-officers called Lay Elders, so England was to be alarge country of some 10, 000 or 12, 000 parishes and parochialcongregations, each after the same fashion. As in Scotland the parishesor congregations, though mainly managing each its own affairs, were notindependent, but were bound together in groups by the device ofPresbyteries, or periodical courts consisting of the ministers and rulingelders of a certain number of contiguous parishes meeting to hear appealsfrom congregations, and otherwise exercise government, so the ten timesmore numerous parishes of England were similarly to be grouped intoPresbyteries or Classes (Classes was the more favourite English term), each Classis containing some ten or twelve congregations. Thus in Londonalone, where there were about 120 parishes, there ought to be abouttwelve Classes or Presbyteries. Finally, the Presbyteries were to beinterconnected, and their proceedings supervised, as in, Scotland, byperiodical Synods of the ministers and ruling elders of manyPresbyteries--say of all the Presbyteries of one large shire, or ofseveral small shires taken as a convenient ecclesiastical district. InScotland the practice was for all the ministers and ruling elders withinthe bounds of a Provincial Synod to attend the Synod personally; but inEngland, on account of her size, the plan of Synods of electedrepresentatives might be advisable--which, however, would not affect theprinciple. In any case, the annual National Assembly of the whole Church, which, under the new Presbyterian system, would be to England the sameEcclesiastical Parliament that the General Assembly in Edinburgh was toScotland, must necessarily, like that Assembly, be constitutedrepresentatively. Nothing less than all this was implied in the eightResolutions of the Commons on Friday, Jan. 23, 1644-5. By an order ofMonday the 27th, however, Mr. Rous, who had been commissioned to reportthe Resolutions to the Lords, was instructed to report only four ofthem, --the 3rd, the 6th, the 7th, and the 8th. The answer of the Lords onthe following day was "That this House agrees with the House of Commonsin all the Votes now brought up concerning Church-government. " Inrefraining from sending up all the eight Votes, the Commons appear tohave thought it best not yet positively to determine against theCongregationalists on one or two points, including that of strictparochialism. But in the four Votes sent up to the Lords and agreed to bythem, all the essentials of Presbytery were involved; so that from the28th of January 1644-5 it stood registered in the Acts of Parliament thatEngland should, be Presbyterianized. [Footnote: Commons and LordsJournals of dates given. ]

At this stage of the proceedings we may leave the Westminster Assemblyfor a while. On the 26th of December, Johnstone of Warriston and Mr. Barclay had left it, in order to be present at the Scottish Convention ofEstates, which was to meet at Edinburgh on the 7th of January; [Footnote:Baillie, II. 251. ] and on the 6th of January Baillie and Gillespie leftit, on a weary horse-journey, in order to be present at the GeneralAssembly of the Scottish Kirk, which was to meet at the same place on the22nd. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 250. ] Henderson and Rutherford remained inLondon. What tidings were carried by the Scottish Commissioners toEdinburgh of the great things which the Lord had up to that time done forthe cause of Presbytery and true Religion in England may be read to thisday in the records of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish GeneralAssembly of 1645. Baillie's exulting speech in the Assembly is reallyworth reading. [Footnote: It is given in Baillie's Letters, II. 255-257. But see also Letter of Scottish Commissioners and Letter of WestminsterAssembly to the Scottish General Assembly, both of date Jan. 6, 1645, inActs of General Assembly of the Kirk. ] Suffice it to say here that therewas great rejoicing in Edinburgh and in all Scotland; that the GeneralAssembly unanimously ratified the Westminster Directory of Worship (Feb. 3) and the Westminster Frame of Presbyterial government (Feb. 10); andthat the Scottish Parliament (Feb. 6) approved and established, forScotland, the Directory already established for England. Let us add thatBaillie had a pleasant holiday, revisited his wife and family in Glasgow, and would fain have been allowed to remain in his own countrythenceforth. But this could not be. Both he and Gillespie had to obeyorders, and prepare, with sighs, for a return to London in March. 

STATE OF THE WAR: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL. 

During the six months the transactions of which, as far as theWestminster Assembly was concerned, we have thus presented in summary(Sept. 1644-March 1645), the hurry of more general events in England hadbeen very marked. Of what use was the preparation of a Presbyterian Formof Church-government, and a Presbyterian Directory of Worship, forEngland, so long as it remained uncertain whether England might not beonce again the King's, and the Parliament under his feet? And, really, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King: ithad spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's defeat inCornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off, In the confidence ofthat victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford(Sept. 30), sending proclamations before him, and threatening a marchupon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven(Oct. 19) was a return of good fortune for the Parliament at the rightmoment; at least it provided the Londoners again with their long-missedcoals. But it had come now to be a contest between the King's main forceand the combined forces of Parliament in the South-English midlands. Inthe second Battle of Newbury (Sunday, Oct. 27) the issue was tried--theEarl of Manchester's army, with Cromwell second in it, having been joinedto the recruited armies of Essex and Waller in order to resist the King. Manchester and Waller were the real Parliamentary commanders, Essex beingill. It was a severe battle. The King had, on the whole, the worst; buthe got off, as Cromwell and others thought, less thoroughly beaten thanhe ought to have been. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 721-730; Carlyle'sCromwell (ed. 1857), I. L59. ] From the date of this second Battle ofNewbury, accordingly, Cromwell became the spokesman of a dissatisfactionwith the military and political conduct of the cause of Parliament asdeep and as wide-spread throughout England as that dissatisfaction withthe conduct of the religious question of which he had made himself thespokesman six weeks before. 

What Cromwell had thought when he moved the Accommodation Order of Sept. 13 had been virtually this: "Here are you discoursing about strictPresbytery and what differences from it may be tolerated, when the realquestion is whether we shall have a free England for Presbytery oranything else to exist in, and how we can carry with us all honest menwho will fight to make such a free England. " And now, when, after thesecond Battle of Newbury, he again reappeared in Parliament, it was inthis prolongation, or profounder state, of the same mood:--"The time hascome when I must speak out. We, of this nation, must turn over a newleaf. We have been fighting the King now for more than two years, and weare very much as we were when we began. And why? Because the men whocommand our armies against the King do not want really to beat him;because they want only to _seem_ to be beating him; because thepicture they love to look on, as their heaven on earth to come, is apicture of their gracious sovereign, after he has been beaten no morethan could be helped, surrounded by themselves as his reconciled andpardoned ministers and chatting pleasantly with them over the deeds ofthe campaigns. I say nothing personally of my Lord of Essex, or of SirWilliam Waller: they are most honourable men. But I speak generally as Ifeel. If the King is to be beaten, it can only be by generals who want tobeat him, who will beat him to bits, who will use all means to beat him, who will gladly see in their armies the men who have the right_spirit_ in them for beating him. Are these the Presbyterians only?I trow not. I know my men; and I tell you that many of those that youcall Independents, that you call Anabaptists, Sectaries, and what not, are among the stoutest and godliest in England, and will go as far asany. Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers ofParliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his ownnotions of Religion and Church-government. _Now_ I complain of myLord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, theKing was beaten less than he might have been. He was allowed to get off. I advised pursuing him, and my Lord Manchester would not. It was thatover again which has been from the first. And now I speak out what haslong been in my mind, and what brave men in thousands are thinking. Before the Lord, we must turn over a new leaf in this War. We must havean Army of the right sort of men, and men of the right sort to commandthat Army. "

This is a purely imaginary speech of Cromwell's; but it is an accurateexpression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men atall times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the mosttempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of hislife that he carried everything before him at such times by his burstsand tempests. There can be no doubt that, after the second Battle ofNewbury, Cromwell was in one of his paroxysms. Of his vehemence againstManchester at that time, and of Manchester's recriminations on him, onemay read at large in Rushworth and elsewhere. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 732-736; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 159, 160. ] The brief accountof Baillie, who had not yet left London, and was in the centre of thewhole affair, will be sufficient here. "Lieutenant-general Cromwell, "writes Baillie, Dec. 1, "has publicly, in the House of Commons, accusedmy Lord of Manchester of the neglect of fighting at Newbury. That neglectindeed was great; for, as we now are made sure, the King's army was inthat posture that they took themselves for lost all-utterly. Yet thefault is most in justly charged on Manchester: it was common to all thegeneral officers then present, and to Cromwell himself as much as to anyother. Always my Lord Manchester has cleared himself abundantly in theHouse of Lords, and there has recriminate Cromwell as one who has avowedhis desire to abolish the nobility of England; who has spokencontumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to England to establishtheir Church-government, in which Cromwell said he would draw his swordagainst them; also against the Assembly of Divines; and has threatened tomake a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from King andParliament, what conditions they thought meet. This fire was long underthe emmers; now it's broken out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, forthe interest of our nation, we must crave reason of that darling of theSectaries [_i. E. _ bring Cromwell to a reckoning], and, in obtaininghis removal from the army--which himself by his over-rashness hasprocured--to break the power of that potent faction. This is our presentdifficile enterprise: we had need of your prayers. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 243-245. ] In this account Baillie mixes up the proceedings in theCommons on the 25th of November when Cromwell exhibited his chargeagainst Manchester, and in the Lords a few days after when Manchestergave in his defence and countercharge, with current gossip, apparentlytrue enough, of Cromwell and his awful sayings in private. EvidentlyBaillie thought Cromwell had ruined himself. Even the hero of MarstonMoor could not beard all respectable England in this way, and it shouldnot be the fault of the Scottish Commissioners if he did not find himselfshelved! Little did Baillie know with what great things, beyond allScottish power of resistance or machination, Cromwell's fury waspregnant. 

While Baillie was writing the passage above quoted, the ScottishCommissioners, along with the Lord-general Essex, and some of Essex'schief adherents, including Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton, wereconsulting how they might trip Cromwell up. At a conference late onenight at Essex-house, to which Whitlocke and Maynard were invited, theScottish Chancellor Loudoun moved the business warily in a speech whichWhitlocke mischievously tries to report in its native Scotch--"You kenvary weele that Lieutenant-general Cromwell is no friend of ours, " &c. "You ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms" &c. Loudounwanted to know, especially from the two lawyers, whether the Scottishplan of procedure in such cases would have any chance in England, inother words whether Cromwell could be prosecuted as an _incendiary_;for "you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an_incendiary_ whay kindleth coals of contention and raiseth differences inthe State to the public damage. " Whitlocke and Maynard satisfied hislordship that the thing was possible in law, but suggested the extremedifficulty there would be in proof, represented Cromwell's greatinfluence in the Parliament and the country, and in fact discouraged thenotion altogether. Holles, Stapleton, and others were still eager forproceeding, but the Scots were impressed and thought delay would beprudent. And so, Whitlocke tells us, the Presbyterian intriguers partedat two in the morning, and he had reason to believe that Cromwell knewall that had passed before many hours were over, and that thisprecipitated what followed. [Footnote: Whitlocke's Memorials (edit. Oxford, 1853), I. 3l3 _et seq. _]

On Wednesday the 9th of December, at all events, the Commons having metin grand committee on the condition of the kingdom through thecontinuance of the war, there was for a time a dead silence, as ifsomething extraordinary was expected, and then Cromwell rose and made ashort speech. It was very solemn, and even calm, but so hazy and generalthat the practical drift of it could not possibly have been guessed butfor the sequel. Almost the last words of the speech were, "I hope we havesuch true English hearts, and zealous affections towards the general wealof our mother-country, as no members of either House will scruple to_deny themselves, _ and their own private interests, for the publicgood. " The words, vague enough in themselves, are memorable as havingchristened by anticipation the measure for which Cromwell, as he utteredthem, was boring the way. For, after one or two more had spoken in thesame general strain, Mr. Zouch Tate, member for Northampton, did the dutyassigned him, and opened the bag which contained the cat. He made adistinct motion, which, when it had been seconded by young Vane, anddebated by others (Cromwell again saying a few words, and luminous enoughthis time), issued in this resolution, "That no member of either House ofParliament shall during the war enjoy or execute any office or command, military or civil; and that an ordinance be brought in to that effect. "This was on the 9th of December; and on the 19th of that month theordinance itself, having gone through all its stages, passed the Commons. All London was astounded. "The House of Commons, " writes Baillie, Dec. 26, "in one hour has ended all the quarrels which was betwixt Manchesterand Cromwell, all the obloquies against the General, the grumblingsagainst the proceedings of many members of their House. They have takenall office from all members of both Houses. This, done on a sudden, inone session, with great unanimity, is still more and more admired bysome, as a most wise, necessary, and heroic action; by others as the mostrash, hazardous, and unjust action that ever Parliament did. Much may besaid on both hands, but as yet it seems a dream, and the bottom of it isnot understood. " To the House of Lords the _Self-denying Ordinance_was by no means palatable. They demurred, conferred with the Commonsabout it, and at last (Jan. 15) rejected it. Their chief ground ofrejection being that they did not know what was to be the shape of theArmy to be officered on the new principle, the Commons immediatelyproduced their scheme in that matter. The existing armies were to beweeded, consolidated, and recruited into one really effective army of21, 000 men (of which 6, 000 should be horse in ten regiments, 1, 000 shouldbe dragoons in ten single companies, and 14, 000 should be foot inregiments of not less than 1, 200 each), the whole to cost 44, 955_l_. Per month, to be raised by assessment throughout the kingdom. This army, it was farther resolved by the Commons (Jan. 21), should be commanded inchief by the trusty and popular Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had done so wellin the North, and, under him, by the trusty and popular Major-generalSkippon, whose character for bull-headed bravery even the disaster inCornwall had only more fully brought out. [Footnote: I find, from theCommons Journals, that there was a division on the question whetherFairfax should be appointed commander-in-chief of the New Model--thestate of the vote being _Yeas_ 101 against _Noes_ 69, or a majority of 32_for_ the appointment. The Tellers for the majority were the younger Vaneand Cromwell; for the minority, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton. There was a subsequent division, Feb. 7, on the question whetherFairfax's choice of officers under him should be subject to Parliamentaryrevision. Cromwell was one of the Tellers for the _Noes_--_i. E. _ hewanted Fairfax to have full powers. The other side, however, beat thistime by a majority of 82 against 63. After all it was arrangedsatisfactorily between Fairfax and Parliament. ] On the 28th of Januarythe _New Model_ complete passed the Commons. The Lords hesitated aboutsome parts of it, and were especially anxious for a provision in itincapacitating all from being officers or soldiers in the new army whoshould not have taken the Covenant: there were conferences on this point, and a kind of compromise on it by the Commons; and on the 15th ofFebruary the _Ordinance for New Modelling of the Army_ was finallypassed. The _Self-denying Ordinance_ was then re-introduced in a changedform, and it passed the Lords, April 3, 1645. It ordained that allmembers of either House who had since November 20, 1640, been appointedto any offices, military or civil, should, at the end of forty days fromthe passing of the Ordinance, vacate these offices, but that all otherofficers in commission on the 20th of March, 1644-5, should continue inthe posts they then held. 

Thus the year 1645 (beginning, in English reckoning, March 25) openedwith new prospects. Essex, Manchester, Waller, and all the officers underthem, retired into ordinary life, with thanks and honours--Essex, indeed, with a great pension; and the fighting for Parliament was thenceforwardto be done mainly by a re-modelled Army, commanded by Fairfax, Skippon, and officers under them, whose faces were unknown in Parliament, andwhose business was to be to fight only and teach the art of fighting. 

It was high time! For another long bout of negotiations with the King, begun as early as Nov. 20, 1644, and issuing in a formal Treaty of greatceremony, called "The Treaty of Uxbridge, " had ended, as usual, in noresult. Feb. 22, it had been broken off after such a waste of speechesand arguments on paper that the account of the Treaty occupies ten pagesin Clarendon and fifty-six folio pages in Rushworth. It was clear thatthe year 1645 was to be a year of continued war. [Footnote: For thisstory of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Modelling of the Armyauthorities are--Rushworth, VI. 1-16; Baillie, II. 247; Carlyle'sCromwell (ed. 1857), I. 160-163. The Uxbridge Treaty is narrated inClarendon's Hist. (one-volume ed. 1843), pp. 520-530, and in Rushworth, V. 787-842. ]

PARLIAMENTARY VENGEANCES: DEATH OF LAUD. 

Ere we pass out of the rich general history of this year 1644, the yearof Marston Moor, we must take note of a few vengeances and deaths withwhich it was wound up. The long-deferred trial of poor Laud, begun March12, 1643-4, after he had been more than three years a prisoner in theTower, and they might have left him there in quiet, had straggled onthrough the whole of 1644. The interest in it had run, like a red thread, through the miscellany of other events. The temper of the people had beenmade fiercer by the length of the war, and there was a desire for the oldman's blood. The Presbyterian ministers of the Assembly, I find, fosteredthis desire. In that very sermon of Herbert Palmer's before Parliament(Aug. 13) in which he had called for the extirpation of heresy andschism, and denounced Milton, there was an express passage on the duty of"doing justice upon Delinquents impartially and without respect ofpersons. " [Footnote: Palmer's Sermon, p. 48. ] Calamy in his sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parliament, "All the guilty blood that Godrequires you in justice to shed, and you spare, God will require theblood at your hands. " [Footnote: Calamy's Sermon, p. 27. ] Mr. FrancisWoodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which wason Rev. Xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the proprietyof always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise withoutone's garments; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literaltreatment of the subject suggests, we come upon a passage describing oneof four pieces of raiment which the State ought never to be caughtwithout. He calls it the "Robe of Justice, " and adds, "Would God thisrobe were often worn, and dyed of a deeper colour in the blood ofDelinquents. It is that which God and man calls for. God repeats it, _Justice, Justice_; we, echoing God, cry _Justice, Justice_; and let mesay, perhaps we should not see other garments so much rolled in blood, did we not see these so little. " [Footnote: Woodcock's Sermon, pp 30, 31. ] Baillie, I am glad to think, was more tender-hearted. There was, indeed, one Delinquent for whom Baillie would have had no mercy--Dr. Maxwell, the Scottish ex-Bishop of Ross, who had published at Oxford, inthe King's interest, "a desperately malicious invective" against ScottishPresbytery and its leaders. "However I could hardly consent to thehanging of Canterbury himself, or of any Jesuit, " Baillie had written, July 16, 1644, after his first indignant sight of this book, "yet I couldgive my sentence freely against that unhappy liar's [Maxwell's] life. "But, indeed, the Scottish Commissioners and the Scottish nation wereconjoined as parties with the English Presbyterians and the EnglishParliamentarians generally (Prynne ruthlessly busy in getting up theevidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th ofJanuary, 1644-5. On that day Laud, aged 72, laid his head upon the blockon a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with somedifficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High-Church to thelast. [Footnote: Rushworth's main account of the trial and last days ofLaud is in Vol. V. Pp, 763-786. The "History of the Troubles and Tryal ofWilliam Laud, " edited by Wharton, in two vols. Folio, appeared in 1695-1700. ]--Minor executions about the same time were those of Hugh Macmahonand Lord Maguire for their concern in the Irish rebellion and massacre, Sir Alexander Carew for treachery at Plymouth, and the Hothams, fatherand son, for treachery at Hull. One Roger L'Estrange, a younger son of aNorfolk family, had been condemned to be hanged in Smithfield for anunderhand attempt to win the town of Lynn for the King; but he wasreprieved, lay in Newgate for some years, and lived for sixty yearslonger, to be known, even in Queen Anne's time, as Sir Roger L'Estrange, the journalist. 

CHAPTER II. 

MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES, AND IN A "WORLD OF DISESTEEM": STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY--SAMUEL HARTLIB, JOHN DURIE, AND JOHN AMOS COMENIUS: SCHEMES OF AREFORMED EDUCATION, AND PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY--MILTON'S _TRACTON EDUCATION_, AND METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS--HIS SECOND DIVORCE TRACT, OR COMPILATION FROM BUCER--MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THEPULPIT--MILTON AND THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: THEIR ACCUSATION OF HIM IN APETITION TO THE COMMONS--HIS _AREOPAGITICA_, OR SPEECH FOR THELIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING--ANGER OF THE STATIONERS, AND THEIRCOMPLAINT AGAINST MILTON TO THE LORDS: CONSEQUENCE OF THE COMPLAINT--THEDIVORCE QUESTION CONTINUED: PUBLICATION OF MR. HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON, AND FARTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON BY PRYNNE, DR. FEATLEY, AND AN ANONYMOUSPAMPHLETEER--_TETRACHORDON AND COLASTERION_: THEIR REPLIES TO THEASSAILANTS. 

Ever since August 1643, when Milton had published his extraordinary_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, but more especially since Feb. 1643-4, when he had published the second and enlarged edition of it, withhis name in full, and the dedication to Parliament and the WestminsterAssembly, his reputation with orthodox English society had been definiteenough. He was one of those dreadful Sectaries! Nay he was a Sectary moreodious than most; for his was a _moral_ heresy. What was Independency, what was Anabaptism, what was vague Antinomianism, compared with thisheresy of the household, this loosening of the holy relation on which allcivil society depended? How detestable the doctrine that, when twomarried people found they had made a mistake in coming together, or atleast when the husband could declare before God and human witnesses hisirreconcilable dissatisfaction with his wife, then it was right that thetwo should be separated, with liberty to each to find a new mate! True, it was an able man who had divulged this heresy, one who had broughtapplauses from Cambridge, who was said to have written beautiful Englishpoems, who had served the cause of Parliament by some splendid pamphletsfor Church-reformation and against Episcopacy, and who had in thesepamphlets encountered even the great Bishop Hall. All this only made thedoctrine more dangerous, the aberration more lamentable. This Mr. Miltonmust be avoided, and denounced as a Sectary of the worst kind! Some saidit was all owing to the conduct of his wife, a rank Royalist, who haddeserted him and gone back to her friends! If that were the case, he wasto be pitied; but perhaps there were two sides to that story too!

There must have been much gossip of this kind, about Milton and hisDivorce Treatise, in the booksellers' shops near St. Paul's, and evenround the Parliament in Westminster, in the early months of 1644. Thegossip may have affected Milton's relations with some of his formerfriends and acquaintances. If Bishop Hall, when he first saw thetreatise, and perceived its literary ability, "blushed for his age" thatso "scandalous" a thing should have appeared, and if even Howell theletter-writer, in his prison, thought it the impudent production of "apoor shallow-brained puppy, " what could Milton's orthodox and reverendSmectymnuan friends--Marshall, Calamy, Young, Newcomen, and Spurstow--think or say about it? Shocked they must have been; and, knowing Milton'stemper, and with what demeanour he would front any remonstrances oftheirs, they probably left him alone, and became scarcer in their visitsto Aldersgate Street. It would not do to keep up the Smectymnuanconnexion too visibly after what had happened. Or, if Young could notbreak off so easily, but would still call to see his old pupil, and totalk with old Mr. Milton about the Bread Street days, how the good manmust have yearned to speak sometimes when the old gentleman was out ofthe way, and he and Milton were alone. "O my dear Mr. Milton, how much weare all concerned about that pamphlet! I am not going to argue it withyou; I know you too well, and how little influence my reasonings couldhave with you now in any such matter; and it is my comfort at least to beable to tell some of my Assembly friends that, if they knew you as wellas I do, they would be sure that nothing you do but is done in a greatspirit and with a high intention. But, dear me! it is a terrible opinionyou have broached!" To something like this Milton may have listened, moreor less patiently; or he may have imagined it in Young's mind, if it wasnot uttered. The mutual regard between Young and his old pupil did notsuffer so much from the trial but that we find Milton still willing toacknowledge publicly the connexion that had subsisted between them. 

On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the outcry aboutMilton's treatise among the London Presbyterians, and especially amongthe city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton morearid more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dreadthe ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from thefirst publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in "a world ofdisesteem" on account of it, he naturally held intercourse more and morewith those who, though they may not have approved of _his_ particularheresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, weremore easy in their judgments of all extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643-4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have beenchiefly among the Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, andother Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the LadyMargaret Ley, that "woman of great wit and ingenuity, " and her husbandCaptain Hobson, "a very accomplished gentleman, " with both of whom he wasso intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had aparticular honour for him and took much delight in his company, " must beleft to conjecture. [Footnote: It has been in my mind whether the CaptainHobson who was the Lady Ley's husband, and whom Dagdale describes as "... Hobson of... In the Isle of Wight, Esq. , " can by possibility have beenthe same person as the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who was also aCaptain in the Parliamentary Army, and who figures much in Edwards's_Gangręna_ and in other books of the time, under the express name of"Captain Hobson, " as a leading Sectary, though Edwards will have it thathe was originally "a tailor from Buckinghamshire" (_antč_, p. 148). Thesupposition seems so absurd that I hardly like to mention that I spenthours in turning over Paul Hobson's published sermons and Baptisttreatises in case I might come on any confirmation of it--which I did_not_. ]

From Milton's Sonnet to the Lady Margaret one may safely infer at leastthat she was a woman of liberal principles as well as wit. Probably herhouse was the resort of a good many of what would now be called the"advanced" or "strong-minded" Christians of both sexes then in London;and Milton may there have extended his acquaintance with such, and haveeven been an object of peculiar interest to some of one sex, as "thathandsome, fair gentleman, now talking to Lady Margaret, who is a greatscholar and a poet, and whose wife has left him shamefully, so that hewants to be divorced from her, and has written a book which quite provesit. " Milton's acquaintance with Roger Williams, at all events, is almostcertainly to be dated from Williams's visit to England in 1643-4, when hewas writing his _Bloody Tenent_; and if Milton, at the same time, did not become acquainted with John Goodwin of Coleman Street, it wouldbe a wonder. 

STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY. 

We must, I am sorry to say, descend lower in the society of London, inand about 1644, than the Lady Margaret Ley's drawing-room, or the levelof marked men like Williams and Goodwin, if we would understand howMilton's Divorce opinion had begun to operate, and with what consequencesof its operation his name was associated. The reader may remember a Mrs. Attaway, mentioned by us among both the Baptists and the Seekers, and asperhaps the most noted of all the women-preachers in London (_antč_, pp. 149, 153). She was, it seems, a "lace-woman, dwelling in Bell Alleyin Coleman Street, " and preaching on week-day afternoons in thatneighbourhood, with occasional excursions to other parts of the citywhere rooms could be had. Sometimes other "preaching-women" were withher, and the gatherings, though at first of her own sex only, soonattracted curious persons of the other. From the descriptions of whatpassed in some of them, it would appear that, though the meetings werefor worship, and there were regular discourses by Mrs. Attaway andothers, free talk and criticism was permitted to all present, so that theconventicle took on sometimes the aspect of a religious debating society. Well, Mrs. Attaway, among others, had got hold of Milton's DivorceTreatise, and had been reading it. "Two gentlemen of the Inns of Court, civil and well-disposed men, " who had gone "out of novelty" to hear her, afterwards told _Gangręna_ Edwards of some "discourse they had hadwith her. " Among other passages she "spoke to them of Master Milton's_Doctrine of Divorce_, and asked them what they thought of it;saying "it was a point to be considered of, and that she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that didnot walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of Canaan. " Edwardsdoes not give the date of this conversation with Mrs. Attaway; and, though presumably in 1644, it may have been later. He evidentlyintroduces it, however, in order to implicate Milton in the subsequentbreak-down, which he also reports, of the poor woman morally. For, if Mr. Edwards is to be believed, Mrs. Attaway did "look more into" Milton'sdoctrine, and at length acted upon it. Some time in 1645 she abjured her"unsanctified husband" Mr. Attaway, who, besides being unsanctified, wasthen absent in the army, leaving her alone in her lace-shop, andtransferred herself to a man named William Jenney, an occasionalpreacher, who was much more sanctified, and was also on the spot. Mr. Jenney had, unfortunately, a wife already, some children by her, and oneexpected; but ho too had been meditating on the Divorce Doctrine, and hadused his Christian liberty. Mr. Edwards had been most particular in hisinvestigations. He had actually procured from a sure hand the copies oftwo letters-taken from the original letters, and compared by a ministerwith the originals--one of William Jenney to his wife since he went awaywith Mistress Attaway, the other of Mistress Attaway to William Jenneybefore his going away. " He refrains from printing the letters_verbatim_, as they were too long; but he gives extracts. "I thoughtgood to write to you these few lines, " writes Jenney to the deserted Mrs. Jenney, Feb. 15, 1645, "to tell you that, because you have been to merather a disturber of my body and soul than to be a meet help for me----but I silence! And, for looking for me to come to you again, I shallnever come to you again any more. I shall send unto you never no moreconcerning anything. " If this actually was Jenney's letter, Mrs. Attawaywas worth ten of him, and deserved a better second. "Dearest friend andwell-beloved in the Lord, " so she had begun the letter sent to him whilehe was still Mrs. Jenney's, and which had got into Mrs. Jenney's hands, "I am unspeakably sorry in respect of thy sufferings, I being the objectthat occasioned it. " The sufferings were Mrs. Jenney's bastings of himbecause he was always with Mrs. Attaway. In good time, Mrs. Attaway goeson to say, he would be delivered from these. "When Jehoshaphat knew notwhat to do, he looked to the Lord. Let _us_ look to Him, believingconfidently in Him with the faith of Jesus; and no question but we shallbe delivered. In the mean season I shall give up my heart and affectionsto thee in the Lord; and, whatsoever I have or am in Him which is ourHead, thou shalt command it. " The event, according to Edwards, was thatMr. Jenney and Mrs. Attaway eloped together, Mrs. Attaway havingpersuaded Jenney that she should never die, but that, in obedience to aheavenly message, they must go to Jerusalem, and repair that city inanticipation of the bringing of all the Saints to it in ships to be sentfrom Tarshish. I suspect they went only to Jericho. [Footnote: This storyof Mrs. Attaway is from Edwards's _Gangręna_, Part II. Pp. 31, 32, 113-115; _Fresh Discovery_, appended to Second Part of _Gangręna_, p. 9; andThird Part of _Gangręna_, pp. 25-27 and 188. See also Baillie's_Dissuasive_, Part II. Pp. L00 and 123-4. ]

All this on the faith of Mr. Edwards's statements in the _Gangręna_. But really one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, deadtwo hundred years ago, on that sole authority. Never was there a morenauseous creature of the pious kind than this Presbyterian Paul Pry of1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for thereceipt of all sorts of secret information, by word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote:Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from thecountry to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealedtheir names. ] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-likeconscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous andunscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he inventeddocuments or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did knowof Milton's Divorce Doctrine, and had extracted suggestions from itsuitable to her circumstances. For, indeed, the Doctrine was likely tofind not a few whose circumstances it suited. Mr. Edwards's book isstrewn with instances of persons who had even found out a tantamountdoctrine for themselves--men who had left their wives, or wanted to doso, and wives who had left their husbands, and who, without having seenMilton's treatise, defended their act or their wish on grounds ofreligion and natural law. Nay, in the frenzy of inquiry which had takenpossession of the English mind, everything appertaining to Marriage andthe Marriage-institution was being plucked up for fundamental re-investigation. There were actually persons who were occupying themselvesintently with questioning the forbidden degrees of Consanguinity andAffinity in marriage, and who had not only come to the easy conclusionthat marriage with a deceased wife's sister is perfectly legitimate, buthad worked out a general theologico-physiological speculation to theeffect that the marriage of near relatives is in all cases peculiarlyproper, and perhaps the more proper in proportion to the nearness of therelationship. This, I imagine, was a very small sect. [Footnote: But, unless Edwards and Baillie were both wrong, there _was_ some suchsect. See _Gangręna_, Part III. P. 187, and, more particularly, Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. Pp. 100 and 122-3. ]

Let us re-ascend into more pleasant air. There was one rather notableperson in London, of the highly respectable sort, though, decidedly amongthe free opinionists, whose acquaintance Milton did make about this time, if he had not made it before, and who must be specially introduced to thereader. This was SAMUEL HARTLIB. 

SAMUEL HARTLIB: JOHN DURIE: JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, AND HIS SPECULATIONSABOUT A REFORMED EDUCATION--PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY. 

Everybody knew Hartlib. He was a foreigner by birth, being the son of aPolish merchant, of German extraction, who had left Poland when thatcountry fell under Jesuit rule, and had settled in Elbing in Prussia invery good circumstances. Twice married before to Polish ladies, thismerchant had married, in Prussia, for his third wife, the daughter of awealthy English merchant of Dantzic; and thus our Hartlib, their son, though Prussian-born and with Polish connexions, could reckon himselfhalf-English. The date of his birth was probably about the beginning ofthe century, _i. E. _ he may have been eight or ten years older thanMilton. He appears to have first visited England in or about 1628, andfrom that time, though he made frequent journeys to the Continent, Londonhad been his head-quarters. Here, with a residence in the City, he hadcarried on business as a "merchant, " with extensive foreigncorrespondences, and very respectable family connexions. One of his aunts(sisters of his mother) had married a Mr. Clark, the son of a former LordMayor of London, and afterwards a Sir Richard Smith, Knight and PrivyCouncillor, and again a Sir Edward Savage. The other aunt had married acountry gentleman, named Peak. A cousin of Hartlib's, the daughter of thefirst and wealthier aunt, Lady Smith, became the wife of Sir AnthonyIrby, M. P. For Boston in the Long Parliament. But it did not require suchfamily connexions to make Hartlib at home in English society. Thecharacter of the man would have made him at home anywhere. He was one ofthose persons, now styled "philanthropists" or "friends of progress, " whotake an interest in every question or project of their time promisingsocial improvement, have always some iron in the fire, are constantlyforming committees or writing letters to persons of influence, andaltogether live for the public. By the common consent of all who haveexplored the intellectual and social history of England in theseventeenth century, he is one of the most interesting and memorablefigures of that whole period. He is interesting both for what he didhimself and also on account of the number and intimacy of his contactswith other interesting people. [Footnote: Memoir of Hartlib by H. Dircks, pp 2-6, where there are extracts from an autobiographical letter ofHartlib to Worthington, written in 1660. "The Diary and Correspondence ofDr. John Worthington, " edited by James Crossley, Esq. , F. S. A. (ChethamSociety), contains many letters from Hartlib to Worthington, between 1655and 1662, but not this one. Mr. Crossley's Diary and Correspondence ofWorthington, so far as it has gone, is one of the best edited books knownto me, the footnotes being very nuggets of biographical lore; and it isto be regretted that the connected notices of Worthington, Hartlib, andDurie, postponed by Mr. Crossley until the work should be completed, havenot yet appeared. ]

An early friend of Hartlib, associated with him long before the date atwhich we are now arrived, was that John Durie of whom, and his famousscheme for a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe, we havealready had to take some account (Vol. II. Pp. 367-8 and 517-8). Theirintimacy must have begun in Hartlib's native town of Elbing in Prussia, where, I now find, Durie was residing in 1628, as minister to the Englishcompany of merchants in the town, and where, in that very year, I alsonow find, Durie had the great idea of his life first suggested to him bythe Swedish Dr. Godeman. [Footnote: The proof is in statements ofHartlib's own in a Tract of his published in 1641 under the title of "ABriefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procureEcclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants. "] Among Durie's firstdisciples in the idea must certainly have been Hartlib; and it does notseem improbable that, when Hartlib left Prussia, in or about 1628, tosettle in England, it was with an understanding that he was to be anagent or missionary for Durie's idea among the English. That he did soact, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea thanDurie himself, there is the most positive evidence. Thus, in a series ofletters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to thediplomatist Sir Thomas Roe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib. In the first of theseletters, dated from Heilbron April 2/12, 1633, Durie, among other things, begs Roe "to help Mr. Hartlib with a Petition of Divines of thosequarters concerning an Edition of a Body of Divinity gathered out ofEnglish authors, a work which will be exceeding profitable, but willrequire divers agents and an exact ordering of the work. " In a subsequentletter Durie speaks of having sent Roe, "by Mr. Hartlib, whose industryis specially recommended, " an important proposition made by the SwedishChancellor Oxenstiern; and in still later letters Roe is requested byDurie to show Hartlib not only Durie's letters to himself, but alsoletters about the progress of his scheme which he has enclosed to Roe forthe Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) and the Bishop of London (Laud). Atthis point, accordingly, July 20, 1633, there is a letter of Roe's to theArchbishop, from which it appears that Hartlib was made the bearer ofDurie's letter to his Grace. Roe recommends the blessed work in whichDurie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there isnothing wanting but the public declaration of his Majesty and the Churchof England" in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop "to give hiscountenance to the bearer, " described in the margin as "Mr. Hartlib, aPrussian. " As Abbot was then within fifteen days of his death, nothingcan have come of the application to him; and, as we already know, hissuccessor Laud was a far less hopeful subject for Durie's idea, eventhough recommended by Roe and explained by Hartlib. In fact, he thoughtit mischievous moonshine; and, instead of giving Durie the encouragementwhich he wanted, he wrote to the English agent at Frankfort, instructinghim to show Durie no countenance whatever. Durie felt the rebuff sorely. In England, he writes, he must depend now chiefly on Roe, who could stilldo much privately, apart from Laud's approbation. "Mr. Hartlib will sendanything to Durie which Roe would have communicated to him in a secretway. " So in June 1634; and fourteen months later (Aug. 1635) Durie, whohad meanwhile removed to the Hague, again writes to Roe and again relieson Hartlib. The Dutch, he says, are slow to take up his scheme; and hecan think of nothing better in the circumstances than that Roe in Englandshould collect "all the advices and comments of the best divines of theage" on the subject, and have them printed. His very best agent in such abusiness would be Hartlib, "a man well known, beloved and trusted by allsides, a man exceeding painful, diligent and cordially affected to theseendeavours, and one that for such works had lost himself by too muchcharity. " On independent grounds it would be well to find him "some placesuitable for his abilities, which might rid him of the undeservednecessities whereunto his public-heartedness had brought him;" but inthis special employment he would be invaluable, being "furnished with thePolish, Dutch, English, and Latin languages, perfectly honest and trusty, discreet, and well versed in affairs. " In the same strain in subsequentletters. Thus, from Amsterdam Dec. 7/17, Roe is thanked for havingbestowed some gratuity on Hartlib, and Hartlib is described as, next toRoe, "the man in the world whom Durie loves and honours most for hisvirtues and good offices in Durie's cause. " At the same time Durie "praysGod to free Hartlib from his straits and set him a little on horseback, "and adds, "His spirit is so large that it has lost itself in zeal to goodthings. " Again, from Amsterdam Jan 25/Feb 4, 1635-6, Durie writes to Roeand encloses a letter to be sent to his (Durie's) diocesan in Hartlib'sbehalf. "Mr. Hartlib, " Durie says to Roe, "has furnished his lordship(the diocesan) with intelligence from foreign parts for two or threeyears, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his lordship knowsnot how Hartlib has fallen into decay for being too charitable to poorscholars, and for undertaking too freely the work of schooling andeducation of children. If Hartlib and Roe were not in England, Duriewould despair of doing any good. " The diocesan referred to is probablyJuxon, Bishop of London; but, two years later, we find Roe recommendingDurie's business and Hartlib personally to another prelate, Bishop Mortonof Durham. Writing from St. Martin's Lane, Feb. 17, 1637-8, Sir Thomas"presents the Bishop with a letter from Mr. Durie, and one from Durie tothe writer, from which the Bishop may collect his state, and his constantresolution to pursue his business as long as God gives him bread to eat. Such a spirit the writer has never met, daunted with nothing, and onlyrelying upon Providence. ... Sir Thomas in Michaelmas term sent theBishop a great packet from Samuel Hartlib, correspondent of Durie, anexcellent man, and of the same spirit. If the Bishop like his way, Hartlib will constantly write to him, and send all the passages both oflearning and public affairs, no man having better information, especially_in re literariā_. " [Footnote: The quotations in this paragraph arefrom the late Mr. Brace's accurate abstracts of Durie's and Roe's letters(sixteen in all) given in the six volumes of Calendars of the DomesticState Papers from 1633 to 1638. ]

These letters enable us to see Hartlib as he was in 1637, a Prussiannaturalized in London, between thirty and forty years of age, nominally amerchant of some kind, but in reality a man of various hobbies, andconducting a general news-agency, partly as a means of income and partlyfrom sheer zeal in certain public causes interesting to himself. His zealin this way, and in private benevolences to needy scholars and inventors, had even outrun prudence; so that, though he could reckon his means atbetween 300_l_. And 400_l_. A year, [Footnote: This appears from theletter of his to Worthington, of date Aug. 3, 1660, quoted in Dircks'sMemoir (p. 4), where he says, "Let it not seem a paradox to you, if Itell you, as long as I have lived in England, by wonderful providences, Ihave spent yearly out of my own betwixt 300_l. _ and 400_l. _ sterling ayear. "] that had not sufficed for his openhandedness. Durie's greatproject for a reconciliation of the Calvinists and Lutherans, and a unionof all the Protestant Churches of Europe on some broad basis of mutualtolerance or concession, had hitherto been his hobby in chief. He hadother hobbies, however, of a more literary nature, and of late he hadbeen undertaking too freely some work appertaining to "the schooling andeducation of children. "

This last fact, which we learn hazily from Durie's letters and Roe's, weshould have known, abundantly and distinctly, otherwise. There are twopublications of Hartlib's, of the years 1637 and 1638 respectively, thefirst of a long and varied series that were to come from his pen. Now, both of these are on the subject of Education. "_Conatuum ComenianorumPręludia, ex Bibliothecā S. H. : Oxonię, Excudebat Gulielmus Turnerus, Academia Typographus_, 1637" ("Preludes of the Endeavours of Comenius, from the Library of S. H. : Oxford, Printed by William Turner, UniversityPrinter, 1637")--such is the general title of the first of thesepublications. It is a small quarto, and consists first of a Preface"_Ad Lectorem_" (to the Reader), signed "Samuel Hartlibius, " andthen of a foreign treatise which it is the object of the publication tointroduce to the attention of Oxford and of the English nation; whichtreatise has this separate title:--"_Porta Sapientię Reserata; sivePansophię Christianę Seminarium: hoc est, Nova, Compendiosa et Solidaomnes Scientias et Artes, et quicquid manifesti vel occulti est quodingenio humano penetrare, solertię imitari, linguae eloqui, datur, brevius, verius, melius, quam hactenus, Addiscendi Methodus: AuctoreReverendo Clarissimoque viro Domino Johanne Amoso Comenio_" ("The Gateof Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge: being aNew, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak: The author that Reverendand most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius"). So far as I havebeen able to trace, this is the first publication bearing the name ofHartlib. Copies of it must be scarce, but there is at least one in theBritish Museum. There also is a copy of what, on the faith of an entry inthe Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his secondpublication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book called_Comenii Pansophię Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ (Comenius'sHarbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published bySam. Hartlib. " [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers. ] When thething actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the date "1639" onthe title-page. 

The canvas becomes rather crowded; but I am bound to introduce here tothe reader "that reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John AmosComenius, " who had been winning on Hartlib's heart by his theories ofEducation and Pansophia, prepossessed though that heart was by Durie andhis scheme of Pan-Protestantism. 

He was an Austro-Slav, born in 1592, at Comnia in Moravia, whence hisname Jan Amos Komensky, Latinized into Joannes Amosius Comenius. Hisparents were Protestants of the sect known as the Bohemian or MoravianBrethren, who traced their origin to the followers of Huss. Left anorphan in early life, he was poorly looked after, and was in hissixteenth year before he began to learn Latin. Afterwards he studied invarious places, and particularly at Herborn in the Duchy of Nassau;whence he returned to his native Moravia in 1614, to become Rector of aschool at Prerau. Here it was that he first began to study and practisenew methods of teaching, and especially of grammatical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on thatsubject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Ratich, anEducational Reformer then very active in Germany. From Prerau Comeniusremoved in 1618 to Fulneck, to be pastor to a congregation of MoravianBrethren there; but, as he conjoined the charge of a new school with hispastorate, he continued his interest in new methods of education. Manuscripts of schoolbooks which he was preparing on his new methodsperished, with his library, in a sack of Fulneck in 1621 by theSpaniards; and in 1624, on an edict proscribing all the Protestantministers of the Austrian States, Comenius lost his living, and tookrefuge in the Bohemian mountains with a certain Baron Sadowski ofSlaupna. In this retreat he wrote, in 1627, a short educational Directoryfor the use of the tutor of the baron's sons. But, the persecution waxingfurious, and 30, 000 families being driven out of Bohemia for theirProtestantism, Comenius had to migrate to Poland It was with a heavyheart that lie did so: and, as he and his fellow-exiles crossed themountain-boundary on their way, they looked back on Moravia and Bohemia, and, falling on their knees, prayed God not to let His truth fail utterlyout of those hinds, but to preserve a remnant in them for himself. Lesznoin Poland was Comenius's new refuge. Here again he employed himself inteaching; and here, in a more systematic manner than before, he pursuedhis speculations on the science of teaching and on improved methods forthe acquisition of universal knowledge. He read, he tells us, all theworks he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors orcontemporaries, such as Ratich, Ritter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Cęcilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreę, and also the philosophical works ofCampanella and Lord Bacon; but he combined the information so obtainedwith his own ideas and experience. The results he seems mainly to havejotted down, for future use, in various manuscript papers in his Slavicvernacular, or in German, or in Latin; but in 1631 he was induced by thecurators of the school at Leszno to send to the press in Latin one bookof a practical and particular nature. This was a so-called "_JanuaLinguarum Reserata_, " or "Gate of Languages Opened, " propounding amethod which he had devised, and had employed at Leszno, for rapidlyteaching Latin, or any other tongue, and at the same time communicatingthe rudiments of useful knowledge. The little book, though he thought ita trifle, made him famous. "It happened, as I could not have imaginedpossible, " he himself writes, "that that puerile little work was receivedwith a sort of universal applause by the learned world. This wastestified by very many persons of different countries, both by letters tomyself congratulating me earnestly on the new invention, and also bytranslations into the various popular tongues, undertaken as if inrivalry with each other. Not only did editions which we have ourselvesseen appear in all the European tongues, twelve in number--viz. Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German. Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian; but it was translated, as we havelearnt, into such Asiatic tongues as the Arabic, the Turkish, thePersian, and even the Mongolian. "

The process which Comenius thus describes must have extended over severalyears. There are traces of knowledge of him, and of his _JanuaLinguarum Reserata_, in England as early as 1633. In that year aThomas Home, M. A. , then a schoolmaster in London, but afterwards Masterof Eton, put forth a "_Janua Linguarum_" which is said by AnthonyWood to have been taken, "all or most, " from Comenius. An actual Englishtranslation or expansion of Comenius's book, by a John Anchoran, licentiate in Divinity, under the title of "The Gate of Tongues Unlockedand Opened: or else A Summary or Seed-Plot of all Tongues and Sciences, "reached its "fourth edition much enlarged" in 1639, and may be presumedto have been in circulation, in other forms, some years before. But thegreat herald of Comenius and his ideas among the English was SamuelHartlib. Not only may he have had to do with the importation ofComenius's _Janua Linguarum_ and the recommendation of that book tosuch pedagogues as Home and Anchoran; but he was instrumental inextracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to itwere in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of hisreserved and more general theories and intentions in the field ofDidactics. The story is told very minutely by Comenius himself. 

The _Janua Linguarum Reserata_ was only a proposed improvement inthe art of teaching Language or Words; and ought not a true system ofeducation to range beyond that, and provide for a knowledge of Things?This was what Comenius was thinking: he was meditating a sequel to hispopular little book, to be called "_Janua Rerum Reserata" or "Gate ofThings Opened, " and to contain an epitome or encyclopędia of allessential knowledge, under the three heads of Nature, Scripture, and theMind of Man. Nay, borrowing a word which had appeared as the title of asomewhat meagre Encyclopędia of the Arts by a Peter Laurenbergius, Comenius had resolved on _Pansophia_, or _Pansophia Christiana_("Universal Wisdom, " or "Universal Christian Wisdom"), as a fitalternative name for this intended _Janua Rerum_. But he was keeping thework back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be persuaded to letthe announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue offorthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become sodear a friend to Comenius that he could refuse _him_ nothing. Whetherthere had been any prior personal acquaintance between Hartlib andComenius, by reason of their German and Slavic connexions, I cannot say. But, since the publication of the _Janua Linguarum_, Hartlib had been incorrespondence with Comenius in his Polish home; and, by 1636, hisinterest in the designs of Comenius, and willingness to forward them, hadbecome so well known in the circle of the admirers of Comenius that hehad been named as one of the five chief Comenians in Europe, the otherfour being Zacharias Schneider of Leipsic, Sigismund Evenius of Weimar, John Mochinger of Dantzic, and John Docemius of Hamburg. Now, Hartlib, having heard of the intended _Janua Rerum_ or _Pansophia_ of Comenius, not only in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming works, but also, moreparticularly, from some Moravian students passing through London, hadwritten to Comenius, requesting some sketch of it. "Being thus asked, "says Comenius, "by the most intimate of my friends, a man piously eagerfor the public good, to communicate some idea of my future work, I didcommunicate to him in writing, in a chance way, what I had a thought ofprefixing some time or other to the work in the form of a Preface; andthis, beyond my hope, and without my knowledge, was printed at Oxford, under the title of _Conatuum Comenianorum Pręludia_. " Here we have thewhole secret of that publication from the Oxford University press, in1637, which was edited by Hartlib and announced as being from hisLibrary. It was not a reprint of anything that had already appearedabroad, but was in fact a new treatise by the great Comenius whichHartlib had persuaded the author to send him from Poland and hadpublished on his own responsibility. He had apologized to Comenius for sodoing, on the ground that the publication would "serve a good purpose byfeeling the way and ascertaining the opinions of learned and wise men ina matter of such unusual consequence. " Comenius was a little nettled, hesays, especially as criticisms of the Pansophic sketch began to come in, which would have been obviated, he thought, if he had been allowedquietly to develop the thing farther before publication. Nevertheless, there the book was, and the world now knew of Comenius not only as theauthor of the little _Janua Linguarum_, but also as contemplating a vast_Janua Rerum_, or organization of universal knowledge on a new basis. --Infact, the fame of Comenius was increased by Hartlib's littleindiscretion. In Sweden especially there was an anxiety to have thebenefit of the counsels of so eminent a theorist in the business ofeducation. In 1638 the Swedish Government, at the head of which, duringthe minority of Queen Christina, was the Chancellor Oxenstiern, invitedComenius to Sweden, that he might preside over a Commission for therevision and reform of the schools there. Comenius, however, declined theinvitation, recommending that the work should be entrusted to some nativeSwede, but promising to give his advice; and, at the same time (1638), hebegan to translate into Latin, for the behoof of Sweden and of othercountries, a certain _Didactica Magna_, or treatise on Didactics atlarge, which he had written in his Bohemian Slavic vernacular nine yearsbefore. Hartlib had an early abstract of this book, and this abstract ispart of the _Comenii Pansophię Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ whichhe edited in London in the same year, and published in duodecimo in 1639. [Footnote: Bayle's Dictionary: Art. _Coménius (Jean-Amos)_; "Geshichteder Pädagogik, " by Karl von Raumer (Stuttgart, 1843), Zweither Theil, pp. 46-49; "Essays on Educational Reformers, " by Robert Hebert Quick (1868), pp. 43-47; Wood's Ath. III. 366, and II. 677. The general sketch ofComenius in Bayle, and those by Raumer and Mr. Quick, are very good; butdetails in the text, and especially the particulars of Hartlib's earlyconnexion with Comenius, have had to be culled by me from the curiousautobiographical passages prefixed to or inserted in Comenius's variouswritings as far as 1642. These form Part I. Of his large Folio, _OperaDidactica Omnia_, published by him at Amsterdam in 1657; and the passagesin that Part which have supplied particulars for the text will be foundat columns 3-4, 318, 326, 403, 442--444, 454-459. Comenius, like most suchtheoretic reformers, had a vein of egotism, and a strong memory fordetails respecting the history of his own ideas and their reception. ]

What, after all, were the new notions propounded from Poland, with suchuniversal European effort, by this Protestant Austro-Slav, Comenius, andsponsored in England by the Prussian Hartlib? We shall try to give themin epitome. Be it understood, however, that the epitome takes accountonly of those works of Comenius which were written before 1639, withoutincluding the mass of his later writings, some of which were to be evenmore celebrated. 

The _Didactica Magna_ is perhaps the most pregnant of the earlybooks of Comenius. The full title of this treatise is, in translation, asfollows: "Didactics at Large: propounding a universal Scheme for teachingall Things to all persons; or a Certain and Perfect Mode of erecting suchSchools through all the communities, towns, and villages of any ChristianKingdom, as that all the youth of both sexes, without the neglect of asingle one, may be compendiously, pleasantly, and solidly educated inLearning, grounded in Morals, imbued with Piety, and so, before the yearsof puberty, instructed in all things belonging to the present and thefuture life. " In the treatise itself there are first some chapters ofpreliminary generalities. Man, says Comenius, is the last and mostperfect of creatures; his destiny is to a life beyond this; and thepresent life is but a preparation for that eternal one. This preparationinvolves three things--Knowledge by Man of himself and of all thingsabout him (Learning), Rule of himself (Morals), and Direction of himselfto God (Religion). The seeds of these three varieties of preparation arein us by Nature; nevertheless, if Man would come out complete Man, hemust be formed or educated. Always the education must be threefold--inKnowledge, in Morals, and in Religion; and this combination must never belost sight of. Such education, however, comes most fitly in early life. Parents may do much, but they cannot do all; there is need, therefore, inevery country, of public schools for youth. Such schools should be forthe children of all alike, the poor as well as the rich, the stupid andmalicious as well as the clever and docile, and equally for girls as forboys; and the training in them ought to be absolutely universal orencyclopędic, in Letters, Arts, and Science, in Morals, and in Piety. [Footnote: For Miltonic reasons, as well as for others, I cannot resistthe temptation to translate here, in a Note, the sub stance of Comenius'sviews on the Education of Women; as given in Chap. IX. (cols. 42-44) ofhis _Didactica Magna_:--"Nor, to say something particularly on thissubject, can any sufficient reason be given why the weaker sex"[_sequior sexus_, literally "the later or following sex, " is hisphrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and, though the phrase is usuallytranslated "the inferior sex, " it seems to have been chosen by Comeniusto avoid that implication], "should be wholly shut out from liberalstudies, whether in the native tongue or in Latin. For equally are theyGod's image; equally are they partakers of grace and of the kingdom tocome; equally are they furnished with minds agile and capable of wisdom, yea often beyond our sex; equally to them is there a possibility ofattaining high distinction, inasmuch as they have often been employed byGod himself for the government of peoples, the bestowing of the mostwholesome counsels on kings and princes, the science of medicine andother things useful to the human race, nay even the prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops" [_etiam adPropheticum munus, et incrependos Sacerdotes Episcoposque_, are thewords; and, as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638, onedetects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland, to the recentfame of Jenny Geddes of Scotland]. "Why then should we admit them to theAlphabet, but afterwards debar them from Books? Do we fear theirrashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there bein them for rashness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind. " Someslight limitations as to the reading proper for young women are appended, but with a hint that the same limitations would be good for youth of theother sex; and there is a bold quotation of the Scriptural text (1 Tim. Ii. 12), "_I suffer not a woman to teach_, " and of two well-knownpassages of Euripides and Juvenal against learned women or bluestockings, to show that he was quite aware of these passages, but saw nothing inthem against his real meaning. ] Here, at length, in the eleventh chapter, we arrive at the great question, Has such a system of schools beenanywhere established? _No_, answers Comenius, and abundantly proveshis negative. Schools of a kind there had been in the world from the daysof the Pharaohs and Nebuchadnezzar, if not from those of Shem, but notyet were there schools everywhere; not yet, where schools did exist, werethey for all classes; and, at best, where they did exist, of what sortwere they? Places, for the most part, of nausea and torment for the poorcreatures collected in them; narrow and imperfect in their aims, whichwere verbal rather than real; and not even succeeding in these aims!Latin, nothing but Latin! And how had they taught this precious andeternal Latin of theirs? "Good God! how intricate, laborious, and prolixthis study of Latin has been! Do not scullions, shoeblacks, cobblers, among pots and pans, or in camp, or in any other sordid employment, learna language different from their own, or even two or three such, morereadily than school students, with every leisure and appliance and allimaginable effort, learn their solitary Latin? And what a difference inthe proficiency attained! The former, after a few months, are foundgabbling away with ease; the latter, after fifteen or twenty years, canhardly, for the most part, unless when strapped up tight in theirgrammars and dictionaries, bring out a bit of Latin, and that not withouthesitation and stammering. " But all this might be remedied. There mightbe such a Reformation of Schools that not only Latin, but all otherlanguages, and all the real Sciences and Arts of life to boot, might betaught in them expeditiously, pleasantly, and thoroughly. What was wantedwas right methods and the consistent practical application of these. Nature must supply the principles of the Method of Education: as allNature's processes go softly and spontaneously, so will all artificialprocesses that are in conformity with Nature's principles. And what areNature's principles, as transferable into the Art of Education? Comeniusenumerates a good many, laying stress on such as these: nothing out ofseason; matter before form; the general before the special, or the simplebefore the complex; all continuously, and nothing _per saltum_. Hephilosophizes a good deal, sometimes a little quaintly and mystically, onthese principles of Nature, and on the hints she gives for facility, solidity, and celerity of learning, and then sums up his deductions as tothe proper Method in each of the three departments of education, theIntellectual, the Moral, and the Religious. Things before words, oralways along with words, to explain them; the concrete and sensible toprepare for the abstract; example and illustration rather than verbaldefinition, or to accompany verbal definition: such is his main maxim inthe first department. Object-lessons, wherever possible: i. E. If boys aretaught about the stars, let it be with the stars over their heads to lookat; if about the structure of the human body, let it be with a skeletonbefore them; if about the action of a pump, or other machine, let it bewith the machine actually at hand. "Always let the things which the wordsare to designate be shown; and again, whatever the pupils see, hear, touch, taste, let them be taught to express the same; so that tongue andintellect may go on together. " Where the actual objects cannot beexhibited, there may be models, pictures, and the like; and every schoolought to have a large apparatus of such, and a museum. Writing anddrawing ought to be taught simultaneously with reading. All should bemade pleasant to the pupils; they ought to relish their lessons, to bekept brisk, excited, wide-awake; and to this end there should beemulation, praise of the deserving, always something nice and rousing onthe board, a mixture of the funny with the serious, and occasionalpuzzles, anecdotes, and conundrums. The school-houses ought to be airyand agreeable, and the school-hours not too long. In order that there maybe time to teach all that really ought to be taught, there must be a wiseneglect of heaps of things not essential: a great deal must be flungoverboard, as far as School is concerned, and left to the chanceinquisitiveness of individuals afterwards. And what sort of things may bethus wisely neglected? Why, in the first place, the _non necessaria_(things generally unprofitable), or things that contribute neither topiety nor to good morals, and without which there may be very sufficienterudition--as, for example, "the names of the Gentile gods, their love-histories, and their religious rites, " all which may be got up in booksat any time by any one that wants them; and, again, the _aliena_(things that do not fit the particular pupil)--mathematics, for example, for some, and music for those who have no ear; and, again, the_particularissima_, or those excessive minutenesses and distinctionsinto which one may go without end in any subject whatsoever. So, atlarge, with very competent learning, no small philosophical acumen, muchlogical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs, but afrequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot ofpractical good sense, Comenius reasons and argues for a new System ofEducation, inspired by what would now be called Realism or enlightenedUtilitarianism. Objections, as they might occur, are duly met andanswered; and one notes throughout the practical schoolmaster, knowingwhat he is talking about, and having before his fancy all the while thespectacle of a hundred or two of lads ranged on benches, and to bemanaged gloriously from the desk, as a skilled metallurgist manages amass of molten iron. He is a decided advocate for large classes, each of"some hundreds, " under one head-master, because of the fervour which suchclasses generate in themselves and in the master; and he shows how theymay be managed. Emulation, kindliness, and occasional rebuke, are chieflyto be trusted to for maintaining discipline; and punishments are to befor moral offences only. How Comenius would blend moral teaching andreligious teaching with the acquisition of knowledge in schools isexplained in two chapters, entitled "Method of Morals" and "Method ofinstilling Piety;" and this last leads him to a separate chapter, inwhich he maintains that, "if we would have schools thoroughly reformedaccording to the true rules of Christianity, the books of Heathen authorsmust be removed from them, or at least employed more cautiously thanhitherto. " He argues this at length, insisting on the necessity of thepreparation of a graduated series of school-books that should supersedethe ordinary classics, conserving perhaps the best bits of some of them. If any of the classics were to be kept bodily for school-use, they shouldbe Seneca, Epictetus, Plato, and the like. And so at last he comes todescribe the System of Schools he would have set up in every country, viz. : I. THE INFANT SCHOOL, or MOTHER'S OWN SCHOOL, for children undersix; II. THE LUDUS LITERARIUS, Or VERNACULAR PUBLIC SCHOOL, for boys andgirls up to the age of twelve; III. THE LATIN SCHOOL or GYMNASIUM, forhigher teaching up to eighteen or so; and IV. THE UNIVERSITY (withTRAVEL), for the highest possible teaching on to the age of about five-and-twenty. From the little babble of the Infant School about Water, Air, Fire, Iron, Bird, Fish, Hill, Sun, Moon, &c. , all on the plan ofexercising the senses and making Things and Words go together, up to themost exquisite training of the University, he shows how there might be aprogress and yet a continuity of encyclopędic aim. Most boys and girls inevery community, he thinks, might stop at the Vernacular School, withoutgoing on to the Latin; and he has great faith in the capabilities of anyvernacular and the culture that may be obtained within it. Still he wouldlike to see as many as possible going on to the Latin School and theUniversity, that there might never be wanting in a community spiritsconsummately educated, veritable [Greek: polumatheis] and [Greek:pansophoi]. In the Universities apparently he would allow the largestranging among the classics of all sorts, though still on some principlefor organizing that kind of reading. There is, in fact, a mass of detailsand suggestions about each of the four kinds of schools, all vital toComenius, and all pervaded by his sanguine spirit, but which one canhardly now read through. [Footnote: A separate little treatise on themanagement of "The Infant School, " containing advices to parents for homeuse, was written by Comenius in Bohemian Slavic, and translated thenceinto German in 1633. It appears in Latin among his _Opera Didactica_collected. He wrote also, he tells us, six little books for "TheVernacular School, " under fancy-titles. These do not seem ever to havebeen published. His _Janua Linguarum_ (1631), and one or twoappendages to it, were contributions to the theory and practice of "TheLatin School. "] The final chapter is one of the most eloquent andinteresting. It is entitled, "Of the Requisites necessary for beginningthe practice of this Universal Method. " Here he comes back upon hisnotion of a graduated series of school-books, or rather of anorganization of books generally for the purposes of education. "One greatrequisite, " he says, "the absence of which would make the whole machineuseless, while its presence would put all in motion, is A SUFFICIENTAPPARATUS OF PAMMETHODIC BOOKS. " All, he repeats, hinges on thepossibility of creating such an apparatus. "This is a work, " he adds, "not for one man, especially if he is otherwise occupied, and notinstructed in everything that ought to be reduced into the UniversalMethod; nor is it perhaps a work for one age, if we would have allbrought to absolute perfection. There is need, therefore, of a COLLEGIALSOCIETY (_ergo Societate Collegiali est opus_). For the convocationof such a Society there is need of the authority and liberality of someKing, or Prince, or Republic, and also of some quiet place, away fromcrowds, with a Library and other appurtenances. " There follows an earnestappeal to persons of all classes to forward such an association, and thegood Moravian winds up with a prayer to God. [Footnote: There is asummary of Comenius's _Didactica Magna_ in Von Reumer's "Geshichteder Pędgogis" (pp. 53-59). It is accurate so far as it goes; but I havegone to the book itself. ]

A special part of Comenius's system, better known perhaps at the time ofwhich we write than his system as a whole, was his Method for TeachingLanguages. This is explained in Chapter XXII. Of his _DidacticaMagna_, and more in detail in his _Linguarum Janua Rescrata_, andone or two writings added to that book:--Comenius, as we already know, did not overrate linguistic training in education. "Languages areacquired, " he says, "not as a part of learning or wisdom, but asinstrumental to the reception and communication of learning. Accordingly, it is not _all_ languages that are to be learnt, for that isimpossible, nor yet _many_, for that would be useless, as drawingaway the time due to the study of Things; but only those that are_necessary_. The necessary tongues, however, are: first, theVernacular, for home use; next, Neighbouring Tongues, for conversationwith neighbours, --as, for example, the German for Poles of one frontier, and the Hungarian, the Wallachian, and the Turkish, for Poles of otherparts; next, Latin, as the common language of the learned, admitting oneto the wise use of books; and, finally, the Greek and Arabic forphilosophers and medical men, and Greek and Hebrew for theologians. " Notall the tongues that are learnt, either, are to be learnt to the samenicety of perfection, but only to the extent really needed. Each languageshould be learnt separately--first, the Vernacular, which ought to beperfectly learnt, and to which children ought to be kept for eight or tenyears; then whatever neighbouring tongue might be desirable, for which ayear would be long enough; next, Latin, which ought to be learnt well, and might be learnt in two years; and so to Greek, to which he would giveone year, and Hebrew, which he would settle in six months. If peopleshould be amazed at the shortness of the time in which he ventured toassert a language like the Latin might be learnt and learnt well, letthem consider the principles of his method. Always Things along withWords, and Words associated with new groups of Things, from the mostfamiliar objects to those rarer and farther off, so that the_vocabulary_ might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, theconstant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as wellas in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, onlyusing his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in theend elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading torule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. Akind of common grammar may be supposed lying in the pupil's head, whichhe transfers instinctively to each new tongue, so that he has to betroubled only with variations and peculiarities. The reading-booksnecessary for thoroughly teaching a language by this method might be(besides Lexicons graduated to match) four in number--I. _Vestibulum_(The Porch), containing a vocabulary of some hundreds of simple words, fit for babbling with, grouped in little sentences, with annexed tablesof declensions and conjugations; II. _Janua_ (The Gate), containing allthe common words in the language, say about 8, 000, also compacted intointeresting sentences, with farther grammatical aids; III. _Palatium_(The Palace), containing tit-bits of higher discourse about things, andelegant extracts from authors, with notes and grammatical comments; IV. _Thesaurus_ (The Treasury), consisting of select authors themselves, dulyillustrated, with a catalogue of other authors, so that the pupils mighthave some idea of the extent of the Literature of the language, and mightknow what authors to read on occasion afterwards. --Comenius himselfactually wrote a _Vestibulum_ for Latin, consisting of 427 shortsentences, and directions for their use; and, as we know, his _JanuaLinguarum Reserata_, which appeared in 1631, was the publication whichmade him famous. It is an application of his system to Latin. On theprinciple that Latin can never be acquired with ease while its vocabularyis allowed to lie alphabetically in dead Dictionaries, or inmultitudinous variety of combination in Latin authors, about 8, 000 Latinwords of constant use are collected into a kind of Noah's Ark, representative of all Latinity. This is done in 1, 000 short Latinsentences, arranged in 100 paragraphs of useful information about allthings and sundry, under such headings as _De Ortu Mundi_ (Of theBeginning of the World), _De Elementis_ (Of the Elements), _DeFirmamento_ (Of the Firmament), _De Igne_ (Of Fire), and so on throughother physical and moral topics. Among these are _De Metallis_ (OfMetals), _De Herbis_ (Of Plants), _De Insectis_ (Of Insects), _DeUlceribus et Vulneribus_ (Of Sores and Wounds), _De Agricultura_ (OfAgriculture), _De Vestituum Generibus (Of Articles of Dress), _DePuerperio_ (Of Childbirth), _De Pace et Bella_ (Of Peace and War), _DeModestia_ (Of Modesty), _De Morte et Sepultura_ (Of Death and Burial), _De Providentia Dei_ (Of the Providence of God), _De Angelis_ (OfAngels). Comenius was sure that due drill in this book would put a boy ineffective possession of Latin for all purposes of reading, speaking, andwriting. And, of course, by translation, the same manual would serve forany other language. For, the Noah's Ark of _things_ being much the samefor all peoples, in learning a new language you have but to fit on to thecontents of that permanent Ark of realities a new set of vocables. [Footnote: _Dialectica Magna_ Chap. XXII. First edition of _Janua_, asreprinted in _Comenii Opera Didactica_, 1657 (Part I, cols. 255-302). ]

Comenius rather smiled at the rush of all Europe upon his _JanuaLinguarum_, or Method for Teaching Languages. That was a trifle in hisestimation, compared with the bigger speculations of his _DidacticaMagna_, and still more with his _Pansophię Prodromus_ or _PortaSapientię Reserata_. A word or two on this last little book:--Comeniusappears in it as a would-be Lord Bacon, an Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon, avery Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon. He mentions Bacon several times, andalways with profound respect ("_illustrissimus Verulamius_" and soon); but it appeared to him that more was wanted than Bacon's _NovumOrganum, _ or _Instauratio Magna_, with all its merits. A PANSOPHIA waswanted, nay, a PANSOPHIA CHRISTIANA, or consolidation of all humanknowledge into true central Wisdom, one body of Real Truth. O Wisdom, Wisdom! O the knowledge of things in themselves, and in their universalharmony! What was mere knowledge of words, or all the fuss of pedagogyand literature, in view of that! Once attained, and made communicable, itwould make the future of the world one Golden Age! Why had it not beenattained? What had been the hindrances to its attainment? What were theremedies? In a kind of phrenzy, which does not prevent most logicalprecision of paragraphing and of numbering of propositions, Comeniusdiscusses all this, becoming more and more like a Bacon bemuddled, as heeyes his PANSOPHIA through the mist. What it is he cannot make plain tous; but we see he has some notion of it himself, and we honour himaccordingly. For there are gleams, and even flashes, through the mist. For example, there is a paragraph entitled _Scientiarum Laceratio_, lamenting the state of division, disconnectedness, and piece-mealdistribution among many hands, into which the Sciences had fallen. Thoughthere were books entitled Pansophias, Encyclopędias, and the like, he hadseen none sufficiently justifying the name, or exhausting theuniversality of things. Much less had he seen the whole apparatus ofhuman intelligence so constructed from its own certain and eternalprinciples that all things should appear mutually concatenated amongthemselves from first to last without any hiatus! "Metaphysicians hum tothemselves only, Natural Philosophers chaunt their own praises, Astronomers lead on their dances for themselves, Ethical Thinkers set uplaws for themselves, Politicians lay foundations for themselves, Mathematicians triumph for themselves, and for themselves Theologiansreign. " What is the consequence? Why, that, while each one attends onlyto himself and his own phantasy, there is no general accord, but onlydissonance. "We see that the branches of a tree cannot live unless theyall alike suck their juices from a common trunk with common roots. Andcan we hope that the branches of Wisdom can be torn asunder with safetyto their life, that is to truth? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who isnot also a Metaphysician? or an Ethical Thinker who does not knowsomething of Physical Science? or a Logician who has no knowledge of realmatters? or a Theologian, a Jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is notfirst a Philosopher? or an Orator or Poet who is not all things at once?He deprives himself of light, of hand, and of regulation, who pushes awayfrom him any shred of the knowable. " From such passages one has a glimmerof what Comenius did mean by his Pansophia. He hoped to do somethinghimself towards furnishing the world with this grand desideratum. He hadin contemplation a book which should at least show what a properEncyclopędia or Consolidation of Universal Truth ought to be. But hereagain he invites co-operation. Many hands in many lands would have tolabour at the building of the great Temple of Wisdom. He appeals to all, "of every rank, age, sex, and tongue, " to do what they can. Especiallylet there be an end to the monopoly of Latin. "We desire and protest thatstudies of wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept shut upin the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt andinjury of the people at large and the popular tongues. Let all things bedelivered to each nation in its own speech, so that occasion may beafforded to all who are men to occupy themselves with these liberalmatters rather than fatigue themselves, as is constantly the case, withthe cares of this life, or ambitions, or drinking-bouts, or othervanities, to the destruction of life and soul both. Languages themselvestoo would so be polished to perfection with the advancement of theSciences and Arts. Wherefore we, for our part, have resolved, if Godpleases, to divulge these things of ours both in the Latin and in thevernacular. For no one lights a candle and hides it under a bushel, butplaces it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all. " [Footnote:_Pansophici Libri Delineatio_ (_i. E. _ the same treatise which Hartlib hadprinted at Oxford in 1637) in _Comenii Opera Didactica_, Part I. Cols. 403-454. ] Such were the varied Comenian views which the good Hartlibstrove to bring into notice in England in 1637-9. Durie andReconciliation of the Churches was still one of his enthusiasms, butComenius and Reformed Education was another. But, indeed, nothing of ahopeful kind, with novelty in it, came amiss to Hartlib. He, as well asComenius, had read Lord Bacon. He was a devoted admirer of the Baconianphilosophy, and had imbibed, I think, more deeply than most of Bacon'sown countrymen, the very spirit and mood of that philosophy. That' theworld had got on so slowly hitherto because it had pursued wrong methods;that, if once right methods were adopted, the world would spin forward ata much faster rate in all things; that no one could tell what finediscoveries of new knowledge, what splendid inventions in art, whatdevices for saving labour, increasing wealth, preserving health, andpromoting happiness, awaited the human race in the future: all this, which Bacon had taught, Hartlib had taken into his soul. His sympathywith Durie and Religious Compromise and his sympathy with Comenius andSchool Reform were but special exhibitions of his general passion for newlights. The cry of his soul, morning and night, in all things, was

 Phosphore, redde diem! Quid gaudia nostra moraris? Phosphore, redde diem!

[Footnote: This is no fancy-quotation. Hartlib himself, in 1659, uses itin a letter to the famous Boyle, as the passionate motto of his life (seeDiary of Worthington, edited by Crossley, I, 168, and Boyle's Works, ed. 1744, V. 293). ]

Naturally this passion had a political side. Through the reign ofThorough, it is true, Hartlib had been as quiet as it became a foreignerin London to be at such a time, and had even been in humblecorrespondence in Durie's behalf with Bishops, Privy Councillors, andother chiefs of the existing power. But, when the Scottish troublesbrought signs of coming change for England, and there began to be stiramong the Puritans and the miscellaneous _quidnuncs_ of London inanxiety for that change, Hartlib found himself in friendly contact andacquaintanceship with some of these forward spirits. One is notsurprised, therefore, at the fact, previously mentioned in our History(Vol. II. P. 45), that, when Charles was mustering his forces for theFirst Bishops' War against the Scots, and Secretary Windebank was busywith arrests of persons in London suspected of complicity with the Scots, Hartlib was one of those pounced upon. Here is the exact officialwarrant:--"These are to will, require, and authorize you to make yourrepair to the house of Samuel Hartlib, merchant, and to examine him uponsuch interrogatories as you shall find pertinent to the business you arenow employed in; and you are also to take with you one of the messengersof his Majesty's Chamber, who is to receive and follow such order anddirections as you shall think fit to give him; and this shall be yoursufficient warrant in this behalf. --Dated at my house in Drury Lane, 1May 1639. --Fran. Windebank. To Robert Reade, my Secretary. " [Footnote:Copied by me from the original in the S. P. O. ]--The reader may, at thispoint, like to know where Hartlib's house was. It was in Duke's Place, Aldgate. He had been there for more than a year, if not from his firstsettling in London; and it was to be his residence for many years tocome. [Footnote: Among the Ayscough MSS. In the British Museum there isone (No. 4276) containing a short letter from Joseph Meade to Hartlib, dated from Christ's College, Cambridge, June 18, 1638, and addressed "Tohis worthie friend Mr. Samuel Hartlib at his house in Duke's Place, London. " There is nothing of importance in the letter; which is mainlyabout books Meade would like Hartlib to send to certain persons named--one of them Dr. Twisse, afterwards Prolocutor of the WestminsterAssembly. Meade died less than four months after the date of thisletter. ] He was married, and had at least one child. --Reade and theKing's officer appear to have discovered nothing specially implicatingHartlib; for he is found living on much as before through the remainderof the Scottish Presbyterian Revolt, on very good terms with his formerEpiscopal correspondents and others who regarded that Revolt with dreadand detestation. The following is a letter of his, of date Aug. 10, 1640, which I found in his own hand in the State Paper Office. It has not, Ibelieve, been published before, and letters of Hartlib's of so early adate are scarce: besides, it is too characteristic to be omitted:--

"Right Hon. [no farther indication of the person addressed: was it SirThomas Roe?]

"These are to improve the leisure which perhaps you may enjoy in yourretiredness from this place. The author of the Schedule of Divers NewInventions [apparently enclosed in the letter] is the same Plattes whoabout a year ago published two profitable treatises concerning Husbandryand Mines. He is now busy in contriving of some other Tracts, which willmore particularly inform all sorts of people how to procure their own andthe public good of these countries. [Footnote: Gabriel Plattes, author of"A Discovery of Subterraneall Treasure: viz. Of all manner of Mines andMinerals from the Gold to the Coale: London 1639, 4to. " This is fromLowndes's _Bibliographer's Manual_ by Bohn; where it is added that"Plattes published several other works chiefly relating to Husbandry, andis said to have dropped down dead in the London streets for want offood. " Among other things, he was an Alchemist; and in Wood's Athenę byBliss (I. 640-1) there is a curious extract from his Mineralogical book, giving an account of a process of his for making pure gold artificially, though, as he says, not with profit. One thinks kindly of this poorinventive spirit hanging on upon Hartlib with his "Schedule of NewInventions, " and of Hartlib's interest in him. ] Some of my learnedfriends in France do highly commend one Palissi to be a man of the likedisposition and industry. The books which he hath written and printed(some of them in French) are said to contain a world of excellent matter. [Footnote: This, I think, must be the famous Bernard Palissy, "thePotter, " who died in 1590, leaving writings such as Hartlib describes. Ifso, Hartlib was a little behind time in his knowledge, for one mightfancy him speaking of a contemporary. ] I wish such like observations, experiments, and true philosophies, were more known to other nations. Bythis means not only the Heavens, but also the Earth, would declare theglory of God more evidently than it hath done. ---As for Mr. Durie, bythese enclosed [a number of extracts from letters about Durie's businesswhich Hartlib had received from Bishops and others] your Honour will beable to see how far I am advanced in transactions of his affairs. My LordBishop of Exeter [Hall], in one of his late letters unto himself [Durie], uses these following words: '_Perlegi quę_, ' &c. [A long Latinpassage, which may be given in English: 'I have read through what youhave heretofore written to the most illustrious Sir Thomas Roe respectingthe procuring of an ecclesiastical agreement. I like your prudence andmost sagacious theological ingenuity in the same: should Princes followthe thread of the advice, we shall easily extricate ourselves from thislabyrinth of controversies. The Reverend Bishop of Salisbury has a workon the Fundamentals of Faith, which is now at press, designed for thecomposing of these disputes of the Christian world; doubtless to thegreat good of the Church. Proceed busily in the sacred work you haveundertaken: we will not cease to aid you all we can with our prayers andcounsels, and, if possible, with other helps']: I hear the worthies ofCambridge are at work to satisfy in like manner the Doctors of Bremen:only my Lord Bishop of Durham [Morton] is altogether silent. It may bethe northern distractions hinder him from such and the like pacificalovertures. I am much grieved for his book _De [Greek: polutopia]corporis Christi_ [on the Ubiquity of Christ's Body], which is now inthe press at Cambridge; for both the Bishop of Lincoln [Williams] and Dr. Hacket told me, from the mouth of him that corrects it (an accurate andjudicious scholar), that it was a very invective and bitter railingagainst the Lutheran tenets on that point, insomuch that Dr. Brownrigghad written unto his lordship about it, to put all into a milder strain. I confess others do blame somewhat Mr. D[urie] for certain phrases whichhe seems to yield unto in his printed treatise with the Danes, '_DeOmnipręsentiā et orali manducatione_' [Of the Omnipresence and Eatingwith the Mouth]; yet let me say this much--that Reverend Bucer, thatprudent learned man, who was the first man of note that ever laboured inthis most excellent work of reconciling the Protestants, even in the veryfirst beginning of the breach, and who laboured more abundantly than theyall in it (I mean than all the rest of the Reformers in his time): Bucer, I say, yielded so far for peace' sake to Luther and his followers in someharsh-sounding terms and words that the Helvetians began to be suspiciousof him, lest he should be won to the contrary side, although the good mandid fully afterwards declare his mind when he saw his yielding would dono good. It is not then Mr. D. 's case alone, when so brave a worthy asBucer goes along with him, a man of whom great Calvin uttered these wordswhen news was brought him of his death, '_Quam multiplicem in Bucerojacturam fecerit Dei Ecclesia quoties in mentem venit, cor meum propelaccrari sentio_' ['As often as it comes to my mind what a manifoldloss the Church of God has had in Bucer, I feel my heart almostlacerated']. So he wrote in an epistle to Viret. But enough of thissubject. ----I have had these 14 days no letters from Mr. D. ; nor do Ilong much for them, except I could get in the rents from his tenant topay the 70 rixdollars to Mr. Avery's brother in London. The Bishop ofExeter seems to be a man of excellent bowels; and, if your Honour wouldbe pleased to second his requests towards my Lord's Grace of Canterbury, or to favour Bishop Davenant's advice in your own way, perhaps somecomfortable effects would soon follow. My Lady Anna Waller doth highlyaffect Mr. D. And his endeavours; and, if any donatives or otherpreferments should be recommended to be disposed this way by my LordKeeper (who is a near kinsman of her Ladyship), I am confident she wouldprove a successful mediatrix in his behalf. If your Honour thinks it fit, I can write also to my Lord Primate [Usher] to intercede with my Lord'sGrace [Laud] for Mr. D. He is about to bring forth a great universalwork, or Ecclesiastical History. The other treatise, put upon him by hisMajesty's special command, '_De Authoritate Regum et OfficioSubditorum, _' ['On the Authority of Kings and the Duty of Subjects']will shortly come to light. ----Thus, craving pardon for this prolixity ofscribbling, I take humbly my leave; remaining always

"Your Honour's most obliged and most assured Servant, SAM. HARTLIB. [Footnote: Copied by me from the original in the S. P. O. ]

London: the 10 of Aug. 1640. "

Three months after the date of this letter the Long Parliament had met, and there was a changed world, with changed opportunities, for Hartlib, as well as for other people. The following digest of particulars in hislife for the years 1641 and 1642 will show what he was about:--

"A Briefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procureEcclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants. Published by Samuel Hartlib. London, Printed by J. R. For Andrew Crooke, and are to be sold at hisshop in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Green Dragon. 1641. "--Thislittle tract is an exposition of Durie's idea, and a narrative sketch ofhis exertions in its behalf from 1628 onwards. 

"A Description of the famous Kingdom of MACARIA, shewing its excellentGovernment, wherein the Inhabitants live in great prosperity, health, andhappiness; the King obeyed, the Nobles honoured, and all good menrespected; Vice punished, and Virtue rewarded: An example to othernations. In a Dialogue between a Scholar and a Traveller. London 1641"(4to. Pp. 15). --There is a Dedication to Parliament, dated "25th October1641, " in which it is said that "Honourable Court will lay thecornerstone of the world's happiness. " The tract is an attempt at afiction, after the manner of "More's Utopia" and Bacon's "New Atlantis, "shadowing forth the essentials of good government in the constitution ofthe imaginary Kingdom of MACARIA (Happy-land, from the Greek makarios, happy). The gist of the thing lies in the rather prosaic statement thatMACARIA has Five Councils or Departments of State: to wit, _Husbandry_, _Fishery_, _Land-trade_, _Sea-trade_, and _New Plantations_. --Althoughthere is no author's name to the scrap, it is known to be Hartlib's; who, indeed, continued to use the word MACARIA, half-seriously, half-playfully, till the Restoration and beyond, as a pet name for his IdealCommonwealth of perfect institutions. [Footnote: See Worthington's Diaryedited by Crossley (L 163). Hartlib's original _Macaria_ is reprinted inthe Harleian Miscellany, Vol. I. ]

In 1641 Hartlib was in correspondence with Alexander Henderson. Thereader already knows how "the Scottish business, " or the King'sdifficulty with the Scots, led to the calling of the Long Parliament, andhow for six or seven months (Nov. 1640-June 1641) that businessintertwined itself with the other proceedings of the Parliament, andHenderson and the other Scottish Commissioners, lay and clerical, were inLondon all that time, nominally looking after that business, but reallyco-operating with Pym and the other Parliamentary leaders for the Reformof both kingdoms, and much lionized by the Londoners accordingly (Vol. II. Pp. 189-192). Well, Hartlib, who found his way to everybody, foundhis way to Henderson. Lie probably saw a good deal of him, if not of theother Scottish Commissioners; for, after Henderson had returned toScotland, at least three letters from Hartlib followed him thither. Hereis the beginning of the third: "Reverend and Loving Brother in Christ: Ihope my two former letters were safely delivered, wherein I gave younotice of a purpose taken in hand here to make Notes upon the Bible. Whatconcurrence you think fit to give in such a work I leave to your ownpiety to determine. Now I have some other thoughts to impart to you, which lie as a burthen on my heart. " The thoughts communicated toHenderson are about the wretched state of the Palatinate, with itsProtestantism and its University of Heidelberg ruined by the ThirtyYears' War, and the "sweet-natured Prince Elector" in exile; but Hartlibslips into Durie's idea, and urges theological correspondence of allProtestant divines, in order to put an end to divisions. The letter, which is signed "Your faithful friend and servant in Christ, " is dated"London, Octob. 1641. " All this we know because Hartlib kept a copy ofthe letter and printed it in 1643. "The copy of a Letter written to Mr. Alexander Henderson: London, Printed in the yeare 1643, " is the title ofthe scrap, as I have seen it in the British Museum. Even so we should nothave known it to be Hartlib's, had not the invaluable Thomason written"_By Mr. Hartlib_" on the title-page, appending "_Feb. _ 6, 1642" (_i. E. _1642-3) as the date of the publication. 

"A Reformation of Schooles, designed in two excellent Treatises: thefirst whereof summarily sheweth the great necessity of a generallReformation of Common Learning, what grounds of hope there are for such aReformation, how it may be brought to passe. The second answers certaineobjections ordinarily made against such undertakings, arid describes theseverall parts and titles of workes which are shortly to follow. Writtenmany yeares agoe in Latine by that reverend, godly, learned, and famousDivine, Mr. John Amos Comenius, one of the Seniours of the exiled Churchof Moravia; and now, upon the request of many, translated into Englishand published by Samuel Hartlib for the general good of the Nation. London: Printed for Michael Sparke, Senior, at the Blue Bible in GreeneArbour: 1642" (small ito. Pp. 94). --This is, in fact, a reproduction inEnglish of the views of Comenius in his Didactica Magna, &c. As I find itregistered in the books of the Stationers' Company "Jan. 12, 1641"(_i. E. _ 1641-2), it must have been out early in 1642. 

These traces of Hartlib in the years 1641 and 1642 are significant, andadmit of some comment:--In the _Description_ _of the Kingdom of Macaria_, I should say, Hartlib broke out for himself. He had all sorts of ideas asto social and economic improvements, and he would communicate a littlespecimen of these, respecting Husbandry, Fishery, and Commerce, to thereforming Parliament. But he was still faithful to Durie and Comenius, and three of his recovered utterances of 1641-2 are in behalf of them. His _Brief Relation_ and his _Letter to Henderson_ refer to Durie and hisscheme of Protestant union. It is not impossible that Hartlib was movedto these new utterances in the old subject by Durie's own presence inLondon; for, as we have mentioned (Vol. II. P. 367), there is someevidence that Durie, who had not been in London since 1633, came over ona flying visit after the opening of the Long Parliament. It is acoincidence, at least, that the publisher of Hartlib's _Brief Relation_about Durie brought out, at the very same time, a book of Durie's owntending in the same direction. [Footnote: "Mr. Dureus his ElevenTreatises touching Ecclesiastical Peace amongst Protestants" is the titleof an entry by Mr. Crooke in the Stationers' Registers, of date Feb. 15, 1640. ] Quite possibly, however, Durie may have still been abroad, andHartlib may have acted for him. In the other case there is no such doubt. When, in Jan. 1641-2, Hartlib sent to the press his new compilation ofthe views of Comenius under the title of _A Reformation of Schools_, there was good reason for it. Comenius himself was at his elbow. Thegreat man had come to London. 

Education, and especially University Education, was one of the subjectsthat Parliament was anxious to take up. In the intellectual world ofEngland, quite apart from politics, there had for some time been atradition of dissatisfaction with the existing state of the Universitiesand the great Public Schools. In especial, Bacon's complaints andsuggestions on this subject in the Second Book of his _De Augmentis_had sunk into thoughtful minds. That the Universities, by persistence inold and outworn methods, were not in full accord with the demands andneeds of the age; that their aims were too professional and particular, and not sufficiently scientific and general; that the order of studies inthem was bad, and some of the studies barren; that there ought to be abold direction of their endowments and apparatus in the line ofexperimental knowledge, so as to extract from Nature new secrets, andsciences for which Humanity was panting; that, moreover, there ought tobe more of fraternity and correspondence among the Universities ofEurope, and some organization of their labours with a view to mutualillumination and collective advance: [Footnote: "De Augmentis:" Bacon'sWorks, I. 487 _et seq. _, and Translation of same, III. 323 _et seq. _(Spedding's edition). ] all these Verulamian speculations, first submittedto King James, were lying hid here and there in English intellects, inwatch for an opportunity. Then, in a different way, the political crisishad brought Oxford and Cambridge, but especially Oxford, under severerevision. Had they not been the nurseries of Episcopacy, and of otherthings and principles of which England was now declaring herselfimpatient? All this, which was to be more felt after the Civil War hadbegun and Oxford became the King's headquarters, was felt already in veryconsiderable degree during the two-and-twenty months of preliminarystruggle between the King and the Parliament (Nov. 1640-Aug. 1642). Whynot have a University in London? There was Gresham College in the city, in existence since 1597, and doing not ill on its limited basis; therewas Chelsea College, founded by Dean Sutcliffe of Exeter in 1610, "to theintent that learned men might there have maintenance to answer all theadversaries of religion" but which, after a rickety infancy, and laughedat by Laud as "Controversy College, " had been lost in lawsuits: why not, with inclusion or exclusion of these and other foundations, set up inLondon a great University on the best modern principles, abolishing themonopoly of Oxford and Cambridge?

Of these rumours, plans, or possibilities, due notice had been sent bythe zealous Hartlib to Comenius at Leszno. Ought not Comenius to be onthe spot? What had he been hoping for and praying for but a "CollegialSociety" somewhere in some European state to prepare the necessary"Apparatus of Pammethodic Books" and so initiate his new system ofUniversal Didactics, or again (to take the other and larger form of hisaspiration), a visible co-operation of kindred spirits throughout Europetowards founding and building the great "Temple of Pansophia" or"Universal Real Knowledge"? What if these Austro-Slavic dreams of hisshould be realized on the banks of the Thames? People were very willingthereabouts; circumstances were favourable; what was mainly wanted wasdirection and the grasp of a master-spirit! Decidedly, Comenius ought tocome over. --All this we learn from Comenius himself, whose account of thematter and of what followed had better now be quoted. "The _PansophięProdromus_, " he says, "having been published, and copies dispersedthrough the various kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approvedof the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the work by oneman, and therefore advising the erection of a College of learned men forthis express business, in these circumstances the very person who hadbeen the means of giving the _Prodromus_ to the world, a man strenuous inpractically prosecuting things as far as he can, Mr. S. H. [_strenuusrerum quā datur [Greek: ergodioktęs], D. S. H. _], devoted himselflaboriously to that scheme, so as to bring as many of the more forwardspirits into it as possible. And so it happened at length that, havingwon over one and another, he, in the year 1641, prevailed on me also bygreat entreaties to go to him. My people having consented to the journey, I came to London on the very day of the autumnal equinox [Sept. 22, 1641], and there at last learnt that I had been invited by the order ofthe Parliament. But, as the Parliament, the King having then gone toScotland [Aug. 10], was dismissed for a three months' recess [not quitethree months, but from Sept. 9 to Oct. 20], I was detained there throughthe winter, my friends mustering what Pansophic apparatus they could, though it was but slender. On which occasion there grew on my hands atractate with this title, _Via Lucis: Hoc Est, &c. _. [The Way of Light]:That is, A Reasonable Disquisition how the Intellectual Light of Souls, namely Wisdom, may now at length, in this Evening of the World, behappily diffused through all Minds and Peoples. This for the betterunderstanding of these words of the oracle in _Zachariah XIV. _ 7, _Itshall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light. _ TheParliament meanwhile having reassembled, and our presence being known, Ihad orders to wait until they should have sufficient leisure from otherbusiness to appoint a commission of learned and wise men from their bodyfor hearing us and considering the grounds of our design. Theycommunicate also beforehand their thoughts of assigning to us someCollege with its revenues, whereby a certain number of learned andillustrious men, called from all nations, might he honourably maintained, either for a term of years or in perpetuity. There was even named for thepurpose _the Savoy_ in London; _Winchester College_ out of London wasnamed; and again, nearer the city, _Chelsea College_, inventories ofwhich and of its revenues were communicated to us; so that nothing seemedmore certain than that the design of the great Verulam, concerning theopening somewhere of a Universal College, devoted to the advancement ofthe Sciences, could be carried out. But the rumour of the Insurrection inIreland, and of the massacre in one night of more than 200, 000 English[Oct. -Nov. ], and the sudden departure of the King from London [Jan. 10, 1641-2], and the plentiful signs of the bloody war about to break out, disturbed these plans, and obliged me to hasten my return to my ownpeople. It happened, however, that letters came to me from Sweden, whichhad been sent to Poland and thence forwarded to England, in which thatmagnanimous and energetic man, Ludovicus de Geer, invited me to come tohim in Sweden, and offered immediate means of furthering my studies andthose of any two or three learned men I chose to associate with me. Communicating this offer to my friends in London, I took my departure, but not without protestations from them that I ought to let my servicesbe employed in nothing short of the Pansophic Design. " [Footnote:Autobiographic Introduction to the "Second Part" of the _Opera Didactica_of Comenius (1657), containing his Didactic writings from 1642 to 1650. ]This is very interesting, and, I have no doubt, quite accurate. [Footnote: I have not been able to find in the Lords or Commons Journalsfor 1641 and 1642 any traces of those communications between Comenius andthe Parliament of which he speaks. There may be such, for the Indexes arenot perfect; and there is not the least reason to doubt the word ofComenius. ] And so, through the winter of 1641-2 and the spring of 1642, we are to imagine Hartlib and Comenius going about London together, Hartlib about forty years of age and Comenius about fifty, the youngerman delighted with his famous friend, introducing him to various people, and showing him the chief sights (the law-chambers and house of the greatVerulam not omitted, surely), and all the while busy with Pansophic talkand the details of the Pansophic College. We see now the reason ofHartlib's publication in Jan. 1641-2 of Comenius's two treatises jointlyin a book called _A Reformation of Schools_. It was to help in thebusiness which had brought Comenius to London. 

It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abruptend, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must followhim, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:--"Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642, " proceeds Comenius, "Ifound my new Męcenas at his house at Nortcoping; and, having been kindlyreceived by him, I was, after some days of deliberation, sent toStockholm, to the most illustrious Oxenstiern, Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Dr. Johannes Skyte, Chancellor of the University of Upsal. These twoexercised me in colloquy for four days; and chiefly the former, thatEagle of the North (_Aquila Aquilonius_). He inquired into thefoundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, sosearchingly that it was unlike anything that had been done before by anyof my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the Didactics, with at length this conclusion: 'From an early age, ' said he, 'Iperceived that our Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh andcrude one [_violentum quiddam_]; but where the thing stuck I couldnot find out. At length, having been sent, by my King of glorious memory[Gustavus Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I conversed on thesubject with various learned men. And, when I had heard that WolfgangRatich was toiling at an amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I hadgot that gentleman into my presence; who, however, instead of a talk onthe subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to read. I swallowed thattrouble; and, having turned over the whole book, I saw that he detectednot badly the maladies of our schools, but the remedies he proposed didnot seem sufficient. Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Goon with the work. ' I answered that I had done all I could in thosematters, and must now go on to others. 'I know said he, 'that you aretoiling at greater affairs, for I have read your _Prodromus Pansophię_. We will speak of that to-morrow: I must to public business now. ' Nextday, beginning to examine, but with greater severity, my PansophicAttempts, he opened with this question, 'Are you a man, Mr. Comenius, that can bear contradiction? [_Potesne contradicentem ferre_?]' 'I can, 'replied I, 'and therefore that _Prodromus_ or Preliminary Sketch was (notby me either, but by friends) sent out first, that it might meet withjudgment and criticism. Which if we admit from all and sundry, why notfrom men of mature wisdom and heroic reason?' He began, accordingly, todiscourse against the hope of a better state of things conceived as lyingin a rightly instituted study of Pansophia, first objecting politicalreasons of deep import, and then the testimonies of the divineScriptures, which seem to foretell for the latter days of the worldrather darkness and a certain deterioration of things than light andamended institutions. To all which he had such answers from me that heclosed with these words, 'Into no one's mind do I think such things havecome before. Stand upon these grounds of yours: either so shall we comesome time to agreement, or there will be no way at all left. My advice, however, is (added he) that you proceed first to do a good stroke in theSchool business, and to bring the study of the Latin tongue to a greaterfacility, and so prepare a broader and clearer way for those biggermatter. ' The Chancellor of the University did not cease to urge the same;and he suggested this as well: that, if I were unwilling to remove withmy family into Sweden, at all events I should come nearer to Sweden bytaking up my abode in Prussia, say in Elbing. As my Męcenas, to whom Ireturned at Nortcoping [Ludovicus de Geer], thought that both advicesought to be acquiesced in, and earnestly begged me that nothing should bedone otherwise than had been advised, whether in respect of the place ofmy abode, or of priority to be given to any other task, I agreed atlength, always with the hope that within a year or two there would be anend of the hack-work. "--In fact, Comenius went to Elbing in Prussia(Hartlib's native place, as the reader may remember), to be supportedthere by the generosity of Ludovicus de Geer, with subsidies perhaps fromOxenstiern, and to labour on at a completion of his system of SchoolEducation, with a view to its application to Sweden. --"But this good-nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehemently displeased my Englishfriends; and they sought to draw me back from any bargain by a longepistle, most full of reasons. 'A sufficient specimen, ' they argued, 'hadbeen given in Didactics; the path of farther rectification in thatdepartment was open enough: not yet so in Real Science. Others could actin the former department, and everywhere there were rising upSchoolmasters provoking each other to industry by mutual emulation;whereas the foundations of Pansophia were not yet sufficiently laid bare. Infinitely more profit would redound to the public from an explanation ofthe ways of true Wisdom than from little trifles about Latin. ' Much morein the same strain; and S. H. [Samuel Hartlib] added, '_Quo, moriture, ruis? minoraque viribus audes_?' in this poetical _solecism_ [Comeniuscalls the hexameter a solecism, I suppose, on account of the falsequantity it contains in the word _minora_], reproaching myinconsiderateness. Rejoiced by this recall into the road-royal, I senton this letter to Sweden; and, nothing doubting that they would comeround to the arguments there expressed, I gave myself up wholly to myPansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all events (if theSwedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my Scholastics and it were my hapto die in that drudgery), the foundations of Pansophia, of theinsufficient exposition of which I heard complaints, might be better dugdown into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But from Sweden theanswer that came was one ordering me to persevere in the proposal offirst finishing the Didactics; backed by saws to this effect: 'One wouldrather the _better_, but the _earlier_ must be done first, ' 'One doesn'tgo from the bigger to the smaller, but _wicey warsey_, ' and all the restof it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod on against my will inthe clay of logomachies for eight whole years. Fortunately this was nottill I had printed at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made effortsat a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under the title of'_Pansophię Diatyposis Ichnographica et Orthographica_, ' reprintedimmediately at Amsterdam and Paris. " [Footnote: Introd. To Part II. Of_Opera Didactica_. ]

Poor Comenius! He had a long life before him yet; but at this point wemust throw him off, shunted into his siding at Elbing, to plod there forfour years (1642-1646) at his Didactics, while he would fain have beensoaring among his Pansophics. [Footnote: Though, as he has told us, hisdrudgery at the Didactics continued for _eight_ years in all, therewas a break of these eight years in 1646 when he returned to Sweden toreport proceedings to his employers. ] Letters from his London friend, Hartlib, would reach him frequently in Elbing, and would doubtlessencourage him in the humbler labour since he could not be at the higher. For Hartlib himself, we find, also laid aside the Pansophics for a time, seeing no hope for them in London without the presidency of Comenius, butcontinued to interest himself in the Didactics. In fact, however, he wasnever without interests of some kind or another. Thus, in Feb. 1642-3, orwhen Comenius may have been about a year at Elbing, Hartlib was again atthe Durie business. "A Faithfull and Seasonable Advice, or the Necessityof a Correspondence for the Advancement of the Protestant Cause: humblysuggested to the Great Councill of England assembled in Parliament:Printed by John Hammond, 1643, " is the title of a new tract, of a fewpages, which we know to be Hartlib's. [Footnote: In the copy in theKing's Library, British Museum, there is the MS. Note "Ex dono Authoris, S. Hartlib" with the date "Feb. 6, 1642, " (_i. E. _ 1642-3). ] Then, inJuly 1643, the Westminster Assembly met; and what an accession of topicsof interest that brought to Hartlib may be easily imagined. There was theexcitement of _The Solemn League and Covenant_ (Aug. -Sept. ), withthe arrival in London of the Scottish Commissioners, including Hartlib'sfriend Henderson, to take part in the Assembly; there was the beginningof the great debate between Independency and Presbyterianism; nay, inNov. 1643, Durie was himself appointed a member of the Assembly by theParliament (Vol. II. P. 517), and so drawn over from the Continent for along period of service and residence in England. 

That Hartlib _was_ interested in all this, and led into newpositions and relationships by it, there is very varied proof. --Forexample, he was one of the witnesses in Laud's trial, which began Nov. 13, 1643, and straggled on through the rest of that year and the next. Hisevidence was wanted by the prosecution in support of that one of thecharges against Laud which alleged that he had "endeavoured to causedivision and discord between the Church of England and other ReformedChurches. " In proof of this it was proposed to show that he haddiscouraged and impeded Durie in his Conciliation scheme, on the groundthat the Calvinistic Churches were alien from the true faith, and that, in particular, he had "caused letters-patent granted by the King for acollection for the Palatinate ministers to be revoked after they hadpassed the great seal"; and it was to the truth of both these statementsthat Hartlib, with others, was required to testify. He was, as we know, amost competent witness in that matter; and he gave his evidence duly, though, as I should fancy, with no real ill-will to Laud. [Footnote: Seeparticulars in Prynne's _Canterburie's Doome_ (1646), pp. 539-542. Laud, in this part of his defence, names both Durie and Hartlib. He sayshe did not discourage Durie, but rather encouraged him, as he could proveby letters of Durie's which he had; to which the prosecution replied thatthe contrary was notorious, and that Durie had "oft complained to hisfriends" of Land's coldness. ]--Now that Episcopacy was done with, and itwas to a Parliament and an Assembly mainly Presbyterian that England waslooking for a new system of Church-government, Hartlib's anxiety was, asDurie's also was, to make the best of the new conditions, and to instilinto them as much of the Durie idea as possible. Might it not even bethat a Reformed Presbyterian Church of England would be a more effectiveleader in a movement for the union of the Protestant Churches of Europethan the Episcopal Church had been? This explains another short tract ofHartlib's, put forth Nov. 9, 1644, and entitled, "The Necessity of somenearer Conjunction and Correspondency amongst Evangelical Protestants, for the Advancement of the National Cause, and bringing to passe theeffect of the Covenant. " [Footnote: Though the tract, which consists ofbut eight small quarto pages, is anonymous, it is verified as Hartlib'sby the inscription on the British Museum copy, "By Mr. Hartlib, Novemb. 9th. " The tract itself bears only "London Printed 1644. "]--Well, but howdid Hartlib stand in the great controversy between the Independents andthe Presbyterians? This too can be answered. As might be expected, he wasin sympathy with the Independents, in as far as their claim for aToleration was concerned. The reader will remember Edwards's famous_Antapologia_, published in July 1644, in answer to the _ApologeticalNarration_ of the Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, and which allthe Presbyterian world welcomed as an absolutely crushing blow toIndependency and the Toleration principle. Here, then, is the title of asmaller publication which that big one provoked: "A Short Letter modestlyentreating a Friend's judgment upon Mr. Edwards his Booke he calleth anAnti-Apologia: with a large but modest Answer thereunto: London, Printedaccording to order, 1644. " Actually it was out on Sept. 14th, or abouttwo months after Edwards's book. The title exactly indicates thestructure of the publication. It consists of a short Letter and a longishReply to that Letter. The Letter begins, "Worthy Sir, I have heard of Mr. Edwards's Anti-Apologeticall Book, as I needs must doe, for all the Cityand Parliament rings with it, " and it goes on to request from the personaddressed _his_ opinion of the hook. At the end of the letter we find thewriter's name "Sam Hartlib": and the dating "from my house in Duke'sPlace in great haste, Aug. 5. " And who was the friend addressed? He was aHezekiah Woodward, B. A. (Oxon. ), preacher in or near Aldermanbury, aboutfifty years of age, long a zealous Puritan, latterly a decidedParliamentarian and champion of the Solemn League and Covenant, andalready known as an author by some Puritanic books, and one or two of apedagogic kind, referable to an earlier period of his life when he hadbeen a London schoolmaster. Hartlib had known him, he says in his letter, for sixteen years, that is to say from his first coming to London in 1628or 1629. It is this long friendship that justifies him in askingWoodward's opinion of Edwards's book. The opinion is given in a reply toHartlib, signed "Hezekiah Woodward, " and dated "from my house inAldermanbury, 13 Aug. 1644"; and it is, as far as I remember, quiteagainst Edwards, and a real, though hazy and perplexed, reasoning forToleration. [Footnote: The publication was duly registered, and has a longappended _Imprimatur_ by Joseph Caryl; and the exact date of thepublication (Sept 14) is from a MS. Note in the British Museum copy, Fora sketch of Woodward and a list of his writings see Wood, Ath. III, 1034-7. ]

MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION: HIS METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS. 

It had been Hartlib's chance, he himself tells us, to be "familiarlyacquainted with the best of Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen, ministers, Professors of bothUniversities, Merchants, and all sorts of learned or in any kind usefulmen. " This he wrote at a considerably later date in his life; [Footnote:In Aug. 1660, See Letter in Dircks's Memoir, p. 4. ] but, from what wehave already seen, we may vote it substantially true even in 1644. Inthat year, we know for certain, the circle of Hartlib's friends includedMilton. 

The acquaintanceship may have begun some years before that. It may havebegun in 1639 when Milton, on his return from abroad, took lodgings inSt. Bride's Churchyard, or in 1640, when he first set up house inAldersgate Street. At all events, when Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphletsof the next two years made him a public man, he is not likely to haveescaped the cognisance of Hartlib. I should not wonder if Milton were oneof those "more forward spirits" whom Hartlib wanted to enlist in thegreat scheme of a Pansophic University of London to be organized byComenius, and whom he tried to bring round Comenius personally during thestay of that theorist in London in 1641-2, when the experiment of somesuch University was really in contemplation by friends in Parliament, andChelsea had been almost fixed on as the site. But, if so, I rather guess, for reasons which will appear, that Milton gave the whole scheme the coldshoulder, and did not take to the great Comenius. Quite possibly, however, it was not till Comenius was gone, and was fixed down at Elbingin Prussia, that there was any intimacy between Milton and Hartlib. Itmay have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews he had till then hadcharge of, were received into his wifeless household. Would not this initself be an attraction to Hartlib? Was not Milton pursuing a new methodwith his pupils, between which and the method of Comenius there werepoints in common? Might not Comenius himself, in his retirement atElbing, be interested in hearing of an eminent English scholar and poetwho had views about a Reform of Education akin to his own?

This is very much fancy, but it is the exact kind of fancy that fits thecertainty. That certainty is that, before the middle of 1644, Milton andHartlib were well acquainted with each other, had met pretty frequentlyat Milton's house in Aldersgate Street, or at Hartlib's in Duke's Place, and had conversed freely on many subjects, and especially on that ofEducation. Nay more, Hartlib, trying to indoctrinate Milton with theComenian views on this subject, had found that Milton had already certainmost positive views of his own upon it, in some things agreeing with theComenian, but in others vigorously differing. Hence, after variouscolloquies, he had made a request to Milton. Would he put a sketch of hisviews upon paper--no elaborate treatise, but merely a sketch, such as onecould read in half-an-hour or so, and, if permitted, show to a friend, orprint for more general use? Urged more and more pressingly, Miltoncomplied; and the result was the appearance, on June 5, 1644, on somebooksellers' counters, of a thin little quarto tract, of eight pages inrather small type, with no author's name, and no title-page at all, butsimply this heading atop of the text on the first page, "OF EDUCATION: TOMASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB. " The publication had been duly registered, and thepublisher was the same Thomas Underhill, of Wood Street, who hadpublished Milton's first three Anti-Episcopal pamphlets. The inference isthat the thing was printed by Milton himself, and not by Hartlib. Itwould be handier for Hartlib to have it in print than in manuscript. [Footnote: "June 4, 1644: Tho. Underhill entered for his copy under thehands of Mr. Cranford [the licenser] and Mr. Man, warden, a little tracttouching Education of Youth, " is the entry in the Stationers' books;without which we should not have known the publisher's name. The date ofthe publication is fixed, and the fact that the authorship was known atthe time is proved, by this MS. Note of Thomason on the copy among theKing's Pamphlets in the British Museum (Press mark 12. F. E. 12. /160)"By Mr. John Milton: 5 June, 1644. "--Milton reprinted the tract in 1673, at the end of the second edition of his Minor Poems, with the words"Written above twenty years since" added to the original title. ]

Hartlib must have been pleased, and yet not altogether pleased, with theopening of the Tract. Here it is:--

"MR. HARTLIB, "I am long since persuaded that to say or do aught worth memory andimitation no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply thelove of God and of Mankind. Nevertheless, to write now the Reforming ofEducation, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that canbe thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had notyet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and seriousconjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in thepursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of whichcannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth andhonest living with much more peace. [Footnote: This passage, the wordingof which clearly implies that Milton was prosecuting his Divorcespeculation, with whatever else in addition, sets aside a hypothesis(which may have occurred to the reader as well as to myself) that theTract on Education, though not published till June 1644, may have beenwritten, and in Hartlib's hands, as early as 1641-2, when Comenius was inLondon. The hypothesis, which might have been otherwise plausible, willnot accord with the particular words of the tract now presented; and theconclusion is that, whether Milton knew Hartlib or not as early as 1641-2, when Comenius was with him, the tract was not written till shortlybefore its publication in June 1644, when Comenius had been two years inElbing. ] Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailedwith me to divide thus, or to transpose, my former thoughts, but that Isee those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of aperson sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be theoccasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, andsome of highest authority among us; not to mention the learnedcorrespondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinarypains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here andbeyond the seas, either by the definite will of God so ruling, or thepeculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working, Neither can I thinkthat, so reputed and so valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit ofyour own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderousargument, but that the satisfaction which you profess to have receivedfrom those incidental discourses which we have wandered into hathpressed, and almost constrained, you into a persuasion that what yourequire from me in this point I neither ought nor can in conscience deferbeyond this time, both of so much need at once and of so much opportunityto try what God hath determined. I will not resist, therefore, whateverit is either of divine or human obligement that you lay upon me; but willforthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Ideawhich hath long in silence presented itself to me of a better Education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorterand of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. BriefI shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say assuredly thisNation hath extreme need should be _done_ sooner than _spoken_. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renownedauthors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern JANUAS andDIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclinationleads me not. But, if you can accept of these few observations, whichhave flowered off, and are as it were the burnishing of, many studiousand contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious andcivil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I heregive you them to dispose of. "

What must have pleased Hartlib in this was the tone of respectfulcompliment to himself; what may have pleased him less was the slightingway in which Comenius is passed over. "To search what many modern JANUASand DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, myinclination leads me not, " says Milton, quoting in brief the titles ofthe two best-known works of Comenius. It is as if he had said, "I knowyour enthusiasm for your Pansophic friend; but I have not read his bookson Education, and do not mean to do so. " This was barely polite;[Footnote: The manner of the allusion to Comenius rather forbids the ideathat Milton had met him during his London visit. Like most high-naturedmen, Milton had a kindly side to the merits of those whom he personallyknew. ] but Hartlib was a man of sense: and he would be glad, in readingon, to find that, with whatever independence Milton had formed his views, not even Comenius had outgone him in denunciations of the existing systemof Education. Thus:--

"Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for allkind of learning, therefore we are taught chiefly the languages of thosepeople who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so thatLanguage is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues thatBabel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid thingsin them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to beesteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in hismother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have madeLearning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amissto spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so muchmiserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily anddelightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein somuch behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given bothto Schools and Universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcingthe empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, whichare the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, bylong reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out ofthe nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit: besides the ill habit whichthey get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom withtheir untutored Anglicisms, odious to read, yet not to be avoided withouta well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds ofspeech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to thepraxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good Thingsand Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly intotheir power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable wayof learning _Languages_, and whereby we may best hope to giveaccount to God of our youth spent herein. And, for the usual method ofteaching _Arts_, I deem it to be an old error of Universities, notyet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that, instead of beginning with Arts most easy (and these be such as are mostobvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices atfirst coming with the most intellective abstractions of Logic andMetaphysics; so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flatsand shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words withlamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under anotherclimate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits infathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part growinto hatred and contempt of Learning, mocked and deluded ail the whilewith ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy anddelightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call themimportunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway offriends, either to an ambitious and mercenary or ignorantly zealousDivinity: some allured to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes noton the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, whichwas never taught them, but on promising and pleasing thoughts oflitigious terms, fat contentions and flowing fees. Others betakethemselves to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue andtrue generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannousaphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling theirbarren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if (as I rather think) it benot feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retirethemselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which indeed is the wisestand the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrityundertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis-spending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, eitherin learning mere Words, or such Things chiefly as were better unlearnt. "

Having thus denounced the existing system of Schools and Universities, Milton goes on to explain what he would substitute. As he poeticallyexpresses it, he will detain his readers no longer in the wretched surveyof things as they are, but will conduct them to a hill-side where he willpoint out to them "the right path of a virtuous and noble education, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, sofull of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harpof Orpheus was not more charming. " The rest of the tract is a redemptionof this promise. To represent it by mere continued quotation would be ofsmall use, and is perhaps unnecessary. We will, therefore, try a strictermethod. 

Milton does not formally concern himself in this tract with the completeproblem of National Education. In this respect the passion and theprojects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's. Comenius aimed at, and passionately dreamt of, a system of Education that should, in everycountry where it was established, comprehend all born in that country, ofboth sexes, and of every rank or class, and take charge of them fromtheir merest infancy on as far as they could go, from the first orMother's School through the subsequent routine of the Public VernacularSchool, the Latin School or _Ludus Literarius_, and the University. This last stage of the complete routine might extend to the twenty-fourthor twenty-fifth year of life; and, though few could proceed to thatstage, and the majority must, from sheer social necessity, drop off inthe earlier stages, yet all were to be carried through the stage of theVernacular Public School, and progress beyond that, where possible, wasnot to be denied to girls any more than to boys. Compared with this, whatMilton contemplates, or at least discusses, is but an important fragmentstruck off from the total mass. True, he gives a tolerably broaddefinition of Education at the outset. "I call therefore a complete andgenerous Education, " he says, "that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War. " This definition, if meant as verbally perfect, wouldnot have been satisfactory to Comenius, whose express notion ofEducation, as we know, was that it included preparation for the life tocome as well as for that which now is. But, if he had known Milton, hemight have let the omission pass as certainly and most solemnly implied, and might even have liked, for the sake of effect, the practical andstraightforward utilitarianism of the definition. But then, when Milton'sprecise phrasing of the definition was examined, one could not but guesslimits in his mind. "That which fits a _man_ to perform" are thewords of the definition; and to perform what? "All the offices, bothprivate and public, of _Peace and War_, " are the words that follow. And, as one reads on, the conjecture suggested by this phrasing isconfirmed. By _man_ Milton did not mean _Homo_, but _Vir_. When he framedhis definition of Education, only one of the sexes was present to hismind; and throughout the whole tract, from first to last, there is not asingle recognition of girl, woman, or anything in female shape, as comingwithin the scheme proposed. But more than that. Not only is it theeducation of one sex only that Is discussed in the tract, but it is theeducation only of a portion of that sex, and of that portion only at aparticular period of life. There is nothing about the Infant Education, or what we should now call the Primary Education, of male children; andthere is nothing about ways and means for the secondary or highereducation of any others than those whose parents could pay for sucheducation out of their own resources. In short, the tract is a proposalof a new method for the education of English gentlemen's sons between theages of twelve and twenty-one. It is this, and nothing more, except in sofar as hints in the general philosophy of education may be implied in theparticular exposition. Milton himself was careful, ere the close of thetract, to avow that he had so restricted himself. It was a "generalview, " he said, such as Mr. Hartlib had desired, and meant also "forlight and direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial, "but "not beginning as some have done [_e. G. _ Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations, " and omitting also "manyother circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity beenthe scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys andyouths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English PublicSchools and Universities. 

Within his avowed limits, Milton is very like himself, _i. E. _ verygrand and very bold. At the first start, for example, he tells us that hewould abolish Universities altogether, or roll Public Schools andUniversities into one. Here is his recipe: "First to find out a spacioushouse and ground about it fit for an ACADEMY, and big enough to lodge 150persons (whereof 20 or thereabout maybe attendants), all under thegovernment of one who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and abilityeither to do all or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This placeshould be at once both School and University, not needing a remove to anyother house of Scholarship, except it be some peculiar College of Law orPhysic, where they mean to be practitioners; but, as for those generalstudies which take up all our time from Lilly to the commencing (as theyterm it) Master of Art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, asmany edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in everycity throughout this land; which would tend much to the increase oflearning and civility everywhere. " Milton clearly did not like thedeputation of all the higher education of England to two seats oflearning, like Oxford and Cambridge, but wanted his Academies to bedistributed all over England, in numbers proportionate to the population, and chiefly in cities. 

He takes one of these imagined Academies as a model, and shows how itmight be conducted. He divides the subject into the three heads ofSTUDIES, EXERCISES AND AMUSEMENTS, and DIET. On this last, however, he isextremely brief. "For their Diet there cannot be much to say, save onlythat it would be best in the same house; for much time else would be lostabroad, and many ill habits got; and that it should be plain, healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out of controversy:" _i. E. _ Milton wouldprefer that all the pupils should be boarded in the Academy, and havetheir meals there at a common table. It is to the Studies and theExercises and Amusements that most space is devoted. 

I. THE STUDIES:--Here Milton appears decidedly as an innovator, but yetwith a curious mixture of what would now be called rank Conservatism. Theinnovation consists in a total departure from the use and wont of histime, in respect of the nature of the studies to be pursued and the orderin which they should be taken. There was to be an end of that wretchedtorture of Latin and Greek theme-making and versifying, and that drearytoiling amid obsolete subtleties of scholastic Logic and Metaphysics, which he had denounced in a previous passage, and which had madeUniversity Education, he says, nothing better than "an asinine feast ofsow-thistles and brambles. " Instead of these he would have studies usefulin themselves and delightful to ingenuous young minds. Things rather thanWords; the Facts of Nature and of Life; Real Science of every possiblekind: this, together with a persistent training in virtuous and noblesentiment, and a final finish of the highest literary culture, was tocompose the new Education. Here Milton and Comenius are very much at one;here Milton and the modern advocates of the Real or Physical Sciences inEducation are very much at one. Given a lofty and varied idea of utility, no man has ever been more strenuously utilitarian than Milton was in thistract. The very novelty of the scheme it proposed consisted in theproclamation of utility as the test of the studies to be pursued and asruling the order in which they should come. --What, then, was that "rankconservatism, " as some might call it now, which accompanied the novelty?It was that the medium of liberal education should still be mainly Latinand Greek. A sentence in one of the passages of the tract already quotedhas prepared us for this. Language, Milton had there admitted, isvaluable in education only as an instrument of real knowledge, a vehicleof "things worthy to be known. " But then all languages were not equallyfitted for this function, inasmuch as every people could put into itslanguage only what it had in its head or heart, and so differentlanguages had come down freighted with very different weights and worthsof matter. Now, what were the languages pointed out by this principle asapt for the purposes of education? They were Greek, Latin, and Italian, with (on religious grounds) Hebrew and one or two of its cognates. Thesewere the tongues to be taught, and to be taught in, and mainly, of these, Latin and Greek. Of English there is not one word. This may partly beaccounted for. The acquisition of useful information in all kinds ofsubjects was to be a great part of the education in each of the proposedMiltonic Academies; and at that time information on all kinds of subjectswas locked up chiefly in Latin and Greek books. All modern or mediaevalbooks of information, all the standard text-books in the Sciences andArts, that had been written by Englishmen themselves or by Continentals, were in the common Latin; the library of such books, original ortranslated, in the vernacular was yet but scanty. One could not be_learned_ by means of English alone. Well, but Milton recognised aculture of the feelings, the imagination, the sense of art and nobleness, as also something needed in education, and to be helped by books; and inthis respect, if not in the other, were there not available materials andmeans in the native English Literature? That Literature contained, at allevents, the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and not a fewothers, rated more or less highly by Milton himself. That Milton did not, on this account, include some teaching and reading of the vernacular inthe curriculum of his Academy, may have arisen from the fact that thebest in English Literature was then all recent, and of such small bulkcollectively that acquaintance with it might be expected as a matter ofmere chance and delicious odd hours in window-corners. Here he butfollowed the custom. All Public or Grammar Schools were Latin and GreekSchools: English at that stage was, by common consent, to shift foritself. And yet there were dissentients from the custom, and advocates ofthe claims of the vernacular. Comenius, as we have seen, had blown ablast on the subject for all lands; and in Milton's own school of St. Paul's there had been a rather remarkable tradition of English. Not onlyhad the elder Gill, the Head-master of the school in Milton's time, beena purist in English, and an inventor of new methods for teaching in andthrough English (see Vol. I. Pp. 60-64), but Gill's predecessor in theschool, Mulcaster, had pleaded for English. "Is it not a marvellousbondage, " he had written as early as 1582, "to become servants to onetongue, for learning's sake, the most part of our time, whereas we mayhave the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time:our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom; the Latintongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, butLondon better; I favour Italy, but England more; I honour the Latin, butI worship the English. " [Footnote: Richard Mulcaster's "First Part of theElementarie; which entreateth chiefelie of the Right Writing of ourEnglish Ton. , " (1582). My quotation, however, is not directly from thebook itself, but from an extract in the Appendix to Mr. Quick's "Essayson Educational Reformers" (1868), pp. 301-2. ] After this and thetradition of English in St. Paul's, Milton's total omission of Englishfrom the curriculum of his Academy is rather remarkable. There are proofsthat, when he wrote his Tract on Education, he had settled in a lowerestimate of the worth of all the previous English Literature than iscommon now, and that he thought the greatness of English still to come. This may have had something to do with the omission. Possibly, however, he reserved a large daily use of English in his Academy which does notappear in the programme. 

What does appear in the programme is that the curriculum of eight yearsor so was to be arranged, not rigidly but in a general way, in fourclasses or stages, thus:--

(1) _First Class or Stage_ (ętat. L2-l3?):--The business here was tobe Latin, Arithmetic, and Elementary Geometry. The Latin rudiments andrules were to be learnt from "some good Grammar, either that now used[Lilly's], or any better, " and the Italian or Continental mode ofpronouncing Latin, instead of the customary English, was to be carefullytaught from the first; but as to the first reading-books to be used alongwith the Grammar, or any method for simplifying and accelerating entranceinto Latin, whether that of Comenius or any other, there is no hint asyet. Neither is there any hint as to the manner of learning Arithmeticand the Elements of Geometry, save that the latter might be picked up"even playing, as the old manner was. " On another part of the training ofthis First Class, however, Milton is more specific. Most especially atthis stage, the boys were to be inured to noble and hardy sentiments anda sense of the importance of the education they were beginning; they wereto be "inflamed with the study of Learning and the admiration of Virtue";nay, they were to be "stirred up with high hopes of living to be bravemen and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages. " This mightbe done by reading to them aloud, from Greek or Latin, "some easy anddelightful Book of Education" not yet accessible to themselves. "CEBES, [Footnote: The Pinax (Table) of CEBES of Thebes, a disciple of Socrates. "This Pinax is a philosophical explanation of a table on which the wholeof human life, with its dangers and temptations, was symbolicallyrepresented, and which is said to have been dedicated by some one to thetemple of Cronos at Athens or Thebes. The author introduces some youthscontemplating the table, and an old man who steps among them undertakesto explain its meaning. The whole drift of the book is to show that onlythe proper development of the mind and possession of real virtues canmake us truly happy" (Dr. L. Schmitz in Smith's Dict. Of Greek and RomanBiog. : Art. _Cebes_. ) There were in Milton's time Latin translationsof Cebes, and at least one in English. ] PLUTARCH, [Footnote: This must besome such portion of PLUTARCH'S "Moral Works" as that relating toPedagogy. An English translation of the "Morals, " by Philemon Holland, had been published in 1603. ] and other Socratic Discourses, " arementioned as fit for the purpose in Greek; and, in Latin, "the two orthree first Books of QUINTILIAN. " [Footnote: I do not find in Lowndes anyearly English translation of QUINTILIAN'S "Institutes. " The first two orthree Books of this work are an excellent dissertation on the importanceof Education and survey of what it ought to include; and it gives us anidea of Milton's purpose that he wanted them to be read to pupils at theoutset. He wanted to fire them with high notions of that business ofeducation on which they were entering. ] Most, however, would depend onthe explanations and precepts of the master himself at every opportunity, and on the influence of his own example, "infusing into their youngbreasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make manyof them renowned and matchless men. " Always, too, at evening, there wasto be Religious teaching and reading of the Bible. 

(2) _Second Class or Stage_ (_ętat_. 13-16?):--This stage, itmust be presumed, was to be considerably longer than the first; for itsbusiness was to consist in Latin continued, with Greek added, and in theacquisition through these tongues, and otherwise, of a knowledge of allthe useful Sciences and Arts. Here, indeed, Milton's utilitarian bent, his determination to substitute a pabulum of real knowledge for thestudies then customary in schools, asserts itself most conspicuously. Here it is that he approaches most to Comenius in the substance, thoughwith a difference in the manner. For what were the books he wouldexercise his pupils on at this stage, _i. E. _ as soon as they had gotthrough the Latin Grammar, and could make out a bit of Latin? First, CATO, VARRO, and COLUMELLA, the three Latin writers on Agriculture. [Footnote: CATO is the famous "Cato the Censor" of Roman history, or M. Porcius Cato (B. C. 231-141), among whose preserved writing, is anagricultural treatise, _De Re Rustica_; VARRO is M. Terentius Varro(B. C. 116-28), reputed the most learned of all the Romans, and amongwhose various works is also one _De Re Rustica_; COLUMELLA, theauthor of a systematic work on Agriculture, in twelve Books, lived in thefirst century of the Christian era. I do not know that there were anyEnglish translations of these Latin works on Agriculture in Milton'stime. ] If the language of these unusual authors was difficult for thepupils, "so much the better; it is not a difficulty beyond their years. "They would, at all events, find the matter useful and interesting, andmight, by these readings, and due modern comments, be "incited andenabled" for the great work of "improving the tillage of their country"when they should grow to be men. Hartlib, we may be sure, would like thison its own account; but Milton had an additional reason for it. Thepupils, after having read these writers, would have a good grasp of theLatin vocabulary, and would be masters of any ordinary Latin prose. Theymight then, therefore, learn Geography, with "the use of the Globes andall the Maps, " through any good modern (Latin) treatise on that subject, and also the elements of "Natural Philosophy" in the same way. Miltondoes not specify any manual on either subject. But, about this time, hesays, the pupils would be learning Greek. This they would do "after thesame manner as was before prescribed in the Latin; whereby, thedifficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the historicalPhysiology of ARISTOTLE and THEOPHRASTUS are open before them, and, as Imay say, under contribution. " In other words, the first Greek readings ofthe pupils would be in such works of Aristotle as his "History ofAnimals, " his "Meteorology, " and parts of his general "Physics, " and inthe "History of Plants" of Aristotle's disciple, Theophrastus; [Footnote:Lowndes mentions no English translations of ARISTOTLE or THEOPHRASTUS asearly as Milton's time. ] and the purpose of such readings would be toenlarge their knowledge of the Physical Sciences at the same time thatthey were breaking themselves into Greek. But now, Latin being thoroughlyin their possession, they might be ranging at large, in quest of the sameand analogous kinds of information, in VITRUVIUS (Architecture), SENECA's"Natural Questions, " MELA (Geography), CELSUS (Medicine), PLINY (NaturalHistory), and SOLINUS (Natural History and Geography). [Footnote:VITRUVIUS and CELSUS do not seem to have been translated into English soearly as Milton's time; but there were translations of all the others. The works of SENECA, both Moral and Natural, had been "done into English"by Thomas Lodge (1614); PLINY'S "Natural Historie of the World, "translated by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physic (1601), was a well-knownbook; and MELA and SOLINUS had been made accessible together in "The rareand singular work of Pomponius Mela, that excellent and worthyCosmographer of the Situation of the World, most orderly prepared, anddivided every parte by it selfe; with the Longitude and Latitude ofeverie kingdome, &c. ; whereunto is added that learned worke of JuliusSolinus _Polyhistor_, with a necessarie table for this Booke, rightpleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, andTravellers, Translated into Englyshe by Arthur Golding, gent. " (1585-7. )]What next? Why, "having thus passed the principles of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Geography, with a general compact of Physics, they may descend, in Mathematics, to the instrumental science ofTrigonometry, and from thence to Fortification, Architecture, Enginry, orNavigation; and, in Natural Philosophy, they may proceed leisurely fromthe History of Meteors, Minerals, Plants, and Living Creatures, as far asAnatomy. Then also in course might be read to them out of some nottedious writer the Institution of Physic; that they may know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and how to manage a crudity. " Text-books arenot mentioned here; and, though some must have been in view for suchsubjects as Trigonometry, Fortification, Engineering, and Navigation, yetit is clear, from Milton's language, that he meant a good deal of themiscellaneous instruction to be by lectures and digests of books by theteacher. Nay, there were to be more than lectures. "To set forward allthese proceedings in Nature and Mathematics, what hinders but that theymay procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experiences ofHunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries, and, inthe other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists; who, doubtless, would be ready, some for reward, and some to favour such ahopeful Seminary. " Hartlib must here have rejoiced again. But there comesin a Miltonic touch at the end. Hitherto he has debarred the pupils ofhis Academy, it will have been noticed, from all the ordinary classicsread in schools. But, just about the end of this, the second stage oftheir studies, devoted to the Real or Physical Sciences and theirapplications, he would admit them to such classic readings as wouldimpart a poetic colouring to the knowledge so acquired. In Greek, theymight take now to ORPHEUS, HESIOD, THEOCRITUS, ARATUS, NICANDER, OPPIAN, and DIONYSIUS, and in Latin to LUCRETIUS, MANILIUS, and the Georgics ofVIRGIL. [Footnote: Of the ORPHIC POEMS Milton must here have intendedthose relating to Nature and her phenomena. Of the "Works and Days" or"Georgics" of HESIOD, there had been an English translation by GeorgeChapman (1618); and at least some of the Idylls of THEOCRITUS had been inEnglish since 1588. The _Phnomena_ and _Diosemeia_ of Aratus(circ. B. C. 270) were, as we know, a favourite book with Milton, and hehad had a copy of the Paris edition of 1559 in his possession since 1631(see Vol. I. P. 234, Note), with MS. Notes of his own in the margin. Inlooking at the specimens of these MS. Notes facsimiled by the late Mr. Leigh Sotheby in his Milton _Ramblings_ from the original book, now inthe British Museum, I can see, by my test of the shaping of the letter e(Vol. II. P. 121, Note), that, while some of the notes were writtenbefore the journey to Italy, or between 1631 and 1638, others werewritten after the return from Italy, _i. E. _ after 1639. This proves thatMilton kept using the book in his manhood. There was, I think, then noEnglish translation of it. Neither was there a translation of the_Theriaca_ and _Alexipharmaka_ (Poems on Venomous Animals and Poisons) ofthe Greek NICANDER (circ. B. C. 150); nor of the _Halieutics_ and_Kynegetics_ (Poems on Fishing and Hunting) of OPPIAN (circ. A. D. 210). There was, however, as early as 1572, an English translation "by ThomasIrvine, gentl. " of the _Periegetes_ or Geographical Poem of DIONYSIUSAFER (third century after Christ). Of the Latin Poems mentioned--LUCRETIUS _De Rerum Natura_, the _Astronomica_ of MANILIUS, and theGeorgics of VIRGIL--only the last had been Englished as yet. They hadbeen Englished in 1589 by an Abraham Fleming, and in 1628 by Thomas May. ]

Some of these books which were "counted most hard" would be, in thecircumstances, facile and pleasant. 

(3) _Third Class or Stage_ (_ętat_. 16-19?):--The work of thisstage was also to be very composite. It was to embrace Ethics, Economics, Politics, Jurisprudence, Theology, Church History and General History, together with Italian, Hebrew, and possibly Chaldee and Syriac, variedthroughout by such carefully-arranged readings in Latin and Greekclassics as would harmonize with those studies while they relieved them. For by this stage the reason of the pupils would have been so far maturedthat they might pass from the Physical to the Moral Sciences. For Ethics, they might be led "through all the Moral Works of PLATO, XENOPHON, CICERO, PLUTARCH, LAERTIUS, and those LOCRIAN REMNANTS; [Footnote: Therewas then no complete English translation of PLATO, but individualDialogues had been translated, and he had been accessible complete inLatin since 1484. The _Cyropędia_ of XENOPHON had been twice translatedinto English, the second translation (1632) being by Philemon Holland;but Lowndes mentions no translation yet of the _Memorabilia_. The _DeOfficiis_ of CICERO had been translated again and again, and others ofhis writings. The Morals of PLUTARCH, as we have already seen, wereaccessible in English. The book on the History of Philosophy by the GreekDIOGENES LAERTIUS was not yet in English, but a Latin translation wasextant. By the LOCRIAN REMNANTS seem to be meant reputed remains of thoseLOCRIAN philosophers from whom PLATO had derived instruction. ] but stillto be reduced, in their nightward studies wherewith they close the day'swork, under the determinate sentence of DAVID or SOLOMON, or the EVANGELSand APOSTOLIC SCRIPTURES. " For Economics and Politics, to follow theEthics, no books are named; but the Greek and Latin books in view may beguessed. In Jurisprudence, which was to come next, they would find thesubstance "delivered first, and with best warrant, by MOSES"; and then, "as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those extolled remains ofGrecian Lawgivers, LYCURGUS, SOLON, ZALEUCUS, CHARONDAS, and thence toall the Roman Edicts and Tables, with their JUSTINIAN, and so down to theSAXON AND COMMON LAWS OF ENGLAND and the STATUTES. " [Footnote: To putthis in other words, Milton, to ground his English students in theScience of Law, would have begun first with the MOSAIC LAWS in thePentateuch, and would then have led them through a course of: I. _TheGreek Legislation_, so far as it could be recovered, of LYCURGUS theSpartan (B. C. 884, according to Aristotle), SOLON the Athenian (_circ. _B. C. 600), ZALEUCUS, the Lawgiver of the Locrians (_circ. _ B. C. 660), andCHARONDAS, the Lawgiver of Catana and other Greek cities in Sicily andItaly (_circ. _ B. C. 500); II. _The Roman Law_, in all its ancientfragments, and especially in its great compilation and completion by theEmperor JUSTINIAN (A. D. 527-534); III. _Native English Law_, asrepresented in the preserved codes of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ofKent, Wessex, &c. , and in the traditional and written Laws of Englandsince the Conquest. ] For History, General or Ecclesiastical, no manualsare spoken of; and, as respects Theology, it is only indicated that thismight be the employment of Sundays, though not exclusively so. --TheItalian language was to be acquired "at any odd hour" in an early part ofthis stage, and the Hebrew, with Chaldee and Syriac, farther on; butthere is no specification of means, or of the Grammars to be used. --Thepoetical and oratorical readings interspersed with these various andprogressive studies were to be, in the earlier part of the stage, "somechoice Comedies, Greek, Latin, and Italian, " selected "with wariness andgood antidote, " and a Tragedy or two of the domestic kind, such as the_Trachinię_ of SOPHOCLES, and the _Alcestis_ of EURIPIDES; and sogradually to the chief Historians (HERODOTUS, THUCYDIDES, &c. ), theHeroic Poets (HOMER, VIRGIL, &c. ), the "Attic Tragedies of stateliest andmost regal ornament" (more of SOPHOCLES and EURIPIDES), and "the mostfamous Political Orations" (DEMOSTHENES and CICERO). [Footnote: Chapman'stranslation of HOMER into English had been complete in 1616. Nothing ofĘSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, or EURIPIDES, appears to have been translated intoEnglish. Two Books of HERODOTUS had been translated into English as earlyas 1584; and Hobbes' translation of THUCYDIDES had appeared in 1628. There were English translations of some Orations of DEMOSTHENES andCICERO; and of the Ęneid of VIRGIL, or separate portions of it, there hadbeen many translations, including Caxton's (1480), Gawin Douglas's inScotch (1553), the Earl of Surrey's (1557), Phęr and Irvine's (1573), andSandys's (1627). ] Milton recommends that passages of the Orators andTragedians should be got by heart and solemnly recited aloud. He does notname Ęschylus among his Tragedians. Euripides, we know, was hisfavourite. 

(4) _Fourth Class or Stage_ (_ętat. _ 19-21?):--This was to be thefinishing stage, and was to be devoted to Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics, with practice in Composition. Such training in form and literary theory, Milton argued, would come best after the pupils had acquired asufficiency of _matter_, or somewhat of "an universal insight into_things_. " As to the masters for Logic he says nothing in the tract; butwe know otherwise that he had a fancy for Ramus, as qualifying Aristotle. For Rhetoric the masters were to be "PLATO, ARISTOTLE, PHALEREUS, CICERO, HERMOGENES, LONGINUS. " [Footnote: PLATO comes in here, I suppose, for hisstyle generally, and for disquisitions on Rhetoric in one or two of hisDialogues; ARISTOTLE, of course, for his _Rhetoric_ (not then translated, I think). PHALEREUS is Demetrius Phalereus, the Athenian orator (B. C. 345--283), and reputed author of a work "On Elocution" (not translated inMilton's time, I think); CICERO is brought in, of course, for his _DeOratore_, &c. (translated into English, I should think, before Milton'stime, but I am not sure); HERMOGENES (second century after Christ) is theGreek author of a system of Rhetoric in several Books, all written in hisyouth (not in English in Milton's time, if yet); and LONGINUS wasLonginus' "On the Sublime" (waiting to be put into English). ] By PoeticsMilton did not mean mere Prosody, which he assumed the pupils to havelearnt long ago under the head of Grammar, but "that sublime Art which, in ARISTOTLE'S _Poetics_, in HORACE, and the Italian Commentaries ofCASTELVETRO, TASSO, MAZZONI, and others, teaches what the laws are of atrue Epic Poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what decorum is, which is the great masterpiece to observe. [Footnote: Lowndes does notmention any very early translation of the _Poetics_ of ARISTOTLE. Of the_De Arte Poetica_ of HORACE there had been at least two translations--oneby "Tho. Drant" in 1567, and one by Ben Jonson (published 1640). One workof TASSO referred to in the text is, I suppose, his _La Cavaletta; overodella Poesia Toscana;_ CASTELVETRO (1505--1571) and MAZZONI (_circa_1590) were two Italian scholars who had written on Poetry. The omissionby Milton here of such English books as Sir Philip Sidney's _Apologie forPoetrie_ (1595) and Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) is astriking instance of his resolute non-regard of everything English. ] Thiswould make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our commonRhymers and Play-writers be, and show them what religious, what gloriousand magnificent use, might be made of Poetry both in divine and humanthings. " Observe the contempt which Milton here expresses of the EnglishLiterature of his age. It had by this time become one of his habitualfeelings. He goes on, however, to express the same contempt of thecontemporary English Pulpit. By that practice in speaking and writingwhich he proposed as the final and crowning discipline in his Academy, hehoped to turn out young men fitted to teach the English Pulpit a newstyle of preaching, as well as to excel in public and Parliamentary life. 

II. EXERCISES AND AMUSEMENTS:--These were to be of three kinds: (1)_Gymnastics and Regular Military Drill. _ Milton is most emphatic onthis subject. He would have the course of Education in his Academy to beas good for war as for peace; and therefore he would blend the Spartandiscipline with the Athenian culture. The pupils were to be taughtFencing, so that they might be excellent swordsmen, with "exact use oftheir weapon, to guard, and to strike safely with edge or point. " Theywere also to be "practised in all the locks and gripes of Wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight totug or grapple, and to close. " So much for their gymnastics individually. But the main thing was to be their military drill collectively. There wasto be no mistake about this; it was to be no mere school-play. The 120 or130 youths in each Academy, under its head-master, with his twentyattendants, were to be treated sometimes as a single company of Foot, andat other times as two troops of Horse; and they were to be regularly andcontinually drilled in all the art both of Infantry and Cavalry. As wehave already quoted the substance of the passage where this is insistedon (Vol. II. P. 480), we need here note only that portion of the passagein which Milton points out how, by such a system of training, the pupilsof his Academy might be expected, "as it were out of a long war, " to"come forth renowned and perfect commanders in the service of theircountry. " "Commanders" observe; _i. E. _, as we said before, thecontemplated Academy was one for gentlemen's sons only. (2) _Music_. There was to be abundance of this in the Academy, both for recreation andfor the noble effects of music on the mind. The music was to be bothvocal and instrumental; and of the various instruments the organ is namedin chief. (3) _Excursions_. "In those vernal seasons of the yearwhen the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullennessagainst Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in herrejoicing with Heaven and Earth. I should not therefore be a persuader tothem of studying much then, after two or three years that they have welllaid their grounds, but to ride out in companies, with prudent and staidguides to all the quarters of the land, learning and observing all placesof strength, all commodities of building, and of soil for towns andtillage, harbours and ports for trade; sometimes taking sea as far as toour navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge ofsailing and of sea-fight. "

Dr. Johnson's criticism of Milton's new Method of Education is wellknown, and is perhaps the criticism most operative to the present day. The scheme is a mere air-hung fancy, the _utinam_ of a sanguinespirit, put forth as a possible institution! But the real question inevery such case is, Does the proposal contain some important improvementwhich _is_ practicable? Does it move in the right direction? This isthe question to be asked respecting Milton's plan for a ReformedEducation, How does Dr. Johnson answer it? "The truth is that theknowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledgerequires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of thehuman mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether wewish to be useful or pleasing, the first object is the religious andmoral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with thehistory of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embodytruth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence andjustice are virtues and excellences of all times and all places; we areperpetually moralists, but are geometricians only by chance. Ourintercourse with Intellectual Nature is necessary; our speculations uponMatter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of suchrare emergence that one man may know another half his life without beingable to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moraland prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, mostprinciples of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and thesepurposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians. "[Footnote:Johnson's Life of Milton, in his _Lives of the Poets_ (Cunningham'sedit. I. 91-93)] What an egregious misrepresentation this is of Milton'sproject the reader, who already knows the project itself in itscompleteness, will see at once. Milton included all that Johnson wantedto have included, and more largely and systematically than Johnson wouldhave dared to dream of, and for the same reasons. The introduction ofNatural and Physical Science into schools was but a portion, though anemphatic portion, of Milton's project. And, with respect to this portionof his project--a novelty at the time, though Milton had Comenius andHartlib and all the Verulamians with him--subsequent opinion has more andmore pronounced, and is more and more and more pronouncing, for Miltonand against Johnson. The fairer criticism now would be as to the_mode_ in which Milton proposed to teach Natural and PhysicalScience, and knowledge generally. Milton, who himself possessed in reallyencyclopędic extent all the scientific knowledge of his time, must havebeen right in supposing that the knowledge _could_ then be taughtthrough Latin and Greek books. Even then, however, he perhaps overratedthe necessity of Latin and Greek for this particular business ofeducation, and underrated what could be done in sheer English. And, nowthat Science has burst all bounds of Latin and Greek, and it would beludicrous to go merely to the Greek and Latin authors named by Milton forour Geography, or Astronomy, or Natural History, or Physics, orChemistry, or Anatomy and Physiology, it is clear that the claims ofLatin and Greek in education must not rest on their instrumental value ingiving access to the stores of science, but on quite another basis. Inshort, that in Milton's scheme which is now obsolete is its determinateintertwining of the whole business of the acquisition of knowledge withthe process of reading in other languages than the vernacular. This takenout of the Scheme, all the rest lasts, and is as good now, and perhaps asneedful, as it was in Milton's time. Above all, the noble moral glow thatpervades the _Tract on Education_, the mood of magnanimity in whichit is conceived and written, and the faith it inculcates in the powers ofthe young human spirit, if rightly nurtured and directed, are meritseverlasting. 

The plan of the tract was not speculative only. Since 1639, when he livedin the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, Milton had been teaching his twonephews, and had had the younger nephew, Johnny Phillips, boarding withhim entirely; when he removed in 1640 to the house in Aldersgate Street, the elder nephew, Edward Phillips, also came under his roof; and in 1643, after his wife had deserted him, and his father had come to live withhim, he had received into his house, as boarders or day-boarders, a fewadditional pupils. How many there were we do not know: probably, with thetwo nephews, not more than eight or a dozen at most. Part of his dailywork, therefore, at the very time when he wrote the tract to Hartlib, wasthe teaching of these few boys. Accordingly, it is at this point that wemay best quote Edward Phillips's account of his uncle's method with hispupils. He had himself had four or five years' experience of the method, and was now (1644) fourteen years of age. In his account, however, thoughhe inserts it as early as the year 1639 in his Memoir, he inweavesrecollections that must span from 1639 to 1646, so as to describe in onepassage his uncle's training of boys from the age of ten to that offifteen or sixteen:--

"And here, by the way, I judge it not impertinent to mention the manyauthors both of the Latin and Greek which, through his excellent judgmentand way of teaching, far above the pedantry of common Public Schools(where such authors are scarce ever heard of), were run over within nogreater compass of time than from ten to fifteen or sixteen years ofage:--Of the Latin, the four grand authors _De Re Rusticā_, CATO, VARRO, COLUMELLA, and PALLADIUS; a great part of PLINY'S 'Natural History';VITRUVIUS his 'Architecture'; FRONTINUS his 'Stratagems'; with the twoegregious Poets, LUCRETIUS and MANILIUS: Of the Greek, HESIOD, a poetequal to Homer; ARATUS his _Phęnomena_ and _Diosemeia_; DIONYSIUS AFER'_De Situ Orbis_'; OPPIAN'S 'Cynegetics' and 'Halieutics'; QUINTUSCALABER his Poem of the Trojan War continued from Homer; APOLLONIUSRHODIUS his 'Argonautics'; and, in prose, PLUTARCH'S '_PlacitaPhilosophorum_' and [Greek: Peri Paidon Agogias]; GEMINUS'S Astronomy, XENOPHON'S _Cyri Institutio_ and _Anabasis_, ĘLIAN'S 'Tactics, ' andPOLYĘNUS his 'Warlike Stratagems. ' Thus, by teaching, he in some measureincreased his own knowledge, having the reading of all these authors asit were by proxy.... Nor did the time thus studiously employed inconquering the Greek and Latin tongues hinder the attaining to the chiefOriental languages, viz. The Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, so far as to gothrough the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, in Hebrew, to make a goodentrance into the Targum, or Chaldee Paraphrase, and to understandseveral chapters of St. Matthew in the Syriac Testament: besides anintroduction into several Arts and Sciences, by reading URSTISIUS hisArithmetic, RIFF'S Geometry, PITISCUS his Trigonometry, JOANNES DE SACROBOSCO _De Sphęra_; and into the Italian and French tongues, by reading, in Italian, GIOVAN VILLANI'S History of the Transactions between severalpetty States of Italy, and, in French, a great part of PIEREE DAVITY, thefamous geographer of France in his time. ----The Sunday's work was for themost part the reading each day a chapter of the Greek Testament andhearing his learned exposition upon the same (and how far this savouredof Atheism in him I leave to the courteous backbiter to judge); the nextwork after this was the writing from his own dictation some part, fromtime to time, of a Tractate which he thought fit to collect from theablest of Divines who had written of that subject (AMESIUS, WOLLEBIUS, &c. )--viz. A Perfect System of Divinity; of which more hereafter. "[Footnote: The books named in this extract from Phillips, but not inMilton's tract, may be noted:--The PALLADIUS, who is here added to thethree Latin writers on Agriculture mentioned in the tract, lived probablyin the fourth century, and left a treatise _De Re Rustica_, very popularthrough the Middle Ages. It had not been translated into English. FRONTINUS (who had preceded Agricola as Roman Governor of Britain, anddied _circ_. A. D. 106) was the author of _Stratagematicon Libri IV. _, akind of anecdotic treatise on the Art of War; ĘLIANUS (time of theEmperor Hadrian) and POLYĘNUS the Macedonian (second century) were Greekwriters on the Military Art. Though Milton does not name them in histract, he doubtless had them in view among Military Books to be read. Twoof them had been translated into English--Frontinus, by "RichardeMorysine" (1539), and Ęlianus by "John Bingham" (1616-31). QUINTUSCALABER, the nature of whose Poem in 14 Books is sufficiently describedin the text (really a native of Smyrna, but called "Calaber" because thebest known copy of his Poem was found in Calabria), lived late in thefourth century; APOLLONIUS RHODIUS, so called because he lived long inRhodes, though born in Alexandria, is a much earlier and much betterknown Greek poet (_circ. _ B. C. 200). Neither of these Greek poets seemsto have been translated in Milton's time. GEMINUS was a Greekmathematician of the first century, who seems to have lived in Rome, andwho left an [Greek: Pisagogę kis ta phainomena], or treatise on theSphere. Lowndes mentions no English version of it. URSTISIUS, who ismentioned for his Arithmetic, is CHRISTIAN WURZTICIUS, an Italianmathematician (1544-1588); RIFF I have not farther identified; PITISCUSis Bartholomew Pitiscus (1561-1613); and JOANNES DE SACRO BOSCO is thefamous Englishman John Holywood (died 1256), whose treatise _De Sphęra_, often re-edited and re-published, was the most popular manual ofAstronomy in the Middle Ages. VILLANI, the Florentine historian, died1348; DAVITY, the French geographer, is unknown to me; AMESIUS, author ofthe _Medella Theo logia_ and other theological works, is the William Ames(1576-1633), already known to us (Vol. II. P 579); and WOLLIBIUS (1536-1626) was a Divine of Basle and author of _Compendium Theologię_. ]

What a busy domicile the wifeless house in Aldersgate Street must havebeen through the year 1644! Pupils and their lessons through the solidpart of the day; only a margin, morning and evening, for Milton's ownreadings and meditations; the father sometimes with him for an hour or soof music, but oftener in his own room, "retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable;" every hour of the day crammed withwork; even on the Sundays those expositions of the Greek Testament to hispupils, and those dictations to them in Latin of portions of a System ofDivinity which he had resolved to compile from the Scriptures and theworks of the best Protestant theologians! And yet it was out of thisquiet and industrious household that there had burst upon the Englishpublic that thunderbolt of the Divorce heresy!

A SECOND DIVORCE TRACT: COMPILATION FROM BUCER. 

The Divorce idea still occupied Milton. On the 15th of July, 1644 (fiveweeks after the publication of the _Tract on Education_ addressed toHartlib, and five months and a half after the publication of the SecondEdition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_), there wasentered at Stationers' Hall another tract, which appeared on that day, orimmediately afterwards, with this title: "_The Judgement of MartinBucer concerning Divorce. Writt'n to Edward the Sixt, in his Second Bookof the Kingdom of Christ. And now Englisht. Wherein a late Book restoringthe Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, is heer confirm'd and justify'dby the authoritie of Martin Bucer. To the Parlament of England_. John3, 10: Art thou a teacher in Israel, and know'st not these things?_Publisht by Authoritie. London, Printed by Matthew Simmons_, 1644. "Martin Bucer [Footnote: The entry in the Stationers' Hall Registeris asfollows:--"_July 15, 1614: Matt. Symmons cut. For his copie, underwhich, of Mr. Downham, and Mr. Parker, warden, the Judgment of MartinBucer concerning Divorce, written to King Edw. Ye 6th in the 2nd Book ofthe Kingdom of Xt. : Englished by Mr. Milton. _"] The tract consists of40 small quarto pages in all; of which, however, only 24 are numbered. These numbered pages, forming the body of the tract, are abridgedtranslations by Milton of the passages from Martin Bucer which he wishedto introduce to the English public. They are preceded by six pages of"Testimonies of the high approbation which learned men have given ofMartin Bucer" (viz. Quotations by Milton from Calvin, Beza, Sturmius, andothers, to show what a man Bucer was), and then by eight pages of closertype, addressed by Milton to the Parliament and signed with his name infull. At the end, after the numbered pages, there is a postscript of twopages, in which Milton again speaks directly, and winds up the tract. 

The title-page of the tract indicates Milton's purpose in it, Hisoriginal Divorce treatise had been put forth as the result of his ownreasonings and meditations, without the knowledge that any had precededhim in the same track to anything like the same extent. While preparingthe second edition he had become aware that strong support from learnedauthorities might be adduced for his doctrine; in especial, he had becomeaware that he had had a forerunner in the famous Reformer Paul Fagius. Much of the added matter in the second edition consisted, accordingly, inthe citation of Fagius and other witnesses to strengthen his argument. Strangely enough, however, he was still unaware that he might have thebenefit of a witness more renowned even than Paul Fagius. Not till May1644 did he chance to learn this fact. "When the book, " he says, "hadbeen now the second time set forth well-nigh three months, as I bestremember, I then first came to hear that Martin Bucer had written muchconcerning Divorce: whom earnestly turning over, I soon perceived, butnot without amazement, in the same opinion, confirmed with the samereasons, which in that published book, without the help or imitation ofany precedent writer, I had laboured out and laid together. " Theparticular writing of Bucer's in which Milton found this extraordinarycoincidence with his own views was the _De Regno Christi ad Edw. VI. _, written by Bucer about 1550, but first published at Basle in1557. There was reason, Milton is careful to impress on his readers, whyBucer, and Fagius along with Bucer, should be remembered with unusualreverence by the Protestants of England. Coming over to England in 1549, each with his great continental fame already won, they had been placed inCambridge by the young Edward VI. , then desirous of completing andperfecting the Reformation of his kingdom--Bucer as Professor ofDivinity, and Fagius of Hebrew. Fagius had died in Cambridge in the sameyear, when he had barely begun to teach; Bucer, after he had taught forabout eighteen months, died in the same place, Feb. 28, 1550-51. Both hadthus breathed the last strength of their spirits into the Protestantismof England. Nay, they might be reckoned among the martyrs of EnglishProtestantism; for, when Mary had succeeded Edward, had not their bodiesbeen dug up, as the bodies of heretics, and publicly burnt to ashes inthe Cambridge market-place? Let all this be remembered, and especiallylet it be remembered that Bucer had addressed his _De Regno Christi_to Edward VI. , and intended its admonitions and instructions for the useof that monarch and his people. In that writing Bucer, though he had beendead a hundred years, was still speaking to the people of England, andtelling them what remained to be done before their national reformationcould be called thorough. Well, in that treatise there was a great dealabout Divorce. Bucer had evidently made a study of the topic, andattached great importance to it. A large portion of the Second Book ofthe treatise consisted of nothing else; and it was this portion of thetreatise only that Milton, partly in delight and partly in amazement atits accordance with his own doctrine, proposed to recover out of theneglected Latin, and present in plain English. Not that such drudgery oftranslation was to his taste. "Whether it be natural disposition oreducation in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God mademine own, and not a translator, " is his proud phrase of explanation whyhe could "never delight in long citations, much less in wholetraductions. " Even in this case he would only digest and epitomize. Beginning at Chap. XV. Of the Second Book of Bucer's treatise, he wouldgo on to Chap. XLVII. Inclusively, indicating the contents of thesuccessive chapters by headings, omitting what was irrelevant to his ownpurpose, and translating the passages that were most relevant. This iswhat is done in the 24 numbered pages which form the body of Milton'stract. They are a concatenation of dryish morsels from Bucer, dulylabelled and introduced; but they make it clear that Bucer's notion ofmarriage was substantially the same as Milton's. 

As respects Milton himself, the portion of his new Tract which is ofgreatest interest is the prefixed Address to the Parliament. It isnoteworthy that, whereas the Second Edition of his original Divorcetreatise is dedicated to "the Parliament of England _with_ theAssembly, " the new tract is dedicated to the Parliament only. The Addressmakes the reason of this plain. It is here, in fact, that we first hearfrom Milton himself of the obloquy to which his Divorce Doctrine hadsubjected him. It had begun, he now tells us (and we have already usedthe information), almost immediately after the publication of the first, and anonymous, edition of his original treatise--his style then betrayinghim to be the author, and some of the clergy opening loud cry against himin consequence. This had induced him to bring out the second edition, notanonymous, but openly acknowledged. Though aware of the declaredhostility among the clergy, he had not then deemed it proper to descanton that subject, but had, in courtesy, dedicated the Second Edition tothe Assembly in conjunction with the Parliament. Even then he had nodoubt from which of the two bodies he would receive the fairer treatment. "I was confident, " he says in his present address of the Bucer tract tothe Parliament, "if anything generous, anything noble and above themultitude, were yet left in the spirit of England, it could be nowheresooner found, and nowhere sooner understood, than in that House ofJustice and true Liberty where ye sit in Council. " Here the Assembly isignored, and the insinuation is that, though he had included _them_in the dedication, it was rather by way of form than in real trust. Thishad been in Feb. 1643-4, and now, in July 1644, he knew his position soprecisely that there was no need for farther reticence. He had not beendisappointed in the Parliament. He had had hope in them; "nor doth theevent hitherto, _for some reasons which I shall not here deliver_, fail me of what I conceived so highly. " The words I have put in italicscan bear no other construction than that Milton had reason to know, fromprivate assurances, which he regarded as confidential, that some leadingmen in Parliament thought him perfectly entitled to broach his doctrine, and would take care that he should not be troubled for it. He was notuninformed either, he adds, that "divers learned and judicious men, " bothin and out of Parliament, had "testified their daily approbation" of histreatise. With the Assembly, however, he knew it to be all over. Thoughfrom them above all, by reason of "their profession and supposedknowledge, " his treatise had deserved a fair hearing, all that he hadreceived was to be "esteemed the deviser of a new and perniciousparadox. " He does not, indeed, name the Assembly while intimating this, but only refers to the clergy generally and dispersedly. That he had theAssembly distinctly in view, however, appears not only from the tenor ofthe whole, but also from a passage in the Postscript, where he hints thatsuch action was at work against him that he might be stopped any day bythe official censorship and prevented from printing. If, therefore, thisnew tract should be permitted to appear, only to the Parliament would hededicate it. But, while dedicated to the Parliament, it was intended forthe Assembly. It was a challenge to _them_. The Reverend gentlemenhad refused to consider the Doctrine of Divorce when propounded by theircontemporary, a private layman and reasoner. They had thought it worthyonly of denunciation as an impious paradox, destructive of morality andsocial order. What would they now say to the same Doctrine exhibited tothem, chapter and verse, as the doctrine of one of the great EuropeanReformers and Divines, whose name was often in their mouths, though theyknew so little about him?

While the Address to Parliament thus makes clear Milton's consciousnessthat the Assembly were watching him and might at any time denounce him, there is yet another curious strain in it, interesting as an illustrationof the writer's character. Milton was evidently divided between delightin having found Bucer his predecessor in the doctrine and a proud feelingof his own self-earned property in the same. Not even to Bucer would heyield the palm of this discovery; nay, generally, he did not care thoughit should be known that, while he reverenced Bucer and such men of thepast, he did not think that God's power to create and endow exceptionalhuman spirits had so exhausted itself in that time and that group of menbut that work higher than aught of mere discipleship to any of them mightbe reserved for himself. Here Milton is in one of his constitutionalmoods; and it is interesting to observe with what constancy to it hetreats the small fact of a discovered coincidence in opinion betweenhimself and Bucer. The following passage will suffice in this respect, and also as a specimen of the whole tract:--

"I may justly gratulate mine own mind with due acknowledgment ofassistance from above, which led me, not as a learner, but as acollateral teacher, to a sympathy of judgment with no less a man thanMartin Bucer. And he, if our things here below arrive him where he is, does not repent him to see that point of knowledge which he first, andwith an unchecked freedom, preached to those more knowing times ofEngland, now found so necessary, though what he admonished were lost outof our memory, yet that God doth now again create the same doctrine inanother unwritten table [the _tabula rasa_ of Milton's mind], andraises it up immediately out of his pure oracle to the convincement of aperverse age, eager in the reformation of names and ceremonies, but inrealities as traditional and as ignorant as their forefathers. I wouldask now the foremost of my profound accusers whether they dare affirmthat to be licentious, new and dangerous, which Martin Bucer so often andso urgently avouched to be moot lawful, most necessary, and mostChristian, without the least blemish. To his good name among all theworthy men of that age and since who testify so highly of him. If theydare, they must then set up an arrogance of their own against all thosechurches and saints who honoured him without this exception. If they darenot, how can they now make _that_ licentious doctrine in anotherwhich was never blamed or confuted in Bucer or in Fagius? The truth is, there will be due to them, for this their unadvised rashness, the bestdonative that can be given them--I mean a round reproof [_a hint toParliament about the Assembly?_]; now that, where they thought to bemost magisterial, they have displayed their own want both of reading andof judgment: first, to be so unacquainted in the writings of Bucer, whichare so obvious and so useful in their own faculty; next, to be so caughtin a prejudicating weakness as to condemn that for lewd which, whetherthey knew or not, these elect servants of Christ commended for lawful, and for new that which was taught by these, almost the first and greatestauthors of Reformation, who were never taxed for so teaching, anddedicated without scruple to a royal pair of the first Reforming kings inChristendom [Edward VI. , for whom Bucer's _De Regno Christi_ waswritten, and Christian III. Of Denmark, to whom it was dedicated whenpublished at Basle in 1557], and confessed in the public Confession of amost orthodoxal Church and State in Germany [the church and community ofStrasburg, in whose Confession, according to Milton, Bucer's DivorceDoctrine had been adopted]. This is also another fault which I must tellthem--that they have stood now almost this whole year clamouring afaroff, while the Book [Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_]hath been twice printed, twice bought up, and never once vouchsafed afriendly conference with the author, who would be glad and thankful to beshown an error, either by private dispute or public answer, and couldretract as well as wise men before him: might also be worth the gaining, as one who heretofore hath done good service to the Church, by their ownconfession. ... However, if we know at all when to ascribe theoccurrences of this life to the work of a special Providence, as nothingis more usual in the talk of good men, what can be more like to a specialprovidence of God than in the first Reformation of England that thisquestion of Divorce, as a main thing to be restored to just freedom, waswritten, and seriously commended to Edward the Sixth, by a man calledfrom another country to be an instructor of our nation, and now, in thispresent renewing of the Church and Commonwealth, which we pray may bemore lasting, that same question should be again treated and presented tothis Parliament by one enabled to use the same reasons without the leastsight or knowledge of what was done before. It were no trespass, Lordsand Commons, though something of less note were attributed to theordering of a Heavenly Power. This question, therefore, of such primeconcernment to Christian and Civil welfare, in such an extraordinarymanner not recovered, but plainly twice-born to these latter ages, asfrom a divine hand, I tender to your acceptance and most consideratethoughts. "

MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THE PULPIT. 

Whether up to this time (July 1644) there had been any open mention ofMilton and his Doctrine in the Westminster Assembly, anything more thanmuttered thunder among the Divines in their private colloquies, can bebut guessed. It is quite possible that he _was_ publicly named, andnot by mere implication, among the Sects and Sectaries generally. Theremay even be record of the fact somewhere, though I have found none inLightfoot's Notes of the Assembly, nor in Gillespie's, nor in Baillie'sLetters. But the peal was coming, and this daring challenge to theAssembly in his Bucer tract may have helped to provoke it. 

When the tract was published, the Assembly was about to break up for thatfortnight's vacation (July 23-Aug. 7) which we have represented as soimportant a notch in its proceedings. Or, indeed, the Assembly may havebeen _in_ its vacation when the tract appeared; for, thoughregistered at the Stationers' Hall July 15, it may not have been incirculation till a week later. At all events, when the Assembly metagain, and when, as we have seen, it fell, as if by concert, on thesubject of the multiplication of the Sectaries and their insolences, thenMilton was among the first attacked. He was one of a batch of elevenpersons, including also Roger Williams, John Goodwin, Clement Wrighter, and some Anabaptists and Antinomians, whom the Assembly denounced toParliament as prime offenders. This fact, already noticed in its place inour general history, has now again to be presented more in detail. 

The first publicly to blow the trumpet against Milton, the reader alreadyknows, was Mr. Herbert Palmer. He did so in his Sermon before the twoHouses of Parliament in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on the ExtraordinaryDay of Humiliation, Tuesday, Aug. 13, six days after the Assembly hadresumed its sittings. Here is the particular passage in the Sermon:--

"But against a Toleration in general even the COVENANT itself, in thatvery Article [Article II. ], hath a reason suitable to the Text [Psalmxcix, 8]. 'Lest we partake of other men's sins, and be in danger toreceive of their plagues. ' saith the Covenant; which in the language ofthe Text is 'Lest God take vengeance on their inventions' and ourstogether. It is true that the name of Conscience hath an awful sound untoa conscientious ear. But, I pray, judge but in a few instances whetherall pretence of Conscience ought to be a sufficient plea for Tolerationand Liberty:--1. There be those that say their conscience is against alltaking of an oath before a magistrate. Will you allow an universalliberty of this? What then will become of all our legal and judicialproceedings? which are confined to this way of proof: and so it was byGod appointed, and hath been by all nations practised. 2. There be somethat pretend Liberty of Conscience to equivocate in an oath even before amagistrate, and to elude all examinations by mental reservations. Willyou grant them this liberty; or can you, without destroying all bonds ofcivil converse, and wholly overthrowing of all human judicature? 3. Ifany plead Conscience for the lawfulness of Polygamy; or for Divorce forother causes than Christ and His Apostles mention (_of which a wickedlook is abroad and uncensured, though deserving to be burnt, whose Authorhath been so impudent as to set his name to it and dedicate it toyourselves_); or for liberty to many incestuously--will you grant atoleration for all this?"

Palmer goes on to instance four other opinions which might ask fortoleration, but which are in their nature so subversive of all authorityand all civil order that the bare imagination of their being toleratedis, he thinks, a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the idea of a UniversalToleration. What has been quoted, however, will show whereabouts amongthe Sectaries he placed Milton. He cited him as the advocate of anopinion so monstrous that no sane person could think of tolerating_it_. And it is to be noted that, though he gives other instances ofsuch monstrous opinions tending to practical anarchy, Milton is the onlyperson openly referred to in this extreme category, and his book the onlybook. On the same day, Mr. Hill, Palmer's fellow-preacher beforeParliament, referred by implication to Roger Williams's _BloodyTenent_, which had been burnt by the hangman a day or two before; andhere was Palmer mentioning with less reserve, Milton's _Doctrine andDiscipline of Divorce_ as richly deserving the same fate. Williams, weknow, was happily on his way back to America at the time; but Milton wasat hand, in his house in Aldersgate Street, whenever he should be wanted. 

To be preached at before the two Houses of Parliament, on a solemn FastDay, by an eminent Divine of the Westminster Assembly, was, I should say, a ten times greater trial of a man's equanimity in those days than itwould be in these to waken one morning and find oneself the subject of ascathing onslaught in the columns of the leading newspaper. It waspositively the worst blast from the black trumpet of the wind-god Ęolusthen possible for any inhabitant of England; and not even that poorcompany of suitors to whom, in Chaucer's poem, fickle Queen Fame awardedthis black blast from the wind-god, instead of the blast of praise fromhis golden trumpet which they were expecting, can have been morediscomfited than most persons would have been had they been in Milton'splace a day or two after Palmer's sermon. [Footnote: Cromwell was awaywith the Arms, but Vane may have heard Palmer's sermon. Baillie wascertainly present, with the other Scottish Commissioners; and he wasdelighted with Palmer's outspokenness. See _antč_, p 162]

 What did this Ęolus, but he Took out his black trumpe of brass, That fouler than the Devil was, And gan this trumpe for to blow As all the world should overthrow. Throughout every regioun Went this foule trumpe's soun, As swift as pellet out of gun When tire is in the powder run; And such a smoke gan outwend Out of the foule trumpe's end, Black, blue, greenish, swartish, red, As dote where that men melt lead, Lo! all on high from the tewelle. And thereto one thing saw I well-- That, the farther that it ran, The greater waxen it began, As doth the river from a well; And it stank as the pit of Hell. [Footnote: Chaucer's "House of Fame" III. 516-564. _Teaelle_ is thetrumpet's mouth (French _tuyau_, pipe or nozzle). ]

THE STATIONERS' COMPANY AND ENGLISH BOOK-CENSORSHIP: THE PRINTINGORDINANCE OF JUNE 1643: MILTON COMPLAINED OF TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FORBREACH OF THE SAME. 

Among the haunts and corners of London into which the smoke of Mr. Palmer's pulpit-blast against Milton had penetrated, and where it hadwhirled and eddied most persistently, was the Hall of the Stationers'Company, the centre of the London book-trade. Actually, as the reader hasbeen informed Palmer's sermon, and the general frenzy of the Assembly onthe subject of the increase of heresy and schism, had so perturbed thewhole society of booksellers that, on Saturday the 24th of August, theeleventh day after the sermon, they presented a petition to the Commons, exonerating themselves from all responsibility in the growing evil, andpointing out that the blasphemous and pernicious opinions complained ofwere ventilated in unlicensed and unregistered pamphlets, grievous to thesoul of the regular book-trade, injurious to its pockets, and contrary tothe express ordinance of Parliament. That such was the tenor of thePetition of the Stationers, and that they gave instances of illegalpamphlets of the kind described, and laid stress on Milton's _Doctrineand Discipline of Divorce_ as one most flagrant instance, appears fromthe action of the House of Commons in consequence. Without a day's delay(Aug. 26), the Commons referred the Petition to "the Committee forPrinting, " with instructions to hear parties, consider the wholebusiness, consult the existing Parliamentary Ordinance for the regulationof Printing, and bring in a new or supplementary Ordinance with allconvenient speed. They were likewise "diligently to inquire out" theauthors, printers, and publishers of the Divorce Pamphlet, and ofanother, then in circulation, against the Immortality of the Soul. Thatthe Committee might have fresh energy in it for the purpose, four newmembers were added, viz. Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Mr. Stephens, and Mr. Baynton. [Footnote: See the text of the order, _antč_, pp. 1645, I now add the names of the new members ofCommittee from the Commons Journal, Aug. 26, 1641. ]

Here then, in the end of August 1644, Milton was not only within thesmoke of infamy blown upon him by Palmer's sermon, but also within theclutches of a Parliamentary Committee. They might call him to account notonly for publishing dangerous and unusual opinions, but also for havingbroken the Parliamentary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing. Wemust now explain distinctly what that Ordinance was. 

From the beginning of the Long Parliament, as we know sufficiently bythis time, there had been a relaxation, or rather a total breakdown, ofthe former laws for the regulation of the Press. In the newly-foundliberty of the nation to think and to speak, all bonds of censorship wereburst, and books of all kinds, but especially pamphlets on the currentquestions, were sent forth by their authors very much at their owndiscretion. The proportion of those that went through the legalceremonial of being authorized by an appointed licenser, and registeredin the Stationers' books by the Company's clerk under farther order fromone of the Company's wardens, must, I should say, have been quiteinconsiderable in comparison with the number that flew about printedanywhere and anyhow. Milton had been conspicuously careless or bold inthis respect. Not one of his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, published in1641 and 1642, had been licensed or registered; nor did any one of thembear his name, though he made no real concealment of that, and thougheach of them bore the printer's or publisher's name, or the address ofthe shop where it was on sale. Milton's friends, the Smectymnuans, hadattended to the legal punctualities in some of _their_ publications;but Milton's practice seems to have been the more general one amongauthors and pamphleteers. Nor did they need to resort any longer toclandestine presses, or to printers and booksellers who, not beingmembers of the Stationers' Company, had no title to engage in such book-commerce at all, and were liable to prosecution for doing so. Evenregular booksellers and printers who _were_ freemen of the Stationers'Company had been infected by the general lawlessness, and had fallen intothe habit of publishing books and pamphlets without caring whether theywere licensed, and without taking the trouble of registering theircopyright; which, indeed, they could hardly do if the books wereunlicensed. All Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, I think, werepublished by such regular printers or booksellers. But worse and worse. Some of the less scrupulous members of the Stationers' Company had foundan undue advantage in this lax conduct of the book-business, and hadbegun to reprint and vend books the copyright in which belonged to theirbrethren in the trade. This last being the sorest evil, it was perhaps asmuch in consequence of repeated representations of its prevalence by theauthorities of the Stationers' Company as on any grounds of public damageby the circulation of political libels and false opinions, that theParliament still kept up the fiction of a law, and made attempt afterattempt to regain the control of the Press. That they did so is the fact. Entries on the subject--sometimes in the form of notices of petitionsfrom the Stationers' Company, sometimes in that of injunctions byParliament to the Stationers' Company to be more vigilant--are found atintervals in the Journals of both Houses through 1641 and 1642. Particular books were condemned, and their authors inquired after orcalled to account, and offending printers and publishers were alsobrought to trouble. The Parliament had even tried to institute a newagency of censorship in the form of Committees for Printing, andlicensers appointed by these Committees. Such licensers were eithermembers of Parliament selected for the duty, or Parliamentary officials, or persons out-of-doors in whom Parliament could trust. Through 1641 and1642 I find the following persons, among others. Licensing books--JohnPym, Sir Edward Deering, the elder Sir Henry Vane, Mr. (Century) White, and a Dr. Wykes, but I find evidence that the Parliament and itsCommittees for Printing had really, in a great measure, to leave thelicensing of books to the Wardens of the Stationers' Company. [Footnote:My MS notes from the Stationers' Register for the years named] In short, the Press had escaped all effective supervision whatsoever. This is moststrikingly proved by the Stationers' Registers for 1642. While for theprevious year, ending Dec. 31, 1641, the total number of entries on theRegister had been 240, the total number in this year, ending Dec. 31, 1642, was only 76; of which 76 less than half fell in the second half ofthe year, when the Civil War had just commenced. Actually, of all thepublications which came out this year in England, not more than at therate of three a fortnight regularly registered throughout the whole year, and hardly more than one a week during the second half of the year!Clearly, censorship and registration had then become an absolute farce. 

The same state of things continued into the first half of the year 1643. Between Jan. 1 of that year (Jan. 1, 1642-3, as we now mark it) and July4, I find the number of entries to have been not more than 35--still apreposterously small number in proportion to the crowd of publicationswhich these six months must have produced. But exactly at the middle ofthis year the Registers exhibit a remarkable phenomenon. Although in thefirst half of the year only 35 new publications had been registered, theentries in the second half of the year swell suddenly to 333, or tentimes as many as in the first half. In the month of July alone there were63 entries, or nearly twice as many as in the preceding six monthstogether; in August there were 57; in September 58; in October 48; inNovember 56; and in December 51. Little wonder that, on going over theRegisters long ago, I made this note in connexion with the year 1643:"Curious year: the swelling out in the latter half, so that only 35 infirst half and 333 in second: inquire into causes. " I ought to have knownthe chief cause at the time I made the note. It was the parsing, in June1643, of a new, strict, and minutely framed Ordinance for Printing. 

Forced by the public necessities of the case, including the necessity ofpreventing the diffusion of Royalist tracts and sheets of intelligence, or by the trade complaints of the Stationers' Company, or by bothcombined, the Commons at last addressed themselves to the subjectresolutely. On June 10 an "Ordinance to prevent and suppress the Licenceof Printing" was read in their House, agreed to, and sent to the Lords;on June 14 the Lords concurred, and signified their concurrence to theCommons; and, certain farther arrangement of detail having been made bythe Commons on the 16th, the 20th, and the 21st of the same month, theOrdinance forthwith came into operation. The Ordinance (with the omissionof clauses relative to printing of Parliamentary papers and to merepiracy of copyrights) is as follows:--

"Whereas divers good orders have been lately made by both Houses ofParliament for suppressing the late great abuses and frequent disordersin printing many forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous and unlicensedPapers, Pamphlets and Books, to the great defamation of Religion andGovernment--which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company ofStationers to put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect, by reason the Bill in preparation for the redress of the said disordershath hitherto been retarded through the present distractions, and verymany, as well Stationers and Printers, as others of sundry otherprofessions not free of the Stationers' Company, have taken upon them toset up sundry private printing-presses in corners, and to print, vend, publish and disperse Books, Pamphlets and Papers, in such multitudes thatno industry could be sufficient to discover or bring to punishment allthe several abounding delinquents.... It is therefore ordered that no ... Book, Pamphlet, Paper, nor part of any such Book, Pamphlet or Paper, shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched, or put to sale by anyperson or persons whatsoever, unless the same be first approved of andlicensed under the hands of such person or persons as both or either ofthe said Houses shall appoint for the licensing of the same, and enteredin the Register Book of the Company of Stationers according to ancientcustom, and the Printer thereof to put his name thereto.... And theMaster and Wardens of the said Company, the Gentleman-Usher of the Houseof Peers, the Sergeant of the Commons House, and their Deputies ... Arehereby authorized and required from time to time to make diligent searchin all places where they shall think meet for all unlicensed printingpresses ... And to seize and carry away such printing-presses ... Andlikewise to make diligent search in all suspected printing-houses, warehouses, shops and other places ... And likewise to apprehend allAuthors, Printers, and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, publishing and dispersion of the saidscandalous, unlicensed and unwarrantable Papers, Books and Pamphlets ... And to bring them, afore either of the Houses, or the Committee ofExaminations, that so they may receive such farther punishments as theiroffences shall demerit.... And all Justices of the Peace, Captains, Constables and other officers, are hereby ordered and required to beaiding and assisting to the foresaid persons in the due execution of alland singular the premises, and in the apprehension of offenders againstthe same, and, in case of opposition, to break open doors and locks. --Andit is further ordered that this Order be forthwith printed and published, to the end that notice may be taken thereof, and all contemners of itleft inexcusable. "

Such was the famous _Ordinance for Printing_ of the Long Parliament, dated June 14, 1643. Within a week afterwards it was brought into workingtrim by the nomination of the persons to whom the business of licensingwas to be entrusted. For Books of Divinity a staff of twelve Divines wasappointed, the _imprimatur_ of any one of whom should be sufficient--towit: Mr. THOMAS GATAKER, Mr. CALIBUTE DOWNING, Dr. THOMAS TEMPLE, Mr. JOSEPH CARYL, Mr. EDMUND CALAMY, Mr. CHARLES HEKLE, Mr. OBADIAH SEDGWICK, Mr. CARTER of Yorkshire, Mr. JOHN DOWNHAM, Mr. JAMES CRANFORD, Mr. BACHELER, and Mr. JOHN ELLLS, junior. The first seven of these, it willbe noted (if not also the eighth), were members of the WestminsterAssembly; the others were, I think, all parish-ministers in or nearLondon. For what we should call Miscellaneous Literature, includingPoetry, History, and Philosophy, the licensers appointed were SirNATHANIEL BRENT (Judge of the Prerogative Court), Mr. JOHN LANGLEY(successor of Gill the younger in the Head-mastership of St. Paul'sSchool), and Mr. FARNABIE. The licensing of Law-Books was to belong tocertain designated Judges and Serjeants-at-law; of Books of Heraldry, tothe three Herald Kings at Arms; of Mathematical Books, Almanacks, andPrognostications, to the Reader in Mathematics at Gresham College for thetime being, or a certain Mr. Booker instead; and for things of noconsequence--viz. "small pamphlets, portraitures, pictures and the like"--the Clerk of the Stationers' Company for the time being was to beauthority enough. [Footnote: The Ordinance is printed in the LordsJournals under date June 14, 1644. Rushworth prints it under the samedate (V. 335-6), and adds the names of the licensers, as appointed by theCommons June 20 and 21. ]

The effects of this new Ordinance of Parliament were immediately visible. Whether because Parliament itself now seemed in earnest for the controlof the Press, or because the new staff of licensers were determined toexercise their powers and earn their perquisites, or because the Masterand Wardens of the Stationers' Company then in. Office felt their handsstrengthened and worked hard (Mr. Samuel Bourne was Master, and Mr. Samuel Man and Mr. Richard Whittaker were Wardens), certain it is thatauthors, printers, and publishers were brought at once into greaterobedience. Ten times as many books, pamphlets and papers, we have shown, were duly licensed and registered in the second half of the year 1643, orfrom the date of the new Ordinance onwards, as had been licensed andregistered in the preceding half-year. [Footnote: I ought to note, however, that the swelling out is caused chiefly by the shoals of_Mercuries, Diurnals, Scouts, Intelligencers_, &c. That were nowregistered. These news-sheets of the Civil War, the infant forms of ournewspapers, had previously appeared at will; and there seems to have beenparticular activity in bringing them under the operation of theOrdinance, so as to deprive Royalism of the aid of the Press. ]

Now, it so chanced that the first edition of Milton's _Doctrine andDiscipline of Divorce_ had been ready for the press exactly after thenew Ordinance had come into operation. What had been his behaviour? Hehad paid no attention to the Ordinance whatever. He had been one of those"contemners" of it whom the Ordinance itself had taken the precaution ofrendering inexcusable by the clause ordering its own publication! Thetreatise had appeared on or about the 3rd of August, unlicensed andunregistered, just as its predecessors, the Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, hadbeen. Nay, there was this difference, that there was no printer's fullname on the title-page of the Divorce treatise, but only the semi-anonymous, declaration "Printed by T. P. And M. S. In Goldsmiths' Alley"[Footnote: See full title-page, _antč_, p. 44. ] That Milton hadacted deliberately in all this there can be no doubt. Not that we needsuppose him to have made it a point of honour to outbrave the new law ingeneral by continuing to publish without a licence; but because, in thisparticular case, he had no choice but to do so, and did not mind doingso. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce: was he to go theround of the twelve Reverend Gentlemen who had just been appointedlicensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found oneof them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his_imprimatur_ to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remainedbut to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it inits unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both runningthe risk. Whatever hesitations the printer may have had, Milton had none. He had taken no pains to conceal the authorship; and, when he found thedoctrine of the treatise in disrepute, he had disdained even the pretenceof the anonymous. The second edition, published in February 1643-4, appeared, as the first had done, without licence or registration, andindeed with no more distinct imprint at the foot of the title-page than"_London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1664"; but, to make up for thisinformality, it contained Milton's dedication to the Parliament and theAssembly signed with his name. It was as if he said, "I do break yourOrdinance for Printing, but I let you know who I am that do so. " Sincethen Milton had published two more pamphlets--his _Tract on Education_, addressed to Hartlib (June 1644), and his _Bucer Tract_, continuing theDivorce subject (July 1644). In both of these he had conformed to theOrdinance. Both are duly registered in the Stationers' Books, the formeras having been licensed by Mr. Cranford (_antč_, p. 233), the latter byMr. Downham (_antč_, p. 255). In licensing the new Divorce Tract, eventhough it did consist mainly of extracts from Bucer, Mr. Downham musthave been either off his guard or very good-natured. 

Milton's carelessness or contempt of the Ordinance for Printing had nowfound him out. The charge of heresy, or of monstrous and dangerousopinion, preferred against him by Palmer and the clergy, was one aboutwhich there might be much argument _pro_ and _con_, and withwhich most Parliamentary men might not be anxious to meddle. But here, inaid of that charge, another charge, much more definite, had been broughtforward. The officials of the Stationers' Company were chosen from yearto year; and the Master for the year beginning in the middle of 1644 wasMr. Robert Mead, with Mr. John Parker and Mr. Richard Whittaker forWardens. It was these persons, if I mistake not, who thought themselvesbound, either by sympathy with the horror caused by Milton's doctrine, orby sheer official duty, to oblige Mr. Palmer and his brethren of theAssembly by pointing out that both the editions of Milton's obnoxiouspamphlet had been published in evasion of the law. There can be littledoubt that the Assembly divines and the London clergy generally were atthe back of the affair; but it was convenient for them to put forwardothers as the nominal accusers. "The Stationers' Company, " these accusersvirtually said, "knows nothing of these two publications, and has none ofthe discredit of them; they are not registered in the Company's books, and do not appear to have been ever licensed; and, if Mr. Milton, who hasavowed himself the author, is to be questioned for the doctrine advancedin them, perhaps it would be well that he should at the same time havethe imprints on his two title-pages put before him--_'Printed by T. P. And M. S. In Goldsmiths' Alley, '_ and _'London, Imprinted in theyeare_ 1644'--and asked how he dared defy the law in that way, and whothe printers are that abetted him. " Such, studying all the particulars, is the most exact interpretation I can put on the Petition of theStationers' Company to the Commons, Aug. 24, as it affected Milton. Therewas a trade-feeling behind it. There was a resentment against certainprinters and booksellers (probably quite well known to the Master andWardens) for their contempt of trade-discipline, as well as againstMilton for his part in the matter. It was really rather hard on Milton. For, doubtless, the new Ordinance for Printing had been passed byParliament not with a view to any application of it to soundParliamentarians like him, but as a check upon writers of the other side;and, doubtless, he was not singular in having neglected the Ordinance. Probably scores of Parliamentarian writers had taken the same liberty. Still, as he had offended against the letter of the law, and as thosewhom his doctrine had shocked now chose to avail themselves of thisoffence of his against the letter of the law, he found himself in anawkward position. All depended on the discretion of that "Committee ofPrinting, " reinforced by four additional members, to which the Commons(Aug. 26) had entrusted the delicate task of dealing with him, and thefarther task of revising the Ordinance of the previous year and seeingwhether it could be improved or extended. They might trouble him much, orthey might let him alone. 

They let him alone. The Committee, I find, did indeed proceed so far inthe general business assigned to them. They must have even drafted somenew or supplementary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing, andobtained the agreement of the House to the draft; for, though I am unableto find any record of such proceeding in the _Commons' Journals_, there is this distinct entry in the _Lords' Journals_ under dateSept. 18, 1644: "A message was brought from the House of Commons by Mr. Rous and others, to desire concurrence in two Ordinances--(1) ConcerningOrdination of Ministers, (2) Concerning Printing. The answer returnedwas, That this House will send an answer to this message by messengers oftheir own. " The Lords, it appears in the sequel, did apply themselves tothe Ordination Ordinance, so that the Commons received it back amended, and it passed, Oct. 1. But I find no farther mention of the new PrintingOrdinance. Cromwell's great Accommodation or Toleration motion, passed inthe Commons, in Solicitor St. John's modified form, on the 13th ofSeptember, had, it may be remembered, caused a sudden pause among thePresbyterian zealots. It may have helped indirectly to strangle manythings; and I should not wonder if among them was the prosecution of thebusiness prescribed to the Committee of Printing by the Order of Aug. 26. The Accommodation Order was a demand generally for clearer air andbreathing-room for everybody, more of English freedom, and less ofScottish inquisitorship. If there had been ever any real intention amongthe Parliamentary people to proceed against Milton, it had now to bedropped. 

THE AREOPAGITICA; A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING. 

One good effect the incident had produced. It had prescribed for Milton anew piece of work. This Parliamentary Ordinance for Printing with whichit had been proposed to crush him; this whole system of Censorship andlicensing of books that had prevailed so long in England and almosteverywhere else; this delegation of the entire control of a nation'sLiterature to a state-agency consisting of a few prejudiced parsons andschoolmasters seated atop, to decide what should go into the funnel, anda Company of Stationers seated below, to see that nothing else came outof the funnel:-was not this a subject on which something might be said?Would it not be more than a revenge if Milton were to express histhoughts on this subject? Would it not be a service of moment to England?What might not be hoped for from the Parliament if they were fitlyaddressed on such a theme? It was the great question of Liberty in allits forms that England was then engaged in. Civil Liberty, Liberty ofWorship, Liberty of Conscience, were the phrases ringing in the Englishair. But in the midst of this general clamour for Liberty no one yet hadmoved for one form of Liberty, which would be a very substantialinstalment of the whole, and yet was practicable and perhaps withinsight--the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Let this then be Milton's newundertaking! In the fact that it had been so clearly assigned to him, nay, forced upon him by circumstances, he began to discern a certainregulation, not quite dependent on his own forethought, of the recentcourse of his life. "When the Bishops at length had fallen prostrate, aimed at by the shafts of all, and there was no more trouble from_them_, " he afterwards wrote, reviewing this portion of his life, "then I turned my thoughts to other matters--if I might in anythingpromote the cause of true and solid liberty; which is chiefliest to besought for not without, but within, and to be gained not by fighting, butby the right basing and the right administration of life. When, therefore, I perceived that there are in all three sorts of liberty, without the presence of which life can hardly anyhow be suitably gonethrough--Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, and Civil--then, as I hadalready written on the first, and as I saw that the Magistrate wassedulously occupied with the third, I took to myself that which was leftsecond, viz. Domestic Liberty. That also appearing to consist of threeparts--whether Marriage were rightly arranged, whether the Education ofChildren were properly conducted, and whether, finally, there were thepower of free Philosophising--I explained what I thought, not onlyconcerning the due contracting of Marriage, but also, if it werenecessary, the due dissolution of the same.... On that subject I putforth some books, exactly at that time when husband and wife were oftenthe bitterest enemies, he at home with his children, and she, the motherof the family, busy in the camp of the enemy, threatening death anddestruction to her husband.... Then I treated the Education Questionmore briefly in one little book.... Finally, on the subject of theliberation of the Press, so that the judgment of the true and the false, what should be published and what suppressed, should not be in the handsof a few men, and these mostly unlearned and of common capacity, erectedinto a censorship over books--an agency through which no one almosteither can or will send into the light anything that is above the vulgartaste--on this subject, in the form of an express oration, I wrote my_Areopagitica_. " [Footnote: The Latin of the passage will be foundin the _Defensio Secunda pro Popalo Anglicano. _] In this passage, written in 1654, there is a slight anachronism. _All_ Milton'sMarriage and Divorce tracts had not yet been published: two of them werestill to come. At the moment at which we have arrived, however, thatmapping out of his labours on the Domestic or Private form of the generalquestion of Liberty which the passage explains must have already been inhis mind. He had written largely on a Reform in Marriage and Divorce, andmore briefly on a Reform in Education. In the Marriage and Divorcesubject he had found himself met with an opposition which did not permithim yet to lay it aside; but meanwhile, in consequence of thatopposition, nay, of the very form it had taken, there had dawned on him, by way of interlude and yet of strictly continuous industry, a greatthird enterprise. In any lull of war with the Titans what is Jove doing?Fingering his next thunderbolt. Released from all trouble by theCommittee of the Commons, and left at leisure in Aldersgate Street, through September, October, and November, 1644, what was Milton doing?Preparing his _Areopagitica_. 

It appeared November 24, a month after the Second Battle of Newbury, andthe very day before that outbreak by Cromwell, against the Earl ofManchester for slackness in the battle, which led to the Self-DenyingOrdinance and the New-Modelling of the Army. It was a small quarto of 40pages with this title:--

AREOPAGITICA;

A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing, tothe Parlament of England. 

 [Greek: Touleutheron d'ekeino, ei tis thelei polei Chręston ti bouleum eis meson pherein, echon. Kai tauth o chręzon, lampros esth, o mę thelon, Siga ti touton estin isaiteron polei;] _Euripid. Hicetid. _

 This is true Liberty, when free-born men Having to advise the public may speak free, Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise, Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace; What can be juster in a State than this? _Euripid. Hicetid_. London, Printed in the yeare 1644. 

There was no printer's or bookseller's name to the pamphlet; and it cameforth unlicensed and unregistered. It would have been indeed absurd toask one of the Censors to license a pamphlet cutting up the whole systemof Censorship. Still here was another deliberate breach of the law byMilton. It was probably to soften and veil the offence that the pamphletwas cast into the form of a continuous Speech or Pleading by Milton toParliament directly, without recognition of the public in preface orepilogue. [Footnote: That Nov. 24, 1644, was the day of the publicationof the _Areopagitica_ I learn from Thomason's MS. Note "Novemb. 24"in the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum; Press Mark12. G. E. 9. /182. ]

The _Areopagitica_ is now by far the best-known of Milton'spamphlets, and indeed the only one of his prose-works generally read. Knowing his other prose-writings, I have sometimes been angry at thischoice of one of his pamphlets by which to recollect him as an Englishprose-writer. I have ascribed it to our cowardly habit of taking delightonly in what we already agree with, of liking to read only what wealready think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic, and British. As there are parts of Milton's prose-writingsthat would be even now as discomposing and irritating to an orthodoxBriton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Russian, a genuine British readermight be expected perhaps to tend to those parts by preference. Hencethere is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in ourcountry now-a-days upon the _Areopagitica_ as representative ofMilton's prose. And yet the reasons for the fact are perhaps sufficient. Though the doctrine of the Treatise is now axiomatic, one remembers, asone reads, that the battle for it had then to be fought, that Milton wasthe first and greatest to fight it, and that this very book did more thanany other to make the doctrine an axiom in Britain. But, besides thishistorical interest, the book possesses an interest of peculiar literaryattractiveness. It is perhaps the most skilful of all Milton's prose-writings, the most equable and sustained, the easiest to be read straightthrough at once, and the fittest to leave one glowing sensation of thepower of the author's genius. It is a pleading of the highest eloquenceand courage, with interspersed passages of curious information, keen wit, and even a rich humour, such as we do not commonly look for in Milton. Hemust have taken great pains to make the performance popular. 

After an exordium of respectful compliment to the Parliament, therhetorical skill of which is as masterly as the sincerity is obvious, Milton announces his purpose. He thinks so highly of the Parliament thathe will pay them the supreme compliment of questioning the wisdom of oneof their ordinances and asking them to repeal it. He then quotes theleading clause of the Printing Ordinance of June 14, 1643, enacting thatno Book, Pamphlet, or Paper should thenceforth be printed unless it hadpreviously been approved and licensed by the official censors or one ofthem. He is to challenge, he says, only that part of the Ordinance. He isnot to challenge the part for preventing piracy of copyright; which hethinks quite just, though he can see that it may be abused so as to annoyhonest men and booksellers. From a passage farther on we learn also thatMilton did not object to a prohibition of anonymous publication; for herefers with entire approbation to a previous Parliamentary Ordinance, enacting that no book should be printed unless the names of the authorand printer, or at least that of the printer, were registered. IfParliament had stopped at that Order, they would have been well advised;it is the licensing Enactment of the subsequent Order of June 1643 thathe is to reason against. Books, indeed, were things of which aCommonwealth ought to take no less vigilant charge than of their livingsubjects, "For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain apotency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny theyare. " All the more reason to beware of violence against books. "As goodalmost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonablecreature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reasonitself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a man lives aburden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of amaster-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyondlife. " And how had this slaying of books, and even the prevention oftheir birth, by a Censorship, grown up? After a historical sketch of thestate of the law and practice respecting books among the Greeks, theRomans, and the early and mediaeval Christians, Milton arrives at theconclusion that the system of Censorship and Licensing was an inventionof the worst age of the Papacy, perfected by the Spanish Inquisition. Hegives one or two specimens of the elaborate _imprimaturs_ prefixedto old Italian books, and makes much fun of them. The Papal invention, hecontinues, had passed on into Prelatic England. "These are the prettyresponsories, these are the dear antiphonies that so bewitched our lateprelates and their chaplains with the goodly echo they made, and besottedus to the gay imitation of a lordly _imprimatur_, one from theLambeth House [the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace, where MSS. Had tobe left by their authors for revision by his chaplains], another from thewest end of Paul's [the site of Stationers' Hall]. "

Yes! but, whoever were the inventors, might not the invention itself begood? To this question Milton next proceeds, and it leads him into thevitals of the subject. 

He contends, in the first place, for the scholar's liberty of universalreading at his own peril, his right of unlimited intellectualinquisitiveness. What though there are bad and mischievous books? "Booksare as meats and viands are, some of good, some of evil substance, andyet God in that unapocryphal vision said, without exception, 'Rise, Peter, kill and eat. '" Good and evil are inextricably mixed up togetherin everything in this world; and the very discipline to virtue andstrength consists in full walking amid both, distinguishing, avoiding, and choosing. "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out to see her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run fornotwithstanding dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into theworld, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies is trial, andtrial is by what is contrary. " There is much more in the same strain, afavourite one with Milton, with instances of readings in evil booksturned to good account. Plato's Censorship of Books, or generalregulation of literature by the magistrate, is handled gently, as onlyPlato's whimsy for his own airy Republic. What if the principle of State-licensing were carried out? "Whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book. " Well, shall the State regulate singing, dancing, street-music, concerts in thehouse, looking out at windows, standing on balconies, eating, drinking, dressing, love-making? "It would be better done to learn that the lawmust needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly, andyet equally, working to good and to evil. And, were I the chooser, a dramof well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forciblehindrance of evil-doing. " Besides, suppression even of such tangiblethings as books by a Censorship was really impracticable, and everybodyknew it. In spite of the existing Censorship, were not Royalist libelsagainst the Parliament in everybody's hands in London every week, wetfrom the press? The system was a monstrous injustice and annoyance, andit did not answer its own end. 

If the end were honestly the suppression of false and bad books, and ifthat end were in itself proper, and also practicable with sufficientmeans, all would still depend on the qualifications of the Licensers. Andhere Milton frankly lets the existing English licensers of Books, andespecially the twelve parish-ministers among them, know his opinion oftheir office:--

"It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birthor death of Books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, hadneed to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, andjudicious: there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what ispassable or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth asbehoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made theperpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain seasons; but to beenjoined the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, isan imposition which I cannot believe how he that values time and his ownstudies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. Inthis one thing I crave leave of the present Licensers to be pardoned forso thinking: who doubtless took this office up, looking on it throughtheir obedience to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all thingsseem easy and unlaborious to them. But that this short trial hath weariedthem out already, their own expressions and excuses to them who make somany journeys to solicit their license (!) are testimony enough. Seeingtherefore those who now possess the employment by all evident signs wishthemselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not aplain unthrift of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, excepthe mean to put himself to the salary of a press-corrector, we may easilyforesee what kind of Licensers we are to expect hereafter--eitherignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary.... How much ithurts and hinders the Licensers themselves in the calling of theirministry, more than any secular employment, if they will discharge thatoffice as they ought, so that they must neglect either the one duty orthe other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it totheir own conscience how they will decide it there. "

Closely following this glance at the Licensers and _their_ businessis a description of the true Author and _his_ business, and of theindignities and discomforts put upon him by the Licensing system:--

"When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason anddeliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, andlikely consults and confers with his judicious friends: after all whichdone he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as anythat writ before him. If in this, the most consummate act of his fidelityand ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted andsuspected unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnightwatchings and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of anunleisured Licenser--perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferiorin judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and, if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a punie[child] with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of histitle, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer;--itcannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the Author, to the Book, tothe privilege and dignity of Learning. And what if the Author shall beone so copious of fancy as to have many things well worth the adding comeinto his mind, after licensing, while the book is yet under the press--which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers, and thatperhaps a dozen times in one book? The Printer dares not go beyond hislicensed copy: so often then must the Author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed; and many a jaunt will bemade ere that Licenser (for it must be the same man) can either be found, or found at leisure. Meanwhile either the press must stand still (whichis no small damage) or the Author lose his accuratest thoughts, and sendthe book forth worse than he had made it; which is the greatestmelancholy and vexation that can befall. And how can a man teach withauthority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a _doctor_in his book, as he ought to be or else had better be silent, whenas allhe teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under thecorrection, of his patriarchal Licenser, to blot or alter what preciselyaccords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment?"

The last half of the pamphlet is perhaps more knotty and powerful thanthe first. Milton's well-known retrospect of what he had seen in Italy, with his reminiscence of Galileo, occurs here. But his drift has now beenmade sufficiently apparent; and we shall best discharge what remains ofour duty by presenting certain pieces of autobiographical informationwhich the pamphlet supplies:--

We learn, for one thing, that Milton did not stand alone in hisdetestation of the Censorship, but represented a considerableconstituency in the matter, and had even been solicited to be theirspokesman and write this pamphlet. Those very words of complaint, hesays, which he had heard, six years before, uttered by learned men inItaly against the Inquisition, it had been his fortune to hear uttered oflate by "as learned men" in England against the Licensing Ordinance ofthe Parliament. "And that so generally, " he adds, "that, when I haddisclosed myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if withoutenvy, that he whom an honest quęstorship had endeared to the Sicilians[Cicero] was not more by them importuned against Verres than thefavourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are knownand respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions that Iwould not despair to lay together that which just reason should bringinto my mind toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon Learning. That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, butthe common grievance of all those who had prepared their minds andstudies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, thus much maysatisfy. "

Again, in a pamphlet the subject of which is Books and Authors, we havenaturally some incidental indications of Milton's literary tastes andpreferences. The most interesting of these are perhaps the following:--Hewas as fond as ever of Spenser, "our sage and serious poet" as he callshim, "whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus orAquinas. " He thought Arminius "acute and distinct, " though perverted. Hewould be no slave even to Plato, but would take the liberty of quizzingany of the oddities even of that gorgeous intellect. On moral grounds, hecould not bear Aristophanes, and wondered how Plato could haverecommended "such trash" as the comedies of that writer to the tyrantDionysius. His great liking for Euripides is shown by his taking fourlines from that poet's _Hiketides_ as the motto for the pamphlet. Lord Bacon is again mentioned reverently, once as "Sir Francis Bacon" andagain as "Viscount St. Albans. " There is a tribute of high admiration tothe Parliamentarian peer, Lord Brooke, so recently lost to England, andto the tract on the _Nature of Episcopacy_ he had left behind him:those last words of his dying charge which "I know will ever be of dearand honoured regard with _ye_, so full of meekness and breathingcharity that, next to His last testament who bequeathed love and peace tohis disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard wordsmore mild and peaceful. " Selden is again referred to and complimented:"one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned menreputed in this land. " Acquaintance, on the other hand, is implied oravowed, on Milton's part, with some of the most notoriously ribaldwriters that the world had produced: with Petronius Arbiter, and him ofArozzo "dreaded and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers, " and an Englishmanwhom he will not name, "for posterity's sake, " but "whom Harry the Eighthnamed in merriment his Vicar of Hell. " We may add, that Wycliffe and Knoxare both honourably mentioned in the _Areopagitica_: Knox as the"Reformer of a Kingdom, " and Wycliffe as an Englishman who had perhapshad potentially in him all that had since come from the Bohemian Huss, the German Luther, or the French Calvin. 

A more special piece of information supplied, or rather only confirmed, by the _Areopagitica_, is that Milton, when he wrote it, had brokenoff utterly from the Presbyterians, and regarded the domination of thatparty in the Westminster Assembly with complete disgust. "If it come toinquisitioning again, and licensing, " he says, "and that we are sotimorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear eachbook, and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contentsare, --if some, who but of late were little better than silenced frompreaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what theyplease, --it cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a secondtyranny over Learning; and will soon put it out of controversy thatBishops and Presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing. " Again, alittle farther on, "This is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that wehave made, this is not to put down Prelaty: this is but to chop anEpiscopacy; this is but to translate the Palace _Metropolitan_ fromone kind of dominion into another. " Again, "A man may be a heretic in theTruth; and, if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or theAssembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his beliefbe true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. " Again, "He whohears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sentdown among us would think of other matters to be constituted, beyond thediscipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. " Again, of Ecclesiastical Assemblies in general, and the Westminster Assembly inparticular, "Neither is God appointed and confined where and out of whatplace these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for He sees not asman sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselvesagain to set places, and Assemblies, and outward callings of men, planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, and anotherwhile in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith that shall bethere canonized is not sufficient, without plain convincement and thecharity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and notin the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can therebe made--no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all his liegetombs about him, should lend them voices from the dead to swell theirnumber, " [Footnote: The original meeting-place of the WestminsterAssembly, and their meeting-place in the summer months, was Henry theSeventh's Chapel. In winter it was the Jerusalem Chamber--which had beenthe Convocation House of the English clergy before the Long Parliament. ]Again, he says that, if the Presbyterians, themselves so recentlyreleased from Episcopal tyranny, should not have been taught by their ownsuffering, but should continue active in suppressing others, "it would beno unequal distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressorsthemselves. "

Milton, however, the _Areopagitica_ proves, had not passed away fromPresbyterianism only to become an ordinary Congregationalist orIndependent. In the fight between the Presbyterians and the Independentsof the Assembly he would now, undoubtedly, have taken part with theIndependents; but Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, and the rest of them, had theyinterrogated him why, would have found him a strange adherent. For he hadpassed on into an Independency, if it could be called "Independency, "more extreme than theirs, and resembling rather the vague Independencythat Cromwell represented, and that was rife in the Army. The very notionof an official "minister of Religion, " anyhow appointed, had becomecomical to him. It had come to seem to him supremely ridiculous thatthere should be anything like a caste of Brahmins or officers of Religionin England, by whatever means that caste should be formed or recruited. To curtail proof under this head, let me give but one extract. It is therichest bit of sheer humour that I have yet found in Milton, and isbetter and deeper, in that kind, than anything in Sydney Smith:--

BEING RELIGIOUS BY DEPUTY: OR THE USE OF A POPULAR LONDON CLERGYMAN. 

"There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off to anotherthan the charge and care of their Religion. There be--who knows not thatthere be?--of Protestants and professors who live and die in as arrantand implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addictedto his pleasure and profits, finds Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skillto keep a stock going on that trade. What should he do? Fain he wouldhave the name to be religious; fain he would bear up with his neighboursin that. What does he therefore but resolves to give over toiling, and tofind himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit thewhole managing of his religious affairs: some Divine of note andestimation _that_ must be. To him he adheres; resigns the wholewarehouse of his Religion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody;and indeed makes the very person of that man his Religion--esteems hisassociating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his ownpiety. So that a man may say his Religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him accordingas that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his Religion comes home at night, prays, isliberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted; and, after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfastedthan He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figsbetween Bethany and Jerusalem, his Religion walks abroad at eight, andleaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without hisReligion. "

What light does the _Areopagitica_ throw on Milton's notion ofToleration, or Liberty of Conscience, and on his feelings towards theSects and Sectaries generally among whom he was now ranked? It is notuncommon to regard the _Areopagitica_ as one of the first andgreatest English pleas for Liberty of Conscience; and, broadly viewed, itis. But strictly it is not a plea for Liberty of Conscience or forToleration, but only for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. Milton'sviews of Liberty of Conscience appear only by implication in the courseof this one argument. So far as they do appear, it cannot be said thatMilton advocated a Liberty of Conscience so complete and absolute asRoger Williams's or John Goodwin's. He even saves himself from theimputation of doing so. "If all cannot be of one mind, " he says, "thisdoubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that manybe tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated Popery andopen superstition; which, as it extirpates all religious and civilsupremacies, so itself should be extirpate--provided first that allcharitable and a compassionate means be used to win and regain the weakand the misled. That also which is impious or evil absolutely, eitheragainst faith or manners, no law can possibly permit that intends not tounlaw itself. " There are hints also to the effect that, while Miltonwanted liberty of unlicensed publication for all kinds of books, he didnot deny the right of the magistrate to call writers to account, incertain cases, for the opinions they had published. On the whole, therefore, in his theory of Toleration, Milton was decidedly behind someof his contemporaries. One can see, however, that he was uneasy in hisexceptions, and had little care for them in comparison with the principlehe meant them to limit. Practically he stands forth in the _Areopagitica_as the advocate of a Toleration that would have satisfied all thenecessities of the juncture, by giving full liberty not only to orthodoxCongregationalists, but also to Baptists, so-called Antinomians, andSeekers, and perhaps all other Protestant sects that had any real rootingat that time in English society. His whole oration breathes the fullprinciple rather than the exceptions. "Give me, " he says, "the liberty toknow, to utter and to argue freely according to my conscience, above allliberties. " And he makes a brave defence of the existing Sects, withoutputting a mark of exclusion on any. Those Sects and Schisms, Sects andSchisms, which weak men were bewailing, and the Presbyterians werecalling on Parliament to crush, appeared to Milton not only somethingthat must be permitted because it could not be prevented, but positivelythe finest English phenomenon of the time, and the richest in promise:--

"The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It isnot the unfrocking of a Priest, the unmitring of a Bishop, and theremoving him from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that will make us ahappy nation. No, if other things as great in the Church, and in the ruleof life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hathbeaconed up to us that we are stark blind. There be who perpetuallycomplain of Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any mandissents from _their_ maxims.... Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are thegovernors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, andpiercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, notbeneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soarto.... Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the generalinstinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express theirthoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in hisChurch, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He thenbut reveal himself to his servants, and, as his manner is, first to hisEnglishmen--I say, as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not themethod of his counsels and are unworthy? Behold now this vast City, acity of refuge, the mansion-house of Liberty, encompassed and surroundedwith His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils andhammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armedJustice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and headsthere, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving newnotions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and theirfealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying allthings, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could aman require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek afterknowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, butwise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation ofprophets, of sages, and of worthies?... Where there is much desire tolearn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, manyopinions; for Opinion in good men is but Knowledge in the making. Underthese fantastic terrors of Sect and Schism we wrong the earnest andzealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirredup in this city. What some lament of we rather should rejoice at, shouldpraise rather this pious forwardness among men to reassume the ill-deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again.... As in abody, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only tovital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and thepertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight andconstitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is sosprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its ownfreedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest andsublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us notdegenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old andwrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined tobecome great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in mymind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man aftersleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eaglemewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the fullmidday beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountainitself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous andflocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticatea year of Sects and Schisms. "

After this it is bathos to speak of the Stationers' Company; but we mustdo so. For, at the end of the _Areopagitica_ there is a distinctinsinuation by Milton that the Ordinance he was asking the Parliament torepeal was less the invention of Parliament itself than of some cunningStationers. "If we may believe those men, " he says, "whose professiongives them cause to inquire most [_i. E. _ some worthy booksellers ofMilton's acquaintance] it may be doubted there was in it the fraud ofsome old patentees and monopolisers in the trade of bookselling; who, under pretence of the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, and thejust retaining of each man his several copy--which God forbid should begainsaid--brought divers glozing colours to the House, which were indeedbut colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiorityover their neighbours. " Milton makes a farther and worse insinuation. "Another end, " he says, "is thought was aimed at by some of them inprocuring by petition this order--that, having power in their hands, malignant books might easier scape abroad [_i. E. _ get about thecountry], as the event shows. " Here was a hit for some of the good peopleabout Paternoster Row. 

SECOND PROSECUTION OF MILTON BY THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: CONDUCT OF THEHOUSE OF LORDS IN THE CASE. 

It might have been safer for Milton to let the Stationers alone. For, within five weeks after the publication of the _Areopagitica_, Ifind him again in trouble, and all by the doing of the Stationers'Company, in revenge for his past offences and this new insult. The story, as I have dug it out of the _Lords' Journals_, with some help fromold pamphlets, is as follows:--

Monday the 9th of December, 1644, there being twenty-one Peers present, and Lord Grey of Wark in the chair, "a scandalous printed libel againstthe Peerage of this realm was brought into the House and read; and thisHouse ordered, that the Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationersshall attend this House at four of the clock this afternoon, to know ofthem whether they do know of the print and can discover the author ofit. " That same afternoon, accordingly, there being now but fifteen peerspresent, the three gentlemen who had been sent for--Messrs. Mead, Parker, and Whittaker--appeared, and with this result: "The Master and Wardens ofthe Company of Stationers desired some longer time, and they will dotheir best endeavours to find out the printer that printed the scandalouslibel brought into this House this day; and this House gave two or threedays longer. " On Friday the 13th of December they have not yet foundeither the author or the printer; but they have caught a poor fellow, George Jeffrey, apprentice to a hosier in Cornhill, who had beendispersing copies of the libel in London. Examined by the Earls ofSalisbury and Kent, aided by the Judges, this George Jeffrey confessesall about it. On Monday morning last (the very day on which the Lordsfirst discussed the subject) he had found two-and-twenty copies of thething between the stall-boards of his master's stall, put there by heknew not whom. He had taken them into the shop, read one of them, andbeen so greatly amused by it that he had told his neighbours of theprize. Some of the more unruly of the neighbours had snatched at copiesand carried them off, so that he had only two left. When he found thatthere was a hue and cry on the matter, and that he had got himself intotrouble, he had done what he could. He had sent his own two remainingcopies to the Lord Mayor, and had recovered six of the other copies andsent them to the Mayor too, naming the persons from whom he got themback. One was an exciseman, one an oilman; and one or two wereapprentices like himself; but there was also one Thomas Heath, who wasactually the Lord Mayor's kinsman. This was positively all he knew of thematter; and he could not tell where the papers came from, nor where anymore were to be found. Apparently the Peers believed him, for he wasdischarged on his own promise to attend again if he should be called for. 

The libel, however, seems to have been unusually flagrant. The Peers senta copy of George Jeffrey's examination to the Lord Mayor, withinstructions that he should both give an account of what he had alreadydone in the business and also prosecute it farther. It is not till Dec. 26 that we hear more. On that day, two-and-twenty Peers being present, and nothing having been farther reported either by the Lord Mayor or theStationers, it was ordered "that the Lord Mayor of London and thePrinters be sent to, to give an account of the scandalous paper printedand dispersed, what they have done in discovering the Author, Printer, and Publisher. " The Mayor and the Stationers still not responding, theorder was repeated more peremptorily on Saturday, Dec. 28, one-and-twentyPeers being present. The gentleman-usher of the House went there and thenfor the two Wardens of the Stationers' Company, who forthwith appearedand gave this account: "They have used their best endeavours to find outthe printer and author of the scandalous libel, but they cannot yet makeany discovery thereof, the letter [type] being so common a letter; andfurther _complained of the frequent printing of scandalous Books bydivers, as Hezekiah Woodward and Jo. Milton. _"--Here was an extremelyclever trick of Messrs. Parker and Whittaker! They were themselves introuble for not being good detectives: what if they diverted theattention of the Peers, while they were in this angry mood, upon otherobjects? It is as if they said to the Peers, "It is a very hard mattersometimes to find out the authors and printers of scandalous tracts; butreally the abuse has attained to frightful dimensions, and perhaps theleniency of your Lordships in cases where the authors of scandaloustracts are well enough known encourages others. Last August, for example, we took the liberty of calling the attention of the House of Commons to aTract on Divorce by Mr. John Milton, which the Assembly unanimouslycondemns as containing horrid doctrine, and which Mr. Palmer denounced onthat ground in the hearing of your Lordships. It was our duty to do so, because the Tractate, in any case, was unlicensed and unregistered, andtherefore a violation of the Printing Ordinance. The Commons referred thesubject to their Committee for Printing, but nothing appears to have beendone. And now, as your Lordships have sent for us on this other matter, in which we are sorry not to have succeeded as we could have wished, allow us to mention that the same Mr. Milton has since then--in fact, only last month-put forth another pamphlet, called _Areopagitica_, with his name to it certainly and addressed to your Lordships and theother House, but with no printer's name, and unlicensed and unregistered, like most of its predecessors. The pamphlet contains some very injuriouspersonal reflections on us; but we should not think of mentioning itmerely on that ground. It is very bold and strange altogether, verydisrespectful to the Assembly, and is an attack on the whole Ordinancefor Printing which it wilfully breaks. Besides Mr. Milton there areothers as bad: for instance, Mr. Hezekiah Woodward. "

Who Mr. Hezekiah Woodward was the reader already, in some degree, knows. He was that old friend of Samuel Hartlib's to whom Hartlib, in Aug. 1644, had addressed a letter requesting his opinion of Edwards's _Antapologia_, and who had furnished that opinion, which was published, with Hartlib'sletter, in the following month (_antč_). He must have been fond of usinghis pen; for I find him to have been the author of at least seven otherpamphlets, published before our present date, viz. _The Kings Chronicle_(1643); _Three Kingdoms made One_ (1643); _The Cause, Use, and Cure ofFear_ (1643); _A Good Soldier maintaining his Militia_ (1644); _TheSentence from Reason and Scripture against Archbishops and Bishops, withtheir Curates_ (1644); _As you were_ (1644); _Inquiries into the Causesof our Miseries_ (1644). The last-named but one of these pamphlets givesat least one additional particular about Woodward. Its full title is "_Asyou were: or a Reducing (if possibly any) seduc't ones to facing-about, turning head-front against God, by the Recrimination (so intended) uponMr. J. G. (Pastor of the Church in Coleman Street) in point of fightingagainst God. By an unworthy auditor of the said (Juditious pious Divine)Master John Goodwin. _" This may have been the very pamphlet, or one ofthe pamphlets, of Woodward which the Stationers had in view when theycomplained of him; for it was published Nov. 13, 1644, or exactly elevendays before the _Areopagitica_, and it appeared anonymously and without alicence. Out of the confused wording of the title we gather that Woodwardwas a hearer and admirer of John Goodwin, and that the tract was intendedas in some sort a vindication of that Sectary against attacks that hadbeen made upon him in connexion more especially with a pamphlet of hisentitled _Theomachia_. All this, though slight, is not uninteresting. Itpresents to us Woodward as a London citizen of what maybe called theHartlib-Goodwin connexion, and possibly therefore known to Miltonpersonally. He lived in Aldermanbury, and was addicted to writingpamphlets. From what I have read of them I judge him to have been a mild, hazy-headed person, with a liking for indefiniteness and elbow-roomrather than Presbyterian strictness, and therefore ranking among theSectaries, but of such small mark individually that, but for hisincidental association with Milton in the business under notice, weshould not now have had any particular interest in inquiring about him. For some reason or other, however, the Stationers thought him worth theirhostility. Had they any trade dislike to Hartlib? It is somewhat curiousthat the two persons they selected to be complained against were two ofHartlib's friends. [Footnote: For particulars here about Woodward, inaddition to those already given (_antč_ pp. 230-1), my authorities are(1) The British Museum Library Catalogue: _Woodward, Hezekiah_; (2) Thetwo publications named as consulted by myself, viz. , Woodward's _As YouWere_, and his joint-tract with Hartlib, _A Short Letter, &c. , with alarge but modest answer_, which last is not given in the Museum Catalogueamong Woodward's publications, but came in my way in my researches forHartlib; (3) MS. Notes of Thomason in Museum copies of these twopublications: viz. , in the first the words "suposed to be Ezech. Woodward's, " and the date "Novemb. 13, London;" in the second the date"Sept 14. "]

To resume our story from the _Lords' Journals_:--The device of thetwo Wardens for diverting the attention of the Peers was for the momentsuccessful. The Peers on the same day (Sat. Dec. 28), as soon as theWardens had withdrawn, passed this order: "Hereupon it is ordered, thatit be referred to Mr. Justice Reeves and Mr. Justice Bacon to examine thesaid Woodward and Milton, and such others as the Master and Wardens ofthe Stationers' Company shall give information of, concerning theprinting and publishing their Books and Pamphlets, and to examine alsowhat they know concerning the Libel [the Libel against the Peers of whichGeorge Jeffrey had dispersed copies], who was the author, printer, andcontriver of it; and the Gentleman-Usher shall attach the parties, andbring them before the Judges; and the Stationers are to be present attheir examinations, and give evidence against them. "

This was clearly a tighter action against Milton than the former one bythe Commons. What came of it?--Woodward's business came up on the nextTuesday, Dec. 31, when Mr. Justice Bacon informed this House of somepapers which Ezechiell Woodward [it was "Hezekiah" before] confessed hemade: "Hereupon it is ordered, that Mr. Serjeant Whitfield shall perusethem over, and report them to this House; and, because the said Woodwardis now in custody of the Gentleman-Usher, it is ordered, He shall bereleased, giving his own bond to appear before this House when he shallbe summoned. " Woodward's offence, it would therefore seem, was consideredvenial. He had nothing to do with the Libel that was the special subjectof inquiry; and, though he had confessed to the authorship of someanonymous papers recently published, there seemed to be nothingformidable in them. He might go back to his house in Aldermanbury on hisown recognisances. [Footnote: "_Soft Answers unto Hard Censures_, London 1645, " is the title of a tract of Woodward's subsequent to theincident of the text, and possibly referring to it; after which I findhim, so far as there is evidence, totally silent till 1656. In that yearhe published four new religious or politico religious pamphlets; which isthe last I know of him at present. ] But what of Milton? Not a word about_him_ in the Journals of the same day. He was not in the custody ofthe Gentleman-Usher then at all events; and so far he had been morefortunate than Woodward. Possibly, he had had a call from the Usher inhis house in Aldersgate Street on the Saturday or Monday, had accompaniedhim to the chambers of Mr. Justice Reeve or Mr. Justice Bacon, hadconfronted the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company there, andhad there given such a satisfactory and straightforward account of hisquestioned pamphlets that there was no need for detaining him, ortroubling him farther. Some report may have been made to the Peers by theJustices; but if so, it was of such a kind, and the Peers themselves hadsuch information about Milton, that they thought it best to let thematter drop without the least farther mention of it. If even two or threeof them had read the _Areopagitica_ (and probably even more had), that alone would have honourably acquitted him. It appears, however, froma subsequent allusion by Milton himself, as if the _Doctrine andDiscipline_ of Divorce was still the real stumbling-block. On thatsubject too the Peers may have been a little liberal by this time. Wasnot the great Mr. Selden understood to hold opinions on Marriage andDivorce very much the same as those Mr. Milton had published? So thePeers may have reasoned for themselves; and it is not at all improbablethat Selden, Vane, and others of the Lower House may have given them ahint what to do. And so the Booksellers were baulked again. Baillie andGillespie, who did not leave London for their Scottish holiday till Jan. 6, 1644-5, may have been a little disappointed, and the Presbyteriansgenerally. [Footnote: Authorities for this curious story are the entriesin the Lords' Journals of the dates named--Vol. VII. Pp. 91, 92, 97, 115, 116, and 118. The one-and-twenty Peers who were present on Saturday, Dec. 28, when the order for Milton's examination was issued were--Lord Grey ofWark, as Speaker; the Lord General the Earl of Essex; the Lord HighAdmiral the Earl of Warwick; Earls Rutland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Bolingbroke, Manchester, Nottingham, Northumberland, Denbigh, andStamford; Viscount Saye and Sele; and Lords North, Montague, Howard ofEscrick, Berkeley, Bruce, Willoughby of Parham, and Wharton. The samePeers, with the omission of the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Wharton, and the addition of the Earl of Suffolk (_i. E. _ twenty Peers inall), were present on Dec. 31, when a report was made on Woodward's case, but none on Milton's. --Selden's _Uxor Ebraica_ was published in1646, and was then much welcomed by Milton. --That the Divines of theWestminster Assembly were at the back of this second prosecution ofMilton, though the authorities of the Stationers' Company were thenominal accusers, is not only probable in itself, but is distinctlyimplied by Anthony Wood's reference to the affair (Fasti I. 483). "Uponthe publication of the said three books of marriage and divorce, " saysWood, with a slight error as to the number of the books on that subjectthen published, "the Assembly of Divines then sitting at Westminster tookspecial notice of them; and thereupon, though the author had obliged themby his pen in his defence of _Smectymnuus_, and other their controversieshad with the Bishops, they, impatient of having the clergy's jurisdiction(as they reckoned it) invaded, did, instead of answering or disprovingwhat those books had asserted, cause him to be summoned before the Houseof Lords: but that House, whether approving the doctrine, or notfavouring the accusers, did soon dismiss him. "]

THE DIVORCE CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON PUBLISHED:OTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON. 

And now we are in the winter of 1644-5, when Parliament and all London, and all England, were astir with the two great businesses of the New-Modelling of the Parliamentary Army and the Self-Denying Ordinance. Itwas with public talk about these matters, and about such contemporarymatters as the execution of Laud, the death of Century White, and theabortive Treaty of Uxbridge, that any immediate influence from Milton's_Areopagitica_ must have mingled. In the midst of it all he hadother labours on hand. They were still on the woful subject of Divorce. 

Not only had the subject fastened on Milton with all the force of apropagandist passion, urging him to repeated expositions of it; therewere, moreover, fresh external occasions calling on him not to desist. Offour such external occasions, amid others now unknown to us, we may heretake note:--[Footnote: Palmer's Dedication of the Sermon. ] HerbertPalmer's sermon, with the attack on Milton still remaining in it, had nowbeen published. "Some bodily indispositions" had prevented Palmer from atonce complying with the request of the two Houses that he would print thesermon; but at length, in September or October 1644, it had appeared. [Footnote: "By William Prynne, of Lincoln's Inn, Esquier: London, Printedfor Michael Sparke, Sem. , and are to be sold at the Blew Bible in GreenArbour, 1644. " The Exact date of publication I ascertain from Thomason'snote, "Sept. 16, " in a copy in the British Museum. ] About the same time(more precisely the 16th of September, 1644) there appeared one ofPrynne's interminable publications, entitled "_Twelve considerableserious Questions touching Church government: sadly propounded (out of aReel Desire of Unitie and Tranquillity in Church and State) to all sober-minded Christians, cordially affecting a speedy settled Reformation andBrotherly Christian Union in all our Churches and Dominions, nowmiserably wasted with Civill Unnaturall Wars, and deplorably laceratedwith Ecclesiastical Dissensions. _" Though with so long a title, thething consists but of eight largish quarto pages, with a bristle ofmarginal references. "Having neither leisure nor opportunity, " saysPrynne, "to debate the late unhappy differences sprung up amongst ustouching Church-government (disputed at large by Master Herle, DoctorSteward, Master Rutherford, Master Edwards, Master Durey, Master Goodwin, Master Nye, Master Sympson, and others), ... I have (at the importunityof some Reverend friends) digested my subitane apprehensions of thesedistracting controversies into the ensuing considerable Questions. "Accordingly, the Tract consists of 12 Queries propounded forconsideration, each numbered and beginning with the word "Whether. " Weare concerned mainly with Query 11. It runs as follows:--"Whether thatIndependent Government which some contend for ... Be not of its ownnature a very seminary of schisms and dangerous divisions in the Churchand State? a floodgate to let in an inundation of all manner of heresies, errors, sects, religions, destructive opinions, libertinism andlawlessness, among us, without any sufficient means of preventing orsuppressing them when introduced? Whether the final result of it (asMaster Williams, in his late dangerous licentious work, _A BloudyTenent_, determines) will not really resolve itself into thisdetestable conclusion, that every man, whether he be Jew, Turk, Pagan, Papist, Arminian, Anabaptist, &c. , ought to be left to his own freeliberty of conscience, without any coercion or restraint, to embrace orpublicly to profess what Religion, Opinion, Church government, hepleaseth and conceiveth to be truest, though never so erroneous, false, seditious, detestable in itself? And whether such a government as thisought to be embraced, much less established among us (the sad effectswhereof we have already experimentally felt by the late dangerousincrease of many Anabaptistical, Antinomian, Heretical, Atheisticalopinions, as of _The Soul's Mortality, Divorce at Pleasure_, &c. , lately broached, preached, printed in this famous city; which I hope ourGrand Council will speedily and carefully suppress), &c. " Here, and by noless a man than Prynne, Milton's Divorce Doctrine is publicly referred toas one of the enormities of the time, and coupled, as of coequal infamy, with the contemporary doctrine of the Mortality of the Soul vented in ananonymous tract. (3) Farther, in the month of November, or while the_Areopagitica_ was in the press, there had appeared the firstdistinct Reply to Milton's original Divorce Treatise. It was a pamphlet, in 44 pages of small quarto, with this title:--"_An Answer to a Book, Intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, or A Plea for Ladiesand Gentlewomen, and all other Married Women, against Divorce. WhereinBoth Sexes are vindicated from all bondage of Canon Law, and othermistakes whatsoever: And the Unsound Principles of the Author areexamined and fully confuted by Authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws ofthis Land, and Sound Reason. London, Printed by G. M. For William Lee atthe Turk's-Head in Fleet Street, next to the Miter Taverne. _ 1644. "[Footnote: Entered at Stationers' Hall, Oct. 31, 1644 (my notes from theRegisters); Licensed Nov. 14 (the pamphlet itself); out in London, Nov. 19 (Thomason's note in copy in British Museum, Press Mark 12 G. O. 12/181)] Milton had now his wish: one of his adversaries had written abook, and could be wrestled with. Nay more, though the writer had notgiven his name, the licenser, Mr. Joseph Caryl, had, in his prefixed"Imprimatur, " applauded the sentiments of the tract, and spokenslightingly of Milton. Mr. Caryl, therefore, on his own account, mightdeserve a word. (4) Finally, in January 1644-5, Dr. Daniel Featley, fromhis prison in "the Lord Peter's house in Aldersgate Street, " close toMilton's own dwelling, had sent forth his "_Dippers Dipt, or theAnabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd over Head and Eares_" [Footnote: See_antč, p. _ 138. ] dedicating it publicly to the Parliament andprivately to his "Reverend and much-esteemed friend, Mr. John Downam, "--the very person, by the bye, who had good-naturedly licensed Milton'sBucer pamphlet. Now, Featley, in this book, had been at Milton amongothers. Denouncing the Anabaptists on all sorts of grounds in his EpistleDedicatory to the Parliament, he charges them especially with originatingodious heresies beyond their own. "For they print, " he says, "not onlyAnabaptism, from whence they take their name, but many other mostdamnable doctrines, tending to carnal liberty, Familism, and a medley andhodge-podge of all Religions. Witness the Book, printed 1644, called_The Bloudy Tenent_, which the author affirmeth he wrote in milk;and, if he did so, he hath put some ratsbane in it [Footnote: Featleyblunders here. Roger Williams did not say he had written his book inmilk, but that the Baptist Tract of 1620 which he reprints in his bookwas said to have been written in milk in prison on pieces of paper sentto the writer as stoppers to his milk-bottle--his friends outsidedeciphering the writing by heating the papers. ]--as, namely, 'that it isthe will and command of God that, since the coming of his son the LordJesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti-Christian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nationsand countries, ' ... Witness a Tractate on Divorce, in which the bonds ofmarriage are let loose to inordinate lust and putting away wives for manyother causes besides that which our Saviour only approveth, viz. In caseof Adultery. Witness a Pamphlet newly come forth, entitled _Man'sMortality_, in which the soul is cast into an Endymion sleep from thehour of death to the day of Judgment. Witness, " &c. One other dreadfulpamphlet is mentioned; but it is worthy of note that the persons withwhom Milton now, as before, is most pertinaciously associated are RogerWilliams and the author of _Man's Mortality_. 

These external occasions and provocations co-operating with his unabatedinterest in the Divorce doctrine on personal and general grounds, Miltonwas busy, through the winter of 1644-5, on two new Divorce Treatises. They both appeared on the same day--March 4, 1644-5. The one was hisTETRACHORDON; the other was his COLASTERION. Neither was licensed, andneither was registered. [Footnote: The date of publication is ascertainedfrom copies of both among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum--both with the Press Mark 19. G. E. 11/195. In both the printed year ofpublication on the title-page is 1645; but in both Thomason, theCollector, has put his pen through the 5, and has annexed in manuscriptthe date "March 4, 1644. " Books published near the 25th of March weregenerally dated in the year then to begin. ] Some account of these twoTreatises must conclude our present section of Milton's Biography. 

TETRACHORDON. 

We shall take the TETRACHORDON first. It is a bulky treatise, consisting, in the original edition, of 104 small quarto pages; of which 6, notnumbered, are occupied with a Dedication to Parliament, and the remaining98 are numbered and form the body of the work. The following is thecomplete title:--

TETRACHORDON:

Expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture, which treat ofMarriage, or nullities in Marriage. 

 On: Gen. I. 27-28, compar'd and explain'd by Gen. Ii. 18, 23, 24 Dent. Xxiv. 1-2. Matth. V. 31-32, with Matth. Xix. , from the 3 v. To the 11th. 1 Cor vii. , from the 10th to the 16th. 

Wherein the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd by explanation of Scripture, by testimony of ancientFathers, of civill lawes in the Primitive Church, of famousest ReformedDivines, and lastly, by an intended Act of the Parlament and Church ofEngland in the last yeare of Edward the Sixth. By the former Author J. M. --

 [Greek: skaioisi kaina prospheron sopha doxeis achreios k oy sophos pephykenai ton d ay dokounton eidenai ti poikilon kreisson nomistheis en polei lupros phanę. ] _Euripid. Medea_ London: Printed in the yeare 1645. 

As the title indicates, the body of the Treatise consists mainly of anelaborate examination and comparison of the four chief passages ofScripture relating to Marriage and Divorce, viz. _Genesis_ i. 27-28, withii. 18, 23, 24; _Deuteronomy_ xxiv. 1-2; _Matthew_ v. 31-32, with xix. 3-11; and 1 Corinth, vii. 10-16. This labour of Biblical exegesis Miltonhad undertaken, he tells us, in consequence of the representations ofsome judicious friends, who thought that, while there was "reason to asufficiency" in his first Divorce Treatise, a fuller discussion of thetexts of Scripture there alleged might be desirable. How he performed thelabour--how he plods through the four passages in succession, explaining, commenting, answering objections, and in the end construing each and alltogether into a ratification of his own Doctrine of Divorce, or at leastinto consistency with it--must be learnt, if it is learnt at all, fromthe _Tetrachordon_ itself. Very few now-a-days will care to read it. Forit is decidedly, according to our modern ideas, a heavy pamphlet. The_Areopagitica_ bites into modern interests and the constitution of themodern intellect; the _Tetrachordon_, though it must have occupied theauthor longer, has, I should say, quite lost its bite, except forstudents of Milton, and for reasoners who would debate his DivorceDoctrine over again by the same method of the interpretation of Biblicaltexts. For Milton is most submissive to the Bible throughout. Clearly itwas his opinion that whatever the Bible could be found to have ruled onany point must be accepted as the decision. There is no sign of anydissent by him from the most orthodox idea of the verbal inspiration ofScripture. Not the less he contrives that the Bible shall support his ownfree conclusions. It is evident that the method of his exegesis was notso much to extract positive injunctions from particular texts as to letthe doctrine of the Bible as a whole invade and pervade his mind, unitingthere with whatever of clear sense or high views of affairs it couldfind, and so forming a kind of organ of large and enlightened Christianreason, by which the Bible itself could then, in all mere particulars, besafely interpreted. Once and again, in the course of his _Tetrachordon_, he expresses his contempt for the grubbing literalists, who, in theirmicroscopic infatuation over one text at a time, miss the view of thewhole waving field of all the texts together. Yet he shows much ingenuityin parts of the verbal proof, and produces also commentators of reputewho agreed with him. 

There is, and doubtless purposely, in order to give weight to the newbook, a large display of learning in its pages. Besides the motto fromEuripides to begin with, there are references, in the course of thecommentary, to Plato, Philo, Josephus, Cicero, Horace, Cellius, JustinMartyr, Eusebius, Tertullian, St. Augustine, Beza, Paręus, Rivetus, Vatablus, Dr. Ames, Spanheim, Diodati, Marinaro, Cameron, and many more. At the end of the commentary on the Texts, also, there is an expresssynopsis of testimonies, for the benefit, as Milton is careful toexplain, of the weaker sort who are led by authorities, and not becausehe sets much store on that style of proof himself. Here we have JustinMartyr again, Tertullian again, Origen, Lactantius, several earlyCouncils, Basil, Epiphanius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine again, the Lawsof Theodosius and Valentinian, Leo, Wycliffe, Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Bucer of course, Fagius of course, the Confession of the Churchof Strasburg, Peter Martyr, Musculus, Gualter of Zurich, Hemingius, Hunnius, Bidenbachius, Harbardus, Wigandus, Beza again, Aretius of Berne, Alciat of Milan, Corasius, Wesembechius, and Grotius. When he quotes oneof the Fathers, I may observe in passing, Milton is true to the Puritaninstinct, and never prefixes to the name the title of Saint; it is always"Austin, " for example, and not "St. Austin. " Also it may be noted that heis punctual in making it clear whether he quotes from his own knowledgeor at second hand. Thus, referring to Wycliffe's view of Marriage as putforth in one of his writings, he says, "This book, indeed, through thepoverty of our Libraries, I am forced to cite from Arnisęus ofHalberstadt on the Right of Marriage, who cites it from Corasius ofToulouse, _c. _ 4. , _Cent. Set. _, and he from Wicklef _l. _ 4. _Dial c. _2l. "--Appended to the collation of Testimonies, and winding up the wholetreatise, is a historical statement to which Milton attached greatimportance, and which is really interesting. It was only by chance, hesays, that a notion of Divorce not far short of his own was not thenactually part and parcel of the Law of England. For, when young EdwardVI. Had abolished the Canon Law out of his dominions, a Committee of two-and-thirty select persons, Divines and Lawyers, had been appointed byParliament--Cranmer, Peter Martyr, Walter Haddon, and Sir John Cheke, theKing's tutor, being members of this Committee--to frame a new set ofecclesiastical laws. The draft was actually finished, and it included alaw of Divorce substantially such as Bucer had then recommended to theEnglish. It allowed complete Divorce not only for the causes usuallyesteemed grave and capital, but for such causes as desertion, cruelusage, or even continued contentiousness and wrangling. The untimelydeath of the young King alone had prevented this Law from coming intoeffect. This fact in English history, it is evident, together with theknowledge of such an amount of scattered opinion in his favour lying inthe works of other authors besides his formerly quoted Bucer, Fagius, Erasmus and Grotius, had been acquired by Milton by fresh research sincehe had published his Bucer Tract. And here again there is the curiousstruggle between Milton's delight in finding auxiliaries and his feelingof property in his own idea. "God, I solemnly attest him, " he says, "withheld from my knowledge the consenting judgment of these men so lateuntil they could not be my instructors, but only my unexpected witnessesto partial men that in this work I had not given the worst experiment ofan industry joined with integrity, and the free utterance though of anunpopular truth. " Again, in a passage where he points out that a truth isnever thoroughly sifted out in one age, and that some of those who hadpreceded him in the Divorce notion had only hinted it in vague terms, andothers who had been more explicit in the assertion of it had still leftit to be fully argued, he concludes with a gentle remark that perhaps, after all, it will be his fortune "to meet the praise or dispraise ofbeing something first. "

There is no abatement in the _Tetrachordon_ of the bitterness ofMilton's feeling on the subject of an unsuitable marriage. Rather thebitterness is more concentrated and intense. It is as if eighteen monthsof rumination over his own unhappy condition had made him savage. Thereis careful abstinence still from all direct allusion to his own case; butthere are again the repeated phrases of loathing with which hecontemplates, chiefly from the man's side, the forced union of twoirreconcileable or ill-matched minds:--"a creature inflicted on him tothe vexation of his righteousness"; "a carnal acrimony without eitherlove or peace"; "a ransomless captivity"; "the dungeon-gate asirrecoverable as the grave"; "the mere carcase of a marriage"; "thedisaster of a no-marriage"; "counter-plotting and secret wishing oneanother's dissolution"; "a habit of wrath and perturbation"; "heavenlywith hellish, fitness with unfitness, " &c. "God commands notimpossibilities, " he bursts out, "and all the ecclesiastical glue thatLiturgy or Laymen can compound is not able to sodder up two suchincongruous natures into the one flesh of a true beseeming marriage. " Ortake this remarkable passage, repeating an opinion we have already hadfrom him, "No wise man but would sooner pardon the act of adultery onceand again committed by a person worth pity and forgiveness than to lead awearisome life of unloving and unquiet conversation with one who neitheraffects nor is affected, much less with one who exercises all bitterness, and would commit adultery too, but for envy lest the persecuted conditionshould thereby get the benefit of his freedom. " This assertion thatadultery is more venial than mental unfitness is reiterated in anotherplace, with a bold addition: "Adultery does not exclude her otherfitness, her other pleasingness; she may be otherwise loving andprevalent. " Occasionally, it may be added, in a less startling way thanthis, Milton leaves the man's point of view and tries to be considerateabout the woman. Not that he recants his doctrine of the inferiority ofher sex to man's. On the contrary he repeats it, extracting out ofGenesis the absolute certainty that it was Man that was made primarilyand immediately in the image of God, and that the image of God is inWoman only by derivation from Man. But he qualifies the doctrine at oncegallantly and shrewdly. "Nevertheless, " he says, "man is not to holdwoman as a servant, but receives her into a part of that empire which Godproclaims him to, --though not equally, yet largely, as his own image andglory; for it is no small glory to him that a creature so like him shouldbe made subject to him. Not but that particular exceptions may haveplace, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and hecontentedly yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female. "

This may be taken as the summary of Milton's doctrine about Woman'sRights. Incidentally also the Treatise furnishes us with his opinion onTeetotalism and the Permissive Bill. It comes in thus:--The Mosaic Law(Deut. Xxiv. 1-2) allowing a man to give his wife a writing ofdivorcement and send her away, if he did not like her, had beeninterpreted by some, in consequence of Christ's comment upon it (Matt. Xix. 8), as only a Permissive Bill on this subject to the hard-heartedJews. To continue it in modern times would be to open the door tolicense: it would be abused; everybody would be putting away his wife;there must therefore be no longer any such Permissive Bill, but a strictLaw of indissoluble marriage. Well then, by the same reasoning, Miltonargues, there ought to be a great many more strict laws, that nobody hadever thought of. "What more foul and common sin among us thandrunkenness; and who can be ignorant that, if the importation of wine, and the use of all strong drink, were forbid, it would both clean rid thepossibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards livehappily and healthfully without the use of those intoxicating liquors?Yet who is there, the severest of them all, that ever propounded to losehis sack, his ale, toward the certain abolishing of so great a sin; whois there of them, the holiest, that less loves his rich canary at meals, though it be fetched from places that hazard the religion of them whofetch it, and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the same tun?While they forbid not, therefore, the use of that liquid marchandise, which forbidden would utterly remove a most loathsome sin, and not impaireither the health or the refreshment of mankind, supplied many otherways, why do they forbid a Law of God, the forbidding whereof brings intoan excessive bondage oft-times the best of men, and betters not theworse? He, to remove a national vice, will not pardon his cups, nor thinkit concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that outlandish grape in hisunnecessary fulness, though other men abuse it never so much; nor is heso abstemious as to intercede with the magistrate that all manner ofdrunkenness be banished the Commonwealth: and yet, for the fear of a lessinconvenience, unpardonably requires of his brethren in their extremenecessity to debar themselves the use of God's Permissive Law, though itmight be their saving, and no man's endangering the more! Thus, thisperemptory strictness, we may discern of what sort it is, how unequal andhow unjust. " Lest the meaning of this passage should be mistaken, we maypoint out that the Permissive Bill in the matter of drinking which itdefends by implication is a Permissive Bill to drink and not a PermissiveBill to prevent drinking. The passage, therefore, cannot be quoted asMilton's testimony in favour of the so-called modern Permissive Bill. Itis dead the reverse. And yet there is a lurking kindness in the passagetowards a Permissive Bill of that sort, contemplated as possible, thoughyet unheard of; and, though Milton's principle of Liberty would havebound him to oppose it, he would perhaps have done so reluctantly. Theidea of a country cleared of all its apparatus of Bacchus, and in whichwine, or ale, or any other form of intoxicating fluid, ruby, amber, orcrystal at its purest, should be unattainable by any mortal breathing onits surface, had, so far as his personal tastes and habits wereconcerned, no terrors for Milton. Had it been a matter of personalpreference, instead of principle, he would gladly, I doubt not, haveconsented to a Permissive Bill in England to prevent absolutely thedrinking of intoxicating liquors, if it had been accompanied by aratification of Moses's Permissive Bill in quite the contrary sense, bywhich the sobered nation should have the right of divorcing. 

Nothing has been said yet about the few pages prefixed to the_Tetrachordon_, in which Milton dedicates the treatise, as he haddone three already (the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, the_Buear Tract_, and the _Areopagitica_), to the Parliament ofEngland. These pages, though put first, were doubtless written last. Theyare signed with the writer's name in full. In respect of biographicalinformation, of the external kind at least, they are more interestingthan the treatise itself. Most of the information, however, will now besufficiently intelligible, if given in the form of mere extracts, withoutmore of explanation than may be supplied by Italic headings:--

_Thanks to Parliament for Past Favour and Protection_:--"Although itbe generally known how and by whom ye have been instigated to a hardcensure of that former Book entitled _The Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce_--an opinion held by some of the best among Reformed writerswithout scandal or confinement, though now thought new and dangerous bysome of our severe Gnostics, whose little reading and less meditatingholds ever with hardest obstinacy that which it took up with easiestcredulity--I do not find yet that aught, for the furious incitements thathave been used, hath issued by your appointment that might give the leastinterruption or disrepute either to the Author or the Book. Which he whowill be better advised than to call your neglect, or connivance at athing imagined so perilous, can attribute it to nothing more justly thanto the deep and quiet stream of your direct and calm deliberations, thatgave not way either to the fervent rashness or the immaterial gravity ofthose who ceased not to exasperate without cause. For which uprightness, and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incensed to, Lords and Commons--though it were done to justice, not to me, and was a peculiardemonstration how far your ways are different from the rash vulgar--besides those allegiance of oath and duty which are my public debt toyour public labours, I have yet a store of gratitude laid up which cannotbe exhausted; and such thanks perhaps they may live to be as shall morethan whisper them to the next ages. "

_Punishment for Mr. Herbert Palmer_:--"I shall here briefly singleone of them [his detractors], because he hath obliged me to it--who, Ipersuade me, having scarce read the book, nor knowing him who writ it, orat least feigning the latter [!], hath not forborne to scandalize him, unconferred with, unadmonished, undealt with by any pastorly or brotherlyconvincement, in the most open and invective manner, and at the mostbitter opportunity that drift or set design could have invented. Andthis, whenas the Canon Law, though commonly most favouring the boldnessof their priests, punishes the naming or traducing of any person in thePulpit, was by him made no scruple. If I shall therefore take licence bythe right of nature, and that liberty wherein I was born, to defendmyself publicly against a printed calumny, and do willingly appeal tothose Judges to whom I am accused, it can be no immoderate or unallowablecourse of seeking so just and needful reparations. Which I had done longsince, had not these employments which are now visible deferred me. --Itwas preached before ye, Lords and Commons, in August last, upon a specialDay of Humiliation, that 'there was a wicked book abroad;' and ye weretaxed of sin. That it was yet 'uncensured, the book deserving to beburnt;' and 'impudence' also was charged upon the Author, who durst 'sethis name to it, and dedicate it to yourselves. ' First, Lords and Commons, I pray to that God before whom ye then were prostrate so to forgive yethose omissions and trespasses which ye desire most should findforgiveness, as I shall soon show to the world how easily ye absolveyourselves of that which this man calls your sin, and is indeed yourwisdom and your nobleness, whereof to this day ye have done well not torepent. He terms it 'a wicked book, ' and why but 'for allowing othercauses of Divorce than Christ and his Apostles mention;' and with thesame censure condemns of wickedness not only Martin Bucer, that electinstrument of Reformation, highly honoured and had in reverence by Edwardthe Sixth and his whole Parliament--whom also I had published in English, by a good providence, about a week before this calumnious digression waspreached, so that, if he knew not Bucer then, as he ought to have known, he might at least have known him some months after, ere the Sermon camein print; wherein, notwithstanding, he persists in his former sentence, and condemns again of wickedness, either ignorantly or wilfully, not onlyMartin Bucer, and all the choicest and holiest of our Reformers, but thewhole Parliament and Church of England in those best and purest times ofEdward the Sixth. All which I shall prove with good evidence at the endof these Explanations. And then let it be judged and seriously consideredwith what hope the affairs of our Religion are committed to one amongothers [the Westminster Assembly] who hath now only left him which of thetwain he will choose--whether this shall be his palpable ignorance, orthe same 'wickedness' of his own Book which he so lavishly imputes to thewritings of other men; and whether this of his, that thus peremptorilydefames and attaints of wickedness unspotted Churches, unblemishedParliaments, and the most eminent Restorers of Christian Doctrine, deserve not to be 'burnt' first. And, if his heat had burst out onlyagainst the _opinion_, his wonted passion had no doubt been silentlyborne with wonted patience. Eut, since, against the charity of thatsolemn place and meeting, it served him further to inveigh opprobriouslyagainst the _person_, traducing him with no less than 'impudence, 'only for setting his name to what he had written, I must be excused notto be so wanting to the defence of an honest name, or to the reputationof those good men who afford me their society, but to be sensible of sucha foul endeavoured disgrace--not knowing aught, either in mine owndeserts or the laws of this land, why I should be subject, in such anotorious and illegal manner, to the intemperancies of this man'spreaching choler. ... But, if only to have writ my name must be accounted'impudence' how doth this but justify another, who might affirm, with asgood warrant, that the late Discourse of _Scripture and Reason_, which is certain to be chiefly his [Palmer's] own draft, was publishedwithout a name out of base fear, and the sly avoidance of what mightfollow if the party at Court should hap to reach him! And I, to have setmy name where he accuses me to have set it, am so far from recanting thatI offer my hand also, if need be, to make good the same opinion which Ithere maintain by inevitable consequences drawn parallel from his ownprincipal arguments in that of _Scripture and Reason_; which I shallpardon him if he can deny without shaking his own composition to pieces. The 'impudence, ' therefore, since he weighed so little what a grossrevile that was to give his equal, I send him back again for a phylacteryto stitch upon his arrogance, that censures not only before conviction sobitterly without so much as one reason given, but censures theCongregation of his Governors to their faces, for not being so hasty ashimself to censure. " [Footnote: The discourse _Scripture andReason_, which Milton here ascribes to Palmer, charging him withcowardice in having published it anonymously, was a quarto pamphlet of 80pages, published in April 1643, and purporting to be "by divers Reverendand Learned Divines. " More fully its title was _Scripture and ReasonPleaded for Defensive Armes: or the whole Controversie about Subjectstaking up Armes_. It was, in fact, an elaborate proof, from Scriptureand Reason, of the right of the English Parliament and People to make warupon the King. Doubtless Milton had ascertained that Palmer was its chiefauthor: hence, rather unnecessarily, his taunt. Palmer had also publishedmore recently (Dec. 1644), but _with_ his name, the First Part of aBook called _Memorials of Godliness and Christianity_. It was afterwardscompleted by two additional Parts, also with his name, Part II. Containing, among other things, a set of aphorisms entitled "Thecharacter of a Christian in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions. " It hadso chanced, however, that, before he had published this Part II. Of his_Memorials_, a surreptitious edition of the aforesaid Aphorisms had foundits way into print, with no author's name attached (July 1645). Hence astrange result. Palmer died in 1647, _ętat _. 46; and in the followingyear--though his _Memorials_, containing the "Christian Paradoxes, " werein circulation with his name--the "Christian Paradoxes" by themselves, asthey had been published anonymously in the surreptitious edition of July1645, were published as Lord Bacon's in a quarto volume of Bacon's"Remaines. " The blunder was probably then detected; but it was againcommitted in 1730, when the "Paradoxes" were included in Blackburn'sEdition of Bacon's works. From that date till 1864 the "Paradoxes" wereprinted as Bacon's, and, though suspected by some, yet often writtenabout as Bacon's; but in the last-mentioned year the mistake wasrectified, and Herbert Palmer reinstated in the authorship of the"Paradoxes, " by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart (See his little volume_Lord Bacon not the Author of "The Christian Paradoxes:"_ see alsoSpedding's _Bacon_, VII. 289 _et seq. _). ]

_Punishment for Dr. Featley_:--"Some whose necessary shifts havelong inured them to cloak the defects of their unstudied years and hatrednow to learn under the appearance of a grave solidity--which estimationthey have gained among weak perceivers--find the ease of slighting whatthey cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worththe answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctorwho, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the_Dippers_, diving the while himself with a more deep prelaticalmalignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions withignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers nothing, but insteadthereof (for which I do not commend his _marshalling_), sets Mosesalso among the crew of his Anabaptists, as one who to a holy nation, theCommonwealth of Israel, gave laws 'breaking the bonds of marriage toinordinate lost' These are no mean surges of blasphemy--not only'dipping' Moses the Divine Lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand againstthe justice and purity of God Himself; as these ensuing Scriptures, plainly and freely handled, shall verify to the lancing of that oldapostemated error. Him, therefore, I leave now to his repentance. "[Footnote: Poor Dr. Featley died April 17, 1645 (_ętat_ 65), only sixweeks after this punishment of him was published. He had then beenrestored to liberty, for he died in his house at Chelsea. Milton knew himperfectly when he characterized him as one of those who had gained among"weak perceivers" a reputation for "grave solidity. " And yet it istouching to have before me, as I now have in a copy of the Sixth Editionof the _Dippers Dipt_ (1651), not only an elaborate portrait of Featleyby the engraver Marshall, done in the ordinary way, but also an engravingrepresenting the old man most painfully as he looked when lying in hiswinding-sheet before they put him into his coffin. Over the corpse arethese words, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; Ihave kept the faith;" and underneath is Featley's Latin Epitaph, tellingthat he was "Impugnator Papismi, Propugnator Reformationis, " and"Theologus Insignis, Disputator Strenuus, Conscionator Egregius. "--Theword "_marshalling_" which I have italicised in the extract from Miltonabout Featley is, no doubt, a punning allusion to an engraving byMarshall in the _Dippers Dipt_, giving caricatures of different kinds ofSectaries, with a representation of men and women bathing in the centre(see _antč_, p. 188, Note). ]

A fact which might have been guessed independently, but which it isinteresting to have told us by Milton himself, is that there were somepersons who were particularly courteous in acknowledging the abilityshown in the Divorce treatise, the "wit and parts" of the author, his"elocution, " and the more than ordinary "industry, exactness, and labour"he had expended on the subject, but who made all this only an excuse fornot discussing his proposition seriously. On this class of his criticsMilton is very severe. They were like those, he said, who used to get offfrom Socrates, when they could not resist the force of his truths, bysaying that Socrates could at any time make the worse cause seem thebetter. To what would the world, to what would England, come, if thishabit of regarding all novelty as sophistry, of making the very abilityand learning bestowed upon a doctrine an objection to the receipt of thatdoctrine, were to become general? "Ignorance and illiterate presumption, "he says, "which is yet but our disease, will turn at length into our veryconstitution, and prove the hectic evil of this age. " He hoped better ofthe Parliament; he hoped that they would not overlook the necessity of achange of the Law in this matter of Divorce. At all events he had donehis part. "Henceforth, except new cause be given, I shall say less andless. For, if the Law make not a timely provision, let the Law, as reasonis, bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now moreevidently produces. And, if men want manliness to expostulate the rightof their due ransom, and to second their own occasions, they may sithereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected, through faintness, theonly remedy of their sufferings, which a seasonable and well-groundedspeaking might have purchased them. And perhaps in time to come otherswill know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands, whenthey have marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and unwise it isto hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsel of abashful silence. " Here Milton seems to be speaking for himself. He seemsto be giving warning what he means to do without leave of the Law if theLaw will not give him leave, COLASTERION. 

COLASTERION is Greek for "Punishment. " Now Mr. Herbert Palmer and Dr. Featley had each had his _colasterion_ in the Dedication prefixed tothe TETRACHORDON. Three other persons were waiting for their turn of thelash. These were the anonymous author of that Answer to Milton's Treatisewhich had been published in the preceding November; [Footnote: See itsfull title, _antč_, pp. 299-300. ] the Rev. Mr. Joseph Caryl, thelicenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne. The COLASTERION, expressly so called, published by Milton on the same day with theTETRACHORDON, settled accounts with these gentlemen. It is a short tractof twenty-seven pages, without preface. Its full title was as follows;--"_Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against 'The Doctrine andDiscipline of Divorce, ' Wherein the trivial Author of that Answer isdiscovver'd, the licenser conferr'd with, and the Opinion which theytraduce defended. By the former author, J. M. _ Prov. Xxvi. 5. Answera Fool according to his folly, lest hee bee wise in his own conceit. _Printed in the year_ 1645. "

First for Mr. Caryl. What was _his_ offence? It was that, notcontent with merely licensing the anonymous answer to Milton, he hadbecome godfather to it by expressing the license thus:--

"To preserve the strength of the Marriage-bond and the Honour of thatestate against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it which commondiscontents (on this side Adultery) are likely to make in unstaid mindsand men given to change, by taking in or grounding themselves upon theopinion answered and with good reason confuted in this Treatise, I haveapproved the printing and publishing of it. --November 14, 1644. JosephCaryl. "

Now Caryl was not a nobody. He was one of the Assembly of Divines, and inthat Assembly was tending by this time to the side of the Independents. He was also Lincoln's Inn preacher, had published some sermons, and wasknown to be engaged on an exposition of the Book of Job; which attainedat length, when it was published (1648-66), the vast dimensions of twelvequarto volumes. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, by Bohn:Art. _Caryl_; and Wood's Athenę, III. 979--983. ] He was about fouryears older than Milton; who thus "confers with" him:--

_Punishment for Mr. Caryl_:-"A Licenser is not contented now to givehis single "Imprimatur, " but brings his chair into the title-leaf; theresits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this besuffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not beambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?--which may intime bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to thepeople. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, topreserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breachesand dangerous abuses of it. ' Belike then the wrongful suffering of allthese sad breaches and abuses in marriage to a remediless thraldom is'the strength and honour of Marriage!' A boisterous and bestial strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doctrine, worse than the _salvojure_ of tyrannizing which we all fight against! Next he saith that'common discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds and men given tochange. ' His words may be apprehended as if they disallowed only divorcefor 'common discontents in unstaid minds, ' having no cause but a 'desirefor change;' and then we agree. But, if he take all discontents 'on thisside adultery' to be common, that is to say, not difficult to endure, andto affect only 'unstaid minds, ' it might administer just cause to thinkhim the unfittest man that could be to offer at a comment upon Job, asseeming by this to have no more true sense of a good man in hisafflictions than those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains, andagainst whom God testifies his anger. Shall a man of your coat, who hathespoused his flock, and represents Christ more in being the true husbandof his congregation than an ordinary man doth in being the husband of hiswife--and yet this representment is thought a chief cause why marriagemust be inseparable--shall this spiritual man, ordinarily for theincrease of his maintenance, or any slight cause, forsake that weddedcure of souls that should be dearest to him, and marry another andanother; and shall not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted evento extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent mate, tied onlyby a civil and fleshly covenant? If you be a man so much hating change, hate that other change; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your brethrento hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge of other men'smiseries and changes, that your own be not judged. The reasons of yourlicensed pamphlet, you say, 'are good. ' They must be better than your ownthen . ... Mr. Licenser ... You are reputed a man discreet enough, religious enough, honest enough--that is, to an ordinary competence inall these. But now your turn is to hear what your own hand hath earnedye, that when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into public sucha despiteful contumely upon a name and person deserving of the Church andState equally to yourself, and one who hath done more to the presentadvancement of your own tribe than you or many of them have done forthemselves, you forgot to be either honest, religious, or discreet. "[Footnote: In 1645, according to Wood (Ath. III. 979), Mr. Caryl wasappointed to the living of St. Magnus near London Bridge. It is probablywith this readiness of his to leave one congregation and wed another thatMilton twits him. Evidently Milton would not spare an Independent, anymore than a Presbyterian or Prelatist, who had given him offense. ]

The punishment for Mr. Prynne is milder, and it comes in incidentally atthe very beginning of the _Colasterion:_--

_Punishment for Mr. Prynne_:--"After many rumours of confutationsand convictions forthcoming against _The Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce_, and now and then a bye-blow from the Pulpit, feathered witha censure, strict indeed, but how true more beholding to the authority ofthat devout place which it borrowed to be uttered in than to any soundreason which it could oracle, --while I still hoped, as for a blessing, tosee some piece of diligence or learned discretion come from them--it wasmy hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of _Queries_ thatseek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of 'Anabaptistical, ''Antinomian, ' 'Heretical, ' 'Atheistical' epithets, a jolly slander called'_Divorce at Pleasure_. ' [Footnote: See the quotation from Prynne's"Queries" antč, pp. 298-9. ] I stood a while and wondered what we might doto a man's heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for allour wonted marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was we see itis not--for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see nogood of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, withoutperpetual watchfulness and perseverance, whenas one above others[_i. E. _ Prynne] who hath suffered much and long in the defence ofTruth shall, after all this, give her cause to leave him so destitute, and so vacant of her defence, as to yield his mouth to be the common roadof Truth and Falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with the rash andheedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, 'printed in the city, ' maintaining, either in thetitle or in the whole persuance, '_Divorce at Pleasure?_' 'Tis truethat to divorce upon extreme necessity, when, through the perverseness orthe apparent unaptness of either, the continuance can be to both no goodat all, but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and thedefrauded, to divorce then there is a book that writes it lawful. Andthat this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheldfrom good men because others likely enough may abuse it to theirpleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must be entered a boldand impious accusation against God himself, who did not for this abusewithhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best forthe reputation of him who in his _Subitanes_ hath thus censured, torecall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and thereadiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great Audit for Accounts, he can spare us aught to thebetter understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public, andwhat hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction--provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged againstthem, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the goodhealth of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations. "

But it is the anonymous author of the pamphlet which Mr. Caryl hadlicensed that comes in for the most ferocious and protracted punishment. On the evidence of the pamphlet itself one can see that he was some veryinsignificant person, not worth Milton's while on his own account, butonly because Milton wanted to toss and gore somebody publicly for a wholehour, by way of deterring others. 

The Answerer begins by announcing that he is first to show what theDoctrine or Discipline of Divorce really is, then to give some reasons"why a man may not put away his wife for indisposition, unfitness, orcontrariety of mind, although manifested in much sharpness, " and finallyto reply to the arguments to the contrary brought forward in Milton'sbook. Nine pages having sufficed for the first two divisions, theremaining thirty-five are devoted to Milton. They are dull and plodding, the punctuation and expression showing that the author was ill-educatedand little accustomed to write; and, from the frequent use of scrivener-like or attorney-like phrases and illustrations, one soon comes toconjecture the pamphlet to have been written by some one in a small wayof law-business. Occasionally there is a little hit of personalreference, proving that the writer knew something about Milton and hisreputed habits. Thus, speaking of Milton's complaint of a wife "to alldue conversation inaccessible, " he says, "It is true, if every man wereof your breeding and capacity, there were some colour for this plea; forwe believe you to count no woman to due conversation accessible as toyou, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and disputeagainst the Canon Law as well as you, or at least be able to holddiscourse with you. But other gentlemen of good quality are content withfewer and meaner endowments, as you know well enough. " Sometimes hecriticises Milton's phraseology. "The rankest politician, " Milton hadsaid in one of his sentences; on which this is the comment: "Is this thefine language that your book is commended for? Good your worship, look alittle more upon your rhetoric in this one piece, shall I say ofnonsense? However, I am sure it is contrary to all laws and customs ofspeaking. 'Rankest politician!' Wonderful!" Milton's phrase describing adull woman as "an image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess, " he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet Ibelieve you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women areusually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough towear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. Iwonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or womenthat are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. Ifthere be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there areenough dull enough to own them; and, for yourself or any other who desirethem, there are spirited dames enough who are something besides mereimages of earth and phlegm. " Here is a specimen of the argumentation:--"Suppose you should covenant with a man at Hackney that he should dwellin your house at Aldersgate Street, and you in requital should dwell inhis house at Hackney, for a time: I doubt not but your main end in thisyour covenant was your own solace, peace, refreshing. Well, but suppose, when you came there, the Cavaliers or other soldiers should trouble you, and should be quartered there; who, peradventure, if they did not quiteput you out, yet would lie in your most pleasant chamber, best situatefor your solace, peace, and refreshing, and divers other ways would annoyyou, by means whereof you could not enjoy that pleasure and delight whichyou intended in your covenant when you changed houses with the other. Think you in this case it would be lawful or accepted on by the otherparty if now you should come to him and say 'Sir, I covenanted for yourhouse at Hackney for my own refreshing, comfort, and solace; but I amdisturbed of it, I do not enjoy the end of my covenant: give me my ownhouse again, and go you and live there. ' He would tell you, and so hemight justly, 'Stay, Sir; take your own fortune; a bargain is a bargain;you must even stand to it. '" Sometimes the writer thinks he will rebukesharply. Thus:--"This is a wild, mad, and frantic Divinity, just like tothe opinions of the maids of Aldgate [some Antinomian young women thathad been making themselves notorious]. 'Oh, ' say they, 'we live in Christand Christ doth all for us: we are Christed in Christ and Godded in God, and at the same time that we sin here we, joined to Christ, do justice inhim. ' ... Fie, fie, blush for shame, and publish no more of this looseDivinity. " But the choicest bit shall come last. Criticising theconclusion of a passage in Milton's treatise, the language of the firstportion of which is pronounced "too sublime and angelical for mortalcreatures to comprehend it, " the Answerer declares, "This frothydiscourse, were it not sugared over with a little neat language, wouldappear so immeritous, so contrary to all humane learning, yea truth andcommon experience itself, that all that read it must needs count itworthy to be burnt by the hangman. "

Milton's first glance at the anonymous pamphlet, he tells us, had shownhim the sort of person he had to deal with. He could be no educated man, for in the very first page of his pamphlet, where he quotes Greek andHebrew words, he misspells them. This was no serious crime in itself;only a man falsely pretending to know a language would do worse! "Nor didI find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompaniedwith such a low and homespun expression of his mother-English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stopand conclude that this author could for certain be no other than somemechanic. " It was singular also that, while the Second Edition of the_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ had been out for months beforethe publication of this Answer, only the First Edition was referred to inthe Answer. This, indeed, had enabled Milton to find out who the Answererwas, and the whole history of his pamphlet. For, in the course of thepreceding summer, he had been amused by hearing that there was in thepress, half printed, an Answer to the First Edition of his Divorce Book, concocted by a committee of heads, in the centre of whom was--"let thereader hold his laughter, " he says, and hear the story out--"an actualserving-man. " At least, he _had_ been a serving-man, waiting attable, cleaning trenchers, and the like; but he was ambitious of risingin the world, and had turned Solicitor. Zeal for public morality, or somefarther ambition for literary distinction, had put it into his head toanswer the First Edition of Milton's treatise; and, taking into hisconfidence one or two raw young Divines of his acquaintance, he hadactually composed something, and sent it to the press. Milton hadresolved that, if the thing did appear, he would leave it unnoticed. Forsome months, during which it had been lying unfinished in the press, hehad quite dismissed it from his mind. But lo! here it was at length, stitched and published--this precious composition of the Serving-manturned Solicitor. Not quite as it had come from his pen, however! ADivine of note--no other, in fact, than Mr. Caryl himself, the Licenser--had looked over the thing, and "stuck it here and there with a clove ofhis own calligraphy to keep it from tainting. " This, and Caryl'sapprobation prefixed, had rather altered the state of matters; and Miltonhad resolved that, when he had leisure for a little recreation, his manof law "should not altogether lose his soliciting. "

Nor does he. Never was poor wretch so mauled, so tumbled and rolled, andkept on tumbling and rolling, in ignominious mire. Milton indeed pays himthe compliment of following his reasonings, restating them in theirorder, and quoting his words; but it is only, as it were, to wrap up thereasoner in the rags of his own bringing, and then kick him along as afootball through a mile of mud. We need not trouble ourselves with thereasonings, or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine towhich they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis ofMilton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it ispropelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork. " he saysnear the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist, " he calls him at thenext kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot bybreeding, and a solicitor by presumption, " is the third propulsion; afterwhich we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimesso ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer, " "groom, " "rankpettifogger, " "mere and arrant pettifogger, " "no antic hobnail at amorris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard, " "asnout in this pickle, " "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'themaids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool, " "the noisome stench of his rudeslot, " "the hide of a varlet, " "such an unswilled hogshead, " "such acock-brained solicitor;" "not a golden, but a brazen ass;" "barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys, why do they not hoist him over the barand blanket him?"--such are a few of the varied elegancies. Two or threeof them break the bounds within which modern taste permits quotation. "Imay be driven, " he says in the end, "to curl up this gliding prose into arough Sotadic, that shall rime him into such a condition as, instead ofjudging good books to be burnt by the executioner, he shall be readier tobe his own hangman. So much for this nuisance. " After which, as iffeeling that he had gone too far, he begs any person dissenting from hisDoctrine, and willing to argue it fairly, not to infer from this_Colasterion_ that he was displeased at being contradicted in print, or that he did not know how to receive a fair antagonist with civility. Practically, however, I should fancy that, after the _Colasterion_, most people would be indisposed to try the experiment of knowing whatMilton meant by being civil to an antagonist. 

BOOK III. 

April 1645-August 1646. 

_HISTORY_. --SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONGPARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED. --BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITSCONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THESCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR. --PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATIONCONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THEINDEPENDENTS--LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:--RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATESTREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS:CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OFTHE POWELL FAMILY. 

CHAPTER I. 

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT--FIRSTACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL--CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY:OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL--POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISHAUXILIARY ARMY--EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND--FAG-END OF THE WAR INENGLAND, AND FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS--FALLEN AND RISEN STARS. 

By the Ordinance for New-Modelling the Parliamentarian Army, passedFebruary 15, 1644-5, and by the Self-Denying Ordinance, which followedApril 3, 1645, excluding all members of either House from commands in theNew Army, the prospects of the war had been completely altered. Fromthese dates people everywhere were talking of the _New Model_, andwhat it was likely to accomplish, the only difference being that the bulkof the Parliamentarians expected great things from it, while theRoyalists, and perhaps also those of the Parliamentarians who resentedthe removal of Essex from the chief command, and their own removal fromcommands under him, regarded the whole experiment rather sneeringly, andridiculed it as the _New Noddle_. Which of these sets of prophetswere in the right will appear presently; meanwhile it is desirable thatwe should know as exactly as possible what the _New Model_ or _NewNoddle_ really was. 

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT. 

The following is an account of the organization of the New Model, with alist of its chief Officers when it was first organized:--

TOTAL ARMY ESTIMATED AT 22, 000. 

_Commander-in-Chief_: SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX (_ętat. _ 33). 

_Second-in-Command_ (for the present): PHILIP SKIPPON, with the rankof Serjeant Major-General. 

_Chief of Ordnance_: THOMAS HAMMOND. He was a brother of theRoyalist Divine and King's faithful Chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond (see Vol. II. 519 and 526, Note); and the split of the Hammond family intoRoyalists and Parliamentarians was much noticed. 

_Scout-Master-General_: LEONARD WATSON, "originally a goldsmith inLincoln. "

_Chaplain to the Commander-in-Chief_: Mr. EDWARD BOWLES. 

_Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief_: JOHN RUSHWORTH. 

I. FOOT = 14, 400. 

These consisted of twelve Regiments, each of 1, 200 men, and each dividedinto ten Companies, The officers of the Regiments, respectively, were asfollows:--

1. (The Commander-in-Chief's Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX;Lieutenant-Colonel JACKSON; Major COOKE; and seven Captains. 

2. (The Serjeant-Major-General's Regiment):--Colonel PHILLIP SKIPPON;Lieutenant-Colonel FRANCIS; Major ASHFIELD; and seven Captains. 

3. Colonel HOLBORN; Lieutenant-Colonel COTTESWORTH; Major SMITH; andseven Captains. 

4. Colonel CRAWFORD or CRAYFORD, succeeded soon by young Colonel ROBERTHAMMOND (_ętat. _ 24), a nephew of the chief of the Ordnance and ofthe Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond; Lieutenant-Colonel ISAAC EWER (reportedto have been "a serving man"); Major SAUNDERS; and seven Captains. 

5. Colonel BARCLAY; Lieutenant-Colonel EWINS (INNES?); Major COWELL; andseven Captains. 

6. Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (_ętat. _ only 20: he was cousin of theEarl of Manchester, being son of the Earl's brother, Sir Sidney Montague, who had been M. P. For Hunts, but was now dead); Lieutenant-Colonel ELLISGRIMES; Major KELSEY; and seven Captains. 

7. Colonel ALDRIDGE; Lieutenant-Colonel WALTER LLOYD (who succeeded tothe Colonelcy); Major READ; and seven Captains. 

8. Colonel JOHN PICKERING (of the family of the Pickerings, of Tichmarsh, Northamptonshire, "a little man, " quite young, and cousin of the boy whowas to be known as the poet Dryden); Lieutenant-Colonel JOHN HEWSON(originally a shoemaker in Westminster, but who had risen from the ranksby his valour); Major JUBBS; and seven Captains, one of whom was aCaptain AXTELL. 

9. Colonel FORTESCUE; Lieutenant-Colonel BULSTRODE; Major RICHBELL; andseven Captains. 

10. Colonel RICHARD INGOLDSBY (_ętat. _ 23: his father was SirRichard Ingoldsby of Lenthenborough, and his mother was a cousin ofCromwell's); Lieutenant-Colonel FARRINGTON; Major PHILIP CROMWELL (acousin of Cromwell's: second son of his uncle Sir Philip Cromwell); andseven Captains. 

11. (Artillery) Colonel THOMAS RAINSBOROUGH (once "a skipper of Lynn, "who had seen service at sea); Lieutenant-Colonel OWEN; Major DOVE; andseven Captains. 

12. (Artillery) Colonel RALPH WELDEN, a veteran; whose under-officers Ihave not ascertained, save that one of them seems to have been ROBERTLILBURNE (brother of John Lilburne), who in time succeeded to theColonelcy. 

II. HORSE AND DRAGOONS = 7, 600. 

The Horse (6, 600) consisted of eleven Regiments, each of 600, dividedinto six troops; the Dragoons consisted of one Regiment (1, 000), in tentroops of 100 each. They were officered thus:--

1. (The Commander-in-Chiefs Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; MajorJOHN DESBOROUGH (a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell's: married to hisyounger sister, Jane Cromwell); and four Captains, one of them a CaptainBERRY. 

2. Colonel MIDDLETON; Major RICHARD NORTON; and four Captains. 

3. Colonel THOMAS SHEFFIELD (a younger son of the aged Earl of Mulgrave, and uncle of Sir Thomas Fairfax); Major SHEFFIELD (the Colonel's son orbrother?); and four Captains. 

4. Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (a young man of a good Buckinghamshirefamily, and well known to Milton from his childhood, as Milton himselftells us: he had served first as a private trooper in the Earl of Essex'sguards, and had rapidly distinguished himself); Major THOMAS HARRISON(formerly an attorney's clerk in London); and four Captains. 

5. Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER; Major TWISTLETON; and four Captains. 

6. Colonel VERMUYDEN (a Dutchman, who resigned after a month or two ofgood service, and returned to Holland, where his father, Sir CorneliusVermuyden, was engaged in engineering works); Major HUNTINGDON (whosucceeded Vermuyden in the Colonelcy); and four Captains. 

7. Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (famous long afterwards for his death: now_ętat. _ 23: third son of the Earl of Leicester: had served as aCaptain in Manchester's army--he and his eldest brother, Philip, LordLisle, being more actively Parliamentarian than their father); MajorALFORD; and four Captains. 

8. Colonel SIR ROBERT PYE, junior (son of the Sir Robert Pye who had beenM. P. For Woodstock, as colleague with Speaker Lenthall, since thebeginning of the Long Parliament, and was now a conspicuous man in theHouse); Major MATTHEW TOMLINSON (said to have been "a gentleman-usher toa lady"); and three Captains, one of whom was HENRY IRETON (a B. A. OfOxford, and barrister of the Middle Temple, _ętat. _ 35, who hadtaken to soldiering: described as of "a melancholic, reserved, darknature, " and great ability). 

9. Colonel EDWARD WHALLEY (rumoured by the Royalists to have been "awoollen-draper or petty merchant in London, " who had got into debt andmigrated to Scotland for a time; but certainly of a Nottinghamshirefamily of mark, and certainly a cousin of Cromwell's; recently also knownfor excellent service under Cromwell as Major in Cromwell's ownregiment); Major BETHELL; and four Captains. 

10. Colonel RICHARD GRAVES; Major ADRIAN SCROOP; and four Captains. 

11. Colonel Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY, Bart. , of Co. Kent; Major SEDASOUE; andfour Captains. 

_Regiment of Dragoons_: Colonel JOHN OKEY (originally, it is said, a"drayman, " then "stoker in a brewhouse at Islington, " and next a "mostpoor chandler in Thames Street;" said also to have been "of more bulkthan brains;" but certainly of late an invincible dragoon-officer); MajorWILLIAMS or GWILLIAMS; and eight Captains. 

N. B. Some of the above-mentioned officers (such as Colonels Middleton, Livesey, Holborn, and Barclay) do not seem to have taken the placesassigned them in the New Model. Others therefore had to be brought in byFairfax almost at once. Among these were:--1. As _Colonels ofHorse_: Colonel BUTLER; the Hon. JOHN FIENNES (third son of ViscountSaye and Sele); CHARLES RICH (he had been nominated in the Commons for aColonelcy Feb. 28 and March 1, 1644-5, and rejected both times; but musthave been appointed soon afterwards). 2. As _Colonels of Foot_:EDWARD HARLEY (whose Lieutenant-Colonel was THOMAS PRIDE, a foundling whohad been a drayman); JOHN LAMBERT (who had been a Colonel under Fairfaxin the North); SIR HARDRESS WALLER (_ętat. _ 41, cousin of SirWilliam Waller). [Footnote: In the Lords Journals, date March 18, 1644-5, there is a list of the intended officers of the New Model as then agreedto, after a month or two of choosing, between the Lords and the Commons. This has been my chief authority; but it has been aided and checked bythe _Anglia Rediviva_ of the New Model chaplain Sprigge (pp. 8-10_et seq. _ of Oxford Edition of 1854) and by Rushworth (VI. 13-17_et seq. _). Mr. Clements Markham's account of the New Model Army inhis life of Fairfax (pp. 188-202) has likewise been of use, though itdoes not profess to be more than general, nor to be calculated for thevery commencement of the New Model. Some particulars of informationrespecting persons I have taken from Mr. Markham; others I have had togather miscellaneously from the Parliamentary Journals, Wood, Carlyle's_Cromwell_, Walker's Hist. Of Independency, Reprint of _TheMystery of the Good Old Cause_ (a satirical tract of 1660) at end ofVol. III. Of Parl. Hist. , &c. I have had to rectify the spellings of someof the names in the original Lords Journals list, and to find out theChristian names where possible. It is not always so easy as one mightsuppose to ascertain the Christian name of a man who may have been ofconsiderable note in his day and have left his mark. ]

Such was the famous New Model. [Footnote: In the New Model the readerought to note three things:--(1) The comparative youth of the officers. There _were_ veterans; but the Commander-in-chief was but thirtythree years of age, and most of the Colonels were still younger. (2) Theblending of different ranks of society in the body of the officers. Themajority were decidedly from the ranks of the aristocracy and gentry--peers' younger sons, knights, sons of knights and country-gentlemen, &c. ;but in men like Skippon, Colonel Okey, Colonel Rainsborough, Lieutenant-Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hewson, Lieutenant-Colonel Pride, MajorHarrison, and Major Tomlinson, there was a conspicuous sprinkling ofstout representatives of a lower and more popular stratum. The Royalists, and even the Presbyterians, fastened on this fact and exaggerated it. Allthe army, from the general to the meanest sentinel, could not muster£1, 000 a year in lands among them; so it was laxly said. (3) Anotherfact, of which the Presbyterians and the Royalists, and other anti-Cromwellians, afterwards made the most, was the unusual number ofrelatives of Cromwell that there were among the officers. To those whoregarded the whole invention and organization of the New Model as a deepdesign of Cromwell's craft, with Fairfax as his temporary tool, this factwas blackly significant. But, apart altogether from that theory, the fact_is_ important, and ought to be borne in mind. There was not onlymuch of the Cromwell spirit in the New Model from the first, but a largeleaven of the Cromwell _kin_. ] Where was it first to be employed?This was an anxious question; and, to understand it, we must have the mapof England before us as it appeared to the Parliamentarians in the earlymonths of 1645. 

England then, in the eyes of the Parliamentarians, consisted of fourregions, as follows:--(I. ) The _Pre-eminent and assured ParliamentarianRegion_. This included London and Middlesex, with the Eastern andSouth-Eastern counties at their back, or immediately flanking them northand south--viz. : Herts, Essex, Cambridge, Bedford, Northamptonshire, Hunts, Suffolk, Norfolk, and almost all Lincoln, together with Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. All this sweep of country was now thoroughly in thepossession of the Parliament, and constituted the region whence it drewits main strength. The services of the New Model were not required in it;for it was the main feeder and support of the New Model. (II. ) _TheNorthern Counties_. Here, beyond the Humber and Mersey, or perhapseven beyond the Trent, the cause of Parliament was also in the ascendant. Since Marston Moor Royalism lingered here only in a few towns andgarrisons. In Cumberland, Carlisle still held out for the King, and thesiege of this city, together with the preservation of the Northgenerally, was the work now specially expected from the Scottishauxiliary army. In Yorkshire, the castles of Skipton, Pontefract, Scarborough, Sandal, and Bolton, and, in Lancashire, Latham House andGreenhaugh Castle, kept up the King's flag, but were surrounded by localParliamentary besiegers. On the whole there was no reason for anxiety nowabout the North within itself; and the hope was that the Scottish Armyand other stray forces in those parts might be able soon to movesouthwards and co-operate with the New Model. (III. ) _The South-Westand Mid-Southern Counties. _ Here the King was vastly in the ascendant. Cornwall was absolutely his; Devon was wholly his, with the exception ofthe port of Plymouth, still held for the Parliament, but besieged by theKing's forces; Somerset was wholly his, save that Taunton was holding outfor Parliament in great distress; all Wilts was his, except MalmesburyCastle; in Dorset he was nearly master, though the three port-towns ofPoole, Lyme, and Weymouth (Melcombe) had Parliamentary garrisons; andeven in Hants, where the Parliament divided the power with him moreequally, he held the two strong places of Winchester and Basing. TheKing's field-forces in all this southwestern and southern region wereextremely numerous, apart from the garrisons, and were commanded by LordsGoring and Hopton, Sir Richard Greenville, Major-General Sir John Digby, and others. With them was the Prince of Wales, now fifteen years of age. He had been recently sent from Oxford into those parts, with a view bothto his own safety and to the effects of his influence. (IV. ) _TheEnglish Midlands, backed by Wales. _ Here also the King was firmlyestablished. Here it was that, with the Princes Rupert and Maurice as hischiefs in command, he directly faced the massed Parliamentarianism ofLondon and the Eastern Counties. In Bucks and Berks, indeed, his forcesand those of the Parliament overlapped each other. Aylesbury, the chieftown in Bucks, was the Parliament's, while Boarstall House, ten or twelvemiles east from it, was the King's; and, similarly, the east of Berks, with Windsor, Reading, and Abingdon, were mainly held by Parliament, while in the same county the King had some strong garrisons. Oxford, however, the county of the King's head-quarters, was wholly in hispossession, with the exception of Henley on the Berks border. To thenorth of Oxfordshire was Warwickshire, all the King's except WarwickCastle, though bordered by Northamptonshire, which was all theParliament's; and farther north were the shires of Leicester, Nottingham, and Stafford, in each of which, though the Parliament held the county-town, the King had countervailing strongholds. Then, at the back of thisrow of central counties facing the massed Parliamentarianism of the East, there were the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Salop, and Chester, inwhich Parliament had scarcely any hold; that of Hereford, in which it hadno hold; and the whole bulk of Wales, in which the two castles ofPembroke and Montgomery were the sole Parliamentarian specks. Leaningback upon Wales, and the English counties of the Welsh border, the King, from Oxford, with its flanking counties north and south, frontedParliament very formidably. [Footnote: In this survey of the state of thewar over all England in April 1645, I have availed myself of theintroductory Tables in Sprigge (pp. Xi-xvi, Edit. 1854), repeated inRushworth, VI. Pp. 18-22. The geographical information in the Tables is, however, somewhat confused, and I have recast it. ]

FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL. 

Clearly, it was against one or other of the two last-mentioned regionsthat the New Model must first show its prowess. Which of the two shouldit be?

The West had many claims. Besides the importance of relieving thebesieged Parliamentary garrisons in that direction, there was thenecessity of taking precaution against the possible advance from it ofGoring's forces towards London. Accordingly, even before the Self-DenyingOrdinance had become law, Cromwell and Sir William Waller had beenordered on a special expedition into the West (February 27), "for reliefof Melcombe and the garrisons and places adjacent, and for preventing andbreaking the enemy's levies and recruits. " Cromwell's men were veryreluctant to go on this expedition, probably because they did not like toserve with Waller. But, Cromwell having managed them, he and Waller didgo into the West as far as Dorset and Somerset, and, after as muchsuccess as was possible, returned about the middle of April. The Self-Denying Ordinance was then law; and on the 22nd of April Cromwell was atWindsor, to resign his command, and take leave of Fairfax. 

Suddenly, on the following morning, a message from the Committee of thetwo Kingdoms came to Windsor ordering Fairfax to employ Cromwell on a newenterprise of pressing moment. [Footnote: This "Committee of the twoKingdoms" originally appointed in Feb. 1643-4, after the coming in of theScots Auxiliary Army (see list of members _antč_, p. 41) is foundvery active after the organization of the New Model--a quorum alwayssitting in Derby House, Canon Row, Westminster, close to Parliament (thehouse in which Pym had died) and sending orders, &c. , to Fairfax. Manchester, Saye and Sele, Wharton, and Vane the younger, of the Englishmembers of the Committee, and Loudoun and Sir Archibald Johnstone of theScottish members, signed most such orders and letters in May and June1645 (see Rushworth, VI. 27-33). ] He was to ride with all haste intoOxfordshire, to intercept, if possible, a convoy of 2, 000 horse, whichPrince Rupert was to detach from Worcester, then the head-quarters of theKing's main army, for the purpose of fetching off the King and hisArtillery-train from Oxford. As the forty days of grace fixed by theSelf-Denying Ordinance did not expire till the 13th of May, Cromwellwould have time to perform this service before the exact day on which hisresignation was required! In fact, he performed it thoroughly in twodays. On the 24th of April he met the enemy, consisting of the Queen'sown regiment, the Earl of Northhampton's, and Lord Wilmot's, at IslipBridge, routed them utterly, slew many, and took about 200 prisoners and400 horses, besides the Queen's standard. Not only so; but, some of thefugitives having taken refuge in Bletchington House, then commanded byColonel Thomas Windebank, son of the ex-Secretary, with a garrison of 200men, Cromwell had summoned the house to surrender, and, though a defencemight easily have been made, Windebank had actually surrendered that samenight, giving up all his stores. 

Such were the first actions of the New Model; and, as they carried joyinto the Parliamentarian heart, so in the King's quarters they causedrage and vexation. Windebank was tried by court-martial for cowardice, and, notwithstanding his connexions, was shot to death in the court ofMerton College, Oxford (May 3). [Footnote: For facts in the precedingthree paragraphs see _Commons Journals_, Feb. 27 and 28, and March 4and at 20, 1644-5; Sprigge's _Anglię Reduc. _ (1854) 11-13:Carlyle's _Cromwell_ (ed. 1857) I. 163-167; Rushworth, VI. 23-25. We had a glimpse of young Windebank at an earlier period, when he littleforesaw this end. See Vol. II. P. 70. ]

CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THENEW MODEL. 

On the 1st of May, while Cromwell was still absent in Oxfordshire, themain body of the New Model, under Fairfax and Skippon, was on the move inanother direction. It had seemed on the whole that it would be of mostuse in the South-West. In especial, there was great anxiety for therelief of Taunton. But, when Fairfax had got as far as into Dorset, onhis way to Taunton, he was overtaken by an Ordinance of the two Houses, in conformity with a resolution of the Committee of both Kingdoms (May6), recalling him and Skippon, with the bulk of the New Model, forservice, after all, in the Mid-English Counties. For Goring had carriedmuch of the South-Western force thither, and had joined Rupert andMaurice, so that there was a great stir of something new intended aboutOxford and round the King's person. Accordingly, detaching only a brigadeof some 7, 000, consisting of Welden's, Lloyd's, Fortescue's, andIngoldsby's foot-regiments, and Graves's horse-regiment, with some otherdistrict forces, all under Welden's chief command, to push on for therelief of Taunton, Fairfax wheeled his main force back north-east, and, after forced cross-country marching, found himself (May 14) at the well-known Newbury, on his way to Oxford. By this time he knew, if he had notknown it before, that he was to have the help of other generalship underhim than that of Skippon. If it had ever been really intended thatCromwell should retire from the Army with the others, according to thestrict terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance, the successes at Islip Bridgeand Bletchington House had put it into all men's minds to inquire how theArmy could get on without him. The Army itself had but one opinion on thesubject. For many months past he had been the darling of the entireforce, so that, whenever he appeared unexpectedly on the field, therewere shouts of "_A Cromwell! A Cromwell!_" Willingly or unwillingly, Parliament had to defer to this sentiment; and on May 10, three daysbefore the expiry of the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-DenyingOrdinance, a special ordinance of the Commons continuing Cromwell in hisemployment for forty days longer, i. E. Till June 22, was agreed to by theLords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of thelate generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing wasinevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, notcontent with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's servicesthus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant-general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which daya letter was drawn up, signed by the Speaker, and despatched to Fairfax, "to desire him, if he shall so think fit, to appoint Lieutenant-generalCromwell to command the horse during so long time as the House shalldispense with his absence. " [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named. ]

Within four days after the formal appointment of Cromwell to theLieutenant-generalship under Fairfax there came that great action of theyear which more than justified the appointment. The circumstances werethese:--While Fairfax had been on the march towards Taunton, the King, with his Artillery-train, &c. , had left Oxford (May 7) and taken thefield with his main army of the Midlands under Prince Rupert. Cromwell, who had remained in Oxfordshire, kept hovering after him and watching hismovements. These were uncertain; but it appeared as if he were tendingnorthwards, to relieve Chester, then besieged by a Parliamentarian forcefrom Lancashire and Cheshire under Sir William Brereton. [Footnote: It isto be remembered that, apart from the New Model, there were still EnglishParliamentary garrisons, and field forces, here and there, doingnecessary district work. Sir William Brereton, M. P. For Cheshire, had hadin his hands much of the management of the war in those parts; and as hewas still useful, Parliament had exempted him as well as Cromwell, fromthe same hate operation of the Self Denying Ordinance, extending hiscommand (May 12) for forty days. The same extension, on the same day, wasgiven to Sir Thomas Middleton, M. P. For Denbighshire, at work on theWelsh border, but with a reserve that, after the forty days his commandwas to be resigned to a Colonel Mitton Common Journal. ] When, therefore, Fairfax had wheeled back from his South-Western expedition, and was oncemore in the Midlands, the question arose whether he and his New Modelshould besiege Oxford in the King's absence, or whether they shouldpursue his Majesty and fight him in the field. The siege of Oxford seemedthe preferable course; and, accordingly (May 22), Fairfax, now rejoinedby Cromwell, sat down before that city. Soon, however, it becamequestionable whether the war-committee had judged rightly. Fordiscomfiting the King's design for the relief of Chester the Parliamenthad trusted to the Scottish Army, aided by the English Parliamentariansof the Northern Counties, and by a band of the New Model horse despatchednorth under Colonel Vermuyden. But the Scots, out of humour with the NewModel altogether, had been backward or careless; the King, throughWarwickshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, had made his way intoCheshire; his approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwardsinto Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and(May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the veryverge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the EasternCounties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On thevery day on which the news of the storming of Leicester arrived, Cromwellwas off from Oxford into the Eastern Counties, and on the 5th of June, Fairfax, with the rest of the New Model, raised the siege of Oxford andmarched north. June 13, he was in the north-west of Northamptonshire, within sight of the King's main force, which had advanced out ofLeicestershire into that county. Early on that morning, while he washolding a council of war, Cromwell came in, fresh from his work in theAssociation, and welcomed as the man most wanted. He at once assumed hisLieutenant-generalship; and on the next day, Saturday, June 14, 1645, there was fought the great BATTLE OF NASEBY. There had been nothing likeit since Marston Moor. The King's Army, commanded by the King in person, Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Sir Jacob Astley (now Lord Astley), LordBarnard Stuart, Sir George Lisle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and ColonelHoward, was utterly defeated and ruined. The prisoners taken amounted to5, 000, and included many of the King's chief officers; all the artillerywas captured, and much baggage, including the King's cabinet, with hisprivate papers and correspondence. These papers were speedily publishedby Parliament under the title of _The Kings Cabinet Opened_; and, bythe revelations they made of the King's duplicity, his absolutesubjection to the Queen, and his secret dealings with the Irish andPapists, they did as much to discredit his cause as the battle itself. [Footnote: Sprigge, 21-51; Rushworth, VI. 29-48; and Carlyle's_Cromwell_, I. 169-l76. --Here is a note from the Stationers' Registers, July 9 (1645): "Robert Bostock entered for his copy, by special command, under the hands of Mr. Henry Parker and Mr. Thomas May, Secretaries, andMr. Miller, Warden, a Book entitled _The King's Cabinet Opened, orcertain Packets of Secret Letters and Papers, written by the King's ownhand, taken in his Cabinet at Naseby Field_. " For an account of Nasebybattle and review of previous accounts, see Markham's _Fairfax_, 213-230. ]

Though Fairfax was voted everywhere the brave and worthy commander-in-chief at Naseby, and though Skippon had behaved like himself and kept hispost after having been seriously wounded, much of the credit of thebattle, as of that of Marston Moor, went to Cromwell. He had commandedthe Horse on the right wing, and his success there against the enemy'sleft had been effectual and decisive. Moreover, in the whole marshallingof the battle, and in what had prepared for it, people saw, or thoughtthey saw, Cromwell's influence. The horse regiments engaged were, on theright wing, Fairfax's Life-guards, Cromwell's Ironsides, ColonelWhalley's, Colonel Sir Robert Pye's, Colonel Rossiter's, ColonelSheffield's, and Colonel Fiennes's, and, on the left wing, ColonelButler's, Colonel Vermuyden's (now Huntingdon's), Colonel Rich's, ColonelFleetwood's, and another; and the foot regiments engaged were Fairfax'sown, Skippon's, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller's, young Colonel Pickering's, young Colonel Montague's, young Colonel Hammond's, ColonelRainsborough's, and Lieutenant-colonel Pride's. Fairfax in person, withSkippon, commanded the foot or main body; Cromwell, as we have seen, commanded the right wing; but who commanded the left wing? It was theColonel of that horse-regiment which we have left anonymous. And who washe? No other than that HENRY IRETON, the melancholic, reserved lawyer ofthe Middle Temple, who was only a Captain in Sir Robert Pye's regiment atthe formation of the New Model three months before (_antč_, p. 327). He had been recently promoted to a Colonelcy, and on the eve of thebattle Fairfax had made him Commissary-general of Horse, with command ofthe left wing, over the heads of the other Colonels. This was atCromwell's request, who had reason to know Ireton, and had specialconfidence in him. Nor did the result belie Cromwell's judgment. Ireton'swing, indeed, had given way and fled under the shock of Rupert's charges, but not till Ireton himself had had his horse shot under him, receivedtwo wounds, and been taken prisoner in a counter-attack. Rescued by theturn of the battle, he came in for a share of the praise. [Footnote:Rushworth, VI. 42, 43. Carlyle's _Cromwell_, I. 176. --It came to bean assertion with the Presbyterians, thought I do not believe theybelieved it themselves, that Cromwell's military fame had been gained bysystematic puffing on the part of the Independents. "The news bookstaught to speak no language but Cromwell and his party, and were mute onsuch actions as he and they could claim no share in, " wrote ClementWalker a year or two after Naseby (Hist. Of Indep. Part I, 30). We havesee Baillie writing rather in the same way after Marston Moor. ]--When thenews of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their variousrejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, ajewel worth 500_l_. To Fairfax, and the like, did not forget onepractical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) theCommons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptionalLieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shallcontinue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the establishedpay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerlygranted to him. " This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept. 22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may herestate that, before that date arrived, the term of his service wasstretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that itwas to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals ofdays named. ]

Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of thecentral mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the warmay be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuitof the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice. 

The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back throughLeicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and theMidlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer hisvictorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was thenmost sorely needed, i. E. The West and South-West. --The brigade which hehad detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, whenrecalled himself from his former march westward, had successfullyaccomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up inTaunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned intothose parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West inthese circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted aseparate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the Westto Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that partof the country, and distinguished by his previous services in itthroughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journalsunder the date named. ] But Massey was to hold the separate command onlytill Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, afterseeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once moresouthwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire andGloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war inthe South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey asbut an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relievedthe second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, LamportBattle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23, Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered. Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire. August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where SherborneCastle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of Septembercame the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city wasdefended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-Westfor the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it tothe last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad tosurrender--himself and his men marching out with their personal baggageand the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, andammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: YoungMajor Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and hereis a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's_Life of Fairfax_. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was ayoung officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, withmilitary honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, andhis wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she wasburied, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in herwedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playingbefore her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by theside of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field. "]It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he wasso enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered himto leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, areconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high commandagain during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. Thesurrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23)and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming ofBerkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary ischiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is anexcellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of thefacts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's _Cromwell_. ]

POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY. 

Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North. --As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again onduty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things fromhis beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle(Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show, so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it wasworth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or otherafter all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, theinvention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform thefinishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughtswhen the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident, " he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face ofaffairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party isbroken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lordhas given the victory of that day. " The news of the taking of Carlisle atlast by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; butthat also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and thesubsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South-West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of PontefractCastle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finallythat of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by theCountess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentariansof the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing. From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on theKing's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering aboutin those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire ofParliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Levenpleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable toremain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, theScots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, theEnglish Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speakingthem fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere inEngland while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote:Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316. ]

THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. 

It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of theScottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, todisgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottishnation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak ofRoyalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but hadlatterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connectitself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and soundo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that hasread Scott's _Legend of Montrose_ but must be curious as to thefacts of real History on which that romance was founded? They areromantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode inthe general history of the Civil War. 

Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, whenthe King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that ofhis associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonmentin Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. P. 307). The life of the young Earl hadthen been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had allhis expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified, expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and ofthe establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocraticbasis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed inthe supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and thePresbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no countryfor Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of hisestates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire, and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four littleboys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself, hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, butfinding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch'sheroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:--

 "An Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne: He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all. "

Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun andWarriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black-coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thunderingit collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there forany such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from whichanyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifesin Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young ScottishEarl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand?[Footnote: Napier's _Montrose_ (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol. I. P. Xxxiv. ; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from theoriginal Latin of 1648), Preface, p. Vi. ] So till August 1642, when theKing raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there wasagain hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, andcommunications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; sawthe Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642-3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland mightbe roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a braveyoung enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened fromScotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and hisbrother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest withoutthat open rising against the Argyle government which Montroserecommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose hadthus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title ofDuke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, andMontrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, asmonths had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise forMontrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How illHamilton and Lanark had succeeded in _their_ milder undertaking wealready know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy inScotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able toprevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argylethought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able toprevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the EnglishParliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of theParliament on the terms of Henderson's _Solemn League and Covenant_(August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had beentrying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish noblesin an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near theConvention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had takencare to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget ofadvices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England inthe cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt aboutthat! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not theCovenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering toforgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegianceto the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projectedarmy under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with thistemptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposesof the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of theCovenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contraryenterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argylegovernment should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King, and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his powerin England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide inhim, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses andtheir policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds mightbe shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all theirplausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better thantraitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland forinterests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, hadMontrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to littlepurpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there hadgathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugeeScottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the newLeague and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading armywas actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal minddid somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, comingto Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested oncharges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trialon these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle;whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county ofCornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for atime in London, was cordially received there by the ScottishCommissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence toScotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalistand Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be atheart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384;Burnet's _Hamiltons_ (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the chargesagainst the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates eventsanxiously in their behalf. ]

The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearingfor his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commissionhim as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with somesmall force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that wereready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl ofAntrim then with his Majesty at Oxford--that very Randal Macdonnell, Earlof Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to sendsecretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in hisfirst strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. P. 23)? Six years had elapsedsince then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of thegreat Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power formischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between thisclan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, andmake a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if thetime could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as hisMajesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction ofthe two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into theagonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from Englandwould be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might besurely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listeningto his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643-4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's owncountrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do withMontrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few ofthe younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (theMarquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie'sson and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, ofcourse, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him allhe could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King'shesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created aMarquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1stof April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland withhimself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven'sScottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made outappointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces inScotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in-chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should beconferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own workin Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force ofvolunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52;Baillie, II. 73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; andNapier, 385-388. ]

Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyneand Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where heattached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resistingthe advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in theKing's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himselfill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, sothat the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) wasabout 1, 000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most ofthe English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushedon to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed hisstandard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could bedone. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the WestHighlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all tothe north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. Totry to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in theHighlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up theattempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, mostreluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of allPresbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronouncedagainst him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9. ]

"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing, " Baillie was able towrite early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, inrecognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisatehad been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come torepresent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose thatshould contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such acontest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as minglingactively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillagingMorpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to joinPrince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meetthe Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horsefor another raid into Scotland, " was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man thanMontrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousandhorse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spokemanfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, latein July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued thestrangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctlysouthwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothingremained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had beenbut two days on their march when they found that their leader had giventhem the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely knownthat he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secretinstructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwardsremembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn daythree persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottishborder, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and thethird behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a sparehorse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrosehimself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]

There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in thisfurtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not aninformal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met onthe 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more thanforty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners fromBurghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they wereapproaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence:"Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3, 000 rebels in them, fromIreland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and thesons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to sendthe Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, andpowder and ammunition. " On subsequent days there were corrections of thisintelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was thatAntrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montroseat Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in theshape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which hadbeen promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2, 000 Irish andScoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshireunder the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair MacCholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, _i. E. _ Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, sonof Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was alreadypretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of hisname, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, orAlexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, AlexanderMacdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, offthe Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as theIrish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the wholerace of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of beingambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well aswith his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll theLeft-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and youngColkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance inEdinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had beenrecently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrimamong the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his hugestature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command ofthe Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending thisgigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into theterritories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glensbefore it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, itmight work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, theMarquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command againstthe invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote:Balfour's Annals, III. 215 _et seq. _; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67;Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received atthe hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. Of Independency (1660), Appendix toPart I. Pp. 3-6. ]

This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness aboutCarlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th ofAugust, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only twocompanions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know;but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton inPerthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham ofInchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as"Black Pate, " Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collectingnews. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argylepower everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland orHighland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouringHighlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from hischildhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of aforce. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager forintelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He hadnot long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they hadbeen making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither andthither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sendingout the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part ofInverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and therewere reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montroseas he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becomingdesperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north ofArgyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to giveany; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; thefleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt byArgyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for ageneral arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written tohim there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that theletters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them soonerthan the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by wayof precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Atholeand make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfactionof rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure intoScotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes himfirst hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish _after_ he hadcome into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier'snarrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As thelanding of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of Julywas known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton atthat time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the newsmust have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in theNorth of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of hisresolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain fora time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seeminglyauthentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that hefirst learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in thewood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadfulnews to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention todates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis. ]

A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate tothe rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the onehand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch hadbrought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise forKing Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald fromColonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He hadput on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man, " fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, andan air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather smallstature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joyof the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed theirdoubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place asLieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as hisMajor-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot nearCastle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troopswere reviewed. They consisted of about 1, 200 Irish, with a following ofwomen and children, and 1, 100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c. ). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them forthe lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms andammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserablydeficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty-two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422. ]

It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash thephrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a wholeyear, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible. 

Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from thewest, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined byhis kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir JohnDrummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, hegave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to aCovenanting force of some 6, 000 men, gathered from the shires of Perthand Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse andfoot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about2, 000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose enteredthat town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder ofwhom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. Butmovement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north-eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too welldefended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earlof Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, andcame down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days ofhis Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of hisRoyalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh andLord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the timeon this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days onthe doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with aconsiderable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming fromAberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of theupper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by amuster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilderHighlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, toremain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argylehad meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week ortwo, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into theWest Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, hemade it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry andfatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoidingclose quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Onceat Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him;but, with his 1, 500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so thatthey, with their 2, 500 foot and 1, 500 horse, had no advantage. As much ofthis time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley'sown domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. Atlength, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to beroused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose'ssupporters individually having begun to tell, so that even ColonelSibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to facethe winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after acouncil of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take anyrest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horseinto winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose'strustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard thisthan, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, hebrought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-fourmiles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yetsixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison ofPerth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426-469; Rushworth, V. 929-931. ]

Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part ofhim. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end ofNovember, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficultto find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that thefit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of theauxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh onprivate business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalledby express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear thatArgyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted thecommission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 _et seq. _, where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesakeand kinsman. ] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, thereto spend the rest of the winter. 

It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assuredpossession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major-general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there wereMacdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts ofAppin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon themountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders?Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: onlywhat was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let uswinter in the country of King Campbell, " was what the Macdonalds andother clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would havepreferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But howshall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know;how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?"Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "Iknow, " he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tighthouses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want. "And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills andthrough glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow--firstthrough the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then toLoch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the BreadalbaneCampbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, tillthey break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range overLorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of theircoming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seatof Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it layat Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host rangedthrough the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels intheir glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows whatthey did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts andvillages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever theyare found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailingwomen and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive andstarving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shuddersat the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262;Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473. ]

The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th ofJanuary, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him;and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estateshad gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of themonth they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out ofArglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albynchain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strongCovenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of thegarrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland andCaithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power anddispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians whollyhis own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyleseemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on toArgyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central partof Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1, 100 seasonedinfantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own brokenmen he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him alongthe chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander;but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir DuncanCampbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to commandunder him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strengthfrom the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancingcautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, orthat, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he wouldfall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote:Balfour's Annals, III. 246 _et seq. _; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier, 475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, inBaillie's Letters, II. 417t. ]

Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have beenhis most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January hewas at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence itwas his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received newsthat Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle ofInverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. Hesaw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but tokeep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should beengaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go onagainst Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first byhimself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to preventcommunication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had everbeen before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed ofthe Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of theinfant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over themountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he beganthe march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February theywere down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was afrosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; andArgyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him, went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance fromthe shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It wasthe greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. Therewere slain in all about 1, 500 of Argyle's men, including braveAuchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's sidethe loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among hisimportant followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argylesailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior aswell as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King. "Give me leave, " he said, "after I have reduced this country to yourMajesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to yourMajesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by _my_ name. '" [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his accountof the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose'ssupposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, wasfirst "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs, 1699;" but he adds an extract from the _Analecta_ of the Scottishantiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a personwho had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated"one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr. Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony, thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a strikingdocument; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it nowstands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggestingposthumous alteration and concoction. ]----The Battle of Inverlochy wasmuch heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits hadbeen for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated;and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mindby the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break offthe Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly brokenoff just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5). 

On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquisof Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament, "having his left arm tied up in a scarf. " The day before, the Parliamenthad unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis notrecognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl ofAirlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and PatrickGraham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason, " and hadforfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also orderingthe Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of thetraitors out of his registers and books of honour. " The General Assemblyof the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season(Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical businessarising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillieand Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, therebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in adocument penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb. 12), there was this passage:--"In the meantime, the hellish crew, underthe conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and ofAlaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous, unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression. " But, though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the GeneralAssembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to accountrested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there wascoming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general ofhorse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had desertedfrom the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion ofHampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had madehim a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour'sAnnals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of GeneralAssembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126. ]

After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along thechain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been curedof any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose;and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time, issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whomwere Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforthhimself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was moreslippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away assoon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, whohad been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness. Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when hisfather, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2, 000 footand 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire, "as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry. " March 9, he was atAberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar inKincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns ofEarl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry keptzig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horseand tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time. Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south throughForfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay atDunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of LordLewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him todesist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillieand Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forthcountry, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee, and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to himfor his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight, April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and setfire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irishwere ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most ofthem madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, whohad not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose gothis drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is aninexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them, by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himselfin the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, pastArbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among theprotecting Grampians. "Truly, " says his biographer Wishart, "I have oftenheard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not inBritain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose tohis most celebrated victories. " [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth, VI. 2. 8; Napier, 490-497. ]

Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. Therewere to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn inNairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's madbravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by theEarls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506. ] The second was the Battle ofAlford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Bailliehimself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders inwhich, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie wasassisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was triflingin comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon[Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the CovenantingGovernment the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, whichhad adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh fortwo short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24-Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the considerationof ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war[Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307. ]. Baillie, chagrined at theloss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame ofhis disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly onthe great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither andthither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to hisinterests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him, persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a newCommittee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advisehim (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th ofAugust he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted, with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow timefor the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) fromIreland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedlyhe did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day ofhis anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received fromMontrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle ofKilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had beengreat exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were, according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6, 000 foot and 1, 000horse under Baillie against 4, 400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose. Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that therecruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. Invarious posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief ofClanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or, as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle, the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, andBalcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle, Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, bothfoot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts(which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and inthis style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans andClanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the oldEarl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter wassuch as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie'sside against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but thechief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one ofthese. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship inthe Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himselfin this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did notcome ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171;Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructivevindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousinBaillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over thewhole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meetingwith Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle ofKilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had neverbeen allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted andoverridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individualnobles. ]

The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He enteredClydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up hishead-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide. Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in theirsubmissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gatheredobsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had beenarrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during hisenterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrosewere his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion--the veteran LordNapier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; SirGeorge Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; andseveral other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. Infact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montroseat Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great dayat this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victoryof Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army;a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir RobertSpotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant andCaptain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had tillthen been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowingspeech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially hisMajor-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first actof Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On thefollowing day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliamentat Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, toobey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were thathe should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with theEarls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of thoseparts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging fromEngland, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digbyshould be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had beenreported all through England and had altered the state and prospects ofthe war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensationeven for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model. The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea, and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, itwould be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of Englandfor the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote:Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569. ]

In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to theBorder. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for theexpected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of theBorder lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10thof September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; andthence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575. ] While he is at this lastplace, let us pause a little to ask an important question. 

What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under themeteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make ofScotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose wasnot, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, apolitical theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist ourguesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictationat that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. Thedocument is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law andclosest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, inNapier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writingmaterials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in allprobability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it wasthat vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrosemeant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliamentat Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October. 

The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleadingaddressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been anenthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. Hisdefence is that it was not _he_ that had swerved from the originalScottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant, and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps"giving way to more than was warrantable, " till their deviation from thetrue purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seenthis to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusionof the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or ratherthey had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone onin perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, intheir pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad toworse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre andtheir committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of theloyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. TheChurch too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction"overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents inEngland, to the prejudice of Religion. " [Footnote: Several times in thecourse of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comesin--an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patentfact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism toIndependency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probablya little behind-hand in their knowledge of English EcclesiasticalHistory, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase ofreproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamationsagainst Parliament. ] So much for a review of his past acts; but what werehis _present_ grounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his"grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinaryand repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained hishatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration inScotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England, inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did notdesire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of theScottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, andit was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, thathe had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of thatoriginal Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland. "It cannot be denied, " says the document, "neither ever shall be by us, that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by theperverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abusedlawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance, but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government, and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to theprejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery waspublicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away byenforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of theWhore of Babel. " For the defence, therefore, of genuine old ScottishPresbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the firstshould draw a sword. " But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented, and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of thecaterpillar. " As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that hadbeen set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes, "resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of ourReformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour tomaintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be noless dear to us than our own souls. "--Allowing for the fact thatMontrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic toconciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe thesepassages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believedhimself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, infact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of theKing's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation ofevery relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and thesubstitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of theMarquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted fromin the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to havedeciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. Of his Life of Montrose, pp. Xliv. -liii. ), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to becommended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about hishero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as achampion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's documentmust be unwelcome news. ]

Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remainin Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and theParliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet. 

In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose'striumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fastand prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that hadbefallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London toand from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since WilliamWallace's days, " he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "Whatmeans the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eightdays" (_i. E. _ Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, hadgone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking withhim 4, 000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done. David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far thanLieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, andbetter even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bringfrom Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315. ]

Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his4, 000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had addedfrom the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore, in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, butLeslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watchedLeslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength, and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediateencounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days, when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to theirhills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose, his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a properperiod at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it isbelieved, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-generalof the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, hadprojected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the privatesatisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells. Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises ofspeedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice, " andgone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by hisuncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and wasbusy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lordshad come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter-negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the Kinghimself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. Itwas, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland footand a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends--Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, andHartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir WilliamRollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others--foundhimself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but toreturn north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow hisvigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning ofSaturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fogcovering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at earlybreakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one briefhour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others, cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and theplaces where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, andthe tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are nowamong the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in thepossession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shapedbottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of thesame sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in aplace where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, Iam told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles hadcontained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of theneighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, onthe morning when he was surprised by Leslie. ]

Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favouriteAthole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerableNapier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, hedied in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the sametime in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present ather funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant griefcaused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government uponthose of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir WilliamRollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose inhis disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, andothers, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, CaptainAndrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, theyoung brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed atSt. Andrews--Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, havingcontrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co-operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general inScotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked onperseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize anotherrising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every otherlikely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and hisfickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose'sCaptaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy wasreestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large inthe Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the ArgyleGovernment could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leavehim, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his ownlyrics:--

 "The misty mounts, the smoking lake, The rock's resounding echo, The whistling winds, the woods that shake, Shall all with me sing _Heigho_! The tossing seas, the tumbling boats, Tears dripping from each oar, Shall tune with me their turtle notes: 'I'll never love thee more!'"[Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 232; Wishart, 208-258; Napier, 581-630, withMontrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I. ]

FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS. 

Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved theEnglish Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising inScotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and thestorming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added asa most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war inEngland had reached its fag-end. 

The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre ofaction for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax inthe recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, wasdetached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplishedthe surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House, the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of thatMarchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now againmarried (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had beencompletely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in theextreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales hadretired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge. ]

Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands andthroughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he givenup all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northwardmovement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the newsof that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far asWelbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back, only sending 1, 500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale tomake their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by theParliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as theScottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left theirmen to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digbywent to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the easternborder of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned forhim; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to hishead-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter, holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, andobserving the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces. The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then becomeof considerable importance to him. --We have seen (_antč_, p. 339)how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and hadsulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention ofleaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the stateof Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Governmenthad failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were theEnglish Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had beeninterchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military andpolitical leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament thatthe Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and othernorthern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having beensuppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been madeby the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between thetwo nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake aduty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as asubstitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege ofNewark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the Kinghad left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down beforeNewark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newarkis about a hundred miles. --Through the winter, though the New Model hadnot quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chiefbusiness of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the nowinevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it wouldbe best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actuallyopened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come toLondon for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliamentover these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms, the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it wasthe general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refugewith the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, heremained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from theSouth-west. 

No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed thereby the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of theParliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), thestorming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb. 16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14)Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, andfollowing the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in theScilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael'sMount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, foundhimself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and ofBarnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in thewhole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over farPendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge]

The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and beingfree for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and abody of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in thefield) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west, and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the exampleof surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longerpossible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes forretrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He hadbeen intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with theIrish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10, 000Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch andhis Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France forthe landing of 6, 000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he hadfallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid ofthe Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion inEngland on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholicswould "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment"of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now inthe dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance ofIrish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects, victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closerfor that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What washe to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for sometime the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there hadbeen negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil, both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of theScottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuilhad reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditionsvery different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative, though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to Londonsomehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on thechances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensionsbetween the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve onan escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless. Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travellingsome seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage toScotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-twoLetters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, thefirst dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce forthe Camden Society (1856) under the title of "_Charles I. In_ 1646. "See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curiousfacts and indications of Charles's character. ]

It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that, on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of thebedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for hissole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant andcarrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford;and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined toride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors ofthe Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind hadchanged, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's;thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards toDownham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is onrecord that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, whofound much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who hadlast cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that hisMajesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in thecity; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding theharbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, heended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer atNewark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in Englandand that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the EnglishParliament. --It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The EnglishParliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commonsdid vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and, though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protestedagainst its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution ofthe Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should beclearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliamentshould try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to theRoyalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and, the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge, withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13). [Footnote: Iter _Carolinum_ in Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l), Vol. II. Pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II. 374-5. ]

On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all thecommanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name, anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24thof June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before, was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir ThomasGlenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that ofWallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle inCornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19. Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. Thedefender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustainthe King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges. ]

FALLEN AND RISEN STARS. 

In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The Kingbeing then at Newcastle with the Scots, where were the other chiefRoyalists? I. _The Royal Family. _ The Queen had been abroad againfor more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth atExeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she hadescaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and hadtaken ship for France, leaving the child at Exeter. Richelieu, who hadkept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and CardinalMazarin and the Queen Regent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV. , she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing forthe two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue onher husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice tohim. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was shethat had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil toarrange between the Scots and Charles. The destination of the Prince ofWales had for some time been uncertain. From Scilly he had gone toJersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digby, and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had aproject of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talkedof for a refuge; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him withher in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders fromNewcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went(July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of thesurrender, came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed thecharge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with thePrincesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London. The baby Princess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the handsof the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but hadbeen cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King'sfighting nephews, Rupert and Maurice, who had been in Oxford when itsurrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after aninterview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who hadbeen for some time in England as an honoured guest of the Parliament; andan occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. _Chief RoyalistPeers and Counsellors. _ Some of these, including the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl ofSouthampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order ofthings, and studying opportunities of still being useful to theirsovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted withEngland, or being under the ban of Parliament for delinquency of too deepa dye, dispersed themselves abroad, to live in that condition ofcontinental exile which had already for some time been the lot of theMarquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war. Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales toParis; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. TheQueen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of theRoyalist refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them wereobliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at arespectful distance. 

While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the Englishfirmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places? As thequestion interests us now, so it interested people then; and, to assistthe public judgment, printers and booksellers put forth lists of thosewho, either from the decisiveness and consistency of theirParliamentarianism from the first, or from its sufficiency on a totalreview, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated _TheGreat Champions of England. _ [Footnote: One such fly sheet, publishedJuly 30, 1646 by "Francis Leach at the Falcon in Shoe Lane, " has beenalready referred to (see Vol. II, p. 480, _Note, _ and p. 433, _Note_). The lists there given, though very useful to us now, contain a great manyerrors--misspellings of names, entries of persons as still alive who weredead some time, &c. In those days of scanty means of publicity, it wasfar more difficult to compile an accurate conspectus of contemporariesfor any purpose than it would be now. ]

There were two classes of these Champions, though not a few individualsbelonged to both classes:--I. _The Political Champions, or ChampionPeers and Commoners. _ The Champion Peers were reckoned as exactlytwenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-ninewere, let him repeat here the list already given of those who wereParliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. Pp. 430-1), only deletingfrom that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke andMiddlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Holland, ashaving proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earlof Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earlof Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of thedeceased Royalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), andLord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Royalist, but now passing as aParliamentarian. The Champion Commoners were, of course, a much largermultitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. Pp. 431-4). About three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 ofthe members in all, might be regarded as declared or possibleParliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other sidein the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, withevery exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the endof the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to beremembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its fullcareer of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numericalstrength by the process called Recruiting, _i. E. _ by the issue ofwrits for the election of new members in the places of those who haddied, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Royalists. Ofthis process of Recruiting, and its effects on the national policy, weshall have to take farther account; meanwhile it is enough to say that, between Aug. 1645, when the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646, when the war ended, as many as 179 Recruiters had been elected, and wereintermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving originalmembers. [Footnote: This is my calculation from the Index of new Writs inthe Commons Journals between August 21, 1645, and August 1, 1646. Seealso Godwin's _Commonwealth_, II. 84-39. ] Now, most of these Recruiters, from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, andsome had even attained eminence in that character since their election. About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, ifthese are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, thetotal number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390. [Footnote: InLeach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397. Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from the original members byprinting the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least _eleven_cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members. Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that headmitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whoseclaims were dubious. ] It must not be supposed that they had all earnedthis distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on oneextraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200;and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities andvarious parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but, on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 originalmembers and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the endof the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them. 

II. _Military Champions_. Here, from the nature of the case, therewas less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelledin Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few ofthe officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the NewModel, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, andSir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered. Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were thechief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom wereFairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names ofthe Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our viewof the New Model at the time of its formation (_antč_ pp. 326-7). Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, muchlamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at thestorming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowancefor the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by theretirement of several other field-officers, or their transference togarrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hardservice, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance, our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yetstands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of themost distinguished military coöperants with the New Model: _i. E. _ ofthose surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance, who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted itsoperations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders ofgarrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M. P. For Cheshire, and SirThomas Middleton, M. P. For Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as ofCromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allowtheir continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (_antč_, p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeedLord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North;such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in theWest (_antč_, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similarcommand in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones(Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor ofNottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts), and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous forhis Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his activegovernorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that townagainst sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperantswith the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the NewModel itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruitersfor the House of Commons. [Footnote: My authorities for this list of themilitary stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the NewModel at its formation (_antč_, p. 327, _Note_) and an imperfect list inLeach's fly-sheet (_antč_, p. 376, _Note_) are stray passages in theLords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think Ihave picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouchthat I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles ona Colonel _this_ or a Lieut-colonel _that_, evidently of some note, perplexing one's lists and allocations. ]

If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that havebeen described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars ofthe new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or formilitary reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, asHistory refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eyealmost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomesinteresting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of thehighest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiryfor ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less anauthority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliamentwas looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the fewlast remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submittedto the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, whowere the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewardsshould be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do hispart by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the Englisharistocracy. This was the result:--

THE EARL OF ESSEX:--King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons hadalready voted him a pension of £10, 000 a year. 

THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:--To be made a Duke, and provision for him tobe considered. 

THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral):--To be made aDuke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild, passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side. 

THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:--To be made a Duke, and all hisdebts to the public to be cancelled. 

THE EARL OF MANCHESTER:--To be made a Marquis, and provision to beconsidered for him. 

THE EARL OF SALISBURY:--To be made a Marquis. 

VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE:--To be made an Earl, LORD ROBERTS:--To be made an Earl. 

LORD WHARTON:--To be made an Earl. 

LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM:--To be made an Earl. 

DENZIL HOLLES:--To be made a Viscount. 

GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX:--To be made an English Baron and an Estate of£5, 000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: hisfather LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an EnglishBaron. 

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:--To be made an English Baron, and an Estateof £2, 500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever. 

SIR WILLIAM WALTER:--To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of£2, 500 a year. 

SIR HENRY VANE, SEN. :--To be made an English Baron. As the peerage woulddescend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included_him_. 

SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:--£2, 000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. 

SIR PHILIP STAPLETON:--£2, 000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. 

SIR WILLIAM BRERETON:--£1, 500 a year to him and his heirs for ever. 

MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:--£l, 000 a year to him and his heirs forever. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec 1, 1645. ]

Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours votedfor them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pymhad been a vote of £10, 000 to pay his debts, It mattered the less becausethese Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain_in nubibus_. They were contemplated on the supposition of a directPeace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, andhad been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the lastmoment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliamentcould arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and, if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creationsof peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, orwhether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honoursthat were in their own power--viz. The voted estates and pensions. ForEssex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared aboutthe matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in theStrand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having receivedlittle of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral. 

CHAPTER II. 

WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHSOF THE NEW MODEL--THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES--INDEPENDENCYAND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED:CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE ANDTHE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT--PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THEARRANGEMENT--THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS--EFFECTSOF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVENTO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED--NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE--THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THESCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEENPROPOSITIONS--PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZINGOF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 

During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the fieldwhich had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645--August1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in theWestminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seeminglyinterminable Church-business and its collaterals. 

THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES. 

That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formallydecided in January 1644-5 (_antč_, pp. 172--175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were tworeasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery hadbeen adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be thepowers of the parochial consistories and the other church courtsrespectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to eachminister and his congregational board of elders in the matter ofspiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from thecommunion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulatewhat offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were thevarious Church-courts, once established, to act independently of theCivil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal ofecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or theentire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Anothergreat question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Shouldthe new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with orwithout a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demandedan absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief andpractice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certainamount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its AccommodationOrder of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of thePresbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attackedand slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of theIndependents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress ofblasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!

Such were the questions for continued controversy between thePresbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in thesequestions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the twoparties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the NewModel?

INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSYCONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SIONCOLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS INPARLIAMENT. 

The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to thePresbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enoughpersonally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it waslargely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch-Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope ofthe Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it wasnot to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the whilethe Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of thePresbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action, " wereCromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field:"Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not todiscourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humilityin all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for theliberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of hisconscience, and you for the liberty he fights for. " [Footnote: Carlyle'sCromwell, I. 176. ] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory ofNaseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of thePresbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax, " writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, thelast week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the wholeAssembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. Itwas the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire theHouse not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, andto come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. Youwill see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses. "[Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentionedwas Paul Best (see _antč_, p. 157). He was accused of "diversprodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the HolyGhost. " Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse toawait his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had beendeepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similargrounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member forNottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemygenerally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's caselasted two years. ] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now fromthe field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory onbehalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?

What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Bestmust be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state ofthings in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being atCoventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a piouspreacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, andthe gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit ofcuriosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence tothe quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of hisacquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers, " hesays, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard theplotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention tosubvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were mostprevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; andThomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellentparts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to behonest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear theTruth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell'schief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, orcarried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. ... Theysaid, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror'scolonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains?They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast thetrust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors. " They werefull of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or _Sots_, thePresbyterians or _Priest-biters_, and the Assembly of Divines or _Dry-vines_; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, andAntinomians. --Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of someuse by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, tobecome chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of beinguseful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But hisreception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army, " hesays, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word tome more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me anopportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetingsof the officers were. " Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell tohim. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, andwould make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either. [Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquię Baxterianę), 1696, pp. 50, 51. ]

Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. ThroughEnglish society, and especially in London, there was much of the same. 

Since the publication of Edwards's _Antapologia_ in July 1644 thewar of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had beenincreasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief ofthem, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhapsPrynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency andToleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, IfBibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popularEnglish Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first halfof the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialistswhose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twistedknot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration ofseveral scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, inthe exact order of their publication, and with an account of the natureof each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the mostdeadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets, and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him withirritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of thepamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate inexpression, were anonymous. Such was _The Arraignment ofPersecution_, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy forBartholomew Bang-Priest, " and to be on sale at "his shop in TolerationStreet, right opposite to Persecution Court. " In this and other popularsquibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names, the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logicallywas demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuseof the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote:Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of JohnGoodwin, 61--79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne andBurton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my ownfrom the Stationers' Registers. ]--One Tolerationist, here deserving anotice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even beforethe meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentarycaptain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588-9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League andCovenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom nopersuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen, nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel inManchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at MarstonMoor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding. Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted greatman in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. Butthere was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwellcould not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, thenJohn would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was HenryMarten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been awitness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thoughtCromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and notbringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a chargeagainst a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterlydisgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience ofParliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "digfor turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to makehimself a slave. " His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to holdcommands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induceLilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he hadresigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to theCommons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolvedto be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independencyof the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more thantwenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominentAnti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries, and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlesslylibertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences. There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenientopportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his firstobject of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne fortoleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made morepiquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of theduellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. Of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's _Gangręna, _ Part I. 46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 _et seq. _; Commons Journals, Jan. 17, 1644-5; Prynne's _Fresh Discovery. _]

The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterianmasterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of toleratingopinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead hisliberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely thananything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and itsLiberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to betried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishmentsof others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mereIndependency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God, " writes Baillie, July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin, the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed fromtheir places. " In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected fromhis vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for thesecond time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregularpractices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way ofPrynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following inthe City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting-house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to havebeen in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson'sLife of Goodwin, 79 _et seq. _; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note. --Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney. ]----Burton and Goodwin havingbeen called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. Withcharacteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing thebusiness of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House ofCommons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and alwayswith outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and onthat. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had beena violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne hadbeen in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti-Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. Hehad then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell, recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and thekingdom good service, " wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find himunthankful. " Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to beprinted and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburnestill haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into theHouse, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was inthe Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwicktaking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of theSpeaker, his brother, and other public men. The information wasimmediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to theSpeaker, with this result: "_Resolved_, That Lieutenant-colonelLilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take furtherorder. " Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburnerefused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He alsocaused to be printed _A Letter to a Friend_, stating his case in hisown way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to theHouse, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumaciousin private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remainthere for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14, when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote:Godwin's Hist. Of the Commonwealth, II. L5-21; Commons Journals of datesgiven; Wood's Ath. III. 860. ]

Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method ofthe Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, awaywith the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances toParliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the NewModel after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and inthe long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account ofthis success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument. "Presbyterians, Independents, all, " he wrote, "have here the same spiritof faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, haveno names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! Allthat believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because_in_ the Body and _to_ the Head. For being united in forms, commonlycalled Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do asfar as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason. " By order ofParliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday, Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, tohave sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188. --As late as1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largelycommented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (_A Survey of theSpiritual Antichrist. _ 1648, p. 250 _et seq. _) in proof of Cromwell'sdangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and othererrors. ]

Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may beregarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, remindingParliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "AccommodationOrder" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had thenbeen passed (_antč, _ pp. 168-9). What had become of this AccommodationOrder? The story may be given in brief:--The Grand AccommodationCommittee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting ofDr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. Thebusiness of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements, "was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between theIndependents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did theirbest, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons theGrand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings hadobtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. Thefive original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhillnow added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) theirReasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeableto them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents inthe Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From thevery first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to somevariable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof thereare some _ten_ or _eleven_ in the Synod, many of them very able men, " andmentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See ourList of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524, ) There had been efforts on thepart of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives ofIndependency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, thevery day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination ofJohn Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on theirown account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of theAssembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). TheCommons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheldit, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well asThomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also anIndependent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood'sFasti, II. 172). ] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborateAnswer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essentialparts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified byParliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by theSeven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they wererepublished in 1652 under the title of _The Grand Debate concerningPresbytery and Independency_. ] Affairs then took a new turn in theAssembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merelycritical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of themwas led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing toprepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrastedwith that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudentoffer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee forbringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons forthe same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposedto be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensationfrom attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in theirModel. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. Atlength, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly--what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged forseven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model atall! "Upon these considerations, " they said in concluding the Paper, "wethink that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; norwill that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, anddebates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who havealready voted another Form of Government than that which we shallpresent. "--It was the astutest policy that the Independents couldpossibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselvesoutwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order hadagain to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferencesof the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "TheIndependents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee ofAccommodation, " writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desiresfor toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects. " That was theupshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, andtheir one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington'sHist. Of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury'sMemorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; CommonsJournals, Nov. 14, 1645. ]

The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to theirendeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, orarrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset onthe Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on asignal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets fromthe press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his _Dissuasive_(_antč_, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal _Gangręna_(_antč_, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press werenot enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. Theexpectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as thatParliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, andrepudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent tobring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. ThroughDecember 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians wereceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. Andwith signal success:--Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergyof London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of theAssembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way asboth to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had beenin the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SIONCOLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use ofthe London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of amodern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of latebeen in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so thatat length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College hadbecome a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet inconnexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoctwhat was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from theAssembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty couldsummon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which wehave arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all theministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These aresome of the many considerations, " they say in the close of the Letter, "which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Dianaof Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in thesedistracted times, namely, A Toleration--A Toleration. And, however noneshould have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of abrotherly, peaceable, and Christian _accommodation_, yet, this beingutterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore-mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured _Toleration_. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c. " The Letter waspresented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care thatit should be published that same day. [Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art. _Sion College_; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6. ]--The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterianas the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanksto God, to this point, " writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grievedfor the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They haveyesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenantby oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petitionfor settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without anytoleration. " The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularlyrepresented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for thePetitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were beingvented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337;Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6. ]

Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could theParliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration asif it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and CommonCouncil that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics;but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had receivedthe City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance wassincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had beenstanding at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to membersprinted copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven BaptistCongregations in London (see _antč_, p. 148). It was as if they hadsaid, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenetsof those poor Anabaptists who are described as such monsters. " But theCommons were in a Presbyterian panic; Cox and Richardson were taken intocustody; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies ofthe Baptist Confession that could be found. This alone would prove thatas late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in theircharacter of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6. ]

PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THEARRANGEMENT. 

Hardly less successful had the Presbyterians been in their more propertask of perfecting their Frame of Church-government. Here, indeed, theyhad encountered little or no opposition from the Independents. Theessentials of the Presbyterian scheme having been voted by Parliament, the Independents had quietly accepted that fact; and, though they tended, as was natural, more and more to doubts whether there ought to be anyNational Church at all, they had left Parliament and the Presbyterians ofthe Assembly to construct the detailed machine of the future EnglishPresbytery very much as they pleased. [Footnote: Absolute Voluntaryism, as we know, was already represented in Roger Williams. The _Seekers_, hisfollowers, were bound to the same conclusion; and accordingly, I find alittle tract of six pages, in 1645, by John Saltmarsh, the Seeker andAntinomian (_antč_, p. 151-3), entitled "A New Quere, at this timeseasonably to be considered, &c.. Viz. Whether it be fit, according tothe principles of true Religion and State to settle any Church-governmentover the Kingdom hastily or not. " Burton was already in the same mood ofhypothetical Voluntaryism (_antč_, p. 109), and I think it was spreadingnow among the Independents. Certainly, however, the perception of thenecessary identity of the principle of Independency with absoluteVoluntaryism, or the doctrine of No State Church, was not universal amongthem. ] It was the Erastians rather than the Independents that were herethe clogs upon the thorough-going Presbyterians. Selden especially wastheir torment. He was quite willing, O yes! that the Church of Englandshould be thenceforward Presbyterian; but then what about the rights ofthe individual subject and the relations of the Church to the State? TheState or central Power in every community must be, in the last resort, the guardian of all the rights and liberties of the individual subjects;there had been but one Sanhedrim in the Jewish Commonwealth, supreme incauses ecclesiastical as well as in causes civil; but the PresbyterianDivines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted theChurch in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiasticalcauses, and irresponsible to the State! Plying his learning in thisfashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers inthe Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up anErastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, and thereforestaunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made commoncause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had beenvery formidable. "The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger thanthe Independent, and is like to work us much woe, " wrote Baillie in May1645; "Mr. Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our _remora_" he wrotein September; and he kept repeating the complaint throughout the year. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 277, 315, and also in intermediate and followingpages. ]

Nevertheless great progress had been made in devising and settling thedetails of the Presbyterian system. What it was will be best exhibited ina dated series of paragraphs, digesting the proceedings of the Assemblyand the Parliament:--

_May 1645: Presbyterian Arrangements for all England prospectively, andfor London to begin with_:--That every English Congregation or Parishhave its lay-elders along with its minister, just after the Scottishfashion; That the meetings of the Presbyterians be once a month; That theecclesiastical provinces of England be about sixty in number (about co-numerous with the shires, and, in most cases, identical with them), andthat the Synods of these provinces be held twice a-year, and consist ofdelegates from the Presbyteries; That the National Assembly be held oncea year, and consist of delegates from the sixty Synods, at the rate ofthree ministers and two ruling elders from each, so as to form a House ofabout 300 members. --That London, reckoned by a radius of ten miles fromits centre, be one of the Synodical Provinces, and that the number ofClasses or Presbyteries in the Synod of London be fourteen. --_Baillie_, II. 271, 272. 

_Aug. _ 23: Ordinance of Parliament, calling in all copies of the oldLiturgy, enforcing the use of the new Westminster Directory of Worship, and forbidding any use of the Liturgy, even in private houses, underpenalties. --_Commons Journals. _

_July-Sept. 1645; Directions for the Election of Ruling Elders inCongregations, and for the Division of the English Counties intoPresbyteries. _ July 23, the Commons resolved that Ruling Elders incongregations should be chosen by the ministers and all members dulyqualified by having taken the Covenant and being of full age, save thatservants without families were not to have votes: no man to be a rulingelder in more than one congregation, and that in the place of his usualresidence. July 25, they appointed a committee of forty-seven of theirown body to find out the fittest persons to be a committee forsuperintending the elections of Elders for the Congregations andPresbyteries of London, and at the same time to prepare a letter to besent down into the counties by the Speaker, giving instructions for theformation of County-Committees to consider the best division of thecounties respectively into Presbyteries. The letter was ready Sept. 17, when it was ordered to be sent down into the counties, with a copy of theVotes and Ordinances on the subject of the election of Elders that hadthen passed and been concurred in by the Lords. --_Commons Journals. _

_Sept. -Dec. 1645: Special Presbyterian Arrangements for London. _ Ithaving been resolved by the Commons (Sept. 23) that there should be achoice of Elders forthwith in London, the aforesaid Committee of forty-seven reported to the House (Sept. 26) the names of the persons judgedmost suitable to be TRIERS of the ability and integrity of the Eldersthat should be elected, and of the validity of their election accordingto the Parliamentary regulations. In each of the twelve London Classes orPresbyteries (there were only _twelve_ as yet) there were to be nineof these Triers--three ministers and six lay citizens; and they were todecide all questions by a majority of votes. Thus there were to be 108Triers in all in London. Their names are all registered. The machinerybeing thus ready, the Lord Mayor was requested, Oct. 8, to intimate toall the London ministers the desire of Parliament that Congregationsshould at once proceed to the election of their Elders. --Dec. 5, it wasordered that the whole world of the lawyers--_i. E. _ the Chapel ofthe Rolls, the two Serjeants' Inns, and the four Inns of Court--should beconstituted into a Presbytery by itself, but divided into two Classes. Triers were also appointed for the Elders in this peculiar Presbytery, one of them being William Prynne. --_Commons Journals of datescited. _

_Nov. _ 8, 1645: _New Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers. _ In thislong Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Presbyter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishopamong them, to ordain; nevertheless the ordinations by the late Bishopsare recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for theexamination of candidates for the ministry in future, and for theformalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must betwenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respectof piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, butalso in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; andcongregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions againstministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears thatcertified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England. --_LordsJournals. _

_Powers of the Congregational Elderships in suspending from Church-membership, and excluding from the Communion. _ This was perhaps the mostimportant subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of thenew Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferenceswith the liberties of the individual. Parliament was naturally slow andjealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results mustsuffice here:--The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paperconcerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from theSacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a moreparticular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms_ignorant_ and _scandalous_. The Assembly having then sent in anexplanation, in which, under the head of the _ignorance_ that shouldexclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned "the not having a competentunderstanding concerning the Trinity, " the Commons (March 27, 1645) haddesired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competentunderstanding concerning the Trinity, The Assembly having fartherdeclared, under the same head of _ignorance_, that no persons ought to beadmitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" ofthe Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Redemptionby Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of thenecessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use ofSacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons hadstill demurred about the "competent understanding, " and had begged theAssembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, someresolutions having been come to about the "competent understanding, " andthere being less difficulty in deciding who should come under thecategory of the _scandalous_, the Commons had before them a prettyextensive index of the kinds of persons, whether _ignorant_ or_scandalous_, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered tosuspend or debar from the Communion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, itincluded, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articlesof Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, _et hocgenus omne_, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these--makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints, persons sendingor accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares orunnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons consulting witches, personsassaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted ofperjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their childrenwith Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert theprime Articles of Religion. To provide, moreover, for cases notpositively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in everyecclesiastical province authorized to decide on such cases, whenrepresented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with muchmore of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still underParliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646. --_CommonsJournals, with references there to the Lords Journals_. 

THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS; EMINENT RECRUITERS. 

January 1645-6, I think, was the month in which Presbyterianism was infullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summerof 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly thatcontinued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought theWar obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliamentand the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass ofIndependency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re-approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of itsmasters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increaseof the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming inof the RECRUITERS. 

By the outbreak of the Civil War in August 1642, and the consequentdesertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most ofwhom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, had been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have beenconstitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, andregrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil Warcould not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be suchelections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions ofEngland, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant? Forthree years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it toremain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state towhich it had been reduced, _i. E. _, with a nominal strength at theutmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 orthereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more ofEnglish ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was itdeemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs; and even then the processwas careful and gradual. 

The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe; in September there followed 95 additional newwrits for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more; and so onby smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new members in all had been elected. This did not complete theprocess; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of1646, bringing the total number of the Recruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Recruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians, more orless, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major-general RICHARD BROWNE (Wycombe), Major-general EDWARD MASSEY (WoottonBassett), WALTER LONG, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and CLEMENT WALKER, Esq. (Wells): this last a very peculiar-tempered person fromSomersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and described by himself as an"elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stickin his hand. " Decidedly more numerous among the Recruiters, however, weremen who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolerationists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than thatmonth, may be named Colonel ROBERT BLAKE (Taunton), Sir JOHN DANVERS, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. JOHN FIENNES, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), GEORGE FLEETWOOD, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (Marlborough), Sir JAMES HARRINGTON(Rutland), the Hon. JAMES HERBERT, second son of the Earl of Pembroke(Wilts), Colonel JOHN HUTCHINSON (Notts), Commissary-general HENRY IRETON(Appleby), HENRY LAWRENCE, Esq. , a gentleman of property and some tastefor learning and speculation (Westmoreland), Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY(Queenborough), Colonel EDMUND LUDLOW (Wilts), SIMON MAYNE, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (Hants), Colonel RICHARDNORTON (Hants), Colonel CHARLES RICH (Sandwich), Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER(Great Grimsby), THOMAS SCOTT (Aylesbury), young Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY(Cardiff), Colonel WILLIAM SYDENHAM (Melcombe Regis), and PETER TEMPLE, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or hadbeen officers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It wasstill more significant that among these New Model officers elected amongthe first Recruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognisedas in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officerswere devoted to Cromwell; but Ireton was his _alter ego_, and youngFleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged toa group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers anddisciples. [Footnote: The statistics of the Recruiting in this paragraphare from my own counting of the New Writs from Aug. 1645 onwards in theCommons Journals, checked by Godwin's previous counting or calculation(Hist. Of Commonwealth, II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new writs inthe list of members of the Long Parliament given in the Parl. Hist. (II. 599-629). Among the individual Recruiters named I have tried not toinclude any whose election was _later_ than Jan. 1645-6, and havetrusted, in that particular, to the notices of new writs in the CommonsJournals and the Parl. Hist. ; but one cannot be perfectly sure that ineach case an election immediately followed the new writ. My often-citedfly-sheet authority, Leach's _Great Champions of England_, has beenof use. It distinguishes 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary note beforethe end of July, 1646; but its list of Recruiters up to that date isneither complete nor accurate. --The description of Clement Walker is fromhis own _Hist. Of Independency_ (edit. 1660), Part I. P. 53. --Thecounty in which there had to be most Recruiting, _i. E. _in whichthere were most vacant seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all the seatswere vacant there. A large proportion of the seats was vacant in Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmoreland, and Wales. --The Recruiting went on notonly through 1646, but also in stray cases through subsequent years; andFAIRFAX, SKIPPON, HARRISON, INGOLDSBY, among military men, and PRYNNEhimself among civilians, came at length into the House. ]

Not _called_ Recruiters, but practically such for the Independents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for along while, were now restored to their places. These were NathanielFiennes, _alias_ "Young Subtlety, " and the witty and freethinkingHenry Marten. Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentencedto death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol (_antč_, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad; but opinion of hisconduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and beforethe end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. P. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for wordstoo daringly disrespectful of Royalty--in fact, for prematureRepublicanism; but, the House having become less fastidious in thatmatter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescindedJanuary 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals. [Footnote: Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, 78; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and1238; and Commons Journals of dates given. ]

Although as many as 146 Recruiters had been elected before the end of theyear, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Not till January26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers ofthe House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largestthere had been for many a day--larger by 13 than the House that had madeFairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward thenumbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there wereHouses of 203 and 202 respectively; and before the summer of 1646 therewere members enough at hand to form on great field-days Houses of from250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Recruiterswere able to be present. [Footnote: My notes of Divisions, from theCommons Journals. ]

EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM:CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED. 

As soon as the Recruiting had begun to tell upon the _numbers_ of theHouse, an effect on the _policy_ of the House is also perceptible. Thuson Feb. 3, the very day when the Commons mustered a House of 203, adivision took place involving Toleration in a subtle form. The questionwas whether in a Declaration setting forth the true intentions of theHouse in Church-matters this clause should be inserted: "A fitting careshall be taken of tender consciences, so far as may stand with the Wordof God and the Peace of the Kingdom. " This, though mild enough, displeased the Presbyterians, and was proposed from their side that thewords "Church and" should be inserted before the word "Kingdom. " On adivision the _Yeas_ (for adding the words and so making the pledge of atoleration weaker) were 105, and had for their tellers the Presbyterianparty-chiefs, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton; but 98 _Noes_rallied round Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Henry Mildmay, the tellers forthe Opposition. [Footnote: Commons Journals of date. ] A wavering of thebalance towards Independency and Toleration was indicated by this vote;but it was not till the following month that the balance was decisivelyturned, and then not directly on the Toleration question, but on thatgreat related question of the "Power of the Keys" which the Presbyteriansof the Assembly wanted to see settled in their favour before they couldconsider the Presbyterian establishment perfect. If the phrase "Power ofthe Keys" should seem a mystic one to English readers now, it willperhaps be cleared up by the following story of what happened in March1645-6. 

On the 5th of that month the Commons passed and sent up to the Lords oneall-comprehensive Ordinance, recapitulating in twenty-three Propositionsthe substance of their various Presbyterian enactments up to that date. [Footnote: See the Ordinance in the Commons Journals of the date. It is aclear and excellent summary of what had been done and what was intendedin the matter of Presbyterian Establishment. ] What these were we havejust seen (_antč_, pp. 397-400). They amounted, as one might nowthink, to a sufficiently strict Presbyterianizing of all England, withLondon first by way of example. The Presbyterian Divines were not illsatisfied on the whole; but they had not succeeded to the full extent oftheir wishes, and there were various matters in the RecapitulatingOrdinance that they hoped yet to see amended. In particular, notwithstanding all their efforts for months past to indoctrinate theParliament with the right Presbyterian theory of the independentspiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the natural Erastianism of the laymind had been so strong in the Commons that the 14th Proposition of theRecapitulating Ordinance stood as follows:--

"XIV. That, in every Province, persons shall be chosen by the Houses ofParliament that shall be Commissioners to judge of scandalous offences(not enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament) to them presented: Andthat the Eldership of that Congregation where the said offence wascommitted shall, upon examination and proof of such scandalous offence(in like manner as is to be done in the offences enumerated), certify thesame to the Commissioners, together with the proof taken before them: Andbefore the said certificate the party accused shall have liberty to makesuch defence as he shall think fit before the said Eldership, and alsobefore the Commissioners before any certificate shall be made to theParliament: And, if the said Commissioners, after examination of allparties, shall determine the offence, so presented and proved, to bescandalous, and the same shall certify to the Congregation, the Eldershipthereof may suspend such person from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in like manner as in cases enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament. "

Here was wormwood for the Presbyterians; and over this 14th Article, andone or two subsequent articles, settling farther details of thesuperiority of the proposed Parliamentary Commissioners over the ChurchCourts, and also reserving the appeal of ecclesiastical questions toParliament, they prepared to fight a most strenuous battle. The Assembly, the City Corporation, the City ministers in their Sion College conclave, and the Scottish Commissioners, all flew to arms. Their first hope waswith the Lords; and _them_ they nearly conquered. On the 13th ofMarch there was a long debate in that House on the whole Ordinance, andespecially its 14th Article; and, out of twenty-one Peers present, _nine_ were so opposed to that Article that, before the vote wastaken, they begged leave to be allowed to register their protest if thevote went against them. These Peers were the Earls of Essex, Manchester, Warwick, Bolingbroke, and Suffolk, and Lords Willoughby, Roberts, Dacres, and Bruce. There were, however, _twelve_ Peers in favour of theErastian Article: viz. The Earls of Northumberland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Denbigh, Nottingham, Stamford, and Middlesex, and Lords North, Howard of Escrick, Wharton, and Grey of Wark. Pour of the minority, viz. Essex, Manchester, Bolingbroke, and Bruce, did then protest, on theground that they considered the institution of ParliamentaryCommissioners apart from the Church Courts inconsistent with the SolemnLeague and Covenant. The entire Ordinance, with insignificant amendments, thus passed the Lords; and, the Commons having accepted the amendments, it became law on the 14th of March. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Feb. 27, and March 3, 5, and 14, 1645-6; and Lords Journals, March 13 and 14. ]

Was it, then, such a mongrel Presbytery as this, an Erastian Presbytery, a Presbytery controlled and policed by Parliamentary Commissioners, thatwas to be set up in England? Not if the Presbyterian clergy of England, with all Scotland to aid them, could prevent it! "We, for our part [theScottish Commissioners], " writes Baillie, March 17, "mind to give in aremonstrance against it; the Assembly will do the like; the Cityministers will give the third; but that which, by God's help, may provemost effectual is the zeal of the City itself. Before the Ordinance cameout, they petitioned against some materials of it. This both the Housesvoted to be a breach of their privilege, to offer a petition againstanything that is in debate before them, till once it be concluded andcome abroad. This vote the City takes very evil: it's likely to go highbetwixt them. Our prayers and endeavours are for wisdom and courage tothe City. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 361. ] Within a fortnight, however(March 31), Baillie writes, in a postscript to the same letter, in a muchmore downcast mood. "The leaders of the people, " he says, "seem to beinclined to have no shadow of a King, to have liberty for all Religions, to have but a lame Erastian Presbytery, to be so injurious to us [theScots] as to chase us home with the sword. ... Our great hope on earth, the City of London, has played _nipshot_ [_i. E. _ miss-fire or burntpriming]: they are speaking of dissolving the Assembly. " [Footnote:Ibid. II. 362. ]--To understand this wail of Baillie's we have again toturn to the Journals of the Commons. 

Having passed the all-conclusive Ordinance for Presbytery, the two Houseshad resolved to stand on their dignity, and resent the attempteddictation of the City, the Sion College conclave, the Assembly, and theScottish Commissioners. They had already, as Baillie informs us, made abeginning, while the Ordinance was yet in progress, by voting a petitionof the City against some parts of it to be a breach of privilege. Atthis, as late as March 17, the City was in proper dudgeon, and vowed thatParliament should hear from it again on the subject. Before a fortnighthad elapsed, however, there was a wonderful change. News had come toLondon of Hopton's final surrender to the New Model in Cornwall, of thedefeat of Astley in Gloucestershire with the last shred of the King'sfield-force, and in fact of the absolute ending of the war, except forthe few Royalist towns and garrisons that had yet to make terms. In themidst of the universal joy, why dwell on a difference between the Cityand Parliament as to the details of the Presbyterian mechanism?Accordingly, on Friday, March 27, divers Aldermen and others were at thedoor of the House of Commons, not to remonstrate farther this littledifference, but to beg that the House would "so far honour" the City asto dine with the Corporation at Grocers' Hall on the following Thursday, being Thanksgiving Day, after the two usual sermons! The House was mostgracious, and accepted the invitation; and this restoration of goodfeeling between Parliament and the City was probably the "nipshot" ormiss-fire which Baillie lamented on the 3lst. --The City being out of thebusiness for the time, it was easier for the Parliament to deal with theother parties. To the Scottish Commissioners hints were conveyed, aspolitely as possible, that Parliament would prefer having less of theirvaluable assistance in the governing of England. With the WestminsterAssembly and the London Divines there was less ceremony. The Assembly_had_ drawn up a Petition or Remonstrance against the Articles ofthe conclusive Ordinance of March 14, providing for an agency ofParliamentary Commissioners to aid and supervise the Church judicatories. "The provision of Commissioners, " they said, "to judge of scandals notenumerated appears to our consciences to be contrary to that way ofgovernment which Christ hath appointed in his Church, in that it giveth apower to judge of the fitness of persons to come to the Sacrament untosuch as our Lord Jesus Christ hath not given that power unto;" and theyadded that the provision was contrary to the Solemn League and Covenant, and besought Parliament to cancel it and put due power into the hands ofthe Elderships. This Petition, signed by the Prolocutor, one of theAssessors, and the to Scribes of the Assembly, was presented to the twoHouses, most imposingly, March 23, When Baillie wrote his lamentation hedid not know the precise result, but he guessed what it was to be. 

It was worse than Baillie could have guessed. After much inquiry andconsultation about the Assembly's Petition, the Commons, on the 11th ofApril 1646, came to two sharp votes. The first was on the question"Whether the House shall first debate the point concerning the Breach ofPrivilege in this Petition;" and it was carried in the affirmative by 106_Yeas_, told by Evelyn of Wilts and Haselrig, against 85 _Noes_, told byHolles and Stapleton. The question was then put "Whether this Petition, thus presented by the Assembly of the Divines, is a Breach of Privilegeof Parliament;" and on this question, the tellers on both sides being thesame, 88 voted _Yea_ and 76 _No_: _i. E. _ it was carried by a majority of12 that the Assembly, in their Petition, had been guilty of a gravepolitical offence, for which they might be punished individually, by fineor imprisonment or both. No such punishment, of course, was intended. Itwas enough to shake the rod over the Assembly. A Committee, includingHaselrig, Henry Marten, the younger Vane, and Selden, was appointed toprepare a Narrative on the whole subject, with a statement of theparticulars; and this Narrative, ready April 21, was discussed clause byclause, and adopted. It is a striking document, quiet and tight in style, but most pungent in matter. It begins with an assertion of the supremacyof Parliament in all matters whatsoever; it recites the specific purposesfor which the Assembly had been called by Parliament, and the limitationsimposed upon it by the Ordinance to which it owed its being; and itproceeds to this rebuke: "The Assembly are not authorized, as anAssembly, by any Ordinance or Order of Parliament, to interpret theCovenant, especially in relation to any law made or to be made; nor, since the Law passed both Houses concerning the Commissioners, have [theAssembly] been required by both or either of the Houses of Parliament, orhad any authority before from Parliament, to deliver their opinions tothe Houses on matters already judged and determined by them. Neither havethey the power to debate or vote whether what is passed as a Law by bothHouses be agreeing or disagreeing to the Word of God, unless they bethereunto required. " On the day on which the Narrative containing thispassage of rebuke was adopted (April 21) a Committee was appointed tocommunicate it, with the appertaining Vote of the Commons, "in a fairmanner, " to the Assembly. Actually, on the 27th of April thecommunication was made most ceremoniously, and from that day the Assemblyknew itself to be under curb. [Footnote: For the facts of this and thepreceding paragraph the authorities are Commons and Lords Journals, March23, 1645-6, and Commons Journals of April 1, 3, 8, 11, 16, 18, 21, and24, 1646. The Lords Journals give the Assembly's Petition; the Narrativeof the Commons is in their Journals for April 21. --It is strange, inmodern times, to note the frequency with which the Parliament, and eventhe popular party in it, resorted to the fiction of Breach of Privilegein order to quash opposition to their proceedings. Sometimes, as in theVote about the City Petition recently mentioned, it was the Breach ofPrivilege to assume to know what was going on in Parliament or petitionagainst any measure while it was pending; at other times, as now, it wasa Breach of Privilege to question by petition a measure alreadydetermined. In the present case, however, the Commons seem to havefounded on the fact that the Assembly, "as an Assembly, " had transgressedits powers. Individually, they seem to say, the Divines might havepetitioned, but not as an Assembly, the creature of the Parliament whoseacts they censured. ]

Not only under curb, but thrown to the ground, and baited with sarcasmsand interrogatories! Thus, on the 17th of April, six days after the Voteof Breach of Privilege, but four days before the Vote and theaccompanying Narrative had been communicated officially to the Assembly, there was finally agreed upon by the Commons that Declaration as to theirtrue intentions on the Church question which had been in preparationsince February 3, and in this Declaration there was a double-knotted lashat the prostrate Assembly. Parliament, it was explained, had adopted mostof the Assembly's recommendations as to the Frame of Church-government tobe set up, with no exception of moment but that of the Commissioners; inwhich exception Parliament had only performed its bounden duty, seeing itcould not "consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited powerand jurisdiction to near 10, 000 judicatories to be erected in thiskingdom. " Farther it was announced that Parliament reserved the questionof the amount of toleration to be granted under the new Presbyterial ruleto "tender consciences that differ not in fundamentals of Religion. " Butthere was more to come. Selden and the Erastians, and Haselrig, Vane, Marten, with the Independents and Free Opinionists, had been nettled bythose parts of the Assembly's Petition which assumed that the whole frameof the Presbyterian Government scheme by the Assembly was _juredivino_. They resolved to put the Assembly through an examination aboutthis _jus divinum_. On the 22nd of April, therefore, there was presentedto the House, by the same Committee that had prepared the Narrative ofthe Breach of Privilege, a series of nine questions which it would bewell to send to the Assembly. "Whether the Parochial and CongregationalElderships appointed by Ordinance of Parliament, or any otherCongregational or Presbyterial Elderships, are _jure divino_, and by thewill and appointment of Jesus Christ; and whether any particular Church-government be _jure divino_, and what that government is?"--such is thefirst of the nine queries; and the other eight are no less incisive. Theywere duly communicated to the Assembly; it was requested that the Answersshould be precise, with the Scripture proofs for each, in the expresswords of the texts; every Divine present at a debate on any of theQueries was to subscribe his name to the particular resolution he mightvote for; and the dissentients from any vote were to send to Parliamenttheir own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scriptureproofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult tothe Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646;Baillie, II. 344. ] It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment ordissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, andViscount Saye and Sele had recommended it in the Lords. 

In the midst of these firm dealings of the Parliament with the Assembly, Cromwell was back in London. He was in the House on the 23rd of April1646, and received its thanks, through the Speaker, for his greatservices. He probably brought a train of his young Cromwellians with him(Ireton, Fleetwood, Montague, &c. ) to swell the number of Recruiters thathad already taken their seats. In the course of May, at all events, therewere Houses of 269, 241, 261, 259, and 248, and the Recruiters had soincreased the strength of the Independents and Erastians that a relapseinto the policy of ultra-Presbyterianism and No Toleration appearedimpossible. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 369, and Commons Journals for severaldays in May 1646. ]

NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING--AT NEWCASTLE: THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THESCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON. 

Suddenly, by the King's flight to the Scottish Army at Newark (May 5), and by the retreat of that army, with the King in their possession, tothe safer position of Newcastle (May 13), the whole condition of thingswas changed. The question between Independency and Presbyterianism, andthe included question of Toleration or No Toleration, were thrown, withall other questions, into the crucible of the negotiations, between theEnglish and the Scots, round the King at Newcastle. 

It was known that the strife between the Independents and thePresbyterians had long been a solace to Charles, and a fact of greatimportance in his calculations. Should he fail to rout both parties andreimpose both Kingship and Episcopacy on England by force of arms, didthere not remain for him, at the very worst, the option of allyinghimself with that one of the parties with which he could make the bestbargain? Now that he had been driven to the detested alternative, he had, it appeared, though not without hesitation, and indeed partly byaccident, given the Presbyterians the first chance. He had done so, itwas true, in a circuitous way, but perhaps in the only way open to him. To have surrendered himself to the English Presbyterians was hardlypossible; for, had he gone to London with that view, how could thePresbyterians of the Parliament and the City have protected him, or kepthim to themselves, when the English Army that would then instantly haveclosed round London was an Army of Independents? By placing himself inthe hands of the Scottish Army, had he not cleverly avoided thisdifficulty, receiving temporary protection, and yet intimating that itwas with the Presbyterians that he preferred to treat? So, in fact, theKing's flight to the Scots was construed by the English Presbyterians. They were even glad that it had fallen to the Scots to represent for themoment English Presbyterianism as well as Scottish, advising Charles inhis new circumstances, and ascertaining his intentions. And the Scots, ontheir part, it appeared, had accepted the duty. 

Hardly was the King at Newcastle when there were round him not onlyGeneral Leven, Major-general Leslie, and the Earls of Lothian, Balcarres, and Dunfermline, all of whom had chanced to be at Newark on his receptionthere, but also other Scots of mark, expressly sent from Edinburgh andfrom London. The Earl of Lanark was among the first of these. Argylehimself, who had been excessively busy in Scotland and in Ireland sincethe defeat of Montrose, thought his presence now essential in England, and hastened to be with his Majesty. The Chancellor Loudoun made nodelay, but was off from London to Newcastle on the 16th of May. Aboveall, however, it was thought desirable that Alexander Henderson should benear his Majesty at such a crisis. Accordingly, some days beforeLoudoun's departure, Henderson had taken leave of his brother-divines, Baillie, Rutherford, and Gillespie, with Lauderdale and Johnstone ofWarriston, in their London quarters at Worcester House, and, though insuch a state of ill-health as to be hardly fit to travel, had gonebravely and modestly northwards to the scene of duty. How much wasexpected of him may be inferred from a jotting in one of Baillie'sletters just after he had gone. "Our great perplexity is for the King'sdisposition, " wrote Baillie on the 15th of May: "how far he will bepersuaded to yield we do not know: I hope Mr. Henderson is with him thisnight at Newcastle. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 370 _et seq. _]

The immediate object of the Scots round Charles was to induce him to takethe Covenant. That done, they had little doubt that they would be able tobring him and the English Parliament amicably together. --Charles, however, at once showed by his conduct that the current interpretation ofthe meaning of his flight to the Scots had been too hasty. It was notbecause he wanted to bargain with the Presbyterians as against theIndependents that he had come to the Scots; it was because he had themore subtle idea that he might be able to bargain with the Scots as suchagainst the English as such. He hoped to wrap himself up in thenationality of the Scots; he hoped to appeal to them as peculiarly theirsovereign, born forty-six years before in their own Dunfermline, once ortwice their visitor since, always remembering them with affection, andnow back among them in his distress. [Footnote: On the verge of a woodeddell or glen close to the burgh of Dunfermline, in Fife, there stillstands one fine length of ruined and ivy-clad wall, the remains of thepalace in which, on the 19th of November 1600, Charles I. Was born. Thedell, with the adjacent Abbey, is sacred with legends and stony memorialsof the Scottish royal race, from the days of Malcom Canmore and his QueenMargaret. ] Of course, in such a character, concessions to _their_Presbyterianism would have to be made; but these concessions had all, infact, been made already, and involved no new humiliation. It was aboutEpiscopacy in England, his English coronation oath, his Englishsovereignty, that he was mainly anxious; and what if, from his refugeamong the Scots, and even with the Scots as his instruments, he couldrecommence, in some way or other, his struggle with the English? Charlesdid labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots it wasactually with some absurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in theHighlands, might be forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of hisMajesty's most honoured servants, though recently erratic, into thesociety of Argyle, Loudoun, Lanark, and the rest of the faithful. [Footnote: See in Rushworth (VI. 266-7) a Letter of the King's to theMarquis of Ormond in Ireland, dated from Oxford, April 13, 1646, andexplaining his reasons for his then meditated flight to the Scots. "Weare resolved to use our best endeavours, with their assistance, " saysCharles, speaking of the Scottish Army, "and with the conjunction of theforces under the Marquis of Montrose and such of our well-affectedsubjects as shall rise for us, to procure, if it may be, an honourableand speedy peace. " At the same time (April 18) Charles had written toMontrose himself to the same effect. The infatuation that could believein the possibility of such a combination was monstrous. ]--A day or twoamong the Scots had undeceived him. They repudiated at once any supposedarrangement with him arising out of the negotiations of Montreuil; theyrepudiated expressly the notion that they could by possibility have beenso false to the English Parliament as to have pledged themselves to aseparate treaty. Charles, they maintained, had come among themvoluntarily and without any prior compact. Most willingly, however, wouldthey do their best for him in the circumstances. If he would declare hisrenunciation of Episcopacy and acceptance of Presbyterianism for England, and especially if he would do this in the best mode of all, by personallytaking the Covenant, then they did not doubt but a way would be openedfor a final treaty with England in which they could assist. 

Perforce Charles had now to disguise the real motive of his coming amongthe Scots, and let the interpretation at first put upon it continuecurrent. Not, of course, that he would take the Covenant, or in any waycommit himself even now to Presbytery. But, while he stood firm againstthe proposal that he should himself take the Covenant (which would havebeen to abjure Episcopacy personally), and while he refrained fromcommitting himself to an acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this secondmatter he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipherto Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon CardinalMazarin, and through him on the Pope, the scheme of a restitution ofEpiscopacy in England by Roman Catholic force, on condition of "freeliberty of conscience" for the Catholics in England and "convenientplaces for their devotions, " he was patiently polite to the Presbyteriansaround him, and employed part of his leisure in penning, from the midstof them, letters of a temporizing kind to the two Houses of Parliament, and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London. The letter to theCity (May 19) was short and general, but cordial. That to the Parliament(May 18) was a proposal of terms. A speedy settlement of the ReligiousQuestion by the wisdom of Parliament with the advice of the Assembly (noword of Episcopacy or Presbytery, but some compromise with Presbyteryimplied); the Militia to be as proposed in the Treaty of Uxbridge--_i. E. _ to be for seven years in the hands of Parliament, and afterthat a fresh agreement to be made; Ireland to be managed as far aspossible as Parliament might wish: such were his Majesty's presentpropositions. [Footnote: Letters of Charles numbered XXV. XXVI. AndXXVII. (pp. 39-43) in Mr. Bruce's _Charles I. In_ 1646; Parl. Hist. III. 471 _et seq. _] He would be glad, however, to receive those ofParliament. 

There was a Presbyterian ecstasy in London on the receipt of theseletters. The Corporation, which had, to Baillie's grief, so inopportunelyplayed "nipshot" in the end of March, and left the Assembly and SionCollege to bear the brunt, now hastened to make amends. Headed byAlderman Foot, a famous City orator, they presented, May 26, aRemonstrance to both Houses of Parliament, couched in terms of the mostunflinching Presbyterianism, Anti-Toleration, and confidence in theScots. "When we remember, " they said, "that it hath been long sincedeclared to be far from any purpose or desire to let loose the goldenreins of discipline and government in the Church, or to leave privatepersons or particular congregations to take up what form of divineservice they please; when we look upon what both Houses have resolvedagainst Brownism and Anabaptism, properly so called; when we meditateupon our Protestation and Covenant; and, lastly, when we peruse theDirectory and other Ordinances for Presbyterial government; and yet findprivate and separate congregations daily erected in divers parts of thecity and elsewhere, and commonly frequented, and Anabaptism, Brownism, and almost all manner of schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, boldlyvented and maintained by such as, to the point of Church-government, profess themselves to be Independents: we cannot but be astonished. "After more complaints, they end with petitions for PresbyterianUniformity, the suppression of Independent congregations, the punishmentof Anabaptists and other sectaries, strict union with the Scots, &c. , allto be combined with immediate "Propositions to his Majesty for settling asafe and well-grounded Peace. " There was but one meaning in this. TheCity was the mouthpiece; but in reality it was the united ultra-Presbyterianism of the City, the Assembly, Sion College, and some of thePresbyterian leaders in Parliament, trying to turn the King's presencewith the Scots into an occasion for any practicable kind of peacewhatsoever that would involve the overthrow of Independency, the Sects, and Toleration. The House of Lords bowed before the blast, and returned agracious answer. The Commons, after two divisions, of 148 to 113, and 151to 108, in favour of returning some kind of answer, returned one whichwas curt and general. The divisions indicate the gravity of the crisis. The Independents, thinned perhaps in numbers by the action of theNewcastle peace-chances upon weaker spirits, but with Cromwell, Haselrig, and Vane as their leaders, formed now what was avowedly the Anti-Scottishparty, profoundly suspicious of the doings at Newcastle, and takingprecautions against a treaty that should be merely Presbyterian. ThePresbyterians, on the other hand, with Holles, Stapleton, and Clotworthyas their chiefs, were as avowedly the Pro-Scottish party, anxious for apeace on such terms as the King might be brought to by the help of theScots. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 474-480; Lords Journals, May 26, 1646; Commons Journals of same date; Whitlocke's Memorials (ed. 1853), II. 27. ]

Through June the struggle of the parties was continued in this new form. At Newcastle the Scottish Commissioners, with Henderson among them, werestill plying the King with their arguments for his acceptance of theCovenant and Presbytery. To these, in their presence, he opposed only themost stately politeness and desire for delay; but in his letters to theQueen he characterized them as "rude pressures on his conscience. " Thephrase is perfectly just in so far as there was pressure upon him toaccept Presbytery and the Assembly's Directory of Worship for himself andhis family, and it might win our modern sympathies even beyond that rangebut for the evidences of incurable Stuartism which accompanied it. Heamuses the Queen in the same letters with an analysis he had made of theScots from his Newcastle experience of their various humours. He hadanalysed them into the four factions of the "Montroses" or thoroughRoyalists, the "Neutrals, " the "Hamiltons, " and the "Campbells" orthorough Presbyterians of the Argyle following. He estimates the relativestrengths of the factions, and has no doubt that the real management ofScotland lies between the Hamiltons, leading most of the nobility, andthe Campbells, commanding the votes of the gentry, the ministers, and theburghs; he refers individual Scots about him to the classes to which hethinks, from their private talk, they belong respectively; he tells howthey are all "courting" him, and how he is behaving himself "as evenly toall as he can;" and his "opinion upon this whole business" is that theywill all have to join him in the end, or, which would be quite assatisfactory to himself and the Queen, go to perdition together. Whatcould be done with such a man? Quite unaware of what he was writing aboutthem, the Scots were toiling their best in his service. There wereletters from Edinburgh (where the General Assembly of the Kirk had metJun. 3) to Newcastle and London; there were letters from Newcastle toEdinburgh and London; there were letters from London back to Newcastleand Edinburgh. And still, in the English Parliament, the Pro-Scottishparty laboured for the result they desired, and the Anti-Scottish orIndependent party maintained their jealous watch. Pamphlets and paperscame forth, violently abusive of the Scottish nation; and more than oncethere were discussions in the Commons in which Haselrig and the morereckless Independents pushed for conclusions that would have beenoffensive to the Scots to the point of open quarrel. It did not seemimpossible that there might be a new and most horrible form of the CivilWar, in which the English Army and the Independents should be fightingthe Scottish Army and the Presbyterians. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxix. -xxxiv. In Bruce's _Charles I. In_ 1646; Baillie, II. 374-5;Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1646. Parl. Hist. III. 482-488; and Commons Journals of various days in May and June, when there were divisions. ]

What mainly averted such a calamity was the prudent behaviour of themuch-abused Scots. Anxious as they naturally were to save their ScottishCharles from too severe a reckoning from his English subjects, and verydesirous, as was also natural, that the issue of the present dealingswith him should be one favourable to Presbytery and Religious Conformity, they do not seem to have permitted these feelings to disturb their senseof obligation to the English Parliament, and of a general Britishresponsibility. That this was the case arose, I believe, from the factthat Argyle had come to England to take the direction, and that heimparted a deep touch or two of his own to their purely Presbyterianpolicy. It is interesting, at all events, to have a glimpse of the greatMarquis at this point, not as a fugitive from Montrose, not in themilitary character which suited him so ill, but in his more propercharacter as a British politician. He had been at Newcastle for sometime, "very civil and cunning, " as the King wrote to the Queen; but onthe 15th of June he went to London. He was received there with thegreatest respect by the English Parliament. A Committee of 20 of theLords and 40 of the Commons, composed indifferently of Presbyterians andIndependents, was appointed to meet him in the Painted Chamber to hearthe communication which, it was understood, he desired to make. Accordingly, to this Committee, on the 25th of June, the Marquisaddressed a speech, which was immediately printed for general perusal. Here are portions of the first half of it, with one or two passagesItalicised which seem peculiarly pregnant, or peculiarly characteristicof Argyle himself:--

"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, --Though I have had the honour to be named by theKingdom of Scotland in all the Commissions which had relation to thisKingdom since the beginning of the war, yet I had never the happiness tobe with your lordships till now; wherein I reverence God's providence, that He hath brought me hither at such an opportunity, when I may boldlysay it is in the power of the two Kingdoms, yea I may say in yourlordships' power, to make us both happy, if you make good use of thisoccasion, by settling of Religion and the Peace and Union of theseKingdoms. .. . As the dangers [in the way of the first enterprise, 'Reformation' or the 'settling of Religion'] are great, we must look thebetter to our duties; and the best way to perform these is to keep us bythe Rules which are to be found in our National Covenant, --principallythe Word of God, and, in its own place, the Example of the best ReformedChurches; and in our way we must beware of some rocks, which aretemptations both upon the right and left hand, so that we must hold themiddle path. Upon the one part we should take heed not to settle lawlessliberty in Religion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up athousand heresies and schisms; which is directly contrary and destructiveto our Covenant. _Upon the other part, we are to look that we persecutenot piety and peaceable men who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common Rule; but that they may have such aforbearance as may be according to the Word of God, may consist with theCovenant, and not be destructive to the Rule itself, nor to the peace ofthe Church and Kingdom. _--As to the other point, the Peace and Union ofthese Kingdoms [here the mutual good services of the two Kingdoms since1640 are recited]: let us hold fast that union which is so happilyestablished betwixt us; and let nothing make us again two who are so manyways one; all of one language, in one island, all under one King, one inReligion, yea one in Covenant; so that, in effect, we differ in nothingbut in name (as brethren do): _which I wish were also removed, that wemight be altogether one, if the two Kingdoms think fit_.... I willforbear at this time to speak of the many jealousies I hear aresuggested; for, as I do not love them, so I delight not to mention them:only one I cannot forbear to speak of, --as if the Kingdom of Scotlandwere too much affected with the King's interest. I will not deny but theKingdom of Scotland, by reason of the reigns of many kings, hisprogenitors, over them, hath a natural affection to his Majesty, wherebythey wish he may be rather reformed than ruined: _yet experience maytell that their personal regard to him hath never made them forget thatcommon rule, 'The Safety of the People is the Supreme Law. _'"

Altogether Argyle's speech in the Painted Chamber, June 25, 1646, produced a great impression in London; and, as he remained in town tillthe 15th of July, he was able to deepen it, see all sorts of people, andmake observations. He may not have met Cromwell at this time, who wasaway all June looking after the siege and surrender of Oxford, and themarriage, in that neighbourhood, of his eldest daughter Bridget toGeneral Ireton; but be must have renewed acquaintance with Vane. Herenewed acquaintance, at all events, with an older friend--no other thanthe Duke of Hamilton, recently released from his captivity in Cornwall, and now again busy with affairs. He also took his place in theWestminster Assembly for a few days by leave of the parliament. [Footnote: King's Letter xxii. In Bruce's _Charles I, in_ 1646;Baillie, II. 374-378; Lords Journals, June 23 and July 7, and CommonsJournals, June 25; and Parl. Hist. III. 488-491, where Argyle's Speech isreprinted from the original edition, published by authority, at London, by Laurence Chapman, June 27, 1646. ]

Part of Argyle's purpose in coming to London had been to co-operate withthe resident Scottish Commissioners there in moderating as much aspossible, or at least delaying, the _ultimatum_ which the EnglishParliament were preparing to send to the King. For, though the Parliamenthad taken small notice hitherto of the King's letters from Newcastle, they had been anxiously constructing such an _ultimatum_. In theform of a series of Propositions exhibiting in one viev, all the termswhich they required Charles to accept at once and completely if he wouldretain the sovereignty of England. Without being much influenced, apparently, by the appeals of Scottish Commissioners for moderation andclemency to the King in the purely English portions of this document, andhaving the perfect concurrence of these Commissioners in the otherportions, Parliament did at length complete it, and, on the 14th of July, send it to Charles. The document is remembered by the famous name of "TheNineteen Propositions, " and was altogether most comprehensive andstringent. All the late Royal Acts and Ordinances were to be annulled;the King was to take the Covenant and consent to an Act enjoining itafresh on all the subjects of the three kingdoms; he was to consent tothe abolition of Episcopacy, root and branch, in England, Wales, andIreland; he was to approve of the proceedings of the WestminsterAssembly, and of the establishment of Presbytery as Parliament hadordained or might yet ordain; he was to surrender to Parliament theentire control of the Militia for 20 years, sea-forces as well as land-forces; he was to let Parliament have its own way in Ireland; and he wasto submit to various other requirements, including the outlawing anddisqualification of about 120 persons of both nations named asDelinquents--the Marquis of Newcastle, the Earls of Derby and Bristol, Lords Cottington, Digby, Hopton, Colepepper and Jermyn, with Hyde, Secretary Nicholas, and Bishops Wren and Bramhall, in the English list, and the Marquises of Huntly and Montrose, the Earls of Traquair, Nithsdale, Crawford, Carnwath, Forth, and Airlie, Bishop Maxwell, andMacDonald MacColkittoch, in the Scottish list. As bearers of these fellPropositions to the King the Lords appointed the Earls of Pembroke andSuffolk, and the Commons appointed four of their number. These sixpersons were at Newcastle on Thursday the 23rd of July; and the next daythey had their first interview with the King, Argyle and Loudoun beingalso present. The rough Pembroke took the lead and produced thePropositions. Before letting them be read, Charles, who had had a copy inhis possession privately for some time, asked Pembroke and the restwhether they had powers to treat with him on the Propositions or in anyway discuss them. On their answering that they had no such powers, andhad only to request his Majesty's _Ay_ or _No_ to the Propositions asthey stood, "Then, but for the honour of the business, " said the Kingtestily, "an honest trumpeter might have done as much. " Recoveringhimself, he listened to the Propositions duly read out, and then said hewas sure they could not expect an immediate answer in so large abusiness. They told him that their instructions were not to remain inNewcastle more than ten days, and so the interview ended. Charles, infact, in anticipation of their coming, had been planning how to act. "Allmy endeavours, " he had written to the Queen, "must be the delaying of myanswer till there be considerable parties visibly formed; to which end Ithink my proposing to go to London, if I may be there with safety, willbe the best put-off, if (which I believe to be better) I cannot find away to come to thee. " And so, day after day, though it was the effort ofall who had access to him, and especially of Argyle and Loudoun, topersuade him to accept the inevitable, he remained stubborn. When theCommissioners at length told him they must return to London, all theanswer they could obtain from him was a letter, dated Aug. 1, andaddressed to the Speaker of the House of Peers _pro tempore_, in which hesaid a positive and immediate answer was impossible, but offered to cometo London or its neighbourhood to treat personally, if his freedom andsafety were guaranteed, and also to send for the Prince of Wales fromFrance. With this answer the Commoners left Newcastle on Sunday, Aug. 2, and they reported their success to the two Houses on Wednesday, Aug. 12. And here, so far as the King is concerned, we shall for the present stop. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxxiv. -xl. (June 24--July 3) in Bruce's_Charles I. In_ 1646; Baillie, II. 379; Lords Journals, July 11, andCommons Journals, July 6; Rushworth, VI. 309-321; and Parl. Hist. III. 499-516. Both Rushworth and the Parl Hist. Give the text of the nineteenPropositions. ]

PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OFLONDON AND LANCASHIRE. 

Not the less, while the two Houses had thus been watching the King atNewcastle and corresponding with him, had they been acting as the realGovernment of England without him. 

The King's flight to the Scots having, as we have seen, turned thebalance once more in favour of Presbyterianism, the combined Erastiansand Independents had not been able to keep Parliament steady to that moodof sharp mastership over the Assembly and the London Divines in which weleft it in the months of March and April (_antč_, pp. 407-411). Ithad been necessary to make a compromise in that question of "The Power ofthe Keys" on which the Parliament and the Assembly had been so angrily atvariance. The compromise was complete in June. On the 3rd of that monththe two Houses agreed on an Ordinance modifying, in a somewhatcomplicated fashion, their previous device of Parliamentary Commissionersto assist and control the Congregational Elderships. Instead of thecontemplated sets of Commissioners in each ecclesiastical Province, therewas now to be one vast general Commission for all England, consisting ofabout 180 Lords and Commoners named (Cromwell, Vane, and everybody elseof any note among them); which Commissioners, or any nine of them, shouldbe a Court for judging of non-specified offences, after and inconjunction with the Congregational Elderships, with right of referencein certain cases to Justices of the Peace, and with the reserve of afinal appeal from excommunicated persons to Parliament itself. It doesnot very well appear why this arrangement, as Erastian in principle asthat which it superseded, should have pleased the London Presbyteriansbetter. Perhaps it was made palatable by an accompanying increase of thelist of scandalous offences for which the Elderships were to be entitledto suspend or excommunicate without interference by the Commissioners. Atall events, when Parliament again required the London ministers andcongregations by a new Ordinance (June 9) to proceed in the work whichhad been interrupted, and elect Elders in all the parishes of theprovince of London, there was no reluctance. At a meeting at SionCollege, June 19, the London ministers, the Assembly Presbyterians intheir counsels, agreed to proceed. They contented themselves with a paperof _Considerations and Cautions_, explaining that the ParliamentaryRule for Presbyterianism was not yet in all points satisfactory to theirconsciences. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 3 and 9, 1646; Baillie, II. 377; Neal's _Puritans_ (ed. 1795) III. 106. ]

Nothing now hindered the establishment of Presbytery in London; and, actually, through the months of July and August 1646, while the King wasmaking his solitary personal stand for Episcopacy at Newcastle, thePresbyterian machinery was coming into operation in the capital. "Mattershere, " writes Baillie, July 14, "look better upon it, blessed be God, than sometimes they have. On Sunday, in all congregations of the city, the Elders are to be chosen. So the next week church-sessions in everyparoch; and twelve Presbyteries within the City, and a Provincial Synod, are to be set up, and quickly, without any impediment that we apprehend. The like is to be done over all the land. " On the 13th of August Bailliewas able to report that the Elders had been elected in almost all theparishes, and approved by the Triers; and he adds, "We expect classicalmeetings speedily. " These "classical meetings, " or meetings of the twelveLondon Presbyteries and the two Presbyteries of the Inns of Court, weresomewhat later affairs, and the crowning exultation of the first meetingof the Provincial Synod of London did not come for some months; but fromAugust 1646 the city of London was ecclesiastically a Scotlandcondensed. --Though there was, and continued to be, a general Presbyterianstir throughout England, only in Lancashire was the example of Londonfollowed in effective practice. The division of that shire into classesor Presbyteries was already under consideration, with the names of thepersons fit to be lay-elders in each Presbytery. There were to be ninePresbyteries. Manchester parish, Oldham parish, and four other parishes, were to form the first; Rochdale parish came into the second; Prestonparish into the seventh; Liverpool did not figure by name as a distinctLancashire parish at all, but it had one minister, Mr. John Fogg, and hewas put into the fifth Presbytery. The names of all the Lancashireministers thus classified, and of the Lancashire gentlemen, yeomen, andtradesmen, to the number of some hundreds, thought fit to be lay-eldersin the different Presbyterial districts, may be read yet in the CommonsJournals. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378 and 388; Neal, III. 307-310 (Listof classes or Presbyteries of London). The division of Lancashire intoPresbyteries is given in the Commons Journals, Sept. 15, 1646. See alsoHalley's "Lancashire: its Puritanism and Nonconformity" (1869), Vol. I. Pp. 432 et seq. , where there are many details concerning the firstintroduction of the Presbyterial system into Lancashire. According to Dr. Halley, the system was set up more rigidly in Lancashire than in Londonitself, chiefly in consequence of the activity and energy of RichardHeyricke, or Herrick, M. A. , warden of the Collegiate Church, Manchester. He was one of the Divines of the Westminster Assembly (see Vol. II. P. 510); but he had returned to Lancashire, prefering Presbyterianleadership in that county to second rank in London. ]

The compromise in the matter of "The Power of the Keys" having beenaccepted, with such practical consequences, the Assembly might considerthe long and laborious business of _The Frame of Church Government_out of its hands, and laid on the shelf of finished work beside the_New Directory of Worship_ concluded and passed eighteen monthsbefore. It was free, therefore, to turn to the other great pieces ofbusiness for which it had been originally called: viz. _The Confessionof Faith_ and _The Catechisms_. Notwithstanding interruptions, good progress had already been made in both. Incidentally, too, theAssembly had concluded a work which might be regarded as an appendage totheir Directory. They had discussed, revised, and finally approved Mr. Rous's Metrical Version of the Psalms, referred to them by Parliament forcriticism as long ago as Nov. 1643. Their revised copy of the Version forthe purposes of public worship had been in the hands of the Commons sinceNov. 1645; the Commons had ratified the same, with a few amendments, April 15, 1646; and it only wanted the concurrence of the Lords to addthis "Revised Rous's Psalter" (which Rous meanwhile had printed) to thecredit of the Assembly, as a third piece of their finished work. TheLords were too busy, or had hesitations in favour of a rival Version by aMr. William Barton, so that their concurrence was withheld; but that wasnot the fault of the Assembly. Rous's Psalter, therefore, as well as theDirectory and the Frame of Government being done with, what was to hinderthem longer from the Confession and Catechisms? Only one impediment--those dreadful _jus divinum_ interrogatories which the Parliament, by Selden's mischief, had hung round their necks! Here also a littlemanagement sufficed. "I have put some of my good friends, leading men inthe House of Commons, " says Baillie, July 14, "to move the Assembly tolay aside our Questions for a time, and labour that which is mostnecessar and all are crying for, the perfecting of the Confession ofFaith and Catechise. " The order thus meritoriously procured by Bailliepassed the Commons July 22. The Assembly, in terms of this order, were tolay aside other business, and apply themselves to the _Confession ofFaith_ and _Catechisms_. And so at this point the Assembly hadcome to an end of one period of its history and entered on a second. Asif to mark this epoch in its duration, the Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, hadjust died. He died July 19, 1646, and there is a record of the fact inthe Commons Journals for that same July 22 on which the Assembly wasordered to change the nature of its labours. Mr. Herle was appointed hissuccessor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378-9; Commons Journals, July 22, 1646; and Mr. David Laing's Notices of Metrical Versions of the Psalms inAppendix to Baillie, Vol. III. Pp. 537-540. ]

DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON. 

There was a death about this time more important than that of Dr. Twisse:--The health of Henderson had for some time been causing anxietyto his friends in London; and, when he left them, early in May, on hisdifficult mission to Newcastle, they had followed him in their thoughtswith some foreboding. Actually, from the middle of May to the end ofJuly, these two strangely-contrasted persons--the wise, modest, andmassive Henderson, the chief of the Scottish Presbyterian clergy, and thesombre, narrow, and punctilious Charles I. , the beaten sovereign of threeKingdoms--were much together at Newcastle, engaged in an encounter ofwits and courtesies. Charles had seen a good deal of Henderson before (atBerwick in 1639, in Edinburgh during the royal visit to Scotland in 1641, and more recently during the Uxbridge Treaty of Feb. 1644-5), and hadalways singled him out as not only the most able, but also the mostlikeable, man of his perverse tribe. He had therefore received himgraciously on his coming to Newcastle; and, though there arrivedsubsequently from Scotland three other Presbyterian ministers, Mr. RobertBlair, Mr. Robert Douglas, and Mr. Andrew Cant, all commissioned by theGeneral Assembly to work upon his Majesty's conscience, it was still withHenderson that he preferred to converse. The main subject of theirconversations was, of course, the question between Presbytery andEpiscopacy. Could the King lawfully do what was required of him? Could helawfully now, on any mere plea of State-necessity, give up that Church ofEngland in the principles of which he had been educated, which he hadsworn at his coronation to maintain, and which he still believed in hisconscience to be the true and divinely-appointed form of a Church? If Mr. Henderson could prove to his Majesty even now that Episcopacy was not ofdivine appointment, then the plea of State-necessity might avail, and hisMajesty might see his way more clearly! It was on this point that therepeated conversations of the King and Henderson at Newcastle didundoubtedly turn. Nay, there was more than mere conversation: there wasan elaborate discussion in writing. The King, it is said, would fain havehad a little council of Anglican Divines called to assist him; but, asthat could not be, he was willing to adopt Henderson's suggestion of apaper debate between themselves. Accordingly, there is yet extant, in the_Reliquię Sacrę Carolinę_ or Printed Works of Charles I. , whatpurports to be the actual series of Letters exchanged between the Kingand Henderson. The King opens the correspondence on the 29th of May;Henderson answers June 3; the King's second letter is dated June 6;Henderson's reply does not come till June 17; the King's third letter isdated June 22; Henderson replies July 2; and two short letters of theKing, being the fourth and fifth on his side, are both dated July 16. There the correspondence ends, Henderson having, it is believed, thoughtit fit that his Majesty should have the last word. In the King's letters, as they are printed, one observes a stately politeness to Hendersonthroughout, with very considerable reasoning power, and sometimes areally smart phrase; in Henderson's what strikes one is the studiedrespectfulness and delicacy of the manner, combined with grave decisionin the matter. --The controversy, whether in speech or in writing, wasunreal on the King's part, and for the purpose of procrastination only;and Henderson, while painfully engaging in it, had known this but toowell. His heart was already heavy with approaching death. He had been illwhen he came to Newcastle; and in July, when he is said to have let theKing have the last word in the written correspondence, he was hardly ableto go about. His friends in London, hearing this, were greatly concerned. "It is part of my prayer to God. " Baillie writes to him affectionately onthe 4th of August, "to restore you to health, and continue your service atime: we never had so much need of you as now. " In the same letter, referring to the King's obstinacy, and to the grief on that account whichhe believes to be preying on Henderson, he implores him to take courage, shake off "melancholious thoughts, " and "digest what cannot be gottenamended. " But Baillie knew what was coming. "Mr. Henderson is dying, mostof heartbreak, at Newcastle, " he wrote, three days later, to Spang inHolland. No! it was not to be at Newcastle. "Give me back one hour ofScotland: let me see it ere I die. " Some such wish was in Henderson'smind, and they managed to convey him by sea to Edinburgh. He arrivedthere on the 1lth of August, and was taken either to his own house, inwhich he had not been for three years, or to some other that was moreconvenient. He rallied a little, so as to be able to dine with one friendand talk cheerfully, but never again left his room. There his brother-ministers of the city, and such others as were privileged, gathered roundhim, and took his hands; and the rest of the city lay around, makinginquiries; and prayers went up for him in all the churches. On the 19thof August, eight days after his return, he died, aged sixty-three years, and there began a mourning in the Scottish Israel over the loss of theirgreatest man. They buried him in the old churchyard of Greyfriars, wherehis grave and tombstone are yet to be seen. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 381-387; Burnet's Memoirs of the Hamiltons (ed. 1852), 356-7; Wodrow'sCorrespondence (Wodrow Society), III. 33, 34; Life of Mr. Robert Blair, by Row (Wodrow Society), 185-188; and "_Reliquię Sacrę Carolinę_:or, The works of that great Monarch and glorious Martyr King Charles theI. " (Hague edition of 1651), where the Letters are given in full. Thereis a fair abstract of them in Neal's _Puritans_ (ed. 1795), III. 311-324. The death of Henderson at so critical a moment, and so closelyafter his conferences with the King at Newcastle, made a deep impressionat the time, and became an incident of even mythical value to theRoyalists. Hardly was the breath out of his body when there began to runabout a lying rumour to the effect that he had died of remorse, acknowledging that the King had convinced him, and confessing hisrepentance of all he had said or done against that wisest and best ofmonarchs. Baillie, in London, was indignant. "The false reports whichwent here of Mr. Henderson, " he wrote to Spang in Holland, Oct. 2, 1646, or less than six weeks after Henderson's death, "are, I see, come also toyour hand. Believe me (for I have it under his own hand a little beforehis death) that he was utterly displeased with the King's ways, and overthe longer the more; and whoever say otherwise, I know they speak false. That man died as he lived, in great modesty, piety, and faith. " But thelie could not be extinguished; it circulated among the Royalists; andwithin two years it was turned into cash or credit by some scoundrel Scotin England, who forged and published a document entitled _TheDeclaration of Mr. Alexander Henderson, principall Minister of the Wordof God at Edinburgh, and chief Commissioner from the Kirk of Scotland tothe Parliament and Synod of England, made upon his death-bed. _ Thisforgery was immediately denounced by the General Assembly of the ScottishChurch in a solemn Declaration set forth by them Aug. 7, 1648, statingparticulars of Henderson's last days, and vindicating his memory. Nevertheless the fiction was too convenient to be given up: it lasted;was embalmed by Clarendon in his History (605); and still leaves itsodour in wretched compilations. --The genuineness of the series of Letterson Episcopacy between the King and Henderson, first printed in 1649, immediately after Charles's death, and included since then in alleditions of Charles's works, does not seem to have been questioned bycontemporaries on either side, or by subsequent Presbyterian critics. Inthe year 1826, however, the eminent and acute Godwin, in an elaboratenote in his _History of the Commonwealth_ (II. 179-185), didchallenge the genuineness of the correspondence. He was inclined to theopinion that there had been no interchange of written Papers between theKing and Henderson at all, but only "discourses and conferences, " andthat the whole thing was a Royalist forgery of 1649, contemporary withthe _Eikon Basilike_, and for the same purpose. In venturing on sobold an opinion, Godwin, besides undervaluing other evidence to thecontrary, seems to have dismissed too easily Burnet's information, in his_Lives of the Hamiltons_ in 1673, as to the manner in which theLetters were written and kept. No less eminent a man than Sir RobertMoray, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and its first President, and of whom Burnet elsewhere says, "He was the wisest and worthiest manof his age, and was as another father to me, " had told Burnet, "a fewdays before his much-lamented death" (June 1673), that he had been theamanuensis employed in the correspondence. Being with the King atNewcastle in 1646, then only as Mr. Robert Moray, it had fallen to him, as a person much in his Majesty's confidence, to receive each letter ofthe King's as it was written in his own royal hand, and make the copy ofit which was to be given to Henderson, and also, Henderson's hand beingnone of the most legible, to transcribe Henderson's replies for theKing's easier perusal; and with his Majesty's permission he had "kept Mr. Henderson's papers and the copies of the King's. " After all, however, Godwin's sceptical inquiry leaves a shrewd somewhat behind it. For, granted that a written correspondence did take place, "the questionremains, " as Godwin asserts, "whether the papers now to be found in KingCharles's works are the very papers that were so exchanged at Newcastle. The suspicion here suggested tells, in my mind, more against the King'sletters as we now have them than against Henderson's. The King's letters, we may be sure, would be pretty carefully _edited_ in 1649; and whatmay have been the amount and kind of _editing_ thought allowable?"]

The last of Baillie's letters to Henderson, dated Aug. 13, 1646, containsa curious passage, "Ormond's Pacification with the Irish, " writesBaillie, "is very unseasonable; the placing of Hopes (a professedAtheist, as they speak) about the Prince as his teacher is ill taken. "The _Hopes_ here mentioned is no other than THOMAS HOBBES, then justappointed tutor to the Prince of Wales in Paris. As the letter must havereached Edinburgh after Henderson was dead, he was not troubled with thisadditional piece of bad news before he left the world. Doubtless, however, he had heard of Hobbes, and formed some imagination of thatdreadful person and his opinions. Hobbes indeed was now in his fifty-eighth year, or not much younger than the dying Henderson himself. But hewas of slower constitution, and had begun his real work late in life, asif with a presentiment that he had plenty of time before him, and did notneed to be in a hurry. He was to outlive Henderson thirty-three years. 

CHAPTER III. 

EFFECTS OF MILTON'S _AREOPAGITICA_--HIS INTENTION OF ANOTHERMARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM--REMOVAL FROMALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN--FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS:HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER--TWO DIVORCE SONNETS AND SONNET TO HENRYLAWES--CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIANSONNET OF REPLY--SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY--THEPOWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRSTCHILD. 

The effect of Milton's _Areopagitica_, immediately after itspublication in November 1644, and throughout the year 1645, seems to havebeen very considerable. Parliament, indeed, took no formal notice of theeloquent pleading for a repeal of their Licensing Ordinance of June 1643. As a body, they were not ripe for the discussion of the question of aFree Press, and the Ordinance remained in force, at least as aninstrument which might be applied in cases of flagrant transgression. Butpublic opinion was affected, and the general agitation for Tolerationtook more and more the precise and practical form into which Milton'streatise had directed it: viz. An impatience of the censorship, and ademand for the liberty of free philosophising and free printing. "Suchwas the effect of our author's _Areopagitica_, " says Toland, in hissketch of Milton's life, "that the following year Mabol, a licenser, offered reasons against licensing, and, at his own request, wasdischarged that office. " [Footnote: Toland's Memoir of Milton prefixed tothe Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23. ] Toland isin a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom hemeans--Gilbert Mabbott, _not_ 'Mabol'--was Rushworth's deputy in theoffice of Clerk to the House of Commons, doing duty for him while he wasaway with the New Model as Secretary to Fairfax: and not only did thisMabbott occasionally license pamphlets and newspapers, as it would havebeen Rushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expresslyrecommended to be licenser of "weekly pamphlets" or newspapers, Sept. 30, 1647, and he continued to act in this capacity till May 22, 1649, atwhich time it was, and not in 1645, that he was released from thebusiness at his own request. [Footnote: My notes from the Stationers'Registers of 1645 and subsequent years; Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647;and Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. There is some evidence, however, that, before this last date, Mabbott had found the duty irksome (seeCommons Journals, Aug. 31, 1648). ] The effect of Milton's argument onMabbott in particular, therefore, was not so immediate as Tolandrepresents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his_Areopagitica_, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness of the officeitself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modifytheir official conduct. Several of them, among whom appears to have beenMr. John Downham, who had licensed Milton's own Bucer Tract (_antč_, p. 255, note), became more lax in their censorship than the Presbyteriansthought right; and there was at least one of them, Mr. John Bachiler, whobecame so very lax, from personal proclivity to Independency, that he wasdenounced by the Presbyterians as "the licenser-general not only of Booksof Independent Doctrine, but of Books for a general Toleration of allSects, and against Pędo-Baptism. " [Footnote: _Gangręna_: Part I. (ed. 1646), pp. 38, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes three pages (102--105) to a castigation of Mr. Bachiler for his offences as a licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monstersbegotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last threeyears than ever were brought into the light in England by all the formerlicensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years. " He wasin the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, butalso recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he hadlicensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 called_Religious Peace_ (see _antč_, p. 102). "I am afraid, " says Edwards, "that, if the Devil himself should make a book and give it the title _APlea for Liberty of Conscience, with certain Reasons against Persecutionfor Religion_, and bring it to Mr. Bachiler, he would license it, and notonly with a bare _imprimatur_, but set before it the commendations of 'auseful treatise' or 'a sweet and excellent book. '"] The _Areopagitica_, in fact, found out, even among the official licensers of books, men whosympathised with its views; and it established prominently, as one of thepractical questions between the Independents and the Presbyterians, thequestion of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that hadtaught the Independents, and the Anti-Presbyterians generally, to bringto the front, for present purposes, this form of the Toleration tenet. For example, one finds that John Lilburne had been a reader of the_Areopagitica_, and had imbibed its lesson, and even its phraseology. "Ifyou had not been men that had been afraid of your cause, " is one ofLilburne's addresses to the Presbyterians and the Westminster AssemblyDivines, "you would have been willing to have fought with us upon evenground and equal terms--namely, that the Press might be as open for usas for you, and as it was at the beginning of this Parliament; which Iconceive the Parliament did of purpose, that so the free-born Englishsubjects might enjoy their Liberty and Privilege, which the Bishops hadlearnt of the Spanish Inquisition to rob them of, by locking it up underthe key of an _Imprimatur_. " [Footnote: Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne inhis _Fresh Discovery of Blazing Stars_, p. 8. ] There is proof, in thewritings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocularspecimens of the _imprimaturs_ in old books had taken hold of the popularfancy. It became a common form of jest, indeed, in putting forth anunlicensed pamphlet, to prefix to it a mock licence. Thus, at thebeginning of the anonymous _Arraignment of Persecution_, the author ofwhich was a Henry Robinson (_antč_, p. 387), there is a mock order by theWestminster Assembly, with the names of the two Scribes appended, to theeffect that the author, "Young Martin Mar-Priest, " be thanked for hisexcellent treatise, and authorized to publish it, and that no one except"Martin Claw-Clergy, " appointed by the author to print the same, presumeto do so. [Footnote: Quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery_, p. 8. ]Prynne quotes this as an example of the contempt into which the Ordinancefor Licensing had fallen with the Sectaries, and of their supremeeffrontery, Robinson, he says, was one of the chief publishers ofscandalous libels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up aprivate printing press for the purpose. [Footnote: I may take thisopportunity of announcing a rather curious fact, of which I have ampleand incontestable proof, thought the proper place for stating it indetail is yet to come. It is that Milton, the denouncer of the LicensingSystem, and the satirist of the official licensers of 1644, was himselfafterwards an official censor of the Press. He was one of the licensersof newspapers through 1651 and a portion of 1652, doing the very workfrom which Mabbott had begged to be excused. The fact, however, issusceptible of an easy explanation, which will save Milton'sconsistency. ]

On the whole, then, Milton's position among his countrymen from thebeginning of 1645 onwards may be defined most accurately by conceivinghim to have been, in the special field of letters, or pamphleteering, very much what Cromwell was in the broader and harder field of Armyaction, and what the younger Vane was, in Cromwell's absence, in theHouse of Commons. While Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionallywhen he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some newIndependent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was noman, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically thanMilton, or would have been more ready to second him with tongue or withpen. Both were ranked among the Independents, as Vane also was; but thiswas less because they were partisans of any particular form of Church-government, than because they were agreed that, whatever form of Church-government should be established, there must be the largest possibleliberty under it for nonconforming consciences. If this was Independency, it was a kind of large lay Independency; and of Independency in thissense Milton was, undoubtedly, the literary chief. Only, when he wasthought of by the Independents as one of their champions, it was alwayswith a recollection that his championship of the common cause wasqualified by a peculiar private crotchet. He figured in the list of thechiefs of Independency, if I may so express it, with an asterisk prefixedto his name. That asterisk was his Divorce Doctrine. He was anIndependent with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect ofMiltonists or Divorcers. 

INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITHHIM. 

In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of thesecond and augmented edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce_ having been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year, forming substantially the third edition of the original treatise. None ofhis writings hitherto had been in such popular demand; and as, besidesthe three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also incirculation his _Bucer Tract_, his _Tetrachordon_, and his_Colasterion_, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject bya total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other. While his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of 1641-42, make together 326pages of his prose works in Pickering's edition, the four Divorcetreatises, of 1643-45, make 378 pages of the same; so that, in merequantity, Milton was 52 pages more a Divorcer than an Anti-Prelatist. Hehad now, however, as he had announced in his dedication of the_Tetrachordon_ to Parliament, done all that he meant to do on thesubject through the medium of mere pamphleteering. But he had hinted toParliament, while making that announcement, that a man with his opinionsmight do more than write pamphlets in their behalf. "If the Law make nota timely provision, " he had said, "let the Law, as reason is, bear thecensure of the consequences. " There was a covert threat here that Milton, if the Law would not allow him to marry again, might marry again indefiance of the Law. 

Early in 1645, at all events, Milton did think of marrying again. Hiswife had been away from him for the better part of two years; and she wasnow nothing more in his memory than a girl who had been in his house inAldersgate Street as his bride for a few weeks, whom he had found out inthat short experience to be stupid and uncompanionable, who had then lefthim on some pretence, and gone back to her father's house, and whose onlycommunications with him since had been a message or two of contempt andinsult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All thecircumstances where known: his unfortunate position was the talk ofneighbours; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young andolder, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiablebachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talkwas all very well: but was there any unmarried lady willing to take theplace of the deserter, if asked to do so? This was really the question inAldergate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances. Candidates were not likely to be numerous, even among those freerChristian opinionists among whom Milton principally moved; and there was, moreover, a complication in the general difficulty. Milton, havingblundered in his choice once, and having principled himself now with veryhigh notions of feminine fitness, was very likely to be careful in asecond choice. Was there accessible any lady in whom the twoindispensable conditions of fitness and willingness could be foundunited? This was the problem for Milton, and it is on record that hetried to solve it. One remembers his sonnet "_To a Virtuous YoungLady_, " written about the same time as that to the Lady Margaret Ley, and wonders whether the "virgin wise and pure" there commemorated for herexcellencies of mind and character was thought of by him as the possiblesuccessor of Mary Powell. Can her name have been Miss Davis? That, at allevents, was the name of the lady who _was_ thought of as Mary Powell'sprobable successor. It is from Phillips that we have the particulars ofthe story:--

"Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises, " saysPhillips, referring to the Divorce Treatises, "having application made tohim by several gentlemen of his acquaintance for the education of theirsons, as understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his firstundertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soonfound it out. But, in the interim, before he removed, there fell out apassage which, though it altered not the whole course he was going tosteer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which wasmore than probably thought to be then in agitation: it was indeed adesign of marrying one of Dr. Davis's daughters, a very handsome andwitty gentlewoman, but averse, as it is said, to this motion. However, the intelligence hereof, and the then declining state of the King'scause, and consequently of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family, caused them to set all engines on work to restore the late married womanto the station wherein they a little before had planted her. At last thisdevice was pitched upon:--There dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's-le-Grand, which was hard by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough, whom it was known he often visited; and upon this occasion the visitswere the more narrowly observed, and possibly there might be acombination between both parties, the friends on both sides concentringin the same action, though on different behalfs. One time above the rest, he making his usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on asudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seenmore, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him. Hemight probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; butpartly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than toperseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession offriends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firmleague of peace for the future; and it was at length concluded that sheshould remain at a friend's house, till such time as he was settled inhis new house at Barbican, and all things for her reception in order. Theplace agreed on for her present abode was the Widow Webber's house in St. Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to the otherbrother [Christopher Milton] many years before. "

Phillips tells the story very clearly, and a little annotation is allthat is wanted:--The lady whom Milton thought of, and had perhaps beenthinking of for some time, as a possible substitute for Mary Powell, was"one of Dr. Davis's daughters. " Who this Dr. Davis was, Phillips, writingat a time when the mere name was probably enough for Londoners, does notinform us; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him. [Footnote: There had been a Thomas Davies, M. D. , born about 1564, andeducated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had graduated inmedicine in 1591, and who was afterwards a medical practitioner inLondon, and Licentiate and Censor of the Royal College of Physiciansthere. As he had died in 1615, the youngest of any surviving daughters ofhis in 1645 must have been past her thirtieth year. But, on the whole, Phillips's words suggest that the Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 orhad recently been alive; so that this is not likely to have been the one. There was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M. D. , who had taken that degree atLeyden in 1638, had been incorporated in the same degree at Oxford in1642, and may have been afterwards in practice in London (Munk's Roll ofthe Royal College of Physicians of London, and Wood's Fasti, II. 9). Thedate of his graduation at Leyden, however, seems rather late for thehypothesis that he was Phillips's Dr. Davis. After all, there may havebeen some other conspicuous Dr. Davis among Milton's acquaintances, andhe need not have been a medical doctor. ] Dr. Davis, at all events, deador living, had daughters, one of them "a very handsome and wittygentlewoman, " between whom and Milton there was some attempt to arrange amarriage. She herself, however, was naturally "averse to this motion;"and, indeed, one can hardly understand what kind of proposition couldhave been made to her or her friends. That something was in agitation, nevertheless, and that it was talked of more particularly in the springand early summer of 1645, Phillips had a positive recollection, more bytoken because at that very time, he also remembered, his uncle had offersof more pupils than he could accommodate in the house in AldersgateStreet. He had consequently been looking about for a larger house, andhad found one suitable close at hand, in the street called Barbican. 

Was Miss Davis to be persuaded to be mistress of this new house? Wouldthe "several gentlemen" of Milton's acquaintance who meant to board orhalf-board their sons with him, or would the spouses of those gentlemen, have been satisfied with that arrangement? The experiment was not to betried. The house in Barbican had been taken, but Milton had not yetremoved into it, when, to Miss Davis's relief, another arrangement wasbrought about. 

Rumours of what was going on, and of the new house in Barbican, had beenborne to Oxford, and the Foresthill mansion of the Powells. In any casethe news of the Miss Davis project, the "grand affair, " as Phillips callsit, could not but have caused some excitement there. But the news came ata time when the family-fortunes were no longer what they had been whenMary Powell had left her Parliamentarian husband and taken refuge againunder the maternal wing, amid her Royalist relatives and acquaintances, close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other Royalistfamilies, by necessary contributions to the King's cause, the Powells hadbegun to be aware, and more poignantly than others because of their morestraitened means, that their sacrifices were likely to be all in vain--that Parliament was to be master, and to have the power of pains andpenalties over those whom it called Delinquents. Especially after theshattering blow to the King at Naseby (June 14, 1645), doubt on thesubject was nearly at an end. What was then more natural than thatdistressed Royalist families should be looking forward anxiously to theamount of new distress which the final triumph of Parliament wouldinflict upon them? And so in the Foresthill mansion there had been graveconsultations between Mr. And Mrs. Powell and between Mrs. Powell and herdaughter, ending in a resolution, in which Mrs. Powell was perhaps thelast to acquiesce--for the daughter afterwards pleaded that her motherall along had been "the chief promoter of her frowardness" [Footnote:Wood, Fasti, I. 482. ]--that it would be best for the daughter to returnto London and try to make it up with Mr. Milton. At least one member ofthe family would thus have a roof over her head in the hard time coming;and might not Milton, with his Parliamentarian connexions, be able tobefriend the family generally when the time did come? Soon after Naseby, accordingly, we are to imagine the poor young wife taking the journey toLondon, accompanied by her mother or some other relative, on herhumiliating and dubious errand. 

How were they to manage when they were in London? It was not a simplematter of going straight to the house in Aldersgate Street and obtainingadmission. Ingenuity was necessary, and preparation of a mode forapproaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communicationswere opened or had already been opened, with those of Milton's friendswho, it was supposed, would be willing to co-operate in the intendedreconciliation, if not in the wife's interest, at least in his. And whichof all Milton's friends was _not_ willing? In such cases, it is inthe man himself that the storm rages; he alone passionately feels: thefriends that stand by, even most sympathisingly, are cool and collected, regarding the principal only as a difficult patient, who must be soothedand humoured till he can be brought to reason. To Milton's friends hisDivorce notion may have seemed a just enough speculation, or one at leastabout which _they_ would not quarrel with him; the real questionwith them was as to the continued practical implication of his own lifeand prospects with such a speculation, infamous as it seemed torespectable society and to the leaders of religious opinion. Let him holdit, if he would, and even write for it still; but was he, at the age ofthirty-seven, to wrap up his whole future life in it, and proceed as ifhe and it must be dashed to pieces together? Was not this reconciliationbetween him and his wife, of which there seemed now to be a chance, thebest thing that could happen for him as well as for her? If once it werebrought about, would not things adjust themselves so that the publicwould hear no more of the perilous stuff of the Divorce Doctrine, or hearof it only in dying echoes? So reasoned Milton's friends then, just aspeople would reason now in a similar case; and the friendly plot wasarranged. Milton, it appears, was in the habit of dropping in, almostdaily, in his walk City-wards from Aldersgate Street, on a kinsman ofhis, named Blackborough, whose house was in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane--_i. E. _ in that bend of Aldersgate Street which was _within_ theGate, and where now the General Post-Office of London stands. Here, someday in July or August 1645, he was surprised into an interview with hisgirl-wife. The good Blackborough had consented to aid and abet, and hadlent his house for the purpose; and, other friends being at hand tosecond him, he had opened, let us say, the door of the room in which MaryPowell was waiting, had ushered Milton in, and had left them together. Then, as Phillips imagines, had come Milton's two moods in succession, --the first his instinctive mood of anger and rejection, and the secondthat mood of his slow relenting which was witnessed and helped through bythe in-bustling friends:--

_Mood First. _

_Samson_. My wife, my traitress! let her not come near me!

_Chorus_. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixt, About to have spoke; but now, with head declined, Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, Wetting the borders of her silken veil: But now again she makes address to speak. 

_Dalila. _ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson, Which to have merited, without excuse, I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tears May expiate (though the fact more evil drew In the perverse event than I foresaw), My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon No way assured. But conjugal affection, Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, Hath led me on desirous to behold Once more thy face, and know of thy estate; If aught in my ability may serve To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power, Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed. 

_Samson. _ Out, out! hyęna! _Samson Agonistes_, 725-747. 

_Mood Second. _

 She ended weeping, and her lowly plight, Immoveable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration: soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon. _Paradise Lost_, X. 937-946. 

Was this Milton's idealized history long afterwards of his own two moodsin Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane some time in Julyor August 1645? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not saythat it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalila in the land of thePhilistines, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically asbeautiful, eloquent, and fascinating, while of poor Mary Powell's claimsto beauty we know little, and our information as to her eloquence andfascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of herthat Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tractin which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to"an image of earth and phlegm. " From the side of Milton there was, Ithink, no idealizing: hardly else than as his own Samson, or his ownAdam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion ofhis own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and heyielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity foranother overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted asdisastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and thatthere may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature ofthe reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of bothwife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the newhouse in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge inthe house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, nearSt. Clement's Church in the Strand. 

REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN. 

September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and wasotherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrosein Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, andwhen the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England thatthe first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all theLondon parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of theseElders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, asnear as one can calculate, that the interesting house in AldersgateStreet was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boysPhillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house inBarbican. 

It was no great remove. The street called Barbican derived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there"a _burgh-kenning_, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language a_barbican_;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation bytracing the name, through the medięval Latin _barbacana_, to the Persian_bįla khaneh_, meaning "upper chamber, " whence our less corrupt form_balcony_, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quotedin Cunningham's _London_, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood's _Dict. OfEnglish Etymology_, Art. "Balcony. "] There had, in short, been abarbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond theparticular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyondothers of the city-gates; but the name had lingered only here as appliedto the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retainingits warlike name, still exists--a short street going off from AldersgateStreet at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more thantwo or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house. The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city-gate; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or ofstreet-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the mainthoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit ofsuburban London towards the north; and it boasted, as we already know, ofat least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest--thetown-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and thepeer of _Comus_. The name "Bridgewater Gardens" still designates, withouta shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and thelike instead, the portion of the street which the mansion occupied. Naymore, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, withsome modern change of frontage, and some filling-up of interstices rightand left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important housein Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood(probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition ofMilton still clung around this house in Barbican, I have passed it many atime, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I rememberrightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his signthe peculiar name of "Heaven, " and using the lower part of it for hisshop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the lineof bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been acommodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed thatsome of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozengedin lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knewone of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teachhis pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head thatit required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house, with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last inBarbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless, disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so muchrubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. Theinscription yet remained on the front-door--"This was Milton's House, " orto that effect--which had been very properly put there by the contractoror his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before thedemolition was complete. [Footnote: My information about the interior ofthe house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. ThoughI had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, notexpecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my lasthomage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gapbehind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text. ]

FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THEBOOKSELLER. 

Among Milton's first employments in his new and larger house in Barbican, while his wife was resuming her duties and the schoolroom was gettinggradually into use, we are able to distinguish one of particularinterest. It was nothing else than the revision for the press of theproof-sheets of the first collected edition of his Miscellaneous Poems. 

By his dealings with the Press hitherto, it is to be remembered, Miltonhad made himself known to most people chiefly as a prose pamphleteer. Except his lines _On Shakespeare_, written in 1630, and prefixedanonymously to the Second Folio Shakespeare in 1632; his _Comus_, written and acted in 1634, and sent to the press, also without theauthor's name, by his friend Henry Lawes in 1637; and his _Lycidas_, written in 1637, and printed in 1638, in the Cambridge University volumeof Verses on Edward King's death, but only with the initials "J. M. ":--except these, and perhaps another scrap or two of Latin or English versethat had been printed in a semi-private manner, all Milton's poems, written at intervals over a period of more than twenty years, hadremained in his own keeping in manuscript, and had been communicated tofriends only in that form. In consequence of what had been thus printed, or privately circulated, a certain reputation for Milton as a poet had, indeed, been established; but the voice of this reputation was hardlyheard amid the much louder uproar caused by his eleven prose-pamphletsbetween 1641 and 1645. Now, to a man who believed Poesy to be his truecalling, who had consented reluctantly to put aside "his garland andsinging robes" in order that he might engage in the work of politics, andwho had announced while doing so that in that work it was but thestrength of his left hand he could lend and not the nobler cunning of hisright, this state of public opinion about himself must have begun to be alittle disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, assoon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisureof the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton shouldmake some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about himof his original vocation. But, precisely in the year 1045, when Nasebyhad assured the victory of Parliament, there did come, for the first timesince the war had begun, or indeed since the Long Parliament had met, such a lull of the polemical tumult. The statistics of the English book-trade, as they are presented in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, verify and illustrate this statement. 

Even in the year 1640, when there was political agitation enough inEngland, but the Long Parliament had not yet met, there was still so muchleisure for the purer forms of literature in English society that Londonpublishers were bringing out such things as Masques and other remains ofBen Jonson, the Works of Thomas Carew, various Plays by Shirley, Glapthorne, Habington, Heywood, Killigrew, and Brome, an edition ofHerrick's Poems, and Thomas May's Supplement to Lucan. As soon, however, as we pass beyond 1640, and the real work of the Long Parliament isbegun, such books almost entirely cease to appear. The matter thenprovided for the reading of the English public consisted of a huge jumbleof Pamphlets on the Church-question, Sermons, semi-controversialTreatises of Theology, Political Speeches, fragments of EcclesiasticalHistory, Prose Invectives and Satires, and latterly, when the Civil Warwas in progress, an abundance of Diurnals, Intelligencers, Mercuries, andother news-sheets. Between 1640 and 1645 one does indeed discerntwinkling in this jumble some gems or would-be gems of the purer rayserene. The "Epigrams Divine and Moral" of Sir Thomas Urquhart, thetranslator of Rabelais, were published in April 1641; Howell's"Instructions for Foreign Travel" came out in September in the same year;Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of England" in the following December; inApril 1642 there was a London edition of Thomas Randolph's Poems, whichhad appeared originally at Oxford in 1638; and the publication ofDenham's "Cooper's Hill" and his "Tragedy called The Sophy" is a rathernotable event of August 1642, the very month in which the King raised hisstandard. In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick, registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind whichhad been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton'sPoems, " "Euphues's Golden Legacy, " Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth, " andalso "Hamblett, a Play, " "The Taming of the Shrew, " "Romeo and Juliet, "and "Love's Labour's Lost. " This transaction, however, hardly impliedthat these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to securehis interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards, while the war was actually raging, it is not till December 1644 that onecomes upon anything of the finer sort worth mentioning. On the 14th ofthat month there was registered for publication the first edition of"Poems, &c. , written by Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beckonsfield, Esq. , latelya member of the Honourable House of Commons, " but then, as we know, adisgraced plotter, who, having, by great favour, been permitted to carryhis dear-bought life, and his remaining wealth, into exile in France, left this parting gift to his countrymen, that they might think of himmeanwhile as kindly as they could. Except that I have not taken notice ofa publication or two of the voluminous Scotchman Alexander Rosse, Chaplain to his Majesty, [Footnote: This Alexander Rosse, or "Dr. Alexander Ross, " made famous in _Hudibras_, was one of the singularcharacters of the time, and a memoir of him, with a complete list of hiswritings, would be a not uninstructive curiosity. He was a native ofAberdeen, born about 1590, but had migrated to England, where he becameMaster of the Free School at Southampton, and Chaplain in Ordinary toKing Charles. By a succession of publications of all kinds, in Latin andin English. , he acquired the reputation of being "a divine, a poet, andan historian. " He made a good deal of money, and, at his death in 1654, left bequests, for educational purposes, to Aberdeen, Southampton, Oxford, and Cambridge. ] the foregoing enumeration fairly represents, Ibelieve, the amount of book-production of the purer or non-controversialkind that went on in London in the four loud-roaring years between 1640and 1645. 

In 1645, however, and especially after Naseby, there are symptoms of aslightly revived leisure for other kinds of reading than were supplied byDiurnals, Sermons, Pamphlets, and books of Polemical Theology, and of awillingness among the London booksellers to cater for this leisure. Inthat year, interspersed amid the still continuing tide of Pamphlets, Diurnals, Sermons, and other ephemerides, were such novel appearances inthe London book-world as these--two Treatises, one physical, the othermetaphysical, by Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf'sHebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metricalreligious remains of Francis Quarles, then just dead; some attempts tointroduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works; atranslation of Ęsop's Fables and those of Phędrus; the issue of thesecond and third parts of the _Epistolę Hoelianę_ or James Howell'sLetters, with a re-issue of his "Dodona's Grove;" and a re-issue ofRandolph's comedy of "The Jealous Lovers. " Clearly, as the Civil War wasdrawing to a close, the Muses of pure History, pure Speculation orPhilosophy, Scholarship for its own sake, and even lighter Phantasy, didhover over England again, timidly seeking some spots where they mightrest themselves in the all-prevailing controversy between Independencyand Presbyterianism. 

Almost always, in such cases, a social tendency is represented in theactivity of some particular person. Nor is it otherwise here. So far asPoetry and so-called Light Literature are concerned, one has nodifficulty in pointing to the particular London publisher who in 1645, and from that year onwards, stood out from all his fellows by hisalertness in the trade. This was HUMPHREY MOSELEY, who had his shop atthe sign of the Prince's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. Something in hispersonal tastes, I am inclined to think, must have determined him to theline of business which he selected; so marked is his avoidance of alldealings in sermons, ephemeral treatises on theology, and pamphletseither way on the present crisis, and his preference for poetry and booksof general culture. He had been in the trade, in partnership with aNicholas Fussel, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as early as 1634, [ Footnote:Wood's Ath. II 503. ] and shortly after that is heard of as in businessfor himself. I have a note of him as registering for his copyright, onMarch 16, 1639-40, Howell's "Dodona's Grove;" and thenceforward, in worsetimes, he stuck to Howell. He not only published Howell's "Instructionsfor Foreign Travel" in September 1641, and again the second and thirdparts of Howell's "Letters" in 1645, with a re-issue of "Dodona's Grove;"but he acquired, in the same year, the copyright of the first part of the"Letters, " which had been originally brought out by another publisher. More significant still is the fact that it was Moseley that was thepublisher of Waller's Poems in December 1644. [Footnote: "Poems &c. Written by Mr. Ed. Waller of Beckonsfield, Esquire; lately a member ofthe Honourable House of Commons. All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke wereset by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gent. Of the King's Chappell, and one of hisMajestie's Private Musick. Printed and Published according to Order. London. Printed by T. W. For Humphrey Mosley at the Princes Armes inPaul's Churchyard: 1645:" pp. 96 small 8vo. My authority for the date ofthe publication of the volume--December 1644--is the Stationers'Registers. ] After that date his tendency to trade-dealings in Poetry andthe like is so manifest in the Stationers' records that I find appendedto my MS. Notes, from these records, for the London Bibliography of theyear 1646, this memorandum:--"_Poetry and Pure Literature looking upagain this year, and chiefly through the medium of Moseley's shop. _"By that time Moseley had distinguished himself as the publisher oforiginal editions of books, not only by Howell and Waller, but also byMilton, Davenant, Crashaw, and Shirley, and moreover as the readypurchaser of whatever copyrights were in the market of poems and plays byBeaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant, Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group ofMoseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added; and it was notlong before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems, Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainablecopyright in any of the plays of Shakespeare, Massinger, Ford, Rowley, Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacobandramatists. For at least the ten years from 1644 onwards there was, Ishould say, no publisher in London comparable to Moseley for tact andenterprise in the finer literature. 

Moseley was only on the way to make all this reputation for himself, andindeed Waller's volume of Poems, published in Dec. 1644, was yet theprincipal advertisement of his shop, when he and Milton came together. Pleased with the success of the Waller, it appears, Moseley thought of acollection of Mr. Milton's Poems as a likely second experiment of thesame kind, and applied to Milton for the copy. The application was notdisagreeable to Milton; and, accordingly, some time after the middle of1645, or just while he was preparing to remove from Aldersgate Street toBarbican, and there came upon him the great surprise of his wife's re-appearance, Moseley and he were busy in arrangements for the new volume. Milton's acknowledged London publishers hitherto had been these three--"Thomas Underhill, of the Bible in Wood Street" (_Of Reformation_, 1641, _Of Prelatical Episcopacy_, 1641, and _Animadversions on Remonstrant'sDefence_, 1641), "John Rothwell, at the sign of the Sun in Paul'sChurchyard" (_Reason of Church Government_, 1641, and _Apology forSmectymnuus, 1642), and "Matthew Symmons" (the _Bucer Tract_, 1644); andthis last-mentioned Symmons, who does not give the locality of his shop, had been probably the printer also of those pamphlets of Milton whichbore no publisher's name (_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 1643, 1644, and 1645, _Of Education_, 1644, _Areopagitica_, 1644, and_Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_, 1645). Now, however, these wereforsaken for the moment, and for bringing out the Volume of Poems theconjunction was Milton and Humphrey Moseley. The revisal of the proof-sheets may have been begun in Aldersgate Street, but it must mainly, as Ihave said, have been among Milton's first employments at the new house inBarbican. Here, at all events, is Moseley's entry of the new volume inthe Stationers' Registers: "_Oct. _ 6 [1645], _Mr. Moseley ent. For hiscopie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and both the Wardens, a bookecalled Poems in English and Latyn by Mr. John Milton. _" Usually the entryof a book in the Stationers' Registers was about simultaneous with itspublication. In this case, however, there was a delay of nearly threemonths between the registration and the actual appearance. The preciseday of the publication of the new volume was Jan. 2, 1645-6. [Footnote:This is ascertained by a MS. Note of the collector Thomason's, or by hisdirection, on a copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum;Press-mark E. 1126. "Jan. 2" is inserted before the word "London" in thetitle-page. ] Either, therefore, Moseley had registered the volume beforethe printing had proceeded far, or after the sheets were printed therewas some little cause of delay. 

The following is the title-page of this interesting and now very rarevolume:--

"Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at severaltimes. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majestie'sPrivate Musick. 

 'Baccare frontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro. ' VIRGIL, _Eclog. _ vii. 

Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by RuthRaworth, for Humphrey Moseley; and are to be sold at the signe of thePrinces Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645. "

The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging. First come the ENGLISH POEMS, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus:--_On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd_ 1629; _A Paraphrase onPsalm CXIV. _; _Psalm CXXXVI. _; _The Passion_; _On Time_; _Upon theCircumcision_; _At a Solemn Music_; _An Epitaph on the Marchioness ofWinchester_; _Song on May Morning_; _On Shakespear_, 1630; _On theUniversity Carrier who, &c. _; _Another on the Same_; _L'Allegro_; _IlPenseroso_; _Sonnets_, English and Italian--ten in number (I. "ONightingale;" II. "Donna leggiadra;" III. "Qual in colle, " with theattached "Canzone;" IV. "Diodati e te'l;" V. "Per certo i bei;" VI. "Giovane piano;" VII. "How soon hath Time;" VIII. "Captain or Colonel;"IX. "Lady that in the prime;" X. "Daughter to that good Earl");--_Arcades_; _Lycidas_; _Comus_. [Footnote: To this enumeration of theEnglish pieces in the volume of 1645 I may append three bibliographicalnotes--(1) Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of 10 still exist in thevolume of Milton MSS. In Trinity College, Cambridge--viz. : _On Time_, _Upon the Circumcision_, _At a Solemn Music_, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and 10, _Arcades_, _Lycidas_, and _Comus_. All these drafts are in Milton's ownhand, except that of Sonnet 8, only the heading of which is in his hand. Of the other 18 pieces, the most important of which are _L'Allegro_ and_Il Penseroso_, the original MSS. Have not come down to us. (2) It willbe seen that two of the known early English Poems are omitted in thevolume: viz. The piece _On the Death of a Fail Infant dying of a Cough_--_i. E. _ the poem on the death of his niece, the infant girl Phillips, written in 1626; and the College piece of 1628 entitled _At a VacationExercise_. These pieces first appeared in the Second Edition of the Poemsin 1673. (3) It may also be noted that the latest written pieces whichappear in the volume of 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10--the one to theanonymous young lady, the other to the Lady Margaret Ley. We haveassigned them to the year 1644, but they _may_ have been as late as1645. ] As if to call attention to _Comus_ as the longest and chief of thepoems, it has a separate title-page, thus, "_A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, thenPresident of Wales, Anno Dom. 1645;_" but, though there is this break ofa new title-page, the paging runs on without interruption, _Lycidas_ending p. 65, and _Comus_ taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however, there is a _complete_ break, as if it were intended that the EnglishPoems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The LATIN POEMS followas a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and withthis new title-page prefixed to them: "_Joannis Miltoni LondinensisPoemata: quorum pleraque intra annum oetatis vigesimum conscripsit: nuncprimum edita. Londini, Typis R. R. , Prostant ad Insignia Principis, inCoemeterio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645. _" There is, however, a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a distribution of them intotwo classes. First come those which constitute the so-called ELEGIARUMLIBER; viz. , the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. To VII. , as they nowstand in all editions of Milton, together with the eight little scraps inthe same elegiac verse (five of them on the subject of the GunpowderPlot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editorshave preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separateheading of "Epigrams. " This is contrary to Milton's intention; for thephrase "Elegiarum Finis" _follows_ those scraps in the volume, showingthat he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thoughtit permissible to call anything an Elegy that was written in the ordinaryelegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all hisLatin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the _ElegiarumLiber_, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but eitherin Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two fragments ofGreek verse, are regarded as "Sylvę, " and constitute the distinctSYLVARUM LIBER which ends the volume. First among the "Sylvę" come thesix Latin poems of the Cambridge period--_In obitum ProcancellariiMedici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Pręsulis Eliensis, Naturam nonpati Senium, De Ideā Platonicā quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and AdPatrem_; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps ofGreek verse--viz. _Psalm LXIV_. And the scrap entitled _Philosophus adRegem Quendam_, &c. ; after which are the two Latin pieces, _Ad Salsillum_and _Mansus_, written in Italy, and the _Epitaphium Damonis_, writtenimmediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apartfrom the body of the "Sylvę, " as if Milton attached a peculiar sacrednessto it. 

Such is a general description of the First or 1645 Edition of Milton'sMiscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, presents some points ofadditional interest:----Has the reader noticed the motto on the title-page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue? It is peculiarly significant of themood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himselfThyrsis in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, here adopts in the happiestmanner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral. Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs fromhis brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence, at least

 "Some green thing round the brow, Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be. "

Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume?This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and histhirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than hehad once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it mightat least correct the impression of him common among those who knew himonly as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for thepresent, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he hadgiven his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of eviltongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to returnto Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poetof England. 

This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, appears curiouslyin all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems areprinted, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, theorder in which they were written; the deviations being only such asproper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too, whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of theexact date of its composition; and the title-page of the Latin Poemsdistinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composedbefore the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in thedating is the introduction into the volume of all the eulogiums whichMilton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems, or of any portion of them. To the _Comus_ there is prefixed HenryLawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to ViscountBrackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with itspraise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for hiscontinental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a wholethere is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums. First of all, thereis a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader fortroubling him with them. "Though these following testimonies concerningthe Author, " he says, "were understood by himself to be pronounced not somuch _about_ him as _over_ him, by way of subject or occasion--it being the general habit of men of brilliant genius, if they are at thesame time one's friends, to fashion their praises too eagerly rather bythe standard of their own excellencies than by truth--yet he wasunwilling that the singular goodwill of such persons towards him shouldremain unknown, and the rather because others advised him strongly to thestep he is now taking. While therefore he puts from him with all hisstrength the imputation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not haveattributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he considers theopinion of him meantime by wise and celebrated men a very high honour. "Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italianfriends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved byhim till now among his papers--the Latin distich by the famous MarquisManso of Naples; the outrageously complimentary Latin verses of the twoRomans, Salzilli and Selvaggi; and the more interesting Italian ode ofcompliment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini andCarlo Dati. (See Vol. I. Pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768. ) One has to rememberthat the insertion of such commendatory verses in new volumes of poetrywas a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for"something green round the brow. " In short, it is as if Milton said tohis countrymen--"Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with floridstuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed: pick out as much or aslittle of it as you like; only, at this date in my life, to preventmistake, let me have _some_ kind of garland. "

The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to obligeMilton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poemsthemselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's ownname:--

"THE STATIONER TO THE READER. 

"It is not any private respect of gain, gentle Reader--for the slightestPamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men--butit is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent tocollect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renewthe wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue; and it's the worth ofthese both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixedencomions, that can invite thee to buy them--though these are not withoutthe highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Academicks, bothdomestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country theunparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir HenryWootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor howharmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I havealready received from the most ingenious men, in their clear andcourteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice pieces, hath oncemore made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever-green and not to be blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiarexcellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers orto keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guideitself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into thelight as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famousSpenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitatedas sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure theirworth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal. 

"Thine to command, HUMPH. MOSELEY. "

This is most creditable to Moseley, and confirms the impression of himwhich is to be derived from all the known facts of his publishing life. One notices, with real respect, his introductory statement about himself, that, in an age when only pamphlets were thought vendible, he wasresolved, from his own liking for good literature, to keep to a finerline of business; one observes with interest the admission that it wasMoseley who had solicited the copy from Milton, and not Milton who hadoffered the copy; and one is struck with the justness of taste shown inthe hint that, however choice Mr. Waller's late Pieces might be, here wasa poet of "more peculiar excellency. " Above all, nothing could becritically truer than the assertion that since Spenser's death there hadbeen no English poetry of Spenser's kind equal to that contained in thisvolume. 

Another feature of the volume, for which Moseley, without doubt, is alsoresponsible, is a prefixed portrait of the Author. There was then livingin London a certain William Marshall, an engraver and sketcher of designsfor books. He had been some fourteen or fifteen years in this employment;and among the many heads he had done, separately, or as frontispieces tobooks, ere those of Richard Brathwayte the Poet, Dr. Donne, ArchbishopAbbot, Laud, and Dr. Daniel Featley. Very probably Moseley had alreadyhad dealings with Marshall, as he had certainly had with the morecelebrated engraver Hollar, who had done a frontispiece for him forHowell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel. " At all events, Hollar beingnow out of the way and in trouble (he and Inigo Jones were in the Marquisof Winchester's house at Basing when it was taken by Cromwell), it wasMarshall that came in for most such pieces of engraving work as Moseleyand other London publishers required. The connexion between him andMoseley became, indeed, a permanent one, so that Marshall is perhaps bestremembered now by Horace Walpole's description of him as "the graver ofheads for Moseley's books of poetry. " If the first head he did forMoseley was this for the edition of Milton's Poems in 1645, it was anunlucky beginning of the connexion. It turned out, at all events, to bean unfortunate piece of work for Marshall's own memory with posterity:--Moseley, we are to suppose, insisted on a portrait of Milton as a properornament to be prefixed to such a volume, chose Marshall to do it, andsent him to Milton. Now Milton, as we know, had some recollection ofMarshall, and not a very respectful one. It was Marshall that had donenot only Dr. Featley's portrait, but also the caricature of the differentsorts of Anabaptists and Sectaries, including a river-scene with bathersof both sexes, which had been inserted in the Doctor's treatise entitled_The Dippers Dipt_. Milton, as we have seen (_antč_, p. 311), whileadministering punishment to Dr. Featley in his _Tetrachordon_ on accountof a passage in this treatise, had not allowed the vulgarity of theengraving in Featley's book to escape. "For which I do not commend his_marshalling_" had been Milton's punning notice of it in a parenthesis ofthe punishment. When, therefore, Mr. Marshall came to Milton fromMoseley, Milton must have remembered him as the caricaturist for Dr. Featley's book. Nevertheless, he seems to have given him every facilityfor the portrait wanted. Marshall's habit, in such cases, was to take asketch from the life when he could get it, but to assist himself withwhatever was at hand in the shape of a picture or former engraving. Milton, therefore, may have given him a sitting or two, but perhapsavoided unnecessary trouble by referring to that portrait of himself atthe age of 21, now celebrated as "the Onslow Portrait, " which then hungin some room in the house in Barbican. As the forthcoming volumeconsisted largely of Milton's juvenile Poems, an engraving from thatportrait, touched up a little, would be the very thing. And so Marshallset to work. His dilatoriness over the plate may have been the cause ofthe unusual delay in the publication of the volume after it had beenregistered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley andto Milton. And what a result! How they must have both stared! The generaldesign of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough--an oval containing theportrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or window-sill, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which ashepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdessare dancing; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the MusesMelpomene, Erato, Urania, and Clio, with their names. All this waspassable; it was the portrait within the oval that gave the shock. Theface is that of a grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, lookinglike anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and fallingdown on both sides to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder iscloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and thearms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Round theoval was the legend, "_Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno ętatisvigess: pri. W. M. Sculp. _"--i. E. "Portrait of John Milton, Englishman, in the 2lst year of his age: W. M. Sculp. " The legend _said_ twenty-oneyears of age; the portrait _looked_ somewhere about fifty. What was to bedone? What _ought_ to have been done was to cancel the plate and printthe book without it. Perhaps not to vex Moseley, Milton did not insist onthis, but allowed the engraving, just as it was, to be prefixed to thevolume. But he took his revenge in one of the most malicious practicaljokes ever perpetrated. "Mr. Marshall, " he must have said to theunfortunate engraver, "here are a few lines of Greek which I should liketo have carefully engraved on the plate under the portrait, " at the sametime handing him the following:--

 [Greek: Amathei gegraphthai cheiri tęnde men eikona Phaięs tach an, pras eidos autophues blepon. Ton d'ektupoton ouk epignontes, philoi, Gelate phaulou dusmimęma xographou. ]

Away went Mr. Marshall, and duly, and with some pains, engraved theseletters on the plate, utterly ignorant of their meaning. Accordingly, when the volume appeared (Jan. 2, 1645-6), purchasers of it did indeedfind Marshall's portrait of Milton in it, but those among them who knewGreek could read, underneath it, inscribed by Marshall's own gravingtool, this damning criticism of his handiwork:--

 "That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face; But, finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt. "

[Footnote: This was very savage in Milton; but really, as it turned out, it was a prudent precaution. For, till 1670, Marshall's botch prefixed tothe Poems was the only published portrait of Milton-the only guide to anyidea of his personal appearance for those, whether friends or foes, whether in Britain or abroad, who were not acquainted with himself. Especially among enemies on the Continent, as we shall find, bothMarshall's portrait and Milton's sarcastic disavowal of it were eagerlyscanned and interpreted for the worst. As late as 1655, Milton, in his_Pro se Defendio contra Alexandrum Morion_, had to refer to bothportrait and disavowal as follows:--"Now I am a Narcissus with you, because I would not be the Cyclops you paint me from your sight of themost unlike portrait of me prefixed to my Poems. Really, if, inconsequence of the persuasion and importunity of my publisher, I allowedmyself to be clumsily engraved by an unskilful engraver, because therewas not another in the city in that time of war, this argued rather myentire indifference in the affair than the too great care with which youupbraid me. " The passage quite confirms the view taken in the text of theway in which the portrait came to be published. In justice to Marshall, it is right to say that he had done much better things, and did betterthings afterwards for Moseley, than this head of Milton. "Marshall, " saysBliss (Wood's Ath. III. 518, Note), "though in general a coarse and hastyperformer, is not to be despised, since his heads, though often veryrough sketches, bear evident marks of authenticity and resemblance to theoriginals. The best head he ever engraved, in my opinion, is one of Dr. Donne when young. " I can confirm this by saying that his head of Featleyreally gives one an idea of that obstinate and consequential old divine. I only wish he had done Milton half as well. About Marshall's engravingof Milton see Mr. J. F. Marsh's tract on the _Engraved and PretendedPortraits of Milton_ (Liverpool, 1860). Mr. Marsh thinks, with me, that Marshall based his engraving partly on the Onslow picture, and thatthat picture suggested the date, _ętat_. 21, so absurdly given tothe engraving. ]

TWO DIVORCE SONNETS, AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES. 

Moseley's precious little volume, with the engraver Marshall thus grimlyimmortalized in it, brings Milton to the beginning of 1646, or twelvemonths beyond his _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_. His wife having beenfor some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house atBarbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its publicprosecution. That he did so with a certain reluctance, and in no spiritof recantation, appears from two of his Sonnets, which must have beenwritten about the time of the publication of his volume of Poems (Oct. 1645--Jan. 1645-6), but which are not included in that volume, eitherbecause they were too late to come in their places after the Ten Sonnetscontained in it, or because Milton thought it better not then to printthem. "_On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certainTreatises_" is the title given by Milton himself in MS. To the twoSonnets together; but they may have been written separately. 

I. 

 I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs, By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of Owls and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes, and Dogs; As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny, Which after held the sun and moon in fee. But this is got by casting pearl to hogs, That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, And still revolt when Truth would set them free. Licence they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that must first be wise and good: But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood. 

II. 

 A book was writ of late called _Tetrachordon_, And woven close, both matter, form, and style; The subject new. It walked the town a while Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored on. Cries the stall-reader "Bless us! what a word on A title-page is this!" and some in file Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile- End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than _Gordon_, _Colkitto_, or _Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek. 

The second of these Sonnets is printed first in all the editions ofMilton, but there is proof that it was written second. [Footnote: Itstands first in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems; but in theCambridge MSS, it comes second in Milton's own hand. ] And, while the twotogether form what may be called Milton's poetical farewell to theDivorce subject, the mood in the second, it may be noted, is morehumorous than in the first. In the first Milton, still angry, clencheshis fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs anddogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which theyare howling and grunting; in the second the spleen is less, and he iscontent with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among theilliterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here whatis chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton hadbeen recently attending to the news from Scotland. The "_Colkitto_, or_Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_" of the Sonnet is no other than our friendAlexander MacDonnell, _alias_ MacColkitto, _alias_ MacGillespie, Montrose's gigantic Major-general; and the "Gordon" is either LordAboyne, the eldest son of the Marquis of Huntly, who adhered to Montrosetill Philiphaugh, or it is a general name for the many Gordons who werewith him (see _antč_, pp. 348, 358, 367). The odd Scottish and Gaelicnames had amused Milton's delicate ear; _Gordon_ rhymed aptly to_Tetrachordon_; and hence the notion of the Sonnet. [Footnote: Thoseannotators on Milton who have tried to identify _Galasp_ at all havesupposed him to be the Mr. George Gillespie who was one of the ScottishDivines in the Westminster Assembly. There _may_ be a side-reference tohim, for Milton must have heard much of him; but the primary reference isnot to the Presbyterian minister, but to the huge Colonsay Highlander, recently heard of everywhere as Montrose's comrade in arms, and who was_Colkitto_, _MacDonnell_, and _Galasp_, all in one. ]

A third Sonnet, written about the same time, shows even more distinctlythe calming effect on Milton's mind produced by his changed mode of lifein the house in Barbican, after his wife's return and the publication ofhis little Volume of Poems. It is the well-known Sonnet to his friendHenry Lawes, the musician. 

So far as the two artists, William and Henry Lawes, concerned themselvesin the politics of the time, they were, of course, Royalists. Officiallyattached to his Majesty's household and service, what else could they be?The elder of the two, indeed, William Lawes, had gone into the Royalistarmy, taken captain's rank there, and been slain quite recently at thesiege of Chester (October 1645), much regretted by the King, who is saidto have put on private mourning for him. Henry, the younger, and much themore celebrated as a composer, had remained in London, exercising his artas much as might be at such a time, and kept by it in acquaintance withmany who, differing in other things, were at one in their love of music. Everybody liked and admired the gentle Harry Lawes, and he was welcomeeverywhere. But there was still no family with which he was on moreintimate terms than with his old patrons of the accomplished Bridgewatergroup, and there can have been no house where his visits were morefrequent than at their house in Barbican. True, the family was greatlyreduced from what it had been in the old days of the _Arcades_ and_Comus_, when Lawes was teacher of music to its budding girls andboys, and the master and stage-director of their tasteful masques andprivate concerts. The Countess had been ten years dead; Lord Brackley, the heir of the house, and the elder of the boy-brothers in _Comus_, had wedded, in July 1642, when only nineteen years of age, the LadyElizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the powerful Royalist Earl, afterwardsMarquis and Duke, of Newcastle; and one or two of his sisters, unmarriedin the _Comus_ year, had since found husbands. With the widowerEarl, however, inhabiting now his town-house in Barbican, and visitingbut seldom his country mansion at Ashridge, Herts, there still remainedhis youngest daughter, the Lady Alice of _Comus_, verging on hertwenty-fifth year, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, the younger of the boy-brothers in _Comus_, now a youth of about twenty. Probably elder andmarried members of the family gave the Earl their occasional company; forhe was now about sixty-five years of age, in an infirm state of health, sorely impoverished, and in the unfortunate condition of a Peer who wouldhave been with the King if he could, and whom the King had expected to bewith him, but who was obliged to plead his infirm health and his povertyfor a kind of semi-submission to Parliament. He had reluctantly taken theCovenant (_antč_, pp. 39, 40), and there are entries in the LordsJournals proving that his excuses for non-attendance in the House werebarely allowed to pass. Music and books were among the invalid Earl'schief recreations; and some of his happiest moments in his old age mayhave been in listening to the Lady Alice, or another of his daughters, singing one of Lawes's songs, with Lawes, now the privileged artist-friend rather than the professional tutor, standing by or accompanying. What if it were the Lady Alice, and the song were that well-rememberedone of _Comus_ which she had sung, when a young girl, eleven yearsbefore, in the Hall of Ludlow Castle, before the assembled guests of herfather's Welsh Presidency, her proud mother then among the listeners, --

 "Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell"?

If so, the sound of her voice might have almost reached Milton in_his_ house close by in the same street. At all events, here, in thestreet called Barbican, by a strange chance, were assembled, within a fewyards of each other, at the very time when _Comus_ was firstpublished by Milton himself, and acknowledged among his other poems, atleast five of the persons chiefly concerned in the masque on its firstproduction--the Earl in whose honour it had been composed; the LadyAlice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, two of the chief actors: the musicianLawes, who had directed all, composed the music, and sustained the partsof Thyrsis and the Attendant Spirit in the, performance; and the poet whohad written the words. 

When Lawes was in Barbican of an evening, it was but a step for him fromthe Earl's house to Milton's. And then would there not be more music, mingled with talk perhaps about the Bridgewater family, while Mrs. Miltonsat by and listened? And would not the old Scrivener come down from hisroom to see Mr. Lawes, and bring out his choicest old music-books, andalmost set aside his son in managing the visit for musical delight? Soone fancies, and therefore keeps to the interrogative form as the safest;but the fancy here is really the most exact possible apprehension of thefacts as they are on record. Lawes's friendship with Milton had beenuninterrupted since 1634; but it so chances that the third point inMilton's life at which his intimacy with Lawes emerges into positiverecord is precisely the winter of 1645-6, when Milton was the Earl ofBridgewater's neighbour in Barbican, and his Volume of Poems was goingthrough the press. Not only was there reprinted in this volume Lawes'sDedication of the _Comus_ in 1637, "To the Right Honourable John, Lord Brackley, son and heir-apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater;" but inthe very title-page of the volume, as arranged by Moseley, Lawes's nameis associated with Milton's. "_The Songs were set in musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, &c. _, " says the title-page; and this may mean that notonly the songs in _Arcades_ and _Comus_, but other lyrical pieces in thevolume, had been set to music by Lawes. If so, a good deal more ofLawes's music to Milton's words may have been in existence about 1645than his settings of the five songs in _Comus_, which are all that havecome down to us in his own hand. Songs of Milton set by Lawes may havebeen in circulation in MS. Copies, and may have been as well known inmusical families as the numerous songs by Carew, Herrick, Waller andothers, which had been set by the same composer; and it may be to thisthat Moseley alludes by the prominent mention of Lawes in the title-pageof the collected Poems. And, if Lawes had done so much for Milton'sverse, it was fitting that Milton should make some return in kind. He hadindeed introduced skilful compliments to Lawes personally in his _Comus_;but something more express might be now appropriate. Accordingly, on the9th of February, 1645-6, or five weeks after the publication of thePoems, Milton wrote the following:--

 "TO MY FRIEND MR. HENRY LAWES. 

 "Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas ears, committing short and long, Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan: To after-age thou shalt be writ the man That with smooth air could humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. "

The original draft of this Sonnet, entitled as above, and with the date"Feb. 9, 1645, " attached, and a corrected transcript underneath, both inMilton's own hand, are in the Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. The Sonnetwas prefixed by Lawes, with the same title, in 1648 to a publication ofsome of his own and his deceased brother's compositions, entitled_Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices_; but in the Secondor 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems it reappeared with the title which ithas retained in all subsequent editions: viz. "To Mr. Henry Lawes on hisAirs. " For biographical purposes it is well to remember the first titleand the dating. The Sonnet is, in fact, a memorial of a time when Miltonand Lawes must have been much together. [Footnote: The details about thestate of the Bridge water family in the text are partly from Todd's Noteprefixed to _Comus_ (Todd's Milton, ed. 1852, IV 38-44), partly fromentries in the _Lords Journals_ already referred to in this volume. Todd has also (_ibid. _ 45-54) an elaborate, though ill-digested, note on Lawes, with particulars of his continued connexion, to 1653 andbeyond, with various members of the Bridgewater family. In theStationers' Registers there is this entry:--"Nov. 16, 1647, Rich. Woodnoth entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Downham and Mr. Bellamy, warden, a book called 'Compositions of Three Parts, ' by Henryand William Lawes, servants to his Majesty. " I suppose this was the bookpublished in 1648 with the title "_Choice Psalmes_, " &c. ]

CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OFREPLY. 

Altogether it was beginning to be a more placid time with Milton. Withhis book out, his wife restored to him, the Divorce argument dropped, andhis pupils to teach, he might look about him quietly on the state ofpublic affairs, and expect what should be the next call on him. There didnot seem to be any immediate call. In the month when his volume of Poemsappeared Presbyterianism was at its fullest tide in Parliament; but inthe succeeding months, what with the increase of Recruiters in theCommons, what with the tramp of Independency in the field growing louderand nearer as the New Model ended its work, he could see the politicalpower of the Presbyterians gradually waning, until, in April 1646, whenCromwell reappeared in London, Anti-Toleration was abashed and theWestminster Assembly itself under control. The spectacle must have beenquite to Milton's mind; but, as he had already expressed himselfsufficiently on the main question between the Independents and thePresbyterians, and as nobody doubted on which side he was to be ranked, he was disposed to take his ease on this subject too, and to leave theissue to the Parliament and the Army. He was too marked a man, however, to be quite let alone. The Presbyterian writers, true to their policy ofpublicly naming all prominent heretics and sectaries, and painting theiropinions in the most glaring colours, with a view to disgust people withthe idea of a Toleration, could not part with Milton and his DivorceDoctrine. After he and his wife were in the Barbican house together, hewas still pursued by the hue and cry. Here are two specimens:--

_Mr. Baillie on Milton. _--"Mr. Milton permits any man to put away hiswife upon his mere pleasure without any fault, and without the cognisanceof any judge, " writes Baillie in the Table of Contents to the First Partof his _Dissuasive_, published in November 1645; and in the text of thework (p. 116) the statement is amplified as follows:--"ConcerningDivorces, some of them [the Independents] go far beyond any of theBrownists; not to speak of Mr. Milton, who in a large treatise hathpleaded for a full liberty for any man to put away his wife, whenever hepleaseth, without any fault in her at all, but for any dislike ordyssympathy of humour. For I do not certainly know whether this manprofesseth Independency, albeit all the heretics here whereof ever Iheard avow themselves Independents. Whatever therefore may be said of Mr. Milton, yet Mr. Gorting and his company were men of renown among the NewEnglish Independents before Mistress Hutchinson's disgrace; and all ofthem do maintain that it is lawful for every woman to desert her husbandwhen he is not willing to follow her in her church-way. " In other words, Baillie is not sure that it is fair to charge Milton's extreme opinionupon Independency as such, inasmuch as it may be the crotchet of asolitary heretic; but he is inclined to think that Milton _is_ anIndependent, and he knows at least that Mr. Gorting and otherIndependents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes(pp. 144, 145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ to prove that he does notmisrepresent him. --The "Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "SamuelGorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and evento Roger Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct(Vol. II. 601). He had returned or been ejected from America, and wasmaking himself notorious in London. "This I am assured of from varioushands, " wrote Edwards (_Gangr. _ Part II. P. 144), "that Gorton is here inLondon, and hath been for the space of some months; and I am told alsothat he vents his opinions, and exercises in some of the meetings of thesectaries, as that he hath exercised lately at Lamb's Church, and is verygreat at one Sister Stagg's, exercising there too sometimes. " This willexplain Baillie's allusion to Gorton in connexion with Milton's DivorceDoctrine. Strange that Gorton should be cited as holding a _milder_ formof the heresy than Milton's!

_Mr. Edwards on Milton. _--Of course, Milton got into the _Gangręna. _Everybody that deviated in anything, to the right or left, from the pathof Presbyterian orthodoxy, got into that register of scandals; and wehave already availed ourselves of information incidentally supplied inthe Second and Third Parts of it as to the horror caused by Milton'sDivorce Doctrine among the Presbyterians (_antč_, pp. 189-192). We havestill to present, however, Edwards's direct notice of Milton in the FirstPart of his scandalous medley. It was published in January or February1645-6; so that, at the very time when Milton's volume of Poems was out, and he was writing his Sonnet to Lawes, he found himself pilloried againin the new book which all London was reading greedily. A leading portionof the book, as we know (_antč_, pp. 143-5), consisted of a catalogue of176 "Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies" that had been vented by diversSectaries and were then distracting and corrupting the soul of England. Well, the 154th Error, Heresy, and Blasphemy in this catalogue is this:--"That 'tis lawful for a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in natureunchangeable; and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or somethingdistasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature; and man, inregard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law to himselfin this matter, being head of the other sex, which was made for him;neither need he hear any judge therein above himself. " To this summary byEdwards of Milton's Doctrine, partly in Milton's own words, the referenceis appended in the margin: "_Vide Milton's Doctrine of Divorce. _"(_Gangręna_, Part I. P. 29. ) And so for the moment Edwards dismissesMilton, very much as Baillie had done, to return to him again in theSecond and Third Parts of his _Gangręna_, as Baillie was to do in theSecond Part of his _Dissuasive_. 

Milton was provoked. It was not in his nature to let any attack upon him, from whatever quarter, pass without notice; and attacks by persons ofsuch popular celebrity as Baillie and Edwards could hardly be ignored. But, as he had given up the public prosecution of the Divorce argument, his punishment for Edwards and Baillie came in a different form from thatwhich he had administered in the _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_ toHerbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Prynne, and the anonymousattorney. It came in verse, thus--

 "ON THE FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE. 

 "Because you have thrown off your Prelate lord, And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy, To seize the widowed whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred, Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, Taught ye by mere _A. S. _ and _Rutherford?_ Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics By _shallow Edwards_ and _Scotch What d'ye call. _ But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent, That so the Parliament May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears, And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge-- New PRESBYTER is but old PRIEST writ large. "

Milton, we are to suppose, having already written two Divorce Sonnets, did not care to write a third, but preferred to punish Edwards andBaillie in a general Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet. It turned out, however, not a Sonnet proper, but a _Sonetto con coda_, as the Italians callit, or "Sonnet with a tail"--the Anti-Presbyterian rhythm prolongingitself beyond the fourteen lines that would have completed the normalSonnet, and demanding the scorpion addition of six lines more. Into thispeculiar "tailed Sonnet" Milton condenses metrically all the rage againstPresbytery, the Westminster Assembly, and the Anti-Tolerationists, whichhad already broken forth at large in his later prose pamphlets. The pieceis unusually full of historical allusions. It breathes throughout hisacquired hatred of the Presbyterians for their opposition to Liberty ofConscience, and their determination that the "Classic Hierarchy, " orsystem of Presbyterian _classes_ which they were establishing inEngland, should be as compulsory on all as the Prelacy they had thrownoff; and there is a palpable side-hit at the recent acquisition by someof the leading Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly of University postsand the like in addition to their previous livings, notwithstanding theiroutcries against Pluralities in the time of Episcopacy. In this side-hitnot a few known Divines are slashed; and among them, I fear, Milton's oldtutor Thomas Young, now Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, as well asVicar of Stowmarket. But the open personal references are four. The "A. S. " selected as one prominent expounder of Presbytery is the Scotchman, Dr. Adam Steuart, who, under his initials "A. S. , " had been one of thefirst to rush into print in behalf of strict Presbytery and Anti-Toleration against the _Apologetical Narrative_ of the Independentsof the Assembly, and who had been replied to by John Good win, but hadsince gone into Holland (_antč_, p. 25). The "Rutherford" coupledwith him is the celebrated Scottish divine, and Commissioner to theAssembly, Samuel Rutherford, who had set forth several expositions ofstrict Scottish Presbytery for the enlightenment of the English. "ShallowEdwards" is obvious enough: he is Mr. Edwards of the _Gangręna_, once farfrom a nobody in London, but who will now, through Milton's mention ofhim, be "Shallow Edwards" to the world's end. In Milton's draft of theSonnet he was "hair-brained Edwards;" but "hair-brained" was erased, and"shallow" substituted. The "Scotch What d'ye call" has cost thecommentators more trouble. Most of them have identified him with GeorgeGillespie, whom they also, though erroneously, suppose to be the "Galasp"of one of the Divorce Sonnets. There can be little doubt now, I think, that I have detected the real "What d'ye call" in Gillespie's fellow-Commissioner from Scotland, our good friend Baillie, whose _Dissuasive_, with its reference to Milton as one of the heretics of the time, had justpreceded Edwards's _Gangręna_. I am sorry for this, but it cannot behelped. There was, I ought to add, in the original draft of the Sonnet, afifth personal allusion, which Milton saw fit, on second thoughts, toomit. Line 17, which now stands "_Clip your phylacteries, though baulkyour ears_" (_i. E. _" though pass over your ears and leave themundipped"), was originally "_Crop ye as close as marginal P--'s ears_. "As Milton had already, in his _Colasterion_, said enough about Prynne andthe heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circumstances inwhich Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for apublic joke, it was but good taste in Milton to make the change. 

It is from internal evidence that I assign this famous Anti-Presbyterianoutburst of Milton to some early month of the year 1646. [Footnote: Thelines were first published in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton'sPoems, and not there among the Sonnets, but as a piece apart, with thetitle, since always given to it, _On the New Forcers of Conscienceunder the Long Parliament_. The draft of it among the Milton MSS. AtCambridge has the simpler title _On the Forcers of Conscience_. Thisdraft, however, is not in Milton's own hand, but is a transcript by anamanuensis. Hence we have not the means of determining the date soexactly as if Milton's own draft had been preserved. I am prettyconfident that the date cannot be later than 1646, and I fancy copies mayhave been in private circulation in that year. ] It fits in exactly withthe state of public affairs and of Milton himself at that time; all themotives to it, public and private, were in existence by the March of thatyear; and it is difficult to suppose that the composition was of muchlater date. Or, if it was a little later, the lines fairly representMilton's feeling at the time to which I assign them. In March, April, andMay, 1646, Milton was one of those Englishmen who had done for ever withPresbyterianism, who rejoiced over the curb imposed at length upon theWestminster Assembly by the Independents and Erastians of the Parliament, and who longed to see that conclave dismissed, and the Scots sent packinghome. 

SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY. 

That the Scots should be sent packing home, but that they should leavethe King behind them in English custody, was the result for which all theIndependents were anxious. Through May and June 1646, it was for Milton, among the rest, to watch the progress of the negotiations with the Scotsat Newcastle round the person of the King, and at the same time toobserve the surrender of one after another of the few remaining Royalistgarrisons, including the great Royalist capital of Oxford. The siege ofthis city by Fairfax, begun May 1, a week after the King had left it, andcontinued for seven or eight weeks with the help of Cromwell and Skippon, must have been a matter of considerable personal interest to Milton, andof more interest to his wife. She was now in a state of health requiringas much freedom from anxiety as possible; but, while the siege was goingon, there was good reason for anxiety in the fact that her father andmother, with the rest of her family, or some of them, were in thebesieged city and undergoing its dangers. They had taken refuge there onthe approach of the Parliamentarian troops into Oxfordshire, leavingtheir house at Forest-hill to take its chance. What might that chance be, and what worse chances might come of the siege itself? It was a reliefwhen the news came of the actual surrender of the city (June 24), onterms exceedingly liberal to the garrison, the citizens, and all theresident Royalists. The terms, indeed, were thought far too liberal bythe Presbyterians. "The scurvy base propositions which Cromwell has givento the Malignants at Oxford has offended many, " writes Baillie, June 26;[Footnote: Baillie, II. 376] the reason for the offence being that it wasbut too clear that the Independents had been in haste to obtain Oxford onany terms whatever, in order that the army might be free to act, ifnecessary, against the Scots in the north. Anyhow the surrender had takenplace. The Princes Rupert and Maurice had left the city with a retinueand promise of liberty to go abroad; the garrison, to the number of 7, 000men, had marched out honourably, with arms and baggage; security for theproperty of the citizens and the colleges had been guaranteed; and allthe miscellaneous crowd of Royalists of various ranks that had beencooped up so long in Oxford were at liberty to disperse themselves oncertain stipulated conditions. To one of the Articles of the Treaty ofSurrender I must ask special attention, as it came to be of much domesticconsequence to Milton in future years:--

"XI. That all lords, gentlemen, clergymen, officers, soldiers, and allother persons in Oxford, or comprised in this capitulation, who haveestates real or personal under or liable to sequestrations according tothe Ordinance of Parliament, and shall desire to compound for them(except persons by name excepted by Ordinance of Parliament from pardon), shall at any time within six months after the rendering of the garrisonof Oxford be admitted to compound for their estates; which compositionshall not exceed two years' revenue for estates of inheritance, and forestates for lives, years, and other real and personal estates, shall notexceed the proportion aforesaid for inheritances, according to the valueof them: And that all persons aforesaid whose dwelling-houses aresequestered (except before-excepted) may after the rendering of thegarrison repair to them, and there abide, convenient time being allowedto such as are placed there under the sequestrations for their removal. And it is agreed that all the profits and revenues arising out of theirestates after the day of entering their names as Compounders shall remainin the hands of the tenants or occupiers, to be answered to theCompounders when they have perfected their agreements for theircompositions; And that they shall have liberty, and the General's passand protection, for their peaceable repair to and abode at their severalhouses or friends, and to go to London to attend their compositions, orelsewhere upon their necessary occasions, with freedom of their personsfrom oaths, engagements, and molestations during the space of six months, and after so long as they prosecute their compositions without wilfuldefault or neglect on their part, except an engagement by promise not tobear arms against the Parliament, nor wilfully to do any act prejudicialto their [Parliament's] affairs so long as they remain in their quarters. And it is further agreed that, from and after their compositions made, they shall be forthwith restored to and enjoy their estates, and allother immunities, as other subjects, together with the rents and profits, from the time of entering their names, discharged from sequestrations, and from fifths and twentieth parts, and other payments and impositions, except such as shall be general and common to them with others. "[Footnote: Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 38; also in Rushworth, VI. 282, 283. ]

Some hundreds of persons in Oxford at the time of its surrender must havehad their movements for the next few months determined by this article. Among these was Milton's father-in-law, Mr. Richard Powell. 

The view we arrived at as to the condition of the Powell family beforethe Civil War was (Vol. II. P. 499) that they were then "an Oxfordshirefamily of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour-gentry, and probably more than solvent if all their property had been putagainst their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their propertyheavily mortgaged. " During the war, we have now to record, on the faithof a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell himself, the losses of thefamily in one way or another had amounted to at least 3, 000_l_. Remembering this heavy item, I will try to present in figures the stateof Mr. Powell's affairs while he was shut up in Oxford:--

I. PROPERTY. 

1. Lease, till 1672, of the Forest-hill mansion and £ estate, worth about . . . . . . . . 270 a year. 2. Furniture, household-stuff, and corn in the Forest- hill mansion and appurtenances, valued at . 5003. Wood and timber stacked about the Forest-hill premises, worth . . . . . . . . . 4004. Property in land and cottages at Wheatley, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . 40 a year. 5. Debts owing to Mr. Powell . . . . . . . . 100

II. DEBTS AND OBLIGATIONS. 

1. Due to Mr. John Milton, by recognisance since 1627, as unpaid part of an original debt of £500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3002. Promised to the said Mr. Milton, when he married Mr. Powell's eldest daughter, a marriage portion of. . . . . . . . . 1, 0003. Due to Mr. Edward Ashworth, or his representatives, in redemption of a mortgage on the Wheatley property since 1631, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . 4004. Due to Sir Robert Pye, in redemption of a mortgage on the Forest-hill mansion and property since 1640, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 4005. Other debts, as estimated by Mr. Powell . . . 1, 200

It is difficult to square this ragged account (which, however, is thebest one can produce); [Footnote: My authorities for it are--(1) My ownprevious accounts of the state of Mr. Powell's affairs before the ware, Vol. II. Pp. 492-9, based on authorities there cited. (2) "A Particularof the Real and Personal Estate of Richard Powell of Forest-hill, " afterthe surrender of Oxford, attested by himself Nov. 21, 1646, and given inthe Appendix to Hamilton's _Milton's Papers_. (3) Other papers in thesame Appendix, especially an attestation of Milton himself at p. 95. (4)The documents relative to Milton's Nuncupative Will printed by Todd andothers. ] but the general effect is that Mr. Powell's affairs were in awoful condition. It was almost mockery now to style him Mr. Powell ofForest-hill and Wheatley; for, before he could call these Oxfordshireproperties his own, with their joint revenue of 310_l. _ a year, he had toclear off a debt of 1, 400_l. _ to Sir Robert Pye, and another of 400_l. _to one Ashworth, each with heavy arrears of interest. Actually, infurniture, goods, corn, and timber in the house at Forest-hill and itspremises, and in debts owing to him, he fancied himself worth 1, 000_l. _;but his debts, apart from those to Pye and Ashworth, and apart also fromthe 300_l_. Legally owing to his son-in-law Milton (which, with thepromised marriage-portion of 1, 000_l. _, might stand over to a convenienttime), amounted to 1, 200_l. _ Nay, this is too favourable a view; for, while the siege of Oxford had been going on, incidents had happened whichmuch increased Mr. Powell's difficulties:--(l) The terms of the mortgageof the Forest-hill mansion and estate to Sir Robert Pye had been thatthe mortgage was to be void if Mr. Powell should pay Sir Robert a sum of1, 510_l. _ by the 1st of July, 1641. This not having been done, Sir Roberthad had, ever since that date, a legal right to eject Mr. Powell from themansion and lands and take possession of them for his debt. A friendlycompromise appears to have been arranged on the subject in May, 1642, bythe payment to Sir Robert of l10_l. _, being the difference between theoriginal debt and the higher sum which was to void the mortgage. Nevertheless the right to take possession remained with Sir Robert; andthat he had not exercised it may have been as much owing to the fact thatOxford was difficult of access to a Parliamentarian creditor during thewar as to neighbourly forbearance. But, now that Parliament was at thegates of Oxford, and its troops quartered in and about Forest-hill, itwas but common prudence in Sir Robert to use the only method left ofsaving himself from the loss of his 1, 400_l. _ with the unpaid interest. Some time in May, accordingly, or early in June, while the siege ofOxford was in progress, he caused his servant, or agent, Laurence Farre, to take formal possession of the Forest-hill premises. At the date of thesurrender of Oxford, therefore, Mr. Powell was no longer owner of theForest-hill manor and mansion; they belonged to his neighbour, Sir RobertPye. There was, perhaps, a temporary convenience in this for Mr. Powell. If he had lost the property, his debt to Sir Robert was cancelled by theloss in the meantime; and, if at any future time he or his heirs shouldbe in a position to re-acknowledge the debt with arrears, arrangementsfor the redemption of the property would be easier with the Pye familythan with strangers. Besides, Sir Robert had taken possession of theproperty just in time to anticipate its sequestration by Parliament aspart of the estate of a Delinquent; and in this too there may have beensome intention of neighbourly service, or saving of future trouble, toMr. Powell. Still it was a hard thing for the Powells to know that theirlease of their family residence and estate was gone, and they were nolonger the Powells of Forest-hill. [Footnote: The vouchers for thestatements in the text about the transfer of Forest-hill to Sir RobertPye in May or June, 1646, are in various documents printed in Mr. Hamilton's _Milton Papers_. See especially p. 56 and Documents xxii. , xli. , xlii. , and xlv. In the Appendix. The Forest-hill property, we shallfind, did eventually come back to the Powell family; but it is worthy ofremark that in Mr. Powell's own "Particular" of the state of his propertyin 1646 the Forest-hill lease is not mentioned, but only the goods andhousehold stuff on the premises. On the other hand, of course, the1, 400_l_. And arrears of interest due to Sir Robert Pye are omitted fromthe list of debts, as cancelled by the loss of the property. ] (2). Butnot only was the lease of the family house and lands gone. There had comea sequestration, and worse than a sequestration, upon the goods, household stuff, and timber on the Forest-hill premises, which formed nowthe best part of Mr. Powell's worldly all. The order for thesequestration was issued by the Committee of Parliamentary Sequestrationsfor the County of Oxford just after Sir Robert Pye had possessed himselfof the premises; and, on the 16th of June, while Mr. Powell and hisfamily were in Oxford with the rest of the besieged, three of thesequestrators, John Webb, Richard Vivers, and John King, with assistantsand spectators, were rummaging the rooms and offices at Forest-hill, andtaking an inventory and valuation of all the furniture, goods, and stockof every kind contained in them. The inventory still exists, and has beenused in our description of the house when Milton went to fetch his bridefrom it (Vol. II. Pp. 500, 501). Now, however, it comes in more sadly. _Acopy of the Inventory, with the prices of the goods as they wereappraysed the 16th of June 1646_, is the title of the document; and, aswe read it, we see the sequestrators, with their pens behind their ears, going round the house, and through the house, and in among the wood-yards, attended by gaping country-people, and jotting down particulars. Atrunk of linen first attracts them, and they set down its contents, including "1 pair of sheets, 3 napkins, 6 yards of broad tiffany, " at16_s. _ Next is a heavier entry--to wit, "240 pieces of tymber, 200 loadesof firewood, 4 carts, 1 wain, 2 old coaches, 1 mare colt, 3 sows, 1 boar, 2 ewes, 3 parcels of boards, " valued in the aggregate at 156_l_. L2_s_. And so on they go, pell-mell, putting down "hops in the wool-house" at2_l_. , "a bull" at 1_l. _ 10_s. _, "14 quarters of mastline" at l4_l. _, "5quarters of malt" at 5_l. _, "6 bushels of wheat" at 1_l. _ 2_s. _, two moreparcels of wood at 100_l. _ and 60_l. _ respectively, a piece of growingcorn at 42_l. _, a piece of growing wheat at 6_l. _ l3_s. _ 4_d. _, and eventwo fields of meadow, which they leave unappraised for the good reasonthat they had been "eaten up by the souldiers. " At this point also arementioned, as also unappraised, some bit of land at Forest-hill, apparently not included in the lease that had gone to Sir Robert Pye, andalso Mr. Powell's property at Wheatley. Then, having concluded the outersurvey, and brought the total, so far as appraised, up to 400_l. _ or alittle more, the sequestrators proceed to a separate and specialinventory of the household goods. "In the hall" they find furniture whichthey value at 1_l. _ 4_s. _; "in the great parlour" 7_l. _; "in the littleparlour" 3_l. _; "in the study or boys' chamber" 2_l. _ l3_s. _; and so onthrough the other rooms--"Mrs. Powell's chamber, " as the best furnishedof all, counting for 8_l. _ 4_s. _, while "Mr. Powell's study" goes foronly 1_l. _ l4_s. _ Altogether the household stuff amounts in theirestimate to a little over 70_l. _ It was a monstrously good bargain to anyone who would give that sum for it. Nor, in fact, had the sequestratorsbeen taking all the trouble of the inventory without inducement. Goingabout with them all the while, and possibly haggling with them over thevalues, was an intending purchaser in the person of a certain MatthewAppletree from London--one of those dealers who followed in the wake ofthe Parliamentary forces as they advanced into Royalist districts, with aview to pick up good bargains for ready money in the confiscated propertyof Delinquents. To this Appletree the aforesaid sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, did sell all the household stuff they had inventoried, together with the best part of the out-of-door-stock, including thecarts, wain, and old coaches, the mare, the bull, and other animals, andall of the timber except 100%, worth in keeping of a Mr. Eldridge. Thesum which Appletree was to give for the whole was 335_l. _, whereas thereal value may have been about 800_l. _ or 900_l. _; and no sooner had heconcluded his bargain than he began to cart some of the lighter thingsaway. We can tell what went off in the first cart. They were: "1 arraswork chayre, 6 thrum chayres, 6 wrought stooles, 2 old greene carpetts, 1tapestry carpett, 1 wrought carpett, 1 carpett greene with fringe, 3window curtaines. " [Footnote: Document xxvi. In Appendix to Hamilton's_Milton Papers_, with references to other Documents in same Appendix. ]All this took place on the 16th of June, 1646, eight days before thesurrender of Oxford. On the preceding day, June 15, Cromwell had been atHalton, close to Forest-hill, seeing his daughter Bridget married toIreton. 

The reader now understands the state of Mr. Powell's affairs, when he wasreleased from Oxford, as well as he did himself, if not better. It wasall very well that the Articles of Capitulation had provided for theliberty of all persons among the besieged to return to their severalplaces of abode and resume their estates and callings, subject only tocomposition with Parliament within six months according to the fixedrates of fine for Delinquency. This may have been a privilege for many;but it was poor comfort for the Powells. In the first place, they had nowno home of their own to go to. Forest-hill was in possession of their oldfriend, Sir Robert Pye, who was preparing to fit up the mansion afreshfor himself or some of his family, its redemption by Mr. Powell being nowout of the question. But what remained was worse. Though the house andmanor of Forest-hill were gone, Mr. Powell, by the terms of the Treaty, might still hope to compound for the wreck of his other property whichlay under sequestration--viz. The small Wheatley estate; the goods, furniture, timber, &c. , which he had left on the Forest-hill premises;and also, it appears, some odd bits of land about Forest-hill notincluded in the mortgage to Sir Robert Pye. With what grief and anger, then, must the family, on the surrender of Oxford, have learnt that eventhis poor remainder of their property was for the most partirrecoverable--that not only had it been sequestrated by the CountyCommissioners, but most of it sold and some actually dispersed. Thereappears, indeed, to have been some very harsh, if not unfair andunderhand, dealing on the part of the sequestrating Commissioners in thismatter of the hurried sale of Mr. Powell's goods to Matthew Appletree. Itbecame afterwards, as we shall find, the subject of legal complaint bythe Powells, and of a long and tedious litigation on their behalf. Onlytwo facts need at present be noted. One is the significant fact thatamong the members of the County Committee who issued the order for thesequestration was a "Thomas Appletree, " clearly a relative of the"Matthew Appletree" who purchased the goods, while a third Appletree, named Richard, was also concerned somehow in the transaction. [Footnote:Hamilton's _Milton Papers_: Appendix, Documents xlv. And xlvii. ] Onesuspects some collusion between the public sequestrators and the privatepurchaser. Then again, when the transaction came to be litigated, oneobserves a discrepancy between the two parties as to its alleged date. The preserved copy of the inventory and valuation, signed by thesequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, is distinctly dated "the 16 ofJune 1646, " and as distinctly declares that day to have been the date ofthe sale to Appletree. [Footnote: _Ibid. _ Document xxvi. ] If this iscorrect, the sale had occurred while the Treaty for the surrender ofOxford was in progress, but exactly four days before it was completed andthe Articles of Surrender signed (June 20). On the other hand, thePowells afterwards invariably represented the sale as a violation of theArticles; they quoted June 17, and not June 16, as the date of the orderfor sequestration issued by "the Committee for the County of Oxfordsitting at Woodstock;" and they laid stress on the fact that thesequestrators Webb, Vivers, and King had sold the goods to Appletree"within few days after the granting of the said Articles. " [Footnote:Hamilton's Milton Papers: Appendix, Documents xxviii. And xiv. ] How thediscrepancy is to be accounted for one does not very well see; but oneagain suspects over-eagerness to injure Powell by obliging Appletree. Canthe sequestrators possibly have inventoried and sold the goods, as theythemselves declared, on the 16th, though the sequestrating Order was notformally issued till the 17th? If so, they were evidently in a hurry topush through the business before the Treaty for the Surrender of Oxfordwas signed, so as to deprive Mr. Powell, if possible, of any advantagefrom it. Or, after all, can there have been any contrivance of ante-dating, to disguise the fact that the sale, though intended on the 16th, was really pushed through between Saturday the 20th of June, when theArticles were signed, and Wednesday the 24th, when the surrender tookplace? In either case it must have been a sore sight to Mr. Powell, when, on this latter day, or the day after, he was free to walk over to Forest-hill, to find some of his goods already gone and Mr. Matthew Appletreesuperintending the carting away of the rest-all except the timber, whichremained upon the premises till its removal should be convenient. [Footnote: This appears from an extract from "the Certificate of theSolicitor for Sequestration in the County of Oxford, " not given in Mr. Hamilton's Milton Papers, but in Hunter's Milton Gleanings, pp. 31, 32. ]

THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRSTCHILD. 

What was to be done? Only one thing was possible. Mr. Powell must go toLondon to compound for what shreds of his sequestrated property survivedthe sale to Appletree, and at the same time to see whether he could haveany redress at head-quarters against the Oxfordshire Committee ofSequestrations. On other grounds, too, a removal to London was advisableor necessary. There, in Mr. Milton's house, the family would have a roofover their heads until some new arrangement could be made and while Mr. Powell prosecuted the composition business. Accordingly, on the 27th ofJune, or three days after the surrender of Oxford, Mr. Powell obtainedFairfax's pass, as follows:-"Suffer the bearer hereof, Mr. RichardPowell, of Forest-hill in the county Oxon. , who was in the city andgarrison of Oxford at the surrender thereof, and is to have the fullbenefit of the Articles agreed unto upon the surrender, quietly andwithout let or interruption to pass your guards, with his servants, horses, arms, goods, and all other necessaries, and to repair unto Londonor elsewhere upon his necessary occasions: And in all places where heshall reside, or whereto he shall remove, to be protected from anyviolence to his person, goods, or estate, according to the said Articles, and to have full liberty, at any time within six months, to go to anyconvenient port and to transport himself, with his servants, goods, andnecessaries, beyond the seas: And in all other things to enjoy thebenefit of the said Articles. Hereunto due obedience is to be given byall persons whom it may concern, as they will answer the contrary. Givenunder my hand and seal the 27th day of June, 1646. (Signed) T. FAIRFAX. "[Footnote: From the Composition Papers: Document i. In Hamilton'sAppendix VOL. III. ] Provided with this pass, Mr. Powell and Mrs. Powell, with some of their sons and daughters, arrived in London some time earlyin July, and took up their abode for the while at their son-in-lawMilton's in the Barbican. That they were there, and a pretty large partyof them too, we learn from Phillips. "In no very long time after her [thewife's] coming [back to Milton] she had a great resort of her kindredwith her in the house: viz. Her father and mother and several of herbrothers and sisters, which were in all pretty numerous. " The surrenderof Oxford and the loss of Forest-hill were the immediate causes of thiscrowding of the Barbican house with the Powell kindred, unless we are tosuppose that some of them had preceded Mr. Powell thither. 

Poor Mr. Powell's perplexities were never to have an end. He cannot havebeen more than a fortnight in London when he became aware not only thathe had small chance of redress at head-quarters against the injuryalready done him by the Oxfordshire sequestrators, but thatParliamentarian public opinion in Oxfordshire was pursuing him to Londonwith fell intent of farther damage. July 15, 1646, we read in the_Lords Journals_, "A Petition of the inhabitants of Banbury wasread, complaining that the one half of the town is burnt down, and partof the church and steeple pulled down; and, there being some timber andboards at one Mr. Powell's house, a Malignant, near Oxford, they desirethey may have these materials assigned them for the repair of theirchurch and town. It is Ordered, that this House thinks fit to grant thisPetition, and to desire the concurrence of the House of Commons therein, and that an Ordinance may be drawn up to that purpose. " The Commonsconcurred readily; for, in the _Commons Journals_ of the very nextday, July 16, we read, "The humble Petition of the inhabitants of Banburywas read; and it is thereupon Ordered: That the Timber and Boards cutdown by one Mr. Powell, a Malignant, out of Forest Wood near Oxford, andsequestered, being not above the value of 300%. , be bestowed upon theinhabitants of the town of Banbury, to be employed for the repair of theChurch and Steeple, and rebuilding of the Vicarage House and Common Gaolthere; and that such of the said Timber and Boards as shall remain of theuses aforesaid shall be disposed, by the members of both Houses which areof the Committee for Oxfordshire, to such of the well-affected persons ofthe said town, for the rebuilding of their houses, as to the saidmembers, or major part of them, shall seem meet. " Here was a confiscationby Parliament itself of every moveable thing belonging to Mr. Powell thathad been left at Forest-hill after the sale to Appletree. All theprecious timber, including that bought by the harpy Appletree, but notyet removed by him, was voted to these cormorants of the town of Banbury:Mr. Powell's condition was to be that of Job at his worst. He had come toLondon to plead the benefit of the Articles of Surrender; and behold, enemies in Oxfordshire and Parliament in London had conspired to striphim totally bare!

One sees the poor gentleman in his son-in-law's house utterly broken downwith the accumulation of his misfortunes, hanging his head in a corner ofthe room where they all met, letting his wife and daughters come roundhim and talk to him, but refusing to be comforted. What mattered it tohim to be told of better times that might be coming, or even of the newlittle creature of his own blood that was then daily expected into theworld? To Mrs. Powell, however, this expected event was of moreconsequence. She was a person of some temper and spirit; and, even in hertroubles, there was some spur upon her in her present motherly duty. Andso, when, on the 29th of July, 1646, being Wednesday, and the day of themonthly Fast, Milton's first-born child saw the light, at about half-pastsix in the morning, and was reported to be a daughter, what could they dobut agree to name the little thing ANNE in honour of her grandmother?[Footnote: Pedigree of the Milton Family by Sir Charles Young, GarterKing at Arms, prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, 1851. But the original authority was an inscription in Milton's own hand on ablank leaf of his wife's Bible:--"Anne, my daughter, was born July the29th, the day of the monthly Fast, between six and seven, or about halfan hour after six in the morning, 1646. " This, with subsequent entries onthe same leaf, was copied by Birch, Jan. 6, 1749-50, when the Bible wasshown him by Mrs. Foster, granddaughter to Milton (daughter to hisyoungest daughter Deborah), then keeping a chandler's shop in Cock Lane, near Shoreditch Church. It was the Bible in which Milton had written thedates of his children's births. It was, however, his wife's book: "I amthe book of Mary Milton" was written on it in her hand. --The fact thatthe 29th of July, 1846, on which Milton's first child was born, wasWednesday and a day of public Fast, is verified by a reference to the_Commons Journals_. The Commons had but a brief sitting that dayafter hearing Fast-day sermons by Mr. Caryl and Mr. Whittaker; and theirchief business was to pass thanks to these two preachers for the same. ]It was the name also of Milton's sister, once Mrs. Phillips, now Mrs. Agar; but there is little doubt that this can have been thought of onlyincidentally, and that the real compliment was to Mrs. Powell. The babewas, of course, shown to Mr. Powell in his sadness, and also to its othergrandfather, then in the house, who could be cheerier over it, as havingless reason for melancholy. "A brave girl, " is Phillips's description ofthe new-born infant; "though, whether by ill constitution, or want ofcare, she grew up more and more decrepit. " The poor girl, in fact, turnedout a kind of cripple. This, however, was not foreseen, and for thepresent there was nothing but the misfortunes of the Powells to mar thejoy in the Barbican household over the appearance of this little pledgeof the reconciliation of Milton and his wife about a year before. 

After the little girl was born, they did rouse Mr. Powell to take thenecessary steps for the recovery of what could be recovered of hisproperty, if that should prove to be anything whatsoever. The first ofthese steps consisted in appearing personally, or by petition, before acertain Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall, in Foster-lane, Cheapside, to whomhad been entrusted by Parliament the whole business of arranging thecompositions with Delinquents whose estates had been sequestrated. Tothis Committee, which must have had a very busy time of it at the end ofthe war, when would-be compounders were flocking in from north, south, and west, Mr. Powell, among others, addressed his petition on the 6th ofAugust, 1646, in these terms: "To the Honourable the Committee sitting atGoldsmiths' Hall for Compositions, the humble Petition of Richard Powell, of Forest-hill, in the County of Oxon. , Esq. , sheweth--That yourPetitioner's estate for the most part lying in the King's quarters, hedid adhere to his Majesty's party against the forces raised by Parliamentin this unnatural war; for which his Delinquency his estate lieth undersequestration. He is comprised within those Articles at the surrender ofOxford; and humbly prays to be admitted to his composition according tothe said Articles. And he shall pray, &c. --RICHARD POWELL. " [Footnote:Hamilton's Milton Papers Appendix, Document ii. ] This was all he could doin the meantime. As soon as the Committee should have leisure to attendto his case, he could take the other necessary steps. Among these wouldbe the preparation of the most perfect schedule of his estate, real andpersonal, which he could draw up, the verification of every item of thesame, and (which would be the most difficult part of the business) hisargument with the Committee that, by the Articles of Oxford, he ought tobe reinstated both in the goods and furniture which had been sold, at anunder value, by the Oxford sequestrators to Appletree, and in the300_l. _, worth of his timber which had been hastily bestowed byParliament on the people of Banbury. To these matters it would be timeenough to attend when the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall had returnedtheir answer to his Petition. Not till then either need he go through theformality of subscribing the Covenant in the presence of a parish-minister or other authorized person. That was, indeed, an indispensableformality for any Delinquent who would sue out his composition, orotherwise signify his submission to Parliament. But it was a formalitywhich a Delinquent in Mr. Powell's circumstances would willingly put offto the last moment. 

Milton's father-in-law was not the only one of his relatives who wereengaged about this time in the disagreeable business of compounding fortheir Delinquency. His younger brother, Christopher Milton, was in thesame predicament. Our last glimpse of this gentleman was after thesurrender of Reading to the Parliamentarian Army under Essex, in April1643. He was then, we found (Vol. II. Pp. 488-490), a householder inReading, and decidedly a Royalist; and, after the siege, when his fathercame from Reading to London, to reside with his Parliamentarian brother, he himself remained at Reading, a Royalist still. In the interim he hadeven been rather active as a Royalist, having been "a Commissioner forthe King, under the great seal of Oxford, for sequestering theParliament's friends of three Counties. " Latterly, in some such capacity, he had gone to Exeter; and he had been residing in that city, if not in1644, when Queen Henrietta Maria was there, at least some time before itssiege by the New Model Army. On the surrender of Exeter (April 10, 1646), on Articles similar to those afterwards given to Oxford, he had come toLondon on very much the same errand as that on which Mr. Powell camethree months later. More forward in one respect than Mr. Powell, he hadat once begun his submission to Parliament by taking the Covenant. He didso before William Barton, minister of John Zachary, in Alders-gate Ward, on the 20th of April, or almost immediately on his arrival in London. That preliminary over, he had been residing, most probably, in the houseof his mother-in-law. Widow Webber, in St. Clement's Churchyard, Strand, where Milton had boarded his wife while the house in Barbican was gettingready. Not till August 7, the day after Mr. Powell had sent in hisPetition for compounding to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, didChristopher Milton send in _his_ petition to the same body. Then, still styling himself "Christopher Milton, of Reading, in the county ofBerks, Esq. , a Councillor at Law, " he acknowledged his Delinquency inhaving served as a Commissioner of Sequestrations for the King, butprayed that he might have the benefit of the Exeter Articles ofSurrender, so as to be allowed to compound for his little property nowsequestered in turn. "I am seized in fee, to me and to my heirs, " he saidin his accompanying statement, "in possession of and in a certainmessuage or tenement situate, standing, and being within St. Martin'sparish, Ludgate, called the sign of the Cross Keys, and was of the yearlyvalue, before these troubles, 40_l. _ Personal estate I have none butwhat hath been seized and taken from me and converted to the use of theState. This is a true particular of all my estate, real and personal, forwhich I only desire to compound to free it out of sequestration, and dosubmit unto and undertake to satisfy and pay such fine as by thisCommittee for Compositions with Delinquents shall be imposed and set topay for the same in order to the freedom and discharge of my person andestate. " Two years' value of an estate was about the ordinary fine forDelinquency; but different grades of Delinquency were recognised, and thefines for very pronounced Delinquency were heavier. [Footnote:Particulars about Christopher Milton and his Delinquency are fromHamilton's _Milton Papers_, pp. 62-64, and from Documents lxii. Andlxiii. In Appendix. ]

We have arrived, biographically as well as historically, at August 1646. In this month, while Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had begunseverally to sue out their compositions for Delinquency, it is on arather crowded domestic tableau round Milton in Barbican that the curtaindrops. On one side of him was his own old father, on the other was hisfather-in-law; the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was there, with hermarried daughter Mrs. Milton, and the little baby Anne; how many of Mrs. Milton's brothers and sisters were in the group can hardly be guessed;the two boys Phillips, and one knows not how many other pupils, fill upthe interstices between the larger people in front; and one seesChristopher Milton, his wife Thomasine, their children, and perhaps theWidow Webber, as visitors in the background. Of the whole company, Ishould say, the mother-in law, Mrs. Powell, was, for the time being, andwhether to Milton's private satisfaction or not, the chief in command. 

BOOK IV. 

AUGUST 1646--JANUARY 1648-9. 

_HISTORY_:--THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. :--

I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND FAILURE OFHIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS;

II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ENGLISHPARLIAMENT AND THE ENGLISH ARMY;

III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM;

IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR;

V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM. 

_BIOGRAPHY_:-MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN. --PRIVATE ANDPUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE SONNETS, AND TRANSLATION OF NINEPSALMS: OTHER WORKS IN PROGRESS: LETTERS TO AND FROM CARLO DATI. 

CHAPTER I. 

CHARLES IN HIS CAPTIVITY. 

Charles himself becomes now the central object. For now, one may say, hewas left to think and act wholly for himself, and to work out by his owncogitations and conduct the rest of the long problem between him and hissubjects. From this point, therefore, one follows him with a moresympathetic interest than can be accorded to any part of his previouscareer. When his captivity began (which may be said to have been when theScots withdrew with him to Newcastle, May 1646) he was forty-five yearsand six months old. His hair was slightly grizzled; but otherwise he wasin the perfect strength and health of a man of spare and middle-sizedframe, whose habits had been always careful and temperate. 

Henrietta-Maria was nine years younger than her husband. For two yearsthey had not seen each other, her co-operation during that time havingbeen given from her residence at or near Paris. There her effort had beento induce the French Queen Regent and Cardinal Mazarin to interfereactively for Charles, with or without the help of the Pope; and, when shehad not succeeded in that, she had contented herself with sending toCharles from time to time her criticisms of his procedure and her notionsof the kind of arrangement he ought to try to make with his subjects inthe last extremity. The influence she had acquired over him was so greatthat these missives were perfectly efficient substitutes for her blackeyes and French-English tongue when she had been with him. Unfortunately, however, the co-agency with his absent Queen to which he thus felthimself obliged, and to which indeed he had solemnly pledged himself, hadbecome the more perplexing because, in the particular of greatestpractical moment to both, he and she tended different ways. Of the twomain concessions involved in any possible treaty with the Parliament, that of the abandonment of Episcopacy and that of the surrender of theMilitia, Charles was most tenaciously predetermined against the first. Itwas a matter of conscience with him. Next to the death of Strafford, thething in his past life which caused him the most continued privateremorse was his assent, in Feb. 1641-2, to the Bill excluding Bishopsfrom Parliament: whatever happened, he would sin no more in thatdirection. He would consent to any restriction of his kingly power in theMilitia and other matters, rather than do more in repudiation ofEpiscopacy. Nay, he had reasoned himself into a belief that the coursethus most to his conscience would be also the most expedient. Buoyinghimself up with a hope that, though Parliament demanded both concessions, they might let him off with one, he was of opinion that kingly power inthe Militia and other matters might be more easily fetched back by aretained Episcopacy than a lost Episcopacy could be restored by anyremnant of his power in the Militia. With Queen Henrietta-Maria thereasoning was different. To her, a Roman Catholic, back now among her co-religionists, what were all the disputes of British Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, but battles of kites and crows? If herhusband's kind of Protestant Church could have been retained, that ofcourse would have been well; but, as things were, she had no patiencewith those scruples of conscience for which he would sacrifice the mostsubstantial interests of himself and his family. His main object ought tobe to retain as much of real kingly power as possible, to be enjoyed byhimself and her, and transmitted to their descendants; and might not thisbe attained by a frank concession to the English of the Presbyteriansettlement, only with a personal dispensation to the King if he desiredit very much, a reservation of liberty for the Roman Catholics of Irelandand England, and, of course, a toleration for the Queen herself in herprivate Roman Catholic worship?

Actually, with all the King's firmness within himself on the Episcopacyquestion, the Queen's influence had so far prevailed as to bring him intoa position where her views rather than his had chances in their favour. That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain tomaintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was verymuch the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or atleast since Montrose's ruin at Philiphaugh, it had been in the King'smind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland, Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, while thesea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his ownirresolution, but very considerably to his dread of the Queen'sdispleasure. She did not want him to be on the Continent with her, adependent on her relatives of the French Court or on the DutchStadtholder; she wanted him to remain in Britain and struggle on, somehow, anyhow. Nay, she had devised a particular way for him, andalmost compelled him to it. A flight to the Scots and a pact with them onthe basis of some acceptance of their Presbyterianism even for England:this was the course which she had urged on him ever since his defeat byParliament had become certain; this was the course she had arranged forhim by causing the French Court to send over Montreuil to negotiate forhis reception among the Scots; and, though things had not turned outquite as she expected, and the Scots had shown no disposition to saveCharles from the tremendous Nineteen Propositions of the EnglishParliament, still she did not regret that the course had been taken. Itwas for the King now to extricate himself from the Nineteen Propositionsby his utmost ingenuity, and she did not doubt that this would be mosteasily done by adhering to the Scots, humouring them in all those partsof the Propositions that related to Presbytery, and evading or refusingthe rest. [Footnote: For this and last paragraph see _Charles I. In_1646, Introduction by Mr. Bruce, and the King's own Letters_passim_; Clar. 591-600 (Hist. ) and 961 (Life); Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed. ), II. 182-188, with notes. ]

Irritating as the Queen's conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishnessin it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in herdetermination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, andnowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, withCharles; and since July the Prince, as well as his infant sister, thePrincess Henrietta-Maria, had been under her charge. Rather thanaccompany the Prince to Paris, and undertake the responsibility ofadvising him in matters in which it would be necessary to detach him fromhis mother, Hyde, Hopton, and Lord Capel had remained in Jersey, happyfor a time in their mutual society, and Hyde, as he tells us, passing thepleasantest hours of his life in the composition of parts of his History. Others of the King's late counsellors, such as Cottington, the Earl ofBristol, and Secretary Nicholas, had domiciled themselves in Rouen, Caen, or elsewhere in France, away from Paris. But round the Queen, in Paris orat St. Germains, there _had_ gathered not a few of the exiles, gratifying the King more, as it proved, by this compliance than theothers did by their prudery. Among these were Lord Jermyn, Lord Digby, Lord Percy, Lord Wilmot, and even Lord Colepepper, though he had at firstagreed with Hyde in opposing the removal of the Prince from Jersey. Conspicuous in the same group of refugees was the veteran Thomas Hobbes, Not that he had gone to Paris at that time, as the others had done, inthe mere course of Royalist duty. He had been there for several years onhis own account, that he might be out of the turmoil of affairs at home, and free to pursue his speculations in quiet, with the relaxation ofwalks about Notre Dame and the Sorbonne, and much of the agreeablecompany of M. Gassendi. But the Prince could not be without a tutor, andHobbes was chosen to instruct him in mathematics and whatever could bebrought under that head. If what Clarendon says is true, the philosophermust have had curious remarks to make on the relations between his royalpupil and his mother, and on that lady's own behaviour. Though the Princewas sixteen years of age, she governed him with a high hand. "He neverput his hat on before the Queen, " says Clarendon; "nor was it desiredthathe should meddle in any business, or be sensible of the unhappy conditionthe royal family was in. The assignation which was made by the Court ofFrance for the better support of the Prince was annexed to the monthlyallowance given to the Queen, and received by her and distributed as shethought fit; such clothes and other things provided for his Highness aswere necessary; her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Princelived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with the dignityof the Prince of Wales to be a pensioner to the King of France. Herebynone of his Highness's servants had any pretence to ask money, but theywere contented with what should be allowed them; which was dispensed witha very sparing hand; nor was the Prince himself ever master of tenpistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn was the Queen's chiefofficer, and governed all her receipts; and he loved plenty so well thathe would not be without it, whatever others suffered who had been moreacquainted with it. " In this last sentence there is an insinuation ofmore than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members forBury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn byCharles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Royalism, had long been thespecial favourite of the Queen and the chief of her household; afterCharles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secretmarriage; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate tocountenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of ahusband while Charles was yet alive. [Footnote: Clar. 594-602 and 640;Hallam, Const. Hist. (10th ed. ), II. 183 and 188, with footnotes; andLetters of the King, to the Queen, numbered xxvii. , xxviii. , xxxii. , xxxv. , and xxxviii. In Brace's _Charles I. In_ 1646. In the last ofthese letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, Charles writes:--"Tell Jermyn, from me, that I will make him know the eminent service he hath done meconcerning Pr. Charles his coming to thee, as soon as it shall please Godto enable me to reward honest men. Likewise thank heartily, in my name, Colepepper, for his part in that business; but, above all, thou must makemy acknowledgments to the Queen of England (for none else can do it), itbeing her love that maintains my life, her kindness that upholds mycourage; which makes me eternally hers, CHARLES R. "]

Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when hiscaptivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for morethan two years and a half. The form and place of his captivity wereindeed to be varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the firstonly being his detention among the Scots at Newcastle. At the point whichwe have reached in our narrative, viz. The conclusion of the Civil War, three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May-August 1646)had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with aneye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder ofthis stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeededit. 

FIRST STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: STILL WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE: AUG. 1646--JAN. 1646-7. 

Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents--HisNegotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agentsamong the Scots--His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: WillMurray in London--Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant'sMission to Newcastle--The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A PersonalTreaty offered--Difficulties between the Scots and the EnglishParliament--Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, andCession of Charles to the English--Westminster Assembly Business, andProgress of the Presbyterian Settlement. 

Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to moveCharles. He would not take the Covenant; he would not promise a pure andsimple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of theEnglish Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatoryanswer. 

The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder ofthem, with the Scots, were in despair. "We are here, by the King'smadness, in a terrible plunge, " Baillie writes from London, Aug. 18; "thepowerful faction desires nothing so much as any colour to call the Kingand all his race away. " In another letter on the same day he says, "We[the Scots in London] strive every day to keep the House of Commons fromfalling on the King's answer. We know not what hour they will closetheir doors and declare the King fallen from his throne; which if theyonce do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, if any shouldmutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed. " And again and againin subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honestPresbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with thethought of the King's continued obstinacy. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389_et seq. _]

It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in hisobstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kindof game, he was "playing his cards" as well as he could. What wasconstantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were acomposite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw thePresbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing ofthe English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed tothe smaller and very sensitive Scottish mass, to whose keeping he hadmeanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope, which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before hisflight to the Scots, that he "should be able so to draw the Presbyteriansor the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, thathe should really be King again. " [Footnote: From a letter to Lord Digby, dated March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin (II. 132-3) from Carte. ] He couldnot now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with theexpectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. Hecould extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets ofconcessions which they demanded--the concession of Presbytery and whatwent along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what wentalong with that; and, holding the two sets of concessions in differenthands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents whichpreferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to findout with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal ofyielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppressSects and Heresy, might he not bribe the Scots and Presbyterians to joinhim against the Independents? By a good deal of yielding on the Militiaquestion, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might henot bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, andperhaps even save Episcopacy? Which course would be the best? Might notthat be found out most easily by trying both?

In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun withthe Presbyterian "card, " and had played it first among the Scots. We haveseen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation ofthem at Newcastle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals, the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or absolute Royalists, were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, withthe hope of still performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of hiscaptive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulateand disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Royalistcommanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permittedthe consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, hadembarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a shipbound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King'sreckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals makingnow no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into theHamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present veryapparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensiblyless urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept theNineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majestyhad discerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning itto account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came toNewcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he hadbeen estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more thantwo years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed atonce. " But forgiveness had passed between them; and, though the King inhis letters to the Queen continued to speak of the "bragging" of theHamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-hairedbrothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves againaddressed familiarly by the King as "Cousin James" and "Lanark. " Throughthese Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that shouldbe less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrencewith the English in all the Nineteen Propositions? The experiment wasworth trying, and in the course of September the King did try it in avery curious manner. 

The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, hadthen returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from theCommittee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoningwith his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation theEarls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesserbarons, and three burgesses. They had had an interview with the King, andhad pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by allsorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, theyreceived a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressinghis regret that his conversation with them the day before had not beensatisfactory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had thenproposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by nomeans desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But wasit not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government shouldbe legally settled in England? Well, he was willing to consent to thisafter a particular scheme. "Whereas I mentioned that the Church-government should be left to my conscience and those of my opinion, Ishall be content to restrict it to some few dioceses, as Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter, leaving all the rest ofEngland fully under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictestclauses you shall think upon against Papists and Independents. " In otherwords, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy shouldshare England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration ofanything else, Presbytery taking about four-fifths, and Episcopacy aboutone-fifth. He argues eagerly for this scheme, and points out itsadvantages. "It is true, " he says, "I desire that my own conscience andthose that are of the same opinion with me might be preserved; which Iconfess doth not as yet totally take away Episcopal Government: but thenconsider withal that this [scheme] will take away all the superstitioussects and heresies of the Papists and Independents; to which you are noless obliged by your Covenant than the taking away of Episcopacy. " Howfar this scheme of the King was discussed or even published does notappear. It was one which the Scottish Commissioners collectively couldnot even profess to entertain; and, however well disposed Hamilton mayhave been privately to abet it, he dared not give it any countenanceopenly. [Footnote: Authorities for this and the last paragraph are--Napier's Montrose, 631 _et seq. _; Burnet's Lives of the Hamiltons(ed. 1852), 359-375; Rushworth, VI. 232, and 327-329; King's Letters l. And lxiii. In _Brace's Charles I_, in 1646. The remarkable Paper ofthe King proposing a compromise between Episcopacy and Presbytery isgiven entire both by Rushworth and by Burnet It is not dated, but is oneof several letters given by both these authorities as written by the Kingin September 1646. Burnet, who had a copy before him in Lanark's hand, notes the absence of the date. In a postscript to the letter, however, asgiven in Rushworth, the King says: "I require you to give a particularand full account hereof to the General Assembly in Scotland;" and inBurnet's copy the words are "to the General Assembly _now sitting inScotland_. " This phrase would refer the Paper to some time betweenJune 3 and June 18 when the Assembly was last in session, its nextmeeting not being till August 4, 1647. In that case the Paper must havebeen delivered not to the deputation mentioned in the text, but to theprior deputation from Scotland. Of which Lanark was one (_antč_, pp. 412-418), This is possible; but it does not lessen the significance ofthe document in connexion with the King's dealings with the Hamiltons inSeptember, The extant copy of the Paper seen by Burnet was in Lanark'shand; it must therefore have been mainly through the Hamiltons thatCharles wanted to feel the pulse of Scotland respecting his proposal; andthe proposal, if first made in June, must have been a topic between theKing and the Hamiltons in subsequent months. Altogether, however, Isuspect, the proposal did not go far beyond the King and the Hamiltons, Ihave found no distinct cognisance of it in Baillie or in the Acts of theAssembly of 1646. ]

And so, with a heavy heart, Hamilton, in the end of September, returnedto Scotland. Foreseeing the King's ruin, he had resolved to withdrawaltogether from the coil of affairs, and retire to some place on theContinent. In vain did his brother Lanark fight against this resolution;and not till he had received several affectionate letters from the Kingdid he consent to remain in Britain on some last chance of being useful. Actually, from this time onwards, Hamilton and Lanark, though not yetdaring a decidedly separate policy from that of Argyle and his party inScotland, did work for the King as much as they could within limits. Hecontinued to correspond with both, but chiefly with Lanark. 

Not the less, while the King was trying to bargain with the Presbyteriansthrough the Hamiltons, was he intriguing in the opposite direction. Hisagent here was a certain Mr. William Murray, son of the parish-ministerof Dysart in Scotland, and known familiarly as Will Murray. He had beenpage or "whipping-boy" to Charles in his boyhood, had been in his serviceever since, had been recently in France, but had returned early in 1646. His connexions with the King being so close, and his wiliness notorious, he had been arrested by Parliament and committed to the Tower as a spy;and it had cost the Scottish Commissioners some trouble--Baillie for one, but especially Gillespie, who was related to Murray by marriage--toprocure his release on bail. This having been accomplished in August, hehad been allowed to go to his master in Newcastle, the ScottishCommissioners vouching that he would use all his influence to bring theKing into the right path. He had been well instructed by Baillie as toall the particulars of the duty so expected from him, not the least ofwhich, in Baillie's judgment, was that he should get the King to dismissHobbes from the tutorship of the Prince at Paris. Once with the King, however, Murray had forgotten Baillie's lectures, and relapsed into hiswily self. "Will Murray is let loose upon me from London, " the Kingwrites to the Queen Sept. 7; but on the 14th he writes that Murray hasturned out very reasonable, and that, though he will not absolutely trusthim, the rather because he is not a client of the Hamiltons, but "plainlyinclines more to Argyle, " yet he hopes to make good use of him. On the2lst we hear of "a private treaty" he has made with Murray; and theresult was that, in October, Murray, created Earl of Dysart in prospect, was back in London on a secret mission, the general aim of which was theconciliation of the Independents. On the condition that the King shouldsurrender on the Militia question, give up the Militia even for his wholelife, would the Parliamentary leaders consent to the restoration of aLimited Episcopacy after three or five years? It was a dangerous missionfor Murray, "so displeasing that it served only to put his neck to a newhazard;" and he was obliged to keep himself and his proposals as muchwithin doors as he could. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 391-396, and Appendixto same vol. , 509, 510; Burnet's Hamiltons, 378; and Hallam, II. 187-8, and Notes. ] To the Queen at Paris her husband's continued hesitation onthe Episcopacy question seemed positively fatuous. Her letters, as wellas Jermyn's and Colepepper's, had not ceased to urge bold concession onthat question, and a paction with the Scots for Presbytery. Now, accordingly, their counsels to this effect became more emphatic. TheQueen thought the King perfectly right in refusing his personal signatureto the Covenant, and advised him to remain steady to that refusal, andalso to his resolution not to let the Covenant be imposed upon others;she was moreover sure that he ought not to abandon Ireland or the EnglishRoman Catholics to the mercies of Parliament; but, with these exceptions, she would close with the Scots and Presbyterians in the matter of Church-government, if by that means she could save the Militia and the realsubstance of kingly prerogative. "We must let them have their way in whatrelates to the Bishops, " she wrote to Charles, Oct. 9/19; "which thing Iknow goes quite against your heart, and, I swear to you, against minetoo, if I saw any one way left of saving them and not destroying you. But, if you are lost, they are without resource; whereas, if you shouldbe able again to head an army, we shall restore them. Keep the Militia, and never give it up, and by that all will come back--(_Conservez-vousla Militia, et n'abandonnez jamais, et par cela tout reviendra_). "Colepepper, always rough-speaking, used more decided language. Nothingremained for the King, he wrote, but a union with the Scottish nation andthe English Presbyterians against the Independents and Anti-monarchists;and to secure such a union Episcopacy must go overboard. His Majesty'sconscience! Did his Majesty really believe that Episcopacy only was_jure divino_, and that there could be no true Church withoutBishops? If so, Colepepper personally did not agree with him, and doubtedwhether there were six Protestants in the world that did. "Come, " hebreaks out at last, "the question in short is whether you will choose tobe a King of Presbytery, or no King and yet Presbytery or perfectIndependency to be. " [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 _et seq. _;Rushworth VI. 327 _et seq. _; Clarendon, 605; Hallam, II. 185-6; andQueen's Letter in the original French in Appendix to Mr. _Bruce'sCharles I. In_ 1646. ]

It was not only by letter that such counsels from France reached Charles. Bellievre, who had succeeded Montreuil as French ambassador in England, and had been much with the King at Newcastle, plying him with the samecounsels, had reported to Mazarin that some person of credit among theEnglish exiles should be sent over, expressly to reason with Charles onthe all-important point. They seem to have had some difficulty at Parisin finding a proper person for the mission. To have sent Hobbes, even ifhe would have gone, would have been too absurd. Hobbes a successor ofAlexander Henderson in the task of persuading the King to acceptPresbytery! The person sent, however, was the one next to Hobbes inliterary repute among the Royalist exiles, the one most liked by Hobbes, and oftenest in his company. He was no other than the laureate anddramatist Will Davenant, known on the London boards by that name for agood many years before the war, but now Sir William Davenant, knighted bythe King in Sept. 1643 for his Army-plotting and his gallant soldiering. He was over forty years of age, and had just turned, or was turning, aRoman Catholic in Paris, or perhaps rather a Roman Catholic Hobbist. Clarendon, with a sneer at Davenant's profession of play-writer, makesmerry over the choice of such an agent by the Queen, Jermyn, andColepepper, and relates the result with some malice. Arrived at Newcastlelate in September, or early in October, Davenant had delivered hisletters to the King, and proceeded to argue according to hisinstructions. Charles had heard him for a while with some patience, butin a manner to show that he did not like the subject of his discourse. Determined, however, to do his work thoroughly, Davenant had gone on, becoming more fluent and confidential, It was the advice of all hisMajesty's friends that he should yield on the question of Episcopacy!"What friends?" said the King. "My Lord Jermyn, " replied Davenant. HisMajesty was not aware that Lord Jermyn had given his attention to Churchquestions. "My Lord Colepepper, " said Davenant, trying to mend hisanswer. "Colepepper has no religion, " said the King, bluntly; and then heasked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer (_i. E. _ Clarendon himself, then Sir Edward Hyde) agreed with Colepepper and Jermyn. Davenant couldnot say he did, for Sir Edward was not in Paris with the Prince, as heought to have been, but in Jersey: and he proceeded to convey from theQueen some insinuations to Hyde's discredit. The King, Clarendon is gladto tell, had defended him, and said he had perfect trust in him, and wassure _he_ would never desert the Church. Something of the wit, or of theRoman Catholic Hobbist and freethinker, had then flashed out in thespeech of the distressed envoy. He "offered some reasons of his own inwhich he mentioned the Church slightingly. " On this the King had blazedinto proper indignation, given poor Davenant "a sharper reprehension thanhe ever did to any other man, " told him never to show his face again, andfrowned him to the door. And so, says Clarendon, "the poor man, who hadindeed very good affections, " returned to Paris crestfallen. [Footnote:Clar. 606, and Wood's Ath. III. 801, 805. The King's Letters mentionDavenant's presence at Newcastle and the purport of his argument, butwithout tolling of any such _scene_ between him and Davenant as Clarendondescribes. Davenant had not arrived at Newcastle Sept. 26, but was thereOct. 3. He was back in Paris in November. ]

Perturbed by the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most atheart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in oppositedirections, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state ofsullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. ByDecember, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, Will Murrayhaving returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made uphis mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their NineteenPropositions in detail. He had prepared such an Answer, and on the 4th ofDecember he sent a draft of it to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh. Inthis draft he goes over the Propositions one by one, signifying hisagreement where it is complete, or the amount of his agreement where itis only partial. In such matters as the management of Ireland, lawsagainst the Roman Catholics, &c. , he will yield to Parliament; but hewould like an act of general oblivion for Delinquents. In the matter ofthe Militia his offer is to resign all power for ten years. In the matterof the Church he offers his consent to Presbytery for three years, as hadbeen settled by Parliament, with these provisions--(l) that there be"such forbearance to those who through scruple of conscience cannot ineverything practise according to the said rules as may consist with therule of the Word of God and the peace of the kingdom;" (2) "that hisMajesty and his household be not hindered from that form of God's servicewhich they have formerly done;" and (3) that he be allowed to add twentypersons of his own nomination to the Westminster Assembly, to aid thatbody and Parliament in considering what Church-government shall befinally adjusted after the three years' trial of Presbytery. Altogether, the concessions were the largest he had yet offered, and an elatedconsciousness of this appears in the letter which conveyed the Draft toLanark for the consideration of him and his friends in Scotland. Only onone point is he dubious. The clause promising a toleration for scrupulousconsciences may not please the Scots! He explains, however, that thatclause had been inserted "purposely, " to make the whole "relish thebetter" with the English Independents, and adds, "If my native subjects[the Scots] will so countenance this Answer that I may be sure they willstick to me in what concerns my temporal power, I will not only expungethat clause, but likewise make what declarations I shall be desiredagainst the Independents, and that really without any reserve orequivocation. " This was Charles all over!--Alas! Lanark's reply wasunfavourable. The Toleration clause, he wrote, was but one of thestumbling-blocks. As far as he could ascertain Scottish opinion, he darednot "promise the least countenance" to the King's proposals about theChurch, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, andcontemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor wasit from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, towhom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from apoint of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. Thesurrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. "By that you have alsoconfirmed them the Parliament for ten years; which is as much as to saythat we shall never see an end to our misfortunes. For while theParliament lasts you are not King; and, for me, I shall never again setfoot in England. And with this shift of your granting the Militia youhave cut your own throat (_Et avec le biais que vous avez accordé laMilice, vous vous este coupé la gorge_). " On the promised concessionwith respect to Ireland she remarks: "I am astonished that the Irish donot give themselves to some foreign king; you will force them to it atlast, seeing themselves made a sacrifice. "--The result was that, thoughthe terms of Charles's draft Answer got about, and he was in a mannercommitted to them, the message which he did formally send to Parliament, on the 20th of December, was quite different from the Draft. It explainedthat, though he had bent all his thoughts on the preparation of a writtenAnswer to the Nineteen Propositions, "the more he endeavoured it he moreplainly saw that any answer he could make would be subject tomisinformations and misconstructions. " He repeats, therefore, his earnestdesire for a personal treaty in London. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons, 381-389 (for the interesting correspondence between the King and Lanark);King's Letters, liii. -lxii. In Bruce's _Charles I. In_ 1646, andQueen's Letters in Appendix to the same: Rushworth, VI. 393; and Parl. Hist. III. 537. ]

Meanwhile, quite independently of the King, his messages, or his wishes, matters had been creeping on to a definite issue. For four months nowthere had been a most intricate debate between the Scots and the EnglishParliament on the distinct and yet inseparable questions of the Disposalof the King's Person and the Settlement of Money Accounts. Though thereasoning on both sides on the first question was from Law and Logic, itwas heated by international animosity. Lord Loudoun was the chief speakerfor the Scottish Commissioners in the London conferences; the greatspeech on the English side was thought to be that of Mr. ThomasChalloner, a Recruiter for Richmond in Yorkshire; but the speeches, published and unpublished, were innumerable, and a mere abstract of themfills forty pages in Rushworth. Not represented by so much printed matternow, but as prolix then, was the dispute on the question of Accounts. Theclaim of the Scots for army-arrears and indemnity was for a much vastersum than the English would acknowledge. This item and that item werecontested, and the Accounts of the two nations could not be brought tocorrespond. Not even when the Scots consented to a composition for aslump sum roughly calculated was there an approach to agreement. TheScots thought 500, 000_l_. Little enough; the English thought the sumexorbitant. Equally on this question as on the other it was theIndependents that were fiercest against the Scots and the most carelessof their feelings; and again and again the Presbyterians had to deprecatethe rudeness shown to their "Scottish brethren. " And so on and on thedouble dispute had wound its slow length between the two sets ofCommissioners, the English Parliament looking on and interfering, and theScottish Parliament, after its meeting on the 3rd of November, contributing its opinions and votes from Edinburgh. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 322-372. ]

To Charles in Newcastle all this had been inexpressibly interesting. Arupture between the English and the Scots, such as would occasion theretreat of the Scots into their own country, carrying him with them, wasthe very greatest of his chances; and it was in the fond dream of such achance that he had procrastinated his direct dealings with the EnglishParliament. But from this dream there was to be a rude awakening. It camein December, precisely at the time when he was corresponding with theQueen and Lanark over his proposed compromises on all the NineteenPropositions. Already, indeed, there had been signs that the disputebetween the two nations was working itself to an end. By laying entirelyaside the question of the Disposal of the King's person, and prosecutingthe question of Accounts by itself, difficulties had been removed andprogress made. It had been agreed that the sum to be paid to the Scotsshould be 400, 000_l. _ in all, one-half to be paid before they leftEngland, and the rest in subsequent instalments; and actually on the 16thof December the first moiety of 200, 000_l. _ was off from London inchests and bags, packed in thirty-six carts, to be under the charge ofSkippon in the North till it should be delivered to the Scots. Yes! butwould it ever be delivered to the Scots? Not a word was in writing as tothe surrender of the King by the Scots, but only about their surrender ofthe English towns and garrisons held by them; and, so far as appeared, the money was to be theirs even if they kept the King. Here, however, laythe very skill of the policy that had been adopted. Instead of persistingin the theoretical question of the relative rights of the two nations inthe matter of the custody of the King, and wrangling over that questionin its unfortunate conjunction with a purely pecuniary question, it hadbeen resolved to close the pecuniary question by putting down the moneyin sight of the Scots as undisputedly theirs on other grounds, andallowing them to decide for themselves, under a sense of their duty toall the three kingdoms, whether they would let Charles go to Scotlandwith them or would leave him in England. Precisely in this way was theissue reached. But oh! with what trembling among the Scots, what waveringof the balance to the very last! Dec. 16, the very day when the moneyleft London, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament or Conventionof Estates in Edinburgh, the result of which was a vote that the ScottishCommissioners in London should be instructed to "press his Majesty'scoming to London with honour, safety, and freedom, " for a personaltreaty, and that resolutions should go forth from the Scottish nation "tomaintain monarchical government in his Majesty's person and posterity, and his just title to the crown of England. " This vote, passing overaltogether the question of the surrender of the King, and pledging theScots to his interests generally, was a stroke in his favour by theHamilton party in the Convention, carried by their momentarypreponderance. But the flash was brief. There was in Edinburgh anotherorgan of Scottish opinion, more powerful at that instant than even theConvention of Estates. This was the Commission of the General Assembly ofthe Kirk, or that Committee of the last General Assembly whose businessit was to look after all affairs of importance to the Kirk till the nextGeneral Assembly should meet. The Commission then in power, byappointment of the Assembly of June 1646, consisted of eighty-nineministers and about as many lay-elders; and among these latter were theMarquis of Argyle, the Earls of Crawford, Marischal, Glencairn, Cassilis, Dunfermline, Tullibardine, Buccleuch, Lothian, and Lanark, besides manyother lords and lairds. It was in fact a kind of ecclesiasticalParliament by the side of the nominal Parliament, and with most of theParliamentary leaders in it, but these so encompassed by the clergy thatthe Hamilton influence was slight in it and the Argyle policy all-prevailing. Now, on the very day after that of the Hamilton resolutionsin Parliament for the King (Dec. 17), and when Parliament was again indebate, the Commission spoke out. In "A Solemn and Seasonable Warning toall Estates and Degrees of Persons throughout the Land" they proclaimedtheir view of the national duty. Nothing could be more dangerous, theysaid, than that his Majesty should be allowed to come into Scotland, "henot having as yet subscribed the League and Covenant, nor satisfied thelawful desires of his loyal subjects in both nations;" and they thereforeprayed that this might be prevented, and that, in justice to the English, to whom the Scots were bound by the Covenant, the King should not bewithdrawn at that moment from English influence and surroundings. Thisopinion of the Commission at once turned the balance in the Convention. The resolutions of the previous day were rescinded; and on that and thefew following days it was agreed, Hamilton and Lanark protesting, thatnothing less than the King's absolute consent to the NineteenPropositions would be satisfactory, and that, unless he made his peacewith the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letterswith this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game ofchess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan ofescape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But itcould not be managed. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 389-393; Burnet'sHamiltons, 389-393; Baillie, III. 4, 5; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536. ]

January 1646-7 was an eventful month. On the 1st it was settled by thetwo Houses that Holdenby House, usually called Holmby House, inNorthamptonshire, should be the King's residence during farther treatywith him; and on the 6th the Commissioners were appointed who shouldreceive him from the Scots, and conduct him to Holmby. The Commissionersfor the Lords were the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh and Lord Montague;those for the Commons were Sir William Armyn (for whom Sir JamesHarrington was substituted), Sir John Holland, Sir Walter Earle, Sir JohnCoke, Mr. John Crewe, and General Browne. On the 13th these Commissionersset out from London, with two Assembly Divines, Mr. Stephen Marshall andMr. Caryl, in their train, besides a physician and other appointedpersons. On the 23rd they were at Newcastle. On the whole, the Kingseemed perfectly content. When the English Commissioners first waited onhim and informed him that they were to convey him to Holmby, he "inquiredhow the ways were. " On Saturday, Jan. 30, the Scots marched out ofNewcastle, leaving the King with the English Commissioners, and Skipponmarched in. Within a few days more, the 200, 000_l. _ having beenpunctually paid, and receipts taken in most formal fashion, as prescribedby a Treaty signed at London Dec. 23, the Scots were out of England. TheScottish political Commissioners (Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Messrs. Erskine, Kennedy, and Barclay) had left London immediately after theconclusion of the Treaty. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 7 and 12, 1646-7; Rushworth, VI. 393-398; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536; Burnet'sHamiltons, 393-397. Burnet has a curious blunder here, and founds a jokeon it. Before the Scottish Commissioners left London, he says, there wasa debate in the Commons as to the form of the thanks to be tendered tothem. It was proposed, he says, to thank them for their _civilities andgood offices_, but the Independents carried it by 24 votes to strike outthe words _good offices_ and thank them for their _civilities_ only. "Andso all those noble characters they were wont to give the ScottishCommissioners on every occasion concluded now in this, that they were_well-bred gentlemen_. " On turning to the Commons Journals for the day inquestion (Dec. 24, 1646), one finds what really occurred. It was reportedthat Loudoun, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, wereabout to take their leave, and that they desired to know whether theycould do any service for the English Parliament with the Parliament ofScotland. The vote was on the question whether thanks should be returnedto them _for all their civilities and for this their last kind offer_. The Independents (Haselrig and Evelyn, tellers) wanted it to stand so;the Presbyterians (Stapleton and Sir Roger North, tellers) wanted an_addition_ to be made, _i. E. _, I suppose, wanted some particular use tobe made of the offer of the Commissioners to convey a message to theScottish Parliament. Actually it was carried by 129 to 105 that thequestion should stand as proposed by the Independents; and, the Lordsconcurring next day, the Commissioners were thanked in those terms. ]

With the Scottish lay Commissioners, there returned to Scotland at thistime a Scot who has been more familiar to us in these pages than any ofthem. For a long time, and especially since Henderson had gone, Bailliehad been anxious to return home. Having now obtained the necessarypermission, he had packed up his books, had taken a formal farewell ofthe Westminster Assembly, in which he had sat for more than three years, had received the warmest thanks of that body and the gift of a silvercup, and so, in the company of Loudoun and Lauderdale, had made hisjourney northwards, first to Newcastle, thence to Edinburgh, and thenceto his family in Glasgow. On the whole, he had left the Londoners, andthe English people generally, at a moment when the state of things amongthem was pleasing to his Presbyterian heart. For, both in the Parliamentand in the Westminster Assembly, notwithstanding the engrossing interestof the negotiations with and concerning the King, there had been, in thecourse of the last five months, a good deal of progress towards thecompletion of the Presbyterian settlement. Thus, in Parliament, there hadbeen (Oct. 9) "An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishopswithin the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, and for settlingtheir lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of theCommonwealth. " It was an Ordinance the first portion of which may seembut the unnecessary execution of a long-dead corpse; but the secondportion was of practical importance, and prepared the way for anothermeasure (Nov. 16), entitled "An Ordinance for appointing the sale of theBishops' lands for the use of the Commonwealth. " Then in the WestminsterAssembly there had been such industry over the _Confession of Faith_that nineteen chapters of it had been presented to the Commons on Sept. 25, a duplicate of the same to the Lords Oct. 1, and so with the residue, till on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 the two Houses respectively had the text ofthe entire work before them. The Houses had not yet passed the work, orpermitted it to be divulged, but had only ordered a certain number ofcopies to be printed for their own use; nay they had, with what seemed anexcess of punctiliousness, required the Assembly to send in theirScriptural proofs for all the Articles of the Confession; but still, whenBaillie left London, that great business might be considered off theAssembly's hands. A good deal also had been done in the _Catechisms_by the Assembly; and, if the Assembly's revised edition of Rous's_Metrical Version of the Psalms_ had not received full Parliamentaryenactment, that was because the Lords still stood out for Mr. Barton'scompeting Version. It was satisfactory to Baillie that, on his return toScotland, he could report to his countrymen that so much had been donefor the Presbyterianizing of England. There were, indeed, drawbacks. Bothin London and in Lancashire, where the machinery of Presbytery wasalready in operation, the procedure was a little languid; and in otherparts of England, "owing to the sottish negligence of the ministers andgentry of the shires more than the Parliament, " they were wofully slow insetting up the Elderships and the Presbyteries. Even worse than this wasthe unchecked abundance of Sects and Heresies throughout England, and theprevalence of the poisonous tenet of Toleration. An Ordinance for thesuppression of Blasphemies and Heresies, which had been occupying a GrandCommittee of the Commons through September, October, November, andDecember, had not yet emerged into light. These were certainly seriouscauses of regret to Baillie, but his mood altogether was one ofthankfulness and hope. "This is the incomparably best people I ever knewif they were in the hands of any governors of tolerable parts, " had beenhis verdict on the English in a letter of Dec. 7, when he was preparingto take leave of them. An Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemieswould make them perfect, and till that came were there not substitutes?Had not a number of the orthodox ministers of London put forth a famoustreatise, called _Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici_, arguing forthe Divine Right of Presbytery in a manner which left nothing to bedesired? The Second Part of Baillie's own _Dissuasive from the Errorsof the Time_, published just as he was leaving London (Dec. 28, 1646), and intended as a parting-gift to the English, might also do some good!And, though he himself was no longer to sit in the Westminster Assembly, had he not left there his excellent colleagues, Samuel Rutherford andGeorge Gillespie? [Footnote: Baillie, II. 397-403, 406-7, 410-416, andIII. 1-5; Rushworth, VI. 373-388; Parl. Hist. III. 518; Commons and LordsJournals of dates given; Neal's Puritans III. 350-51. ]

SECOND STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: AT HOLMBY HOUSE: FEB. 1646-7--JUNE 1647. 

The King's Manner of Life at Holmby--New Omens in his favour from theRelations of Parliament to its own Army--Proposals to disband the Armyand reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland--Summary of IrishAffairs since 1641--Army's Anger at the proposal to disband it--View ofthe State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it: Passion forToleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers--Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, andVotes in Parliament to that effect--Resistance of the Army: Petitions andRemonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators--Cromwell'sEfforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous--Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army--The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce'sAbduction of the King from Holmby--Westminster Assembly Business: FirstProvincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of OxfordUniversity. 

Holmby or Holdenby House in Northamptonshire had been built by LordChancellor Hatton in Elizabeth's time, but afterwards purchased by QueenAnne for her son Charles while he was but Duke of York. It was a statelymansion, with gardens, very much to the King's taste. It was not till the16th of February that he arrived there, the journey from Newcastle havingbeen broken by halts at various places, at each of which crowds hadgathered respectfully to see him, and poor people had begged for hisroyal touch to cure them of the king's evil. Near Nottingham he had beenmet by General Fairfax, who had dismounted, kissed his hand, and thenturned back, conveying him through that town, and conversing with him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 398; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 115; Sir ThomasHerbert's _Memoirs of the last Two Years of the Reign of King CharlesI. _. (1813), 13-15. Herbert was a kinsman and _protégé_ of the Pembrokefamily, who had travelled much in the East, published an account of histravels, and had acquired quiet and ęsthetic tastes. He had been invarious posts of Parliamentary employment, procured for him by Philip, Earl of Pembroke; but, having accompanied that Earl when he went toNewcastle as one of the Commissioners to take charge of the King, he hadattracted the King's regard, so that, on the dismissal of some of theKing's attendants at Holmby, _he_ was selected to be one of the grooms ofthe bedchamber. He remained faithfully with the King to his death, cherished his memory afterwards, was made a baronet by Charles II. Afterthe Restoration, and died in 1681. Two or three years before his death hewrote, at a friend's request, the above-mentioned _Memoirs_, containinginteresting reminiscences and anecdotes of Charles in his captivity. Theywere reprinted in 1702 and again in 1813 (see a memoir of Herbert inWood's Ath. IV. 15-42). ]

During the four months of the King's stay at Holmby his mode of life wasvery regular and pleasant. The house and its appurtenances, being large, easily accommodated not only the King and all his permitted servants, butalso the Parliamentary Commissioners and their retinue, besides Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, Colonel Graves as military commandant, and the under-officers and soldiers of the guard. The allowance of Parliament for theKing's own expenses was 50_l. _ a day, so that "all the tables wereas well furnished as they used to be when his Majesty was in a peacefuland flourishing state. " At meal-times the Commissioners always waitedupon his Majesty, and the two chaplains were generally also present. Itwas almost his only complaint that Parliament persisted in keeping thesetwo reverend gentlemen about him, and would not let him have chaplains ofhis own persuasion. But, though he declined the religious services ofMessrs. Marshall and Caryl, and said grace at table himself rather thanask them to do so, he was civil to them personally, and allowed such ofhis servants as chose to attend their sermons. On Sundays Charles kepthimself quite retired to his private devotions and meditations, and onother days two or three hours were always spent in reading and study. Among his favourite English books were Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Herbert's Poems, Fairfax's Tasso, Harrington's Ariosto, Spenser's Faery Queene, and, above all, Shakespeare's Plays, his copy of the Second Folio Edition of which isstill in extant, with the words "_Dum spiro spero: C. R. _" writtenon it by his own hand. But he read also in Greek and Latin, and fluentlyin French, Italian, and Spanish. At dinner and supper he ate of but a fewdishes, and drank sparingly of beer, or wine and water mixed by himself. He disliked tobacco extremely, and was offended by any whiff of it nearhis presence. His chief relaxations were playing at chess after meals, and walking much in the garden; but, not unfrequently, as he was fond ofbowls and there was no good bowling-green at Holmby, he would ride toLord Spencer's house at Althorp, about three miles off, or even to LordVaux's at Harrowden, nine miles off, at both of which places there wereexcellent bowling-greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, ofcourse, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly butthat a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country-bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand. Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King'schamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large silver basinon a low table by the bed, on which also were placed the King's twowatches and the silver bell with which he called his grooms. This customhad begun at Oxford and had become invariable. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 452-4; Parl. Hist. III. 551 and 557-9; Clar. 608; but chiefly Herbert'sMemoirs, 15-25, 61-65, 124-126, and 131. It is remarkable that Herbert, who mentions the other favourite English books of Charles named in thetext, does not mention Shakespeare; for Charles's copy of the SecondFolio, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, was given to Herbert himselfby Charles before his death, and bears, in addition to the inscription inCharles's hand, this in Herbert's, "_Ex dono Serenissimi Regis Car. Servo suo humiliss. T. Herbert_" (Lowndes by Bohn, 2, 257). Herbertmentions that _Dum spiro spero_ was a favourite motto with Charles, inscribed by him on many books. But that Shakespeare was a primefavourite of Charles we have Milton's authority in the well-known phrasein the [Greek: Gakonoklastęs]--"one whom we well know was the closetcompanion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare. "]

Of course there were continued negotiations between Charles and theParliament. Anything done in this way, however, during the four months ofthe stay at Holmby, hardly deserves notice. For at that time there was ahuge new clouding of the air in England, pregnant with no one knew whatchanges, and making the postponement of conclusions between the King andthe Parliament quite natural on both sides. All the world has heard ofthe extraordinary quarrel between the Long Parliament and its ownvictorious Army. 

The war being over, and the troublesome Scots out of England at last, what remained but to disband the Parliamentarian Army, and enter on aperiod of peace, retrenched expense, and renewed industry? This was whatall the orthodox politicians, and especially all the Presbyterians, weresaying. In the very act of saying it, however, they faltered andexplained. By disbanding they did not mean complete disbanding; someforce must still be kept up in England for garrison duty, as a policeagainst fresh Royalist attempts; they meant the disbanding of all beyondthe moderate force needed for such use; nay, they did not even then meanactual disbanding of all the surplus; they contemplated the immediate re-enlistment and re-organization of a goodly portion of the surplus forservice in another employment. What that was, who needed to be told? Didthere not remain for England a tremendous and long-postponed duty beyondher own bounds? Now at length, now at length, was there not leisure toattend to the case of unhappy Ireland?

Unhappy Ireland! Her history at any time is hard to write; but no humanintellect could make a clear story of those five particular years oftriple distractedness which intervene between the murderous Insurrectionof 1641-2 (Vol. II. Pp. 308-314) and the beginning of 1647. One can butnote a few points. 

Through the first year or more of the Insurrection there seemed to be buttwo parties in Ireland. There was the vast party of the Insurgents, orConfederates, including the whole Roman Catholic population of theisland, both the old Irish natives, who had mainly begun the Rebellion, and the Catholics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually themere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed intosomething like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by GeneralsPreston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of theRebellion and the government of Confederate Ireland had been provided forby the assembling at Kilkenny of a Parliament of Roman Catholic lords, prelates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the appointment bythat body of county-councils, provincial councils, and a supremeexecutive council. The other party in Ireland was the small Protestantparty, consisting of the mixed English and Scottish population of certaindistricts of the east and north coasts, with the surviving Protestantsfrom other parts amongst them, and with Dublin and other strongholdsstill in their possession. At their head ought to have been the Earl ofLeicester, Stafford's successor in the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy. But, asLeicester had been detained in England by the King, the management haddevolved on the Lords Justices and Councillors resident in Dublin, and ontheir military assessor, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, who had beenLieutenant-General of the Irish forces under Strafford. In fact it wasthis able Ormond that had to fight the Rebellion. Though supplies andforces, with some good officers, were sent over from England, and aspecial army of Scots under General Monro had been lent to the EnglishParliament for service in Ulster, it was still Ormond that had to directin chief. His success had been very considerable. 

In the course of 1643, however, after the Civil War had begun in England, Ireland and the Rebellion there had become related in a strangely complexmanner to the struggle between the King and the Parliament. Whatevershare the King may have had, through the Queen, in first exciting theRoman Catholics, he had come to regard the Irish distraction as amagazine of chances in his favour. If he could get into his own hands thecommand of the Protestant forces employed in putting down the Rebellion, he would have an army in Ireland ready for his service generally, and thepolicy would then be to come to an arrangement with the Roman CatholicInsurgents, so as to free that army, and perhaps the Insurgents too, forhis service in England. Now, though the Lords Justices and most of theCouncillors in Dublin were Parliamentarian in their sympathies, Ormondwas a Royalist, of a family old in Ireland, far from fanatical in his ownProtestantism, and with many relatives and friends among the RomanCatholics. Willing enough, therefore, to fight on against theConfederates, he was yet as willing, on instructions from Oxford, to makean arrangement with them in the King's interests. Actually, on the 15thof September, 1643, he did make a year's truce with the Rebels, whichpermitted the despatch of some portions of his own force, mixed withIrish Roman Catholics, to the King's assistance in England. Vehement hadbeen the outcry of the English Parliamentarians over this breach of theKing's compact with them to leave the conduct of the Irish war wholly tothe Parliament; and from that moment there were two Protestant powers ortrusteeships for the management of the Irish Rebellion. Ormond, made aMarquis, and raised to the Lord-Lieutenancy in Leicester's place (Jan. 1643-4), was trustee for the King, and continued to rule in Dublin, boundby his truce. In other parts of Ireland, however, the war was maintainedin the interests of Parliament and by instructions from London--inMunster by Lord Inchiquin; in Connaught by Sir Charles Coote; and inUlster by Monro and his Scots, in conjunction with English officers andadvisers. So the imbroglio had gone on, a mere chaos of mutual sieges andskirmishes in bogs, and Ireland in fact, through the stress of the CivilWar at home, all but abandoned to herself in the meantime. TheConfederates were stronger after the end of Ormond's year of truce thanthey had been before; and in 1645 they were up again against Ormond, aswell as against Inchiquin, Coote, and Monro. They had already receivedhelp from France and Spain, and in Oct. 1645 there arrived among them noless than a Papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini, with a retinue of otherItalians, to take possession of the tumult in the name of his Holiness, and regulate it sacerdotally. In this complexity Ormond had still kepthis footing. He had kept it even in the midst of a sudden shock given tohis Vice-royalty by Charles himself. 

Without Ormond's knowledge, Charles had been trafficking for months withthe Confederate Irish Catholics through another plenipotentiary. In Jan. 1645-6 it came out, by accident, that the Roman Catholic Earl ofGlamorgan, to whose presence in Ireland for some months no particularsignificance had been attached, had been treating, in Charles's name, fora Peace with the Confederates on the basis not merely of a repeal of allpenal laws against their Religion, but even of its establishment inIreland. All Britain and Ireland were aghast at the discovery, and evenOrmond reeled. Recovering himself, however, he did what he could to saveCharles from the results of his own double-dealing. Glamorgan wasimprisoned for a time, with tremendous threats; all publicity was givento Charles's letters authorizing proceedings against him as "one whoeither out of falseness, presumption, or folly, hath so hazarded theblemishing of his Majesty's reputation with his good subjects, and soimpertinently framed these Articles out of his own head;" and meanwhileCharles's letters of consolation to Glamorgan, with his thanks, andpromises of "revenge and reparation, " remained private. 

One consequence of the Glamorgan exposure, happening as it did when theKing had been all but completely beaten in England, was a resolution ofParliament that Irish affairs should be managed thenceforward not by themere Committee for these affairs meeting at Derby House, Westminster, andcommunicating with Inchiquin, Coote, and others in Ireland, but by "asingle person of honour, " in fact a Parliamentary Lord-Lieutenant. Forthis high post there was chosen Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, M. P. ForYarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This was partly a tribute to Lord Lisle'sown zeal and to service he had already rendered in Ireland, partly acompliment to his father, the Earl of Leicester, whom Charles haddisplaced from the Lord-Lieutenancy to make way for Ormond. Accordingly, from April 1646, while Ormond remained in power for Charles at Dublin, itwas in the name of Lord Lisle, as "Lord Lieutenant-General, " that allcommissions for Parliament respecting Ireland were issued. Lord Lisle, however, had not gone over to Ireland, but had been waiting till he couldtake troops with him. It remained, therefore, for Ormond to do what hefinally could in Ireland for the fallen King. He had been in negotiationwith the Confederates for a Peace on more respectable terms thanGlamorgan's, and yet valuable for the King; and though, after Charles'sflight to the Scots, letters had come from Newcastle (June 11)countermanding previous instructions, Ormond had persevered. On the 28thof July, 1646, _Ormond's Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels_were signed at Dublin and published for general information. Theypromised the repeal of all acts against the Roman Catholic Religion inIreland, and admission of Roman Catholics to a proportion of all placesof public trust; and the recompense was to be an army of 10, 000 Irish forhis Majesty's assistance in England. The indignation among theParliamentarians in Ireland, and throughout England and Scotland, wasimmense, and Ormond was the best-abused man living. Fortunately for him, he was extricated from the consequences of his own Treaty. The PapalNuncio disowned it as insulting to the Church after Glamorgan's; theRoman Catholic clergy gathered round the Nuncio; there were riotswherever it was proclaimed; excommunications were thundered against itsadherents; the Confederate Commissioners who had made the Treaty wereimprisoned; the Nuncio himself became generalissimo, and, with Owen RoeO'Neile's army on one side of him and General Preston's on the other, declared war afresh against Ormond, and marched in his robes upon Dublin. For Ormond then there remained one plain duty. To save English rule andthe existence of Protestantism in Ireland, he must hand over Dublin andthe entire management of the war to the English Parliament. Havingprocured the King's full consent, he began a treaty with Parliament tothis effect in Nov. 1646. As he was staunch in his desire to make thebest bargain for the King he could, he was in no hurry; so that inFebruary 1646-7, when the King was taken to Holmby, Ormond was still inDublin, going on with the Treaty. In reality, however, by that timeIreland was as good as transferred to the Parliament. They had acted onthe knowledge. Dec. 23, 1646, "Resolved that this House doth declare thatthey will prosecute and carry on an offensive war in Ireland for theregaining of that kingdom to the obedience of the kingdom of England;"Jan. 4, 1646-7, "Resolved that an Ordinance be forthwith prepared andbrought in for establishing and settling the same Form of Church-government in the kingdom of Ireland as is or shall be established in thekingdom of England;" such were two momentous votes of the Commons whenthe King was about to leave Newcastle. Nay, on the 28th of January, whenthe Scots were handing over the King to the English, Lord Lisle had leftLondon for Ireland to assume his Lord-Lieutenancy. A new sword of Statehad been made for him; his Irish Council, of nine members at £500 a yeareach, had been nominated; and, at his special request, Major ThomasHarrison of the New Model had accompanied him. [Footnote: Authorities forthe summary of Irish affairs from 1641 to 1647 given in the text are--Rushworth, VI. 238-249; Clar. 641, and at various other points; Whitlockeunder Jan. 25 and 28 and March 9, 1646-7; Godwin, I. 245 _et seq. _, and II. 102 _et seq. _; Commons Journals of dates given, with otherentries from Dec. 1646 to Feb. 1646-7; and Carte's Ormond. Carte's largebook is of some value from the abundance of information that was at hisdisposal, but is intrinsically silly. ]

What could Lord Lisle do without troops? Now was the time for England toperform fully for "the gasping and bleeding Island" that duty of which, with all the excuse of her own pressing needs, she had been long toonegligent. Now was the time to revenge the massacre of 1641, and re-subject Ireland to English rule and the one only right faith and worship. And were not the means at hand? An army of 25, 000 or 30, 000 Englishmenwas now standing idle: why not disband and cashier part of them, andrecast the rest into a new army for the service of Ireland? The questionwas obvious and natural to all; but it was put most loudly by thePresbyterians, because of a peculiar interest in it. They had never likedthe Army of the New Model; all its victories had not reconciled them toit, or made them cease to regret the Army of the Old Model, That had beena respectable army, with the Earl of Essex at its head; this was an armyof Independents, Sectaries, Tolerationists. Might not the disbanding ofthis army be so managed as to be at once a deliverance of England from agreat danger and the salvation of Ireland? What was necessary in theprocess was to get rid of Cromwell, his followers among the officers, andthe most peccant parts of the soldiery, so as to leave a sufficient massto be re-formed, with additions, into an army of the Old Model type, thecommand of which might be given to Fairfax if he would take it, orperhaps to honest Skippon, or, best of all, to Sir William Waller. 

This had been the understanding between the English Presbyterians andtheir Scottish friends since the close of the war. [Footnote: In a letterof Baillie's October 2, 1646, he expects "the Sectarian Army disbandedand that party humbled. "] There was, however, another party likely tohave a voice in the business. This was the Army itself. 

Never under the sun had there been such an army before. It was not largeaccording to our modern ideas of armies: only some 25, 000 or 30, 000 men, four-fifths of them foot-soldiers and the rest horse-troopers anddragoons. But imagine these all hardy men, thoroughly drilled anddisciplined, and conscious that it was they who had done the work, theywho had fought the battles, they who had saved England. Imagine fartherthat this Army had somehow come to be constituted, through its entiremass, on Cromwell's extraordinary principle, announced by him to Hampdenat the beginning of the war, that the power of an army depends ultimatelyon the "spirit, " or intrinsic moral mood, of the individuals composingit. Imagine that the atoms of this army were all "men of a spirit, " menwho had not fought as hirelings, but as earnest partakers in a greatcause. Imagine them, if you like, as an army of fanatics. This phrase, however, might mislead, unless qualified. 

The common conception of an army of fanatics is that of an army mad forone set of tenets. Now the Parliamentary Army was really, as thePresbyterians called it, an Army of Sectaries. It was a miscellany of allthe forms of Puritan belief known in England, with forms of beliefincluded that were not Puritan. The much largest proportion, afterPresbyterians, of whom there were many, and ordinary Independents, ofwhom there were more, were Sectaries of the fervid and devout sorts, suchas Baptists, Old Brownists, and Antinomians, with mystical Millenariesand Seekers, all passionately Scriptural, saturated with the language andhistory of the Old Testament, and zealously Anti-Romanist and Anti-prelatic; and these, on the whole, were the men after Cromwell's heart. Such, among others, was Harrison--whom Baxter, who had seen much of him, classes at this time among the Anabaptists and Antinomians, telling us"he would not dispute at all [with Baxter], but he would in gooddiscourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of Free Grace, which was savoury to those that had right principles, though he had somemisunderstandings of Free Grace himself:" a man, adds Baxter, "ofexcellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen inthe principles of his Religion; of a sanguine complexion; naturally ofsuch a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hathdrunken a cup too much;" and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle, when the enemy began to flee, "with a loud voice break forth into thepraises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture. "But there were also in the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order--Arminians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, Familists, and Sceptics. Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English Sectsin a former chapter but had representatives in the Army; nay, newspeculative oddities had broken out in some regiments; and it may bedoubted whether even in the English mind of our own time there is anyform of speculation so peculiar as not to have had its prototype orlineal progenitor in that mass of steel-clad theorists contemporary withthe Westminster Assembly. Nor did each man keep his theory to himself. There were constant prayer-meetings in companies and regiments, andmeetings for theological debate; troopers or foot-soldiers off duty wouldexpound or harangue to their fellows in camp, or even from the pulpits ofparish-churches when such were convenient; whenever the Army halted therewas a hum of holding-forth. There were army-chaplains, it is true, andsome of them, such as Peters, Dell, and Saltmarsh, great favourites; but, on the whole, the regular cloth was in disrepute: those who belonged toit were spoken of as the _Levites_ or priests by profession; theneed for such a profession was voted obsolete; and any man was held to beas good for the preaching office as any other, if he had the preachinggift. And with the respect for ordination had vanished the respect formost of the regular Church-forms and symbols. Not only did preachingofficers and troopers, when they chanced to enter parish-churches, ofteneject the regular ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselvesinstead--in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell arereported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for establisheddecencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances, in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregationsby sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing; and Hewson's menwere said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days, having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco _ad libitum_. Suchwere, doubtless, mere excesses here and there, which would have beenrebuked by the more serious men who formed the bulk of the Army; but itis quite certain that even among these that extreme kind of Independencyhad become common which repudiated a National Church of any kindwhatsoever, nay denied that there was any Church on earth at all, anysystem of spiritual ordinances visibly from God, anything but a greatinvisible brotherhood of Saints, walking in this life's darkness, passionately using meanwhile this symbol and that to feature forth theunimaginable, glad above all in the great glow of the present Bible, butexpecting also, each soul for itself, rays and shafts from the Lightbeyond. Of this kind of indifferency to all competing forms of externalworship, and even of doctrine, combined with either a mystical and dreamypiety, or a wildly-fervid enthusiasm, Dell and Saltmarsh, among the army-chaplains, seem to have been the most noted exponents; but it was reallya modification of that which is already known to us as the _Seekerism_ ofRoger Williams. At all events, that absolute doctrine of Toleration whichRoger Williams had propounded, and which was logically inseparable in hismind from Independency at its purest, had found its largest discipleshipin the Parliamentary Army. Toleration to some extent was the universalArmy tenet; even the Presbyterians of the Army, with some exceptions, hadlearnt to be Tolerationists in some degree. But a very full principle ofToleration had possessed most, and the most absolute possible principlewas avowed by many. "If I should worship the Sun or Moon. Like thePersians, or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody has anything to do withit, " one sectary had been heard to say; and some even had "justified theIrish Rebellion, " on the ground that the Irish "did it for the liberty oftheir consciences and for their country. " If this last extremeapplication of the Toleration doctrine did actually come from the mouthof a sectary serving in the Army (which is not quite clear from thereport), it must be regarded, I suspect, as one of those eccentricitiesof mess-table debate which, when Baxter talked of them to ColonelPurefoy, vouching that he had heard such things himself, that officerindignantly refused to credit, saying, "If Noll Cromwell should hear anysoldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown. " Precisely theToleration doctrine, however, was that in which Cromwell himself was mostthorough-going and most distinctly the representative of the whole Army. Even Baxter, after his two years of army-chaplaincy, spent in observingthe medley of sects around him and combating their errors, could notrefer Cromwell with positive certainty to any one of the Sects. He seemedmost for the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Seekers, but "did not openlyprofess what opinion he was of himself. " But on Toleration of ReligiousDifferences he was explicit and decided. All that were most to his mindin the Army "he tied together by the point of Liberty of Conscience, which was the common interest in which they did unite. " [Footnote: Thisdescription of the Parliamentary Army is a digest of the best knowledge Ihave been able to form from various readings in contemporary books andstudy of Army documents; but particulars of it are from Baxter'sAutobiography (1696), Part I. 52-57, and Edwards's _Gangręna_, Parts II. And III. _passim_. The good, though narrow and hypochondriac, Baxter maybe thoroughly relied on for whatever he vouches as a fact known tohimself; otherwise, _cum grano_. Edwards has to be put into the witness-box and cross-examined unmercifully, not as a wilful liar, but as anincredibly spiteful collector of gossip for the Presbyterians. After all, many of the so-called ribaldries and profanities reported by him of theArmy Sectaries turn out innocent enough, or only very rough jokes, aswhen a soldier told a godly old woman that, if she did not believe inuniversal redemption, she would be damned. Perhaps his most horriblestory is that of some soldiers taking a horse into a village church inHunts and baptizing him in all due form at the font, giving him the nameof _Esau_ because he was hairy. The story, with a certificate of itstruth by seven of the villagers, will be found in Gangręna, Part III. 17, 18. But, if the atrocity ever did occur, its date, according to Edwardshimself, was June 2, 1644, _i. E. _ in the time of the Old Model Army, towhich the very objection of Cromwell and others was that it did notconsist sufficiently of "men of a spirit. "]

There were three reasons why this extraordinary Army should object tobeing disbanded:--(1) They had large and long-deferred claims upon theParliament for arrears of pay, compensation for losses, provision for thewounded and disabled and for widows and orphans, indemnity also forillegal or questionable acts done in the time of war. Was the Army to letitself be disbanded without due security on these points? (2) There wasthe unsettled question of Religious Toleration. The whole drift of thingsin the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly seemed to be to auniform and compulsory Presbyterianism; and was that a prospect to whichthe Army, or nine-tenths of it, could look forward placidly? The Army didnot want to undo the Presbyterian settlement as already decreed, but theywere unwilling to disband before a Toleration under that settlement hadbeen arranged. (3) Over and above these two reasons, and in powerfulconjunction with them, was another. The Army, although an Army, had notceased to regard itself as a portion of the English people; nay, it hadcome to regard itself as a select portion of that people, whoseopportunities of thinking and reasoning on political affairs had beenpeculiarly good. It had come to be, in its own belief, an organ ofpolitical opinion, representing wishes and feelings of large parts of thepopulation which were not represented in Parliament, and representingthese in the form of conclusions for the future more radical and moredefinite than any that Parliament alone was ever likely to work out. Inshort, those democratic ideas the prevalence of which in the Army had sosurprised Baxter when he first joined it had now become paramount. It wasnot only that the Army had formed views more severe than those of thePresbyterians as to the proper terms of the settlement to be made withthe King; it was that the Army thought the present the time fordiscussing the whole subject of the constitution of the country. TheHouse of Lords, for example! Whether there should be a Peerage at all, legislating in a separate House by mere hereditary right, might be a veryfair question, and was one on which the Army had pretty decided opinionsBut that the House of Lords then sitting--not the assembled Peerage ofEngland at all, but a mere fifth-part of that Peerage, in the shape ofsome twenty-eight persons meeting from day to day, sometimes as few ashalf-a-dozen of them at a time, and not only partaking with the otherHouse in the legislation, but often obstructing that House, thwarting it, throwing out its measures, --that this should continue who would maintain?No! the House of Lords must go, and the sole House in England must be theother House, the "House of Representers. " But here too there was room forimprovement. The House of Commons then sitting was numericallysubstantial enough, now that it had been Recruited; and no one could lookback on the great things which the House had done without gratitude andadmiration. But were there not signs of exhaustion, debility, and wrong-headedness, even in that House, arising partly from its long independenceof the People, partly from the imperfect system of suffrage under whichit had been elected. Only in an imperfect sense could the existing Housebe called a "House of Representers;" and, as soon as should beconvenient, it must be dissolved and succeeded by a House fully deservingthat name. For the election of such a House there must be a reform of thedetails of the electoral system, including the abolition of suchanomalies as the return of one-twelfth of the whole House by the singleand remote county of Cornwall, and a redistribution of seats inaccordance with the proportions of population and property in the variousparts of England. All these ideas, and many more, anticipating withsurprising exactness the Parliamentary Reform movements of much latertimes, were agitating the Parliamentary Army while the King was in hiscaptivity at Holmby. Pamphlets from London, actively circulated among theregiments, aided the discussion and supplied it with topics and catch-words. Especially popular among the soldiers, and keeping up theirexcitement more particularly against the House of Lords, were thepamphlets that came from John Lilburne and an associate of his namedRichard Overton. --Lilburne, whom we left in October 1645, just releasedfrom the short imprisonment to which he had been committed by the Commons(_antč_, p. 390), had gone on again in his old pugnacious way, till, by Prynne's contrivance, he found himself in the clutches of the Lords. Called before that House, in June 1646, for a Letter he had printed, called _The Just Man's Justification_, he had amazed the Peers byconduct such as they had never seen before. He had refused to kneel, refused to take off his hat, refused to hear the charges against him, stopped his ears while they were read, denied the jurisdiction of thePeers, stamped at them, glared at them, told them his whole mind aboutthem, appealed to the Commons as the sole power in the State, andaltogether behaved like a mad ox. They had consequently fined him £4, 000, and committed him to Newgate for seven years. For similar offences to thePeers, and similar contumacy when charged with them, Richard Overton, aprinter and assiduous publisher of pamphlets, had also been sent toprison two months afterwards (Aug. 1646). There was considerable sympathywith both among the Londoners, and the Independents in the Commons hadtaken up Lilburne's case and procured the appointment of a Committee onit. Nor even in Newgate, it appears, had he been debarred the use of penand ink; for, in addition to his former pamphlets, there had come fromhim fiercer and fresh ones--_Anatomy of the Lords' Tyranny_, _London'sLiberty in Chains_, _The Free Man's Freedom_, _The Oppressed Man'sOppressions_, _The Resolved Man's Resolution_, &c. These were thepamphlets of Lilburne which, together with Overton's, one of which was_An Arrow Shot into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House ofLords_, were popular with the common soldiers of the Parliamentary Army, and nursed that especial form of the democratic passion among them whichlonged to sweep away the House of Lords and see England governed by asingle Representative House. --Baxter, who reports this growth ofdemocratic opinion in the Army from his own observation, distinctlyrecognises in it the beginnings of that rough ultra-Republican partywhich afterwards became formidable under the name of THE LEVELLERS. Allthe while, however, there was also a quiet formation, in some of thesuperior and more educated minds of the Army, of sentiments essentiallyRepublican, but more reserved and tentative in the style of theirRepublicanism. Among these minds too it had become a question whether amere settlement with the King even on the basis of the NineteenPropositions would suffice, and whether the hour had not come for organicchanges in the Constitution of England. Perhaps the leader of Armythought in this direction was Cromwell's son-in-law Ireton. [Footnote:Baxter _ut supra_; Gangręna, part III. _passim_; Lords Journals, June 10, 11, 23, and July 11, 1646 (Lilburne's case), and Aug. 11 (Overton's);Godwin, II. 407 _et seq. _; Wood's Ath. III. 353] That the EnglishPresbyterians, bereft now even of that overrated support which had beenafforded them by the presence of a Scottish Army in England, should haverushed into a struggle with the English Army, such as it has beendescribed, without trying so much as a compromise on the Tolerationquestion, is one of the greatest examples of political stupidity onrecord. They seem to have calculated mainly on the fact that they had amajority in Parliament. Of the few Lords forming the Upper House theycould count nearly all as decidedly with them. In the Commons, too, wherethe balance had always been more nearly equal, Presbyterianism had oflate been gaining force. Why it had been so is not very obvious. Thelatest Recruiters may have been politicians of a more Presbyterian typethan the earlier ones; and of these earlier Recruiters some who had comein as Independents may have veered round. Men whose opinions are not verydecided tend naturally to the winning side, and the King's flight to theScots and their long possession of him had put Presbyterianism in thelikelihood to win. However it had happened, the Presbyterians had of latebeen preponderating in the Commons. In a vote on Sept. 1, 1646, affectingthe relations of the Parliament to the Scots, the Presbyterians hadbeaten the Independents by 140 to 101; in another vote on Dec. 25, on thequestion whether the words "according to the Covenant" should be added toa Resolution, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten by 133 to 91; and inan interesting vote on Dec. 31, on the question whether the words "orexpound the Scriptures" should be added to a Resolution forbiddingunordained persons to preach, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten byno fewer than 105 to 57. In this last vote Cromwell was one of theTellers for the _Noes_ or Independents. In testing divisions thesenumbers may be taken as representing the relative strengths of the twoparties in the end of 1646 and the beginning of 1647. But, even with aconsiderable majority in the Commons, and with the Lords all but wholly aPresbyterian House, the confidence of the Presbyterians in confrontingthe Army can be accounted for only by reckless leadership. Holles andStapleton, their most forward men in the Commons, appear to have been menof but ordinary faculty and decidedly rash temper, incomparably inferiorto their great opponents. One argument they had, of which they did notfail to make the most. The City of London was eminently and staunchlyPresbyterian; and would that great city, the central money-power of thenation, allow the Government to be dictated to by an Army of Sectaries?[Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given, with divisions generallybetween Aug. 1646 and Feb. 1646-7; Godwin, II. 263 _et seq. _]

The struggle, long foreseen, began actually in the first two months and ahalf of the King's stay at Holmby, _i. E. _ in February, March, andApril, 1646-7. The gauntlet was thrown down by Parliament. Feb. 19, in anunusually full House, it was carried by 158 (Holles and Stapletontellers) against 148 (Haselrig and Evelyn tellers), that no force of Footbeyond what was necessary for garrisons should be kept up in England, butonly a certain force of Horse. On the 5th of March there came a vote onthe important question who should be the Commander-in-chief of theretained Army, and so jealous had the Presbyterians become even ofFairfax, because of his connexion with the existing Army, that theIndependents, though going for him to a man, carried his appointment butby a majority of 12. Subsequent resolutions, carried without division, were that no member of the House should hold a military command(Cromwell's Self-denying Ordinance cleverly repeated against himself), that no officer in the future Army under Fairfax should be above the rankof Colonel, and that all officers should take the Covenant; and when, onthe farther and more outrageous proposition, that all officers mustconform to the Presbyterian Church-government, the Independents forced adivision; they lost by 108 _Noes_ (Haselrig and Evelyn), against 136_Yeas_ (Holies and Stapleton). By additional Resolutions of March 29and April 8 the arrangements were completed. It was formally resolvedthat all the Foot of the existing Army not required for the garrisonsshould be disbanded, and that the future Army of Horse under Fairfaxshould consist of nine regiments of 600 each, or 5, 400 in all, recruitedout of the existing Army or otherwise. The Colonels for the nine re-modelled regiments were named, some of them cavalry Colonels of theexisting Army, but not all. Cromwell's own regiment, or the regiment thatshould be built out of any safe shred of it with other materials, was togo to the Presbyterian Major Huntingdon. ----So much for England andWales; but what of the new Army for Ireland? That also had been arrangedfor. March 6, it was voted by the Commons that the Army for Irelandshould consist of 8, 400 foot, 3, 000 horse, and 1, 200 dragoons, to berecruited as far as possible from the existing English Army. But howabout the command of this Army and the government of Ireland while itshould be serving there? Lord Lisle, then in Ireland as Lord-Lieutenantfor the Parliament, was one of Cromwell's disciples, and had beenappointed by Cromwell's influence. It would not do to leave _him_ incommand. Fortunately, he had been appointed but for a year; and, to avoidre-appointing him, it was resolved (April 1) that the previous vote ofthe Houses for the management of Ireland through "a single person ofhonour" should be rescinded, and that, while the Civil Government shouldrevert to the two Lords-Justices in Dublin, the military command shouldbe in the hands of a Field-Marshal, attended by ParliamentaryCommissioners. Sir William Waller was named for this Field-Marshalship;but the Presbyterians did not go to the vote for him; and Skippon, thenat Newcastle, and unaware of the honour intended for him, was unanimouslychosen (April 2). The Presbyterian Massey was to be his Lieutenant-General. As an inducement to officers and soldiers of the English Army tore-enlist for the Irish service, high pay was promised, with an option oftaking part of it in the valuable form of Irish lands. [Footnote: CommonsJournals of the dates given. ]

0, if you had been at Saffron Walden in Essex, where the bulk of theEnglish Army was quartered, when the news of these votes of the Commonsreached them! What murmurs among the common soldiers, what consultationsamong the officers! The officers, as was fitting, took the lead. Adeputation of four Colonels and five Lieutenant-colonels had already goneto London (March 22) with a Petition and Remonstrance. They had beenreceived graciously enough by the Lords, but coldly and with rebuke bythe Commons. Then, a great Petition being in preparation throughout theArmy, to be signed by both officers and men, and addressed to Fairfax asCommander-in-chief, there had come, on a hasty motion by Holles, aDeclaration of the two Houses (March 29-30) voting the same dangerous andmutinous, and threatening proceedings against such as should go on withit. With vast self-control on the part of the Army, and much goodmanagement on the part of Fairfax, the offensive Petition had beensuppressed; and through a great part of April the dispute took the formof conferences between Fairfax and his officers and five Commissionerssent down to the Army from Parliament (Waller and Massey among them) toargue for the disbandment and promote re-enlistment for Ireland. At theseconferences the questions of arrears, indemnity, the rate of pay inIreland, &c. , were all discussed, and the Commissioners tried to givesatisfactory explanations. It was a great point with the Army whetherSkippon would accept the Irish Field-Marshalship; and at one of theconferences, when Colonel Hammond was expressing this for his comrades, and saying that nothing would be more likely to induce them to enlist forIreland than the knowledge that that "great soldier" was to be incommand, "_All, all!_" cried the assembled officers, "_Fairfax andCromwell, and we all go!_" No real conciliation, however, waseffected; and on the 26th of April the Commissioners, in their "perfectlist" of officers who had agreed individually to go to Ireland, couldreport but three Colonels, and a proportionate following of Captains andsubalterns. Among the men it was worse. In one company, eight scorestrong, twenty-six had volunteered to go with their Captain; in anotherthe Captain could not get a single man to join him. Parliament was takenaback by this ill success; but Holles and his party were undaunted. Itwas a gleam in their favour that Skippon, coming to London fromNewcastle, did at length (April 27) accept the Irish Field-Marshalship. The Houses voted him their thanks and a gift of 1, 000_l. _and on thesame day it was carried in the Commons, by the overwhelming majority of114 to 7 (the Independents evidently abstaining from the vote), that theArmy, horse and foot, should be immediately disbanded with payment of sixweeks of arrears. Orders were also issued for the appearance at the barof the House of some of the most refractory superior officers and thearrest of several subalterns; and at the same moment the Common Councilof the City of London proved their Presbyterian zeal by ejecting AldermanPennington and other prominent Independents from the Committee of theCity Militia. On the very day of this concurrence of Presbyteriandemonstrations (April 27) there was presented to the Commons a "HumblePetition of the Officers in behalf of themselves and the Soldiers, " withan accompanying "Vindication" of their recent conduct. Lieutenant-generalThomas Hammond headed the list of Petitioners; next came ColonelsWhalley, Lambert, Robert Lilburne, Rich, Hewson, Robert Hammond, andOkey; then Lieutenant-colonels Pride, Kelsay, Reade, Jubbs, Grimes, Ewer, and Salmon; then Majors Rogers, Axtell, Cowell, Smith, Horton, andDesborough; and there followed about 130 captains and inferior officers. Such an Officers' Petition might well have given the Presbyterians pause;but three days afterwards (April 30) there came something moreextraordinary. It was a Letter brought to town, and delivered to Skipponand Cromwell for presentation to the House, by three private troopers, professing to be "agents" or "agitators" or "adjutators" for someregiments in the Army. It used very high language indeed. It complainedof the "scandalous and false suggestions" current against the Army, spokedarkly of "a plot contrived by some men who had lately tasted ofsovereignty, " and declared flatly that the soldiers "would neither beemployed for the service of Ireland nor suffer themselves to be disbandedtill their desires were granted, and the rights and liberties of thesubjects should be vindicated and maintained. " The amazed House orderedthe three troopers who had brought the Letter, and who were waitingoutside, to be brought in. They came in, gave their names as EdwardSaxby, William Allen, and Thomas Sheppard, and stood stoutly to theirbusiness. Holles and his clique were for committing them to prison; but, Skippon certifying that they were honest men, and another membersuggesting that, if they were committed at all, it should be "to the bestinn of the town, and sack and sugar provided for them, " the more good-humoured counsel prevailed, and they were dismissed. Nay, theirappearance and their Letter had produced an impression. In Holles's ownwords, "the House flatted, " began to think it had been too peremptory, and resolved that Skippon, Cromwell, Ireton, and Fleetwood, should go atonce to Saffron Walden, as mediators between it and the Army. [Footnote:Commons Journals of all the cited dates; Rushworth, VI. 444-475;Whitlocke, II. 121-137; Parl. Hist. III. 560-576; Holles's Memoirs byhimself (1699), pp. 88-90. ]

Agents, or Agitators, or Adjutators, the three bold troopers had calledthemselves; and it was the first time the Houses had heard the name. Itannounced, however, an important reality. The common soldiers had made uptheir minds that they could not leave the struggle for the Army's rightswholly in the hands of the officers, and that it might assist theseofficers if they, the rank and file, with the corporals and sergeants, formed an organization among themselves for the same ends. Accordingly, trusty men in each regiment had been chosen to meet and consult withothers of other regiments, and the name "Agitators" or "Adjutators" hadbeen given to these deputies. Very soon the organization was so perfectthat every troop or company had its two Agitators, every regiment itsdistinct Agitatorship composed of the Agitators of the several troops orcompanies, and so by gradation upwards to general meetings of theAgitators of the whole Army and special meetings of Committees formaturing business more privately. Too obvious a connexion between thisassociation and the higher army-officers was inconvenient; but it wasuseful to have connecting links in officers of the lower ranks; and thePresidency of the Agitators came, at length, to be vested in one suchofficer. This was James Berry, one of the captains of Fairfax's ownhorse-regiment, in which Desborough was Major. He had been a clerk insome iron-works in the west of England, and was "of very good naturalparts, especially mathematical and mechanical. " Before the war he andRichard Baxter had been bosom friends; but, since he had come into theArmy and been much in the society of Cromwell, he had become, saysBaxter, a man of new lights in religion, regarding the old Puritans ofhis acquaintance as "dull, self-conceited men of a lower form. " DuringBaxter's two years of army-chaplaincy, Berry had never visited him, noreven seen him, except once or twice accidentally. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 485: Holles, 86, 87; Baxter's Autobiography, Part I. 57 and 97. ]

Through the greater part of May, Fairfax being then in London, Cromwell, and his fellow-commissioners, Skippon, Ireton, and Fleetwood, remained atSaffron Walden, busy in their work of mediation. Three successive lettersto Speaker Lenthall reported the amount of their success. It was next tonothing. They had obtained, they say in the last of the three letters(May 17), a complete statement of the grievances of the Army, in the formof papers which they would bring to town; but meanwhile they found thesoldiers so unsettled that they did not think it safe to leave them. Skippon and Ireton, in fact, did remain; but Cromwell and Fleetwoodreturned to town, May 21, to report to the House in greater detail. Amongthe documents they brought with them, representing the opinions anddemands of the Army, was one which had been prepared with extraordinarycare. The various votes relating to the Army having been read to eachregiment by its commanding officer, the regimental Agitatorships(apparently now first fully constituted) had reported the opinions anddemands of the regiments severally, and these opinions and demands hadbeen digested into one Draft at a conference of the chief officers, onthe principle of including only such demands as were made unanimously byall the regiments. Rushworth does not give the document, but describes itas fair and moderate, and tells us in particular that, while itcomplained of misrepresentations and ill-treatment, and desiredreparation, it denounced only one person by name. One is not surprised tolearn that this was the Rev. Mr. Edwards. His _Gangręna_, it wassaid, had been written expressly to make the Army odious. [Footnote:Letters in Appendix IX. To Carlyle's Cromwell; Commons Journals of May21; and Rushworth, VI. 485-6. ]

Moderate or not, the Army's _ultimatum_ obtained but an unfriendlyhearing in the two Houses; and, between the 22nd and the 28th of May, Fairfax having meanwhile returned to the Army, they issued their opposed_ultimatum_ in a sharp series of orders. The entire army of Foot wasto be disbanded, willing or unwilling, on the terms fixed: Fairfax's ownregiment at Chelmsford on June 1, Hewson's at Bishop's Stortford on June3, Lambert's at Saffron Walden on June 5, and so on regiment by regiment, each on a named day and at a named place, a Committee of the two Housesto be present at each disbanding, and Skippon also to be present toenlist such of the disbanded men as would go to Ireland. These ordersreached Fairfax at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk, to which he had removedhis head-quarters. They threw the Army into an ungovernable uproar, whichsubsided in a day or two into an ominous calm. For a great resolution hadbeen taken. The Agitators, at a meeting on Saturday, May 29, had drawn upa petition to Fairfax for a speedy Rendezvous of the whole Army at oneplace for united action; and a council of officers, to the number of 200, with Ireton among them, had declared themselves on the same day to thesame effect. They advised Fairfax to grant the Rendezvous, telling himthat, if he did not, the men would hold one themselves and it was surethen to end in tumult. Fairfax had taken the advice; and in the last daysof May orders were out for the "contraction of the Army's quarters" bydrawing the dispersed regiments closer together, and for a general"Rendezvous" at Kentford Heath, close to Newmarket, on Friday the 4th ofJune. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 582-588, and Rushworth, VI. 494-500. ]Fairfax, with whatever hesitation, had thus thrown in his lot with theArmy. Skippon, though he had accepted the Irish Field-Marshalship, almostrepented having done so, and was one at heart with his old comrades. Ofthe other officers only a small minority, whether from Presbyterianpredilections or out of mere respect for authority, wavered towardsParliament. The chief of these were Colonels Harley, Herbert, Fortescue, Sheffield, Butler, Sir Robert Pye, and Graves, this last being theColonel in charge of the King at Holmby. On the other side, roundFairfax, and sustaining him, were Generals Ireton and Hammond, as next inrank; with Whalley, Rich, Okey, Rainsborough, Robert Lilburne, SirHardress Waller, Robert Hammond, Lambert, Hewson, Ewer, Kelsay, Ingoldsby, Pride, Axtell, Jubbs, Desborough, and other Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, and Majors, among whom is not to be forgotten theenthusiast Harrison, back from Ireland just at the right moment. But whatof Fleetwood and Cromwell, left in their places in the House of Commons?Which way they would go nobody could doubt; but the question was whetherthey might not be seized as hostages by the Presbyterians and detained inLondon. As far as Fleetwood was concerned, the danger was over on the 2ndof June; on which day he had leave from the House "to go into thecountry, " and went we can imagine whither. For Cromwell the danger wasgreater. He too, however, had made his arrangements. On the evening ofthe 3rd of June, or early on the following morning, just in time to avoidthe arrest and impeachment which Holles and the Presbyterians werepreparing for him, he rode quietly out of London in the direction of theArmy. As far as can be ascertained, he had waited purposely to coverFleetwood's departure, and be himself the last army-man to leave theCommons. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 2; Whitlocke, May 31;Rushworth, VI. 464-8 and 495; Holles 85, 86; Clar. 611; Godwin, II. 311, 312. Cromwell's so-called "Flight to the Army" is an incident made muchof by Royalist and Presbyterian writers, and Clarendon's account of itand what preceded it is a perfect jumble of incompatible dates andconfused rumours. What all those writers (Holles, Clement Walker, Clarendon, Baxter, Burnet, &c. ) wanted to make out, and really succeededin transmitting as a fact, was that Cromwell's whole conduct through thedispute between the Army and Parliament, up to the moment of his flight, had been a tissue of the profoundest craft and hypocrisy. He had pushedon the policy of disbandment in the Parliament on the one hand, and onthe other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators;to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protestedin the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army wouldlay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of hisdissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mindthat could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressivewords (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts areto be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had beenin London through February, March, and April, while the votes fordisbandment, &c. Were passed, unable to resist those votes, but anxiousto prevent a rupture, and doing his best to that end: and not till afterhis return from his mission of mediation to the Army (May 21), or eventill after the Army's resolution for a Rendezvous (May 29), were hishopes of a reconciliation utterly gone. ]

The general Rendezvous of the Army was duly held, as appointed, nearNewmarket, in Cambridgeshire, on Friday the 4th of June. There werepresent seven foot-regiments and six regiments of horse--a fullrepresentation of the Army, though not the whole. There was the utmostdisplay of resolution. One great general Petition was agreed to; a solemnengagement was drawn up and signed by officers and soldiers; Fairfax rodefrom regiment to regiment, addressed each, and was received with outcriesof applause. The proceedings were not over on the 4th, but protractedthemselves into the next day. On that day it was that a strangeexcitement or suspense, which had been visible in all faces from the verybeginning of the Rendezvous, in consequence of news then received, wasrelieved by the arrival of farther news. "Joyce has done it! Joyce hasdone it!" were the words that might then have been heard through theassembled Army, caught up and repeated by group after group of talkingsoldiers over the heath. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 504-512. ]

Who was Joyce, and what had he done? These questions take us back to theKing at Holmby. --His Majesty, watching the course of the struggle betweenthe Parliament and the Army, had at last, on the 12th of May, sent in hislong-deferred Answer to the Nineteen Propositions. It was substantiallythe Draft which he had submitted to the Queen and the Earl of Lanark inthe preceding December, but had suppressed (_antč_, pp. 505-6). Heoffered the surrender of the Militia for ten years, and assent toPresbytery for three years, but with a reserve of the Liturgy for himselfand his household, and the right of adding twenty divines to theWestminster Assembly to assist in the final settlement of the Church-question. The clause about a toleration for tender consciences, insertedin the former Draft as a bait for the Independents, was now totallyomitted. In other words, Charles had thought the moment favourable forre-opening negotiations with the Presbyterians. The reception of hisLetter by Parliament had been encouraging. It had been read in the Lords, May 18; and it had then been carried in that House by a majority of 15 to9 that his Majesty should be brought at once from Holmby to some placenearer London, for the convenience of treating with him. Oatlands inSurrey had been named, and the concurrence of the Commons requested. Actually on May 21, the very day when Cromwell and Fleetwood returned tothe Commons from their mission to the Army, the matter had been mentionedin that House. Although no decision had been come to, the Independentsand the Army had taken alarm. Colonel Graves, commanding the guard atHolmby, was a Presbyterian; some of those everlasting ScottishCommissioners were back in London, in their old quarters at WorcesterHouse; nay, one of them, the Earl of Dunfermline, had obtained leave fromthe two Houses (May 13) to visit the King at Holmby! What might not be inagitation under this proposal of a removal of the King to Oatlands? Whatso easy as for the Presbyterians, with Colonel Graves for their agent, tosecure the King wholly to themselves, and so, having bargained with himon their own terms, to invite back the Scots and defy the Army? Such hadbeen questions gossiped over in the Army at the very time when for otherreasons the resolution was taken for a general Rendezvous. This verydanger of some Presbyterian plot for removing the King from Holmby was anadditional reason for the Rendezvous and the contraction of the Army'squarters. But the Rendezvous was not enough. Simultaneously with theRendezvous, and to turn it to full account, something else was necessary. What that was had also been discussed among the Agitators with everyprecaution of secrecy; select parties of troopers from differentregiments had been told off for the enterprise; and a George Joyce, oncea tailor, but now cornet in Fairfax's lifeguard, had been appointed totake the lead. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given; andParl. Hist. III. 577-581, containing the King's Letter. ]

As early as Wednesday June 2, or two days before the Rendezvous atNewmarket, there had been a suspicious appearance of parties of horsegathering to a body near Holmby. That night there was no doubt about it;and Colonel Graves, who had reasons for thinking that he was their mainobject, had just made his escape, when, about one in the morning of June3, the troopers were in the park and meadows surrounding the house. Before daylight they were within the gates, Graves's men having let themin and at once fraternized with them. The whole of that day was spent bythe troopers, Joyce acting as their spokesman, in a parley with theCommissioners in charge of the King--viz. : Lord Montague of Boughton, SirJohn Coke, Mr. Crewe, and General Browne--the King meanwhile aware ofwhat was going on, but keeping his privacy. Messengers had been sent offfrom the Commissioners to London; where, accordingly, on Friday the 4th, there was great excitement in the two Houses. That same morning the newswas known in the Army at Newmarket, just before the proceedings of theRendezvous began, not much to the surprise of some there perhaps, butcertainly to the surprise of Fairfax himself. He could not thencountermand the Rendezvous; but at once he detached Whalley and hishorse-regiment, to gallop to Holmby, take Colonel Graves's place, and seethat no harm was done. By that time, however, Joyce had completed hisbusiness. Passing from his first topic with the Commissioners, which hadbeen Colonel Graves and his plot, he had insisted on seeing the King; hadcompelled the Commissioners late at night on the 3rd to introduce himinto his Majesty's bedchamber; had there apologized, talked with hisMajesty, answered his questions, and distinctly informed him that he hadauthority from the Army to carry him away from Holmby. The King, amusedand interested, as it seemed, rather than displeased, had taken the nightto think over the matter; and by six o'clock next morning he had left hischamber, and was again in colloquy with Joyce, who had his troopers allmounted and ready where they could be seen. His Majesty did not seemdisinclined to go, but was naturally inquisitive as to the authority bywhich Joyce acted. Had he a commission from Fairfax? Mr. Joyce could notsay he had. Had he any commission at all? "_There_ is my commission, your Majesty, " said Joyce at last, pointing to his mounted troopers. "Afair commission and well-written, " said the King, smiling: "a company ofas handsome, proper gentlemen as ever I saw in my life. " In short, asthere was no help for it, he supposed he must go. And so, actually, aftervain protests and solemn threats by the Commissioners, and especially byGeneral Browne, to all which Joyce listened unmoved, the party did setoff at a trot from Holmby, about two o'clock in the afternoon of June 4, with Joyce at their head, and the King in their charge, accompanied bythe Commissioners. The Scottish Earl of Dunfermline, who had witnessedmuch of the affair, had posted off to London, The Rendezvous at Newmarketwas then going on. [Footnote: Original accounts of Joyce's conduct atHolmby and abduction of the King are (1) Letters of the Commissionersfrom Holmby, June 3 and 4, and from Childersley June 8, addressed toManchester as Speaker of the Lords, and given in the Lords Journals; (2)Fairfax's Letters to Speaker Lenthall, of June 4 and 7, in the CommonsJournal giving Fairfax's account of the information he had collected, andof his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interestingcontemporary account called "_An Impartial Narration, &c. _, " reprinted byRushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, onesoon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun, that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff atthe pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectlytrustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version of theincident is very loose and inaccurate. He huddles into one day what wasreally an affair of two, &c. ]

Joyce having given the King the option, within a certain extent, of theplace to which he would be conveyed, his Majesty himself had suggestedNewmarket. Thither, accordingly, they were bound. The evening of the 4thbrought them to Huntingdon, where his Majesty rested that night in themansion-house of Hinchinbrook, once the property of Cromwell's uncle, SirOliver, but now of Colonel Edward Montague. Next day (Saturday, June 5)they were again on their march for Newmarket, when they were met, aboutfour miles from Cambridge, by Whalley and his regiment of horse. Joyce, of course, then retired from the management. Whalley, in accordance withhis instructions, was willing to convey the King and the Commissionersback to Holmby; but this his Majesty positively declined. Till thereshould be farther deliberation, therefore, his Majesty was quartered atthe nearest convenient house, which chanced to be Sir John Cutts's atChildersley, near Cambridge. Here he remained over Sunday the 6th andMonday the 7th. Meanwhile both in London and at Newmarket the commotionwas boundless. The full news had reached the two Houses on Saturday the5th. Next day, though it was Sunday, they re-assembled for prayer andbusiness; but nothing practical could be thought of; all was panic, passing into a mood of submissiveness to the Army. The only show ofanger, even in words, up to the mark of the occasion, was in a papergiven in to a Committee of the two Houses by the Scottish Commissioners, with a speech in their name by the Earl of Lauderdale. The Scottishnation had been insulted; its resentment might be expected; it would co-operate at once with the Parliament for "the rescuing and defending hisMajesty's person, " &c. ! It was easier for the Scottish Commissioners tospeak in this strain than for the Parliament to take correspondingaction. The opportunity was now wholly with the Army. That they wouldadopt Joyce's deed, and take the full benefit of it, could not bedoubted; or, if it could, the procedure of Fairfax at once put an end tothe doubt. On Saturday and Sunday he was lifting his Rendezvous fromNewmarket; by Monday the 7th he had brought his army bodily round aboutCambridge, so as to encircle the King; and on that day he, Cromwell, Treton, and Hammond, with Whalley, Waller, Lambert, and other chiefofficers, were assembled in interview with the King and the Commissionersat Childersley House. No persuasion could induce his Majesty to go backto Holmby. Much of the conversation turned on Joyce's daring act and hisauthority for it; and Joyce, having been called in, underwent a longexamination and cross-examination on this point. Very little could be gotout of him, except that he had had no commission from Fairfax, and yetthat he considered his authority perfectly sufficient. Let the question, he said, be put to the Army itself whether they approved of what he haddone, and, if three-fourths or four-fifths did not approve withacclamations, he would be hanged with pleasure. The Commissioners thoughtJoyce deserved hanging in any case; but the King, who had taken a likingfor him, told him that, though it was a great treason he had done, hemight consider himself pardoned. Joyce having then withdrawn, and theKing, having consented to remain with the Army, it was agreed that heshould be conveyed to Newmarket next day. [Footnote: Lords and CommonsJournals of June 5 and 6; Parl. Hist. III. 591-594; Rushworth, VI. 545-550, with the previously-mentioned "Impartial Narration" of Joyce. Tothis day nothing more is positively known of the real origin of thescheme of the King's abduction than Joyce allowed himself to reveal. Wehave Fairfax's own solemn word "as in the presence of God" that he wasutterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the sameLetter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of theArmy were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attributethe act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meetingat Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others laystress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London"was the day of Joyce's appearance at Holmby. The Presbyterian MajorHuntingdon, Cromwell's own Major, afterwards distinctly declared, Aug. 1648, that Joyce had his instructions from Cromwell, and that Joycehimself averred this to excuse himself from Fairfax's displeasure (Parl. Hist. III. 967-8). I suspect that, whatever Cromwell and Ireton may haveprivately sanctioned, the thing was managed among the Agitators; and itdoes not seem impossible that the original design was to seize Graves atHolmby, quash his supposed plotting there with Lord Dunfermline, and takepossession of the King for the Army without removing him. As to theabduction, Joyce may have been left a discretion. ]

Before we pass on, with the King, into the third stage of his captivity, we have to report briefly the progress that had been made, during hisstay at Holmby, in one or two matters of public concern, not directlyinvolved in the feud between the Parliament and the Army. 

In April 1647, there had been a vigorous resumption of the Church-question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee onobstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There wasgreat sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships andclasses; returns from counties were deficient; even in London theProvincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions variousorders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The mostimportant of these was one for the immediate meeting of the FIRSTPROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON. It met in the Convocation Houseof St. Paul's, on Monday, May 3, 1647, and consisted of 108representatives of the London classes or Presbyteries, in the proportionof three ministers and six lay-elders from each. Dr. Gouge, ofBlackfriars, was chosen Prolocutor or Moderator of this first Synod, andthe term of the Moderatorship and of the Synod itself was to be for halfa year, or till November 1647; after which the Second Synod, similarlyelected, was to meet, with a new Moderator; and so on, every six months, Synod after Synod, in Presbyterian London for ever. Of the First Synod, under Dr. Gouge, we need only say that they arranged to meet twice aweek, and that, with the leave of the Parliament, they transferred theirmeeting-place from St. Paul's to Sion College. The discussions there mayhave been a little crippled by the fact that the new Presbyterian Churchof England was not yet provided with an authorized _Confession ofFaith_. The text of such a document, as prepared by the WestminsterAssembly, had been before the two Houses since Dec. 1646 (_antč_, p. 512); the Lords on the 16th of February had urged the Commons in almostreproachful terms to quicken their pace in that business; the Commons onthe 22nd of April had at length roused themselves so far as to order theWestminster Assembly to send in the Scriptural proofs which they had beenpreparing according to a previous order; but, though on the 29th of Aprilthese proofs were actually received and the Assembly thanked, it was nottill the 19th of May that the Commons did begin, Math printed copies ofthe Confession before them, to examine the work, paragraph by paragraph. On that day and May 28 they considered and passed, without division, andapparently without much debate, the three first chapters of theConfession--viz. : Chap. I. _Of the Holy Scriptures_ (ten paragraphs);Chap. II. _Of God and the Holy Trinity_ (three paragraphs); Chap. III. _Of God's Eternal Decrees_. The next chapter, entitled _Of Creation_, wasto be proceeded with punctually on Wednesday next, June 2; but, when thatday came, Fairfax's orders for the Army Rendezvous were out, Joyce wasprowling about Holmby, and the "Creation" had to be postponed. [Footnote:Commons and Lords Journals of the days given (also a curious entry inCommons Journals of April 27); Rushworth, VI. 476; Neal, III. 356-358. ]

A matter on which the Parliament had been intent for some time was thepurgation and regulation of the University of Oxford. If Parliamentarypurgation had been found necessary for Cambridge three years before(_antč_, pp. 92-96), how much more was this process needed inOxford, always the more Prelatic University of the two, and recently, asthe King's head-quarters through the Civil War, more deep-dyed in Prelacythan ever! Where but in Oxford, amid courtiers and cavaliers, had ex-bishops, Anglican doctors, and other dangerous persons, found house-roomfor the last few years? Whence but from the colleges at Oxford had comeall the Prelatic sermons, pamphlets, and squibs against the Parliament, the Covenant, and Presbytery, including the official Royalist newspaper, the _Mercurius Aulicus_, edited by Mr. John Birkenhead and a societyof his brother-wits? Accordingly, since the surrender of Oxford in June1646, punishment for the University had been in preparation. For variousreasons, however, it had been administered first in a didactic form. Preachers of the right Presbyterian type had been sent down to Oxford byauthority in Aug. 1646; and these had been followed by such a rush ofvolunteer zealots of all varieties that the loyal Oxford historian, Anthony Wood, shuddered to his life's end at the recollection. "Hell wasbroke loose, " he says, "upon the poor remnant" of the scholars, so thatmost of them "did either leave the University or abscond in theirrespective houses till they could know their doom. " That doom came atlength in the form of an Ordinance of the two Houses for the Visitationof the University (May 1, 1647). It empowered twenty-four persons, notmembers of Parliament, among whom were Sir Nathaniel Brent, WilliamPrynne, and thirteen other lawyers, the rest being divines, to visitOxford, inquire into abuses and delinquencies, impose the Covenant onHeads of Houses, Fellows, &c. , and report the results to a standingCommittee of both Houses, consisting of twenty-six Peers and fifty-two ofthe Commons. Under this Ordinance the Visitors issued a citation to theHeads of Houses and others to meet them in the Convocation House atOxford on the 4th of June. That was the day of the Army Rendezvous and ofthe King's abduction; beyond which point we do not go at present. Sufficeit to say that there was to be a most strenuous resistance by theOxonians, headed by their Vice-Chancellor Dr. Fell. [Footnote: Wool'sFasti Oxon. II 100-1 and 106-7; Lords Journals, May 1; Neal, III. 395_et seq. _]

THIRD STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ARMY, JUNE-NOV. 1647. 

Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: theirDenunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarmsand Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliamentmobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the twoSpeakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of theArmy upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of theKing by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--TheArmy's _Heads of Proposals, _ and Comparison of the same with the_Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--King at Hampton Court, stilldemurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals, _ but playing them offpublicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney--Cromwell'sMotion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re-application tothe King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise: Intrigues atHampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: Kingimmoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion:New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines amongthe Soldiers: _Agreement of the People--_ Cromwell breaks utterly withthe King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordatbetween the Army and Parliament: The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight, The effects of Joyce's abduction of the King from Holmby may be summed upby saying that for the next five months the Army and the Independentswere in the ascendant, and the Presbyterians depressed. There were to bevibrations of the balance, however, even during this period. 

What the Presbyterians dreaded was an immediate march of the Army uponLondon, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resortto such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for atime, kept moving their head-quarters from spot to spot in the countiesnorth and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding, and paying but slight respect to the injunctions of the Parliament not tobring the Army within a distance of forty miles. On the 10th of Junethere was a Rendezvous 21, 000 strong at Triplow Heath, near Royston;thence, on the 12th, they came to St. Alban's, only twenty miles fromLondon, spreading such alarm in the City by this movement that guardswere posted, shops shut, &c. ; and they remained at St. Alban's till the24th, when they withdrew to Berkhampstead. Through this fortnightnegotiations had been going on between the Army-leaders and ParliamentaryCommissioners who had been sent down expressly; letters had also passedbetween the Army-leaders and the City; and certain general"Representations" and "Remonstrances" had been sent forth by the Army, penned by Ireton and Lambert, but signed by Rushworth in the name ofFairfax and the whole Council of War. In these it was distinctly repeatedthat the Army had no desire to overturn or oppose Presbyterian Church-government as it had been established, and only claimed Liberty ofConscience under that government; but there were also clear expressionsof the opinion that a dissolution of the existing Parliament and theelection of a new one on a more popular system ought to be incontemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, onething was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament mightbe brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Notonly must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, butalso those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who hadoccasioned all the recent troubles! That there might be no mistake, eleven such members of the House of Commons were named--to wit, Holles, Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller, John Glynn, Esq. , Anthony Nichols, Esq. (original members), and Sir JohnMaynard, Major-general Massey, Colonel Walter Long, and Colonel EdwardHarley (Recruiters). This Army denunciation of eleven chiefs of theCommons, dated from St. Alban's June 14, had greatly perplexed the House;but in the course of their debates on it they recovered spirit, and in avote of June 25 they stood out for Parliamentary privilege. As there hadbeen votes of the two Houses about bringing the King to Richmond for atreaty, and other more secret signs of Presbyterian activity, the Armythen again applied the screw. They advanced to Uxbridge, some of theregiments showing themselves even closer to the City (June 26). This hadthe intended effect. The eleven consented to withdraw from their placesin the Commons, for a time at least (June 26); votes favourable to theArmy were passed by both Houses (June 26-29); and, though these weremingled with others not quite so satisfactory, the Army had no pretextfor a severer pressure. They withdrew, therefore, to Wycombe in Bucks. Here, at a Council of War (July 1), a Commission of ten officers(Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Lambert, Rainsborough, Sir Hardress Waller, Rich, Robert Hammond, Desborough, and Harrison) was appointed to treatfarther with new Commissioners of the Parliament (the Earl of Nottingham, Lord Wharton, Vane, Skippon, &c. ). Then surely all seemed in a fair way. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 591-662; Rushworth, VI. 545-597; Godwin, II. 323-354; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 226-232. ]

While Parliament, however, was thus yielding to the Army, the densePresbyterianism of the City and the district round was more reckless andindignant. Whatever Parliament might do, the great city of London wouldbe true to its colours! Accordingly, in addition to various Petitionsalready presented to the two Houses from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, andCommon Council, all of an anti-Army character, a new one in the samesense, but purporting to be simply "for payment of the soldiery and aspeedy settlement of the Nation, " was presented July 2. A public andresponsible body like the Common Council could express itself only insuch general terms; but the Presbyterian "young men and apprentices ofthe City, " the number of whom was legion, and whose ranks andcombinations could easily be put in motion by the higher powers, wereable to speak out boldly. On the 14th of July a Petition, said to besigned by 10, 000 such, was presented to both Houses, praying for strictobservance of the Covenant, the defence of his Majesty's person and justpower and greatness, the disbandment of the Army, the thorough settlementof Presbyterian Government, the suppression of Conventicles, and defianceto the crotchet of Toleration. This audacious document having beenreceived even with politeness by the Lords, and only with cautiousreserve by the Commons, the City was stirred through all its Presbyteriandepths, made no doubt it could control Parliament, and grew more and moreviolent to that end. Crowds came daily to Palace Yard and WestminsterHall, signifying their anger at the seclusion of the Presbyterian Eleven, and at all the other concessions made to the Army and the Independents. What roused the City most, however, was the acquiescence of Parliament ina demand of the Army that the Militia of London should be restored to thestate in which it had been before the 27th of April last. On that day theCommon Council, in whose trust the business was, had placed the directionof the Militia in a Committee wholly Presbyterian, excluding AldermanPennington and other known Independents; and what was desired by the Armywas that Parliament, resuming the power, should bring back theIndependents into the Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had nosooner passed the two Houses, --carried in the Commons by a majority of 77to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23), --than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had beenformed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called "ASolemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the TrainedBands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of Londonand Westminster, Sea-Commanders, Seamen, and Watermen, &c. &c. , " allpledged by oath to an upholding of the Covenant and the furthering of aPersonal Treaty between King and Parliament, without interference fromthe Army. A copy of this Engagement, said by Presbyterian authorities tohave been signed by nearly 100, 000 hands, with an accompanying Petitionin the same sense, which had been addressed by the Engagers to the LordMayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, was brought before both Houses onthe 24th of July. They declared it insolent and dangerous, and adjudgedall who should persevere in it guilty of high treason. That day wasSaturday, and the next day's Sabbath stood between the Houses and thewrath they were provoking. But on Monday the 26th they were called to amighty reckoning. A Petition came in upon them from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, praying for a revocation of the MilitiaOrdinance of the 23rd, and enclosing Petitions to the same effect whichthe Common Council had received from "divers well-affected Citizens" andfrom the "Young Men, Citizens and others, Apprentices. " That was not all. Another Petition came in, from "the Citizens, Young Men, and Apprentices"themselves, complaining of the "pretended Declaration" of the 24thagainst their Engagement, and of the seclusion of the Eleven. Even thatwas not all. While the Petitions were under consideration, the Young Men, Citizens, and Apprentices, with Seamen, Watermen, Trained-Bands, andothers, their fellow-Engagers, were round the Houses in thousands inPalace Yard, and swarming in the lobbies, and throwing stones in upon theLords through the windows, and kicking at the doors of the Commons, andbursting in with their hats on, all to enforce their demands. The riotlasted eight hours. Speaker Lenthall, trying to quit the House, wasforced back, and was glad to end the uproar by putting such questions tothe vote as the intruders dictated. The unpopular Ordinance of the 23rdand the Declaration of the 24th having thus been revoked under mob-compulsion, the Houses were allowed to adjourn. They met next day, Tuesday the 27th, but only to adjourn farther to Friday the 30th. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 664-723; Lords and Commons Journals;Whitlocke, II. 182-185. ]

When the Houses did re-assemble on that day, their appearance was mostwoe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to befound, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eightLords in the one House; and the benches in the other were unusually thin. Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a newSpeaker--the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the CommonsHenry Pelham, Esq. , M. P. For Grantham, in permanence; each took notice ofits absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attendance--the Commonsalso restoring the Eleven, Ly special enumeration, to their places; andeach went on for six or seven days, transacting business or trying totransact it. A good deal of the business related to military preparationsto make good the position the City had taken. Sir William Waller andGeneral Massey, two of the Eleven, were added to a Committee forconsultation with the City Committee of the Militia; this City Committeewas empowered to choose a commander-in-chief and other commanders of theLondon forces; and, when the Committee named Massey for the command-in-chief, and Waller for the command of the Horse, the Houses gave theircordial assent. In short, the two Houses, as they met during thisextraordinary week from July 30 to Aug. 5, consisted mainly of a forlornresidue of the most fanatical Presbyterians in each, regarding the riotsof the 26th as a popular interposition for right principles, andanxiously considering whether, with such a zealous London round them, andwith Massey, Waller, Poyntz, and perhaps Browne, for their generals, theymight not be able to face and rout the Army of Fairfax. There may, however, have been some who remained with the residuary Houses on lazieror more subtle principles. The restored Eleven, with Sir Robert Pye, SirRobert Harley, and a few other typical Presbyterians, certainly led thebusiness of the Commons in this extraordinary week; but among those thatremained in that House how are we to account for Selden? [Footnote: Lordsand Common Journals, July 30-Aug. 5, 1647. ]

The City-tumults, intended as such a brave stroke for Presbytery, hadbeen, in fact, a suicidal blunder. Manchester and Lenthall, the missingSpeakers, though themselves Presbyterians, had withdrawn in disgust fromthe dictation of a London mob of mixed Presbyterian young men andRoyalist intriguers, and had been joined by about fourteen Peers, some ofthem also eminently Presbyterian, and a hundred Commoners, mostlyIndependents. Deliberating what was to be done, these seceders hadresolved to place themselves under the protection of Fairfax, make commoncause with him and the Army, and act as a kind of Parliamentary Councilto him until they could resume their places in a Parliament free frommob-law. Meanwhile Fairfax, acting for himself, was on the march towardsLondon. On the day of the tumults in London his headquarters had been asfar off as Bedford; but, starting thence on the 30th of July, he hadreached Colnbrook on Sunday Aug. 1. Next day he came on to Hounslow; andhere it was that, at an imposing Review of his Army, horse, foot, andartillery, over 20, 000 strong, the seceding Peers and Commoners came in, and were received by the soldiers with acclamations, and cries of"_Lords and Commons, and a Free Parliament_!" Only ten miles nowintervened between the Army and the Common Council of the City of Londonconsulting with their Militia commanders at Guildhall, and somewhat lessthan that distance between the Army and the presumptuous fragment of thetwo Houses at Westminster. Both these bodies, but especially thecitizens, had begun to come to their senses. The tramp, tramp, ofFairfax's approaching Army had cooled their courage. At Guildhall, indeed, as Whitlocke tells us, whenever a scout brought in the good newsthat the Army had halted, the people would still cry "_One and all_;" butthe cry would be changed into "_Treat, Treat_" a moment afterwards, whenthey heard that the march had been resumed. At Hounslow, therefore, Fairfax received the most submissive messages and deputations, withentreaties to spare the City. His reply, in effect, was that the Cityneed fear no unnecessary harshness from the Army, but that the late"prodigious violence" had brought things into such a crisis that the Armymust and would set them right. Nothing more was to be said: the rest wasaction. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 4, a brigade of the Army underRainsborough, which had been despatched across the Thames to approachLondon on the south side, was in peaceable possession of the borough ofSouthwark, and had two cannon planted against the fort on London Bridgetill the citizens thought good to yield it up. That day and the nextother defences on the Thames, eastwards and westwards, were seized orsurrendered. On Friday the 6th, Fairfax with his main Army, all withlaurel-leaves in their hats, and conducting the Lords and Commoners intheir coaches, marched in from Hammersmith by Kensington to Hyde Park, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen joined them, and so to Charing Cross, where the Common Council made their obeisances, and thence to PalaceYard, Westminster. There the two Speakers were ceremoniously reinstated, the Houses properly reconstituted, and Fairfax and the Army thanked. Finally, on Saturday the 7th, the grand affair was wound up by anotherdeliberate march of the Army through the main streets of the City itself, all the more impressive to the beholders from the perfect order kept, andthe abstinence from every act, word, or gesture, that could give offence. The Tower was made over to Fairfax on the 9th; and his head-quarters forsome time continued to be in London or its immediate neighbourhood. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 723-756; Whitlocke, II, 187-193; Godwin, II. 371-387. ]

By the Army's march through the City events were brought back so far intothe channel of regular Parliamentary debate, but with Independencynaturally more powerful than ever. All acts done by the two Houses duringthe week's Interregnum of riot were voted null; and there were measuresof retaliation against those who had been most prominent in thatInterregnum. Six of the culpable Eleven--viz. Holles, Stapleton, SirWilliam Waller, Clotworthy, Lewis, and Long--having fled abroad together, had been chased at sea and overtaken, but let escape; and Stapleton haddied at Calais immediately after his landing. Massey had gone to Holland, with Poyntz; but Glynn and Maynard, remaining behind, were expelled theHouse, impeached, and sent to the Tower (Sept. 7). Seven out of the ninePeers who had formed the Lords' House through the wrong-headed week weresimilarly impeached and committed--viz. The Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middlesex, and Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. TheLord Mayor and four Aldermen were disabled, impeached, and imprisoned(Sept. 24); several officers of the City Trained Bands were called toaccount; and one result of inquiries respecting culprits of a lower gradewas an order by the Commons (Sept. 28 and Oct. 1) for the arrest andindictment for high treason of twelve persons, most of them young men andapprentices, ascertained to have been ringleaders in the dreadful outrageon the two Houses on the 26th of July. As there was a "John Milton, junior" among these young rioters, one would like to have known whetherthey were found and how they fared. In truth, however, nothing veryterrible was intended by such indictments and arrests. As the Army'streatment of the conquered City had been studiously magnanimous, so whatwas chiefly desired by the leaders now in power was that, by the removalfrom public sight of persons like the Seven in the one House, the Elevenin the other, and their City abettors, there might be a Parliament andCorporation reasonably in sympathy with the Army. As respected theParliament, this object had been attained. From the reinstatement of thetwo Houses by Fairfax, Aug. 6, on through the rest of that month and themonths of September and October, what we see at Westminster is a smallUpper House of from half-a-dozen to a dozen Peers, most of themmoderately Presbyterian, but several of them avowed Independents, co-operating with a Commons' House from which the Presbyterians hadwithdrawn in large numbers, so that the average voting-attendance rangedfrom 90 to 190, and the divisions were mainly on new questions arisingamong the Independents themselves. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journalsof dates given, and generally from Aug. 6 to the beginning of November. --The Peers who formed the Lords' House through this period were the Earlof Manchester (Speaker), the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke (whoseerror in remaining in the House through the week of intimidation had beencondoned), Kent, Salisbury, Mulgrave, Nottingham, and Denbigh, ViscountSaye and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Grey of Wark, Howard of Escrick, andDelawarr, with occasionally Lords Montague, North, and Herbert ofCherbury. In the Commons I find one division (Sept. 25) when only 41voted, and another (Nov. 3) when the number rose to 264. At a call of theHouse, Oct. 9, note was taken of about 240 absentees; and of these 59, whose excuses were not considered sufficient, were fined 20_l. _ each. Agood few of these were Independents. ]

It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of hammering out, ifpossible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army andyet be accepted by the King. 

It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into thekeeping of the Army. He was still a captive, but his captivity was littlemore than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany theArmy's movements, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowedto vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting-lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Childersley (June 7), he hadmade visits in his coach or on horseback to various noblemen's housesnear; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Royston; thence(June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield; thence (July 1)to Windsor; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Beading;thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford'sat Woburn; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl ofDevonshire; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved, till, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at hispalace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to himhad been permitted, not only of Parliamentarian noblemen and gentlemen, and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of notedRoyalists and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Richmond. His threeyoung children--the Duke of York, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke ofGloucester--had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian theEarl of Northumberland, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham, to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what wasthe most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted, since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him. These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by thepersonal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by theirmediation with the Parliament. There had been grumblings in the Houses, indeed, at the too great indulgence shown to his Majesty in his choice ofchaplains and other company. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp. 37-49; Godwin, II. 349-361. ]

What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances ofhis Majesty is that, amid all the concourse of people round him, it wasFairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army chiefs, that could now comeclosest to him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed, frequently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to face, considering within themselves whether it would be possible after all tocome to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him theywere most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, itseems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissingthe royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, andwould be "sometimes very pleasant in his discourse with them. " What wasto come of it all? [Footnote: Herbert, 36, 37; Clar. 614. ]

The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Sincehe had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, andputting into exact expression, certain _Heads of Proposals_, to besubmitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better inits own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those_Nineteen Propositions_ of July 1646 which had hitherto been thevexed subject of debate. What these _Heads of Proposals_ were, orcame to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction ofthem put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on itsmarch upon refractory London. The document is signed by Rushworth, "bythe appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council ofWar, " but the penning is Ireton's, and probably much of the matter too. It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlikeprecision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numericallysubdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the greatquestions in dispute between the nation and the King. BiennialParliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, each to sitfor not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons Housein each to have increased powers and to be elected by constituencies soreformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population andproperty all over England: this is the substance of the first Head. Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voicein subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, theexclusion from places of public trust for the next five years of personswho had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliamentmight see fit to make individual exceptions: such is the provision underthe second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland, and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI. -XIII. Treat of theReligious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing aboutEpiscopacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of "allcoercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all otherecclesiastical officers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties uponany, " and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of CommonPrayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worshipapart from the regular Church; and they expressly stipulate for non-enforcement of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole, neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor wouldindicate a preference for Presbytery or Episcopacy in the rule of such aChurch, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty ofReligious Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may bejudged from the fact that they do not haggle on even the Roman Catholicexception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discoverPapists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturbing the State, othermeans than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end. Article XIV. Proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and theirissue, to full "safety, honour, and freedom, " when the preceding Articlesshall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power exceptas therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear thereforesupernumerary. One refers to Compositions by Delinquents, and urges agenerous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people forpast faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act ofOblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Royalists to theirfull civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of gooddesert, without composition, with only the exception provided in thesecond Article. 

These _Heads of Proposals_ of the Army strike one as not onlyinspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the_Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament, but really also asmagnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generousthat we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs werereally prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, andCommons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by theArticle about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession ofBiennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is thatthe _Heads of Proposals_ were tendered for the English kingdomalone, "leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to standas in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both kingdoms, until thatkingdom shall agree to any alteration. " But farther, even as respectedEngland, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid theestablishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction, and the majority seemed so determined in it, that the Army neither couldnor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it perseveredin by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discipline, orworship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsoryeither on the King or on any of his subjects. [Footnote: See the _Headsof Proposals_ complete in Parl. Hist. III. 738-745, and Rushworth, VII. 731-736 (the paging in this vol. Beginning p. 731). Sufficientattention has not been paid by historians, except perhaps Godwin (II. 373-378), to this great document. Even Godwin resorts to theextraordinary hypothesis the Proposals were not in good faith, but only aMachiavellian device of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching Charles fromthe Presbyterians and bringing him over to the Army, who could then laughat him and the Proposals too. Godwin remarks in particular that, asIreton, who penned the Proposals, was "the most inflexible Republicanthat ever existed, " his self-repression in drawing up such a document, accepting restored Royalty, and casting away the chance of a Republic, must have been colossal. In Royalist historians of the seventeenthcentury this kind of reasoning was natural, but one is surprised to findit affecting a mind so able and candid as Godwin's. There is no reason todoubt that, when the _Heads of Proposals_ were settled, they expressedthe real and deliberate conclusions of the Army chiefs as to those termsthe honest acceptance of which by Charles would satisfy them. Nay, thepublication of them was a service to Charles, by instructing the nationgenerally on a better means of dealing with him than the NineteenPropositions. See Denzil Holles's amazed opinion of them as "a newplatform of government, an Utopia of their own. " (Memoirs, p. 176 _etseq. _). As for Ireton's suppression of his Republicanism, Ireton'sRepublicanism, like other people's, probably _grew_. ]

The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subjectof conversations between Charles and the Army-chiefs, and even of aformal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he wasat Woburn. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling thedeputation he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army couldnot do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not hissupport, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been thatCharles was at that moment building great hopes on the recentdemonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty withhim in the Presbyterian interest, and was even aware of the attemptedrevolution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults. It says much for the forbearance of the Army-leaders that they did notwithdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. Onthe contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have theoption of agreeing with them; they modified them in some points to suithim; and they were willing that the whole world should know what theywere. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, atColnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to theParliamentary Commissioners with the Army; and it was with that Papercarried before it that the Army continued its march into London. Accordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses(Aug. 6), the Army's _Heads of Proposals_ were officially tabled inboth (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might, if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead ofthe _Nineteen Propositions_. [Footnote: Major Huntingdon's Paperaccusing Cromwell, Parl. Hist. III. 970; Sir John Berkley's _Memoirs ofNegotiations_ (1699), reprinted in Harleian' Miscellany, IX 466-488;Godwin (quoting Bamfield), II. 378-380; Parl. Hist. III. 737; CommonsJournals, Aug. 6. There is evidence that, between the submission of theProposals to the King at Woburn on or about July 24 and their completeredaction for publication Aug. 1; additions had been made to accommodatethe King. Such additions may have been the two supernumerary Articlesproviding for lenity to compounders and a general Act of Oblivion. ]

September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thusarising. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug. 24, and where he was surrounded by such state and luxury that it seemedas if the old days of Royalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplainsabout him, and favourite household servants brought together again fromdifferent parts of England; not only could he ride over when he liked tosee his children at the Earl of Northumberland's seat of Sion House; but, as if an amnesty had already been passed, Royalists of the most markedantecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, werepermitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time, so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. Such were (in addition tothe Duke of Richmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southamptonand Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge andMr. Ashburnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now atlast, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long dutyin Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse keptguard at Hampton Court, "captivity" was hardly now a word to be appliedto Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpostat Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th ofAugust, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, theArmy's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to beat Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Courtto Westminster is twelve miles, and Putney lies exactly half way between;and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be representedto the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places. At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy whichcould command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians andIndependents of various shades, with Army officers among them; at Putneymidway was the Army, containing its military Parliament, of which thegenerals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-officers, with the regimental agitators, were the Commons; and at Hampton Court, inconstant communication with both powers, and entertaining proposals fromboth, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distancemust not be forgotten. Her emissaries and representatives were on thescene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from HamptonCourt to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 789 _et seq. _; Herbert, 47-51. ]

A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition ofaffairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Rising inLondon had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of thatattempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written fromEdinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. Theimpression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among theLondon Presbyterians, and stupid mismanagement of a splendid opportunity. Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their"brave Engagement, " had Massey and Waller shown "any kind of masculousactivity, " and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen ofthe London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical momentfrom the body of their brethren, and put forth a childish Petitiondisavowing all sympathy with the tumults, what a different ending theremight have been! As it was, "a company of silly rascals" (Fairfax's Armyto wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City, and by them of all England. " So wrote Baillie privately, and the publicorgans of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There hadbeen Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates tothe reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the generalstate of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrousinsolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and theexpulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from theCommons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages onScotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? TheEngland with which Scotland had consented to league herself by theCovenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to becoming into fashion--an England in which constituted authority seemed tobe at an end, and an Army ruled all! And what an Army! An Army ofSectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience whichwould lead to a "Babylonish confusion, " and impregnated also (as could beproved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actuallyanti-monarchical and revolutionary! So, in successive letters, from Aug. 13 onwards, the Scottish Government remonstrated from Edinburgh, intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which theyhad a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers ofFairfax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to theEarl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regularannual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4; and in a longdocument put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of "A Declarationand Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England, " the anarchy ofEngland on the religious question is largely bewailed. "Nevertheless, "they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made byEngland to conformity with Scotland in one and the same PresbyterianChurch-rule, "we are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangersinto which this common cause of Religion is now brought by the growingand spreading of most dangerous errors in England, to the obstructing andhindering of the begun Reformation: as namely (besides many others)Socinianism, Arminianism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism, Erastianism, Independency, and that which is called, by abuse of theword, Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal, schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the truth, hinderingreformation, and seducing others; whereunto we add those Nullifidians, ormen of no religion, commonly called Seekers. " [Footnote: Baillie, III. 9-22; Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1647; Rushworth, VII. 768-771;and correspondence of Scottish Commissioners in Lords Journals of Aug. And Sept. 1647. For the escapade of Stephen Marshall and his friends, referred to by Baillie, see Neal, III. 375-6. While these few of the cityministers disavowed the tumults, the Westminster Divines as a body merelymediated in a neutral style to avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, Aug. 2). ]

Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it hadreinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would havemade their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. Butwith such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by thekey-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have doneso would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots, and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on theNineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy. Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with butone or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered toCharles on the part of the English Parliament and the ScottishCommissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at theutmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him, " he said to the Earl ofPembroke, who presented them; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, datedHampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all hisformer objections to those now familiar Propositions, and that, havingseen certain "Proposals of the Army, " to which "he conceived his twoHouses not to be strangers, " he was of opinion that _they_ would be"a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace. " In other words, though Charleshad rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now playedthem against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliamentnot to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded asobsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better termswhich had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently theywanted to keep out of sight. This for England; and, for what concernedScotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the ScottishCommissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositionswhich were of interest to the Scottish nation. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 796, 802-3, and 810-11; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14. ]

Parliament was in a dilemma. Was Charles to be taken at his word? Werethe Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard, and the Army Proposalspublicly brought forward instead? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration, if not Presbyterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament, and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful withmany, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelvedays of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in theCommons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept. 21: "_Resolved_, That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept. , given atHampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the Propositions: "suchis the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus:" Thequestion being put, That the House be forthwith resolved into a GrandCommittee, to take into consideration the whole matter concerning theKing, according to the former order, the House was divided. The _Yeas_went forth: (Lieut. -General Cromwell, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellersfor the _Yea_) with the _Yea_ 84; (Sir Peter Wentworth, ColonelRainsborough, tellers for the _No_) with the _No_ 34; so that thequestion passed with the affirmative. " On the following day, accordingly, we find "The question was propounded, That the House will once again makeapplication to the King for those things which the Houses shall judgenecessary for the welfare and safety of the kingdom; and, the questionbeing put, Whether this question shall be now put, the House was divided:(Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the _Yea_)with the _Yea_ 70; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Marten, tellers for the_No_) with the _No_ 23: so that the question passed with theaffirmative. " As far as one can construe what lies under these entries, the state of the case was this:--By the King's new rejection of theNineteen Propositions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehandand much approving [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. 478. "We[Berkley, Ashburnham, &c. ] gave our friends in the Army a sight of this[the King's] Answer the day before it was sent, with which they seemedinfinitely satisfied. "]), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless theywould vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of movingthen lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican ofthese, including Colonel Rainsborough and Henry Marten, were for notusing the power, either because they desired to break with Charlesentirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament togetherto the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful tothe Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take theresponsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be atemporizing method? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease thinkingof the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they werebound in all its parts and items, and to go over the whole businessafresh, selecting the most essential questions of the NineteenPropositions and expressing present conclusions on these in newPropositions to be offered to the King? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, andothers of the Independent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a goodfew of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma, Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majorityof Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day. [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named. ]

The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a newapplication to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been dulyinformed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions, and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with eachother. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had beenagreed to; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charleswere to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. Inone matter, however, the Commons _had_ proposed a change. On the13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intendedPropositions which concerned Church-government, and the resolution beforethe House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Actsfor settling the Presbyterian Government, Cromwell had forced the Houseto three divisions. First he tried to limit the term of such settlementto three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38; thenhe insisted that _some_ limit of time should be mentioned, and wonby 44 to 30; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, andlost by 33 to 41, Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlementto which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of theParliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and thefollowing the question of Toleration also came up, and with theseresults: Toleration to be granted of separate worship for Nonconformistsof tender consciences, but not for Roman Catholics, nor any toleration ofthe use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to themain principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on theLord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God somewhere. Thiswas all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents evenin October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, couldextract from the reluctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear tohave hesitated about even so much as this; for it was not till the 2nd ofNovember that the two Houses came to an understanding on the subject, andeven on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional securityin the form of a "Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion. "[Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates named; and Rushworth, VII. 843-4 and 853-4. ]

Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period forthe present, we may notice one or two contemporary incidents. ----OnSaturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of theWestminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith_, at the point wherethey had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. At Chap. IV. "OfCreation, " (_antč_, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also thefirst paragraph of Chap. V. , "Of Providence, " that day, and resolved tocontinue the business next Wednesday and punctually every followingWednesday till it should be despatched. But Wednesday after Wednesdaycame; other business was too pressing; and so the matter hung. This wasthe more inconvenient because on the 22nd of October the Assemblypresented to the two Houses their _Larger Catechism_ completed. Itwas ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and thatmatter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it wassomething on the credit side that the SECOND PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIANSYNOD OF LONDON duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr. Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for EnglishPresbyterianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two ScottishDivines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotlandin the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced inthe Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to hisbrethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in theirbooks that the Scottish Commissioners, all or some, had been present tothat point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assemblywas still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of the dates given; and Neal, III. 354 and 358-9. ]

There was no greater mystery all this while than the conduct of Cromwelland Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been incontinual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or bymessages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been keptup even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approaching the Kingon the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while Cromwell wasconstantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedingsconsequent on his motion. [Footnote: "Sir, I pray excuse my not-attendance upon you. I feared to miss the House a day, where it's verynecessary for me to be. " So wrote Cromwell to Fairfax Oct. 13, the veryday of his three divisions of the House on the duration of Presbytery, and of the compromise there on Toleration (Carlyle's Cromwell, f. 239). ]What did it all mean? We have little difficulty now in seeing what itmeant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in aParliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might beconstrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that ofthe Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity towhich he saw himself reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Armyscheme held out, of a restoration of his Royalty, under inevitableconstitutional restrictions, but those less galling in many respects, andespecially in the religious respect, than the restrictions demanded byParliament? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell andIreton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world atthe time was suspicious and saw much more. What the English Presbyteriansand the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possessionof himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliamentand Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for moreleisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blueriband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and theLieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton--how could the Brewerresist such temptations? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or weremischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and rousedsuspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It wasnot only that Colonel Rainsborough, who had opposed Cromwell's motion forre-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out againsthis policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, suchas Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chiefofficers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. Butamong the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisenoutgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, andimpatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole politicalquestion than seemed agreeable to Cromwell. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs(Harl. Misc. ) 476, 478; Holles, 184; Baxter, Book I. P. 60; Clar. 620;Godwin, II. 400 _et seq. _ See also Major Huntington's Paper ofAccusations against Cromwell and Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Parl. Hist. III. 966-974). Duly interpreted, it is very instructive. ]

At Putney the Army, having little to do, had resolved itself into a greatdaily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships andreceiving deputations from the similar but civilian Agitatorships thathad sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiersof the political school of THE LEVELLERS. Of this school John Lilburne, still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and inkthere, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. "That the House ofCommons should think of that great Murderer of England (meaning theKing), for by the impartial Law of God there is no exemption of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers;""That the Lords are but painted puppets and Dagons, no natural issue ofLaws, but the mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government, putting the body of the People to pain, "--such were opinions and phrasescollected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Governmentas early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotlandfor the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the wholeBritish world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of theLevellers, as distinct from the more tentative Democracy of manycontemporary minds. The _Army Proposals_ of Aug. 1 were not for atotal subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, but only for a great limitation of the Royal Power, a reduction also ofthe power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power ofthe Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that Housein a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals, the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed morevisibly through the whole Army. There began to be comments among theAgitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on hiscoquettings with the King. "I have honoured you, and my good thoughts ofyou are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened, "Lilburne had written to Cromwell Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance ofredeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down fromall his "present conceived greatness" before he was three months older. Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring tofulfil his threat; and by the end of October there was a wide-spreadmutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its ownprinters, had by that time made its designs known in two documents. One, entitled _The Case of the Army_, was signed by the agents of fiveregiments, Cromwell's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18); the other, entitled _An Agreement of the People_ (Nov. 1), emanated from thesame regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regimentsnot to disband until the Army had secured its rights; and among theserights were the speedy dissolution of the existing Parliament, and thereconstitution of the Government of England in a single RepresentativeHouse, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially. This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specifiedfundamentals which were to be regarded as settled _ab initio_ beyonddisturbance or even reconsideration by any corporate authority whatever. One of them was absolute freedom to all "in the matter of Religion andthe ways of God's worship"; but this was not to prevent the State fromsetting up any "public way of instructing the Nation, so it be notcompulsive. " In fact, here was the accurate essence of the _ArmyProposals_ over again, only distilled to a higher strength and morefiercely flavoured. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, and 859, 860; Godwin, II. 423-428, and 436-450. One of the numerous incredible andcontradictory hypotheses about Cromwell is that it was he who, while intreaty with the King for a restoration of his Royalty, was all the while, by his secret grip of the Army-Agitatorships, hounding them on in theirultra democratic tendencies. The Levelling Principle itself would be auseful force in his hands, and he could well consent to being abused bythe Agitators while they were really working for his ends!!]

Cromwell's preserved Letters of this period are few, but one of themcontains a reference to the misconstructions to which he was thensubject. "Though, it may be, for the present, " he says, "a cloud may lieover our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds ofthem, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity, and innocencyfrom any other ends we aim at but His glory and the Public Good. "[Footnote: Letter to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin, dated Sept 14, 1647; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 237-8. ] At length, however, he had to let itbe seen that he had broken off from Charles utterly. Who does not knowthe picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography?Cromwell and Ireton says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern, Holborn, disguised as common troopers and calling for cans of beer, tillthe sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man withthe saddle had arrived; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, gotpossession of the saddle he carried, and, ripping up the skirt of it, found the King's letter to the Queen in which he quite agreed with heropinion of the two Army-villains he was then obliged to cajole, andassured her they should have their deserts at last. [Footnote: The storyprofesses to have come from Cromwell's own lips in conversation in 1649with Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery; but itsmythical character is obvious. ]. 

It needed no such interception of a letter in the yard of a tavern toconvince Cromwell at last that Charles could not be trusted even in anegotiation for his own benefit. All the while that he had been treatingwith Cromwell and Ireton, in the sense of the Army Proposals, with aReligious Toleration included, he had been treating with the Scots, bothby messages through the Earl of Lauderdale and by letters in his own handto the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh, in a sense directly the opposite:_i. E. _ on the terms of a paction with the Scots for compulsoryPresbytery and suppression of the Sects in England, in return for thearmed assistance of the Scottish nation towards a restoration of hiskingship in all other respects. Late in October, Lanark and Loudoun hadcome from Scotland to help Lauderdale in finishing this negotiation; andthe three Lords together, in conferences at Hampton Court, had assuredCharles that, "if he would give satisfaction in the point of Religion, hewas master of Scotland on what terms as to other things he would demand. "He had not quite given them all the satisfaction they wanted; but thethree Lords still remained loyally about him, with plans for his escapeto Berwick. Nothing of all this appeared, of course, in the publiccommunications of the Scottish Commissioners with the English Parliament. The purport, however, had been entrusted to Ormond, Capel, and others ofthe Royalists who were chief in the King's counsels; and Cromwell had hismeans of guessing. [Footnote: For the interesting and instructivecorrespondence of Charles with Lanark from June 1647 onwards, withdetails of the negotiations after Lanark and Loudoun joined Lauderdale atHampton Court, see Burnet's Hamiltons, 401-412. See also Clar. 622-3;Rushworth, VII, 850; and Lords Journals, Nov. 6. ]

The mutinous disposition of so many Regiments, and its manifestation insuch tracts as _The Case of the Army_ and the _Agreement of thePeople_, had greatly alarmed Parliament. The investigation of thematter had been substantially left, however, in the hands of Fairfax andthe Council of War at Putney. That Council, with Fairfax and Cromwellpresent in it, had appointed a special Committee of Inquiry, consistingof twenty officers with Ireton at their head; and in a series of meetingsof this Committee and of the collective Council itself, extending fromOct. 22 to Nov. 8, things were brought to a kind of adjustment. There wasto be a general Rendezvous of the Army for ending of disorder; andmeanwhile certain new Proposals were sketched out, to be presented toParliament as a summary of what might now be considered the opinions ofthe chief representatives of the Army, reviewing their former Proposalsof Aug. 1 in the light of all that had since occurred. So far as theProposals _were_ sketched out, one observes in them a curiouscombination of compromises. There is decidedly greater severity in themto the King than in the original Army Proposals. On the other hand, thereis nothing about the abolition of Kingship or of the House of Lords, noconcession on these points to the ultra-democratic tendency of theLevellers. The question of King or No King had been raised, it is said, in the Council meetings by the Agitators, but had been quashed by thechief officers. Again, rather strangely, the question of Liberty ofConscience and the terms of the establishment of Presbytery is entirelywaived, unless we regard the provision that Delinquents should be obligedto take the Covenant before being admitted to compound as a sign that onthis question too there was a recession from former liberality. On thewhole, the new Army Proposals look like a jumble of incongruities, andrather disappoint one after the clear political comprehensiveness of theoriginal Proposals which Ireton had drafted, or even the rudesimplification of the same put forth by the democratic Agitators. Thereason probably was that the Army-chiefs desired at the moment to patchup a concordat, suppressing all unnecessary appearance of differencebetween the Parliament and the Army, and bringing both as amicably aspossible into the one direct track of the new set of ParliamentaryPropositions to the King. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 849-866; Godwin, II, 450-454. ]

On the 10th of November, all the Propositions being ready, a veryemphatic Preamble to them was agreed upon by the two Houses. It wasintended that they should be presented to the King formally at HamptonCourt within the next few days. Before that could be done, however, hisMajesty had vanished. 

The vicinity of Putney, with exasperated Levellers and Agitators allabout, had become really unsafe for Charles; and, after some meditationand hesitation, he had himself arranged a plan of escape. It was put inexecution on Thursday the 11th of November. On the evening of that dayhis Majesty, accompanied by Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. William Legge, and SirJohn Berkley, contrived to slip out of Hampton Court Palace, by the backgarden, unobserved. It was supper-time before he was missed by Whalleyand the guard; the night was excessively dark and stormy; and, though itwas ascertained that he and his companions had mounted horses near thePalace, the route they had taken could not be guessed. For the next twoor three days, therefore, London was all anxiety. Meanwhile thefugitives, guided by the King himself through the New Forest, had reachedthe south coast, near Southampton, and in sight of the Isle of Wight. TheKing's reasons for taking this direction appear to have been the vaguest;nor is it certainly known that the Isle of Wight had been in his mindwhen he left Hampton Court. No ship, however, having been provided for amore distant voyage, and the King being in any case irresolute about yetleaving England altogether, the island did now, if not before, occur tohim as suitable for his purpose. One inducement may have been that theGovernor, young Colonel Robert Hammond, was a person whom the King hadreason to believe as well disposed to him as any Parliamentarian officer. Hammond, indeed, was the nephew of the King's favourite chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond; and, though he was one of Cromwell's admiring disciples, and had married a daughter of Hampden, his uncle's reasonings, or otherinfluences, had begun of late to weaken his ardour. It had been withundisguised pleasure that, but a week or two before, he had left his postin the Army and gone to this quiet and distant governorship, where hemight live in retirement and without active duty. What, then, was hishorror when, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 13, as he was riding alongthe road near his residence of Carisbrooke Castle, in the centre of theisland, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Ashburnham presented themselves, andtold him that the King had fled in their company from Hampton Court anddesired to be his guest! "He grew so pale, " says Berkley, "and fell intosuch a trembling, that I did really believe he would have fallen from hishorse; which trembling continued with him at least an hour after, inwhich he broke out into passionate and distracted expressions, sometimessaying 'O gentlemen, you have undone me. '" He collected himself atlength, however, and accepted the duty which fate had sent him. Crossingover, with Berkley and Ashburnham, to the earl of Southampton's house ofTitchfield on the mainland, where Charles had meanwhile been waiting withLegge, he paid his homage gravely enough; and, after some conversation, in which he promised to do all for his Majesty that might be consistentwith his obedience to Parliament, he returned to the island, with theKing in his charge, and Berkley, Ashburnham, and Legge in attendance. His letter, narrating what had happened, and asking instructions, wasread in the two houses of Parliament on Monday, Nov. 15. [Footnote:Berkley's Memoir, Harl. Miscell. IX. 479-483; Rushworth, VII. 871-874;Clar. 624-7; Parl. Hist. III. 785-791. As usual, in the later Royalistaccounts, it is Cromwell that had contrived the whole affair of theKing's escape both matter and form. Hammond's appointment to theGovernorship of the island (Sept. 9) was Cromwell's doing, inanticipation of what might be needed; then he had stirred up theAgitators at Putney to threaten the King's life at Hampton Court; then hehad warned the King, through Whalley, of the designs of the Agitators, soas to frighten him into flight; then, through Ashburnham or otherwise, hehad suggested the Isle of Wight as the very place for the King to go to, and so had caught him in the prepared trap. ]

FOURTH STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT: NOV. 1647-NOV. 1648. 

Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence. Parliament's NewMethod of the _Four Bills_. Indignation of the Scots; theirComplaints of Breach of the Covenant--Army Rendezvous at Ware:Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment ofthe Concordat with Parliament--Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle ofWight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of theFour Bills--Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No FurtherAddresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance--_TheEngagement_, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in theIsle of Wight--Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: HisHabits in his Imprisonment--First Rumours of _The ScottishEngagement_: Royalist Programme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR--Beginnings ofTHE SECOND CIVIL WAR: Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in theSouth-east: Siege of Colchester--Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among theRoyalist Exiles abroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey--Invasion ofEngland by Hamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales offthe Southeast Coast: Blockade of the Thames--Consternation of theLondoners: Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of thePresbyterians: their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: theirLeanings to the King: Independents in a struggling minority: Charge ofTreason against Cromwell in his absence--The Three Days' Battle ofPreston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell: Surrender ofColchester to Fairfax: Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland: VirtualEnd of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR--Parliamentary Treaty with the King atNewport: Unsatisfactory Results--Protests against the Treaty by theIndependents--Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of theirConcordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery:Formation of a Republican Party--Petitions for Justice on the King:The _Grand Army Remonstrance_--Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration ofthe Argyle Government there: Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter toHammond--The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle--TheArmy again in possession of London. 

Carisbrooke Castle, now mostly a ruin, but in Charles's time the chieffortified place in the Isle of Wight, stands almost in the centre of theisland, close to the village of Carisbrooke, and near the town ofNewport, which, although really an inland town, communicates with the seaby a navigable river. Here, with the verdant island all round him, andfine views both of land and sea, Charles was to live for a whole year. Though it was November when he came into the island, a lady, as he passedthrough Newport on his way to Carisbrooke, could present him with adamask-rose just picked from her garden; and he was to see all the circleof seasons in that mild South-English climate, till November came roundagain. [Footnote: Herbert, 55, 56. ]

In a letter which Charles had left at Hampton Court, to be communicatedto the two Houses, he had avowed that, though security from threatenedviolence was the immediate reason for his disappearance for a time into aplace of retirement, yet another reason was his desire to extricatehimself from a negotiation in which he felt that the "chief interests"concerned were not all represented. In the same spirit of eclecticism, with a word for each of the "chief interests, " and a special show ofsolicitude for the Army, is a Letter sent by the King to the two Housesonly four days after he had been in the Isle of Wight (Nov. 17). It giveshis Majesty's view of what would be the right kind of negotiation, andconveys his definite offers. He cannot consent to the abolition ofEpiscopacy, but he will assent to the experiment of Presbytery for threeyears, if accompanied by a Toleration, but not for Papists, Atheists, andBlasphemers; he will surrender the Militia for his own life, on conditionthat it shall afterwards revert to the Crown; he will undertake for theArrears of the Army; and on other matters he will be ready to do hisutmost in a conclusive Personal Treaty in London. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 871-2 and 880-833; Parl. Hist. III. 786-7 and 799-802; and KingCharles's Works (1651), 117-125. ]

The two Houses retained their own ideas of the negotiation necessary;and, while giving orders for the despatch of a sufficient guard to theIsle of Wight, to be under Hammond's command, and also for the King'shousehold they were re-adjusting _their_ battery of negotiation forthe changed circumstances of its object. 

At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with thewhole series of Propositions which the Houses had so carefully drawn outfor presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encounteredthe most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The moodof these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before theKing's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in fullbloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hardusage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer theinsults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected, ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managedArmy? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland! Could theScottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these"tossings" to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect ofall the previous Remonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estateson this very subject? No! let those Propositions which the EnglishParliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King beinvited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treatywith Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free"!--Partly toplease the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if theywould not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in theirprocedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, orrather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King "FourBills, " embodying the Propositions "absolutely necessary for presentsecurity. " Bill 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia fortwenty years, or longer if necessary; Bill 2 was for confirmation of allacts of the Parliament in the late war; Bill 3 was for the cancelling ofall Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, andthe creation of new Peers only with consent of the two Houses; and Bill 4was for giving the two Houses the right of adjournment at their ownpleasure. --This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov. 25 (fifteen Peers present); there were divisions on it in the CommonsNov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (anunusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter;and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as aboveindicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec. 14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague, for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, andMr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commissioners forcarrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as notsuperseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were torequire his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at theutmost; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to hisMajesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send anotherCommission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. II. 799-804 and 823-826; Lords and CommonsJournals of days named; also (for a special Letter of the ScottishCommissioners) Lords Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter Charles thankedLanark, saying, "Seriously, it is as full to my sense as if I had pennedit myself. " Burnet's Hamiltons, 416. ]

If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method ofprocedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason toabandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec. 14), the Scottish Commissioners, knowing well enough privately what theywere, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy ofthem. This being reported to the Commons, a discussion ensued, and Mr. Selden (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eagerfor a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee toprepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was takenup by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. Itwas to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the Englishkingdom to communicate Bills ready for the King's assent to "any otherwhomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four Billscould not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as forthe rest, it was intended to send these Bills to the King on Monday next, together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners werealready cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to addany Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As ifto increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it acopy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure bothwith the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known tothem. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commissionersmad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Reply, innineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the twoHouses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was amarvel. The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launchitself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued fromWorcester House "by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament ofScotland, " and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of theindebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was arecapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotlandat the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons forpreferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King tothe English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-madePropositions. But, as the English Parliament _had_ communicated tothe Scottish Commissioners their new set of Propositions (though not theFour Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from theScottish point of view, collectively and _seriatim_. The largestcriticism was on the Religious question. Nearly one half of the entiredocument was occupied with this subject. Was not the Religious questionthe main one, the _unum necessarium, _ deserving the first place inany national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in thePropositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to showthat the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not beso stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's ownconcerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in thePropositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenantitself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly thewhole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that! Wasthe Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes ofoblivion? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treatthe cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity ofChurch-rule in the two kingdoms? Most miserably! No pressing ofPresbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynicalacquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up, and a glee in not being committed even to that beyond three years!Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by anaccompanying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience! TheCommissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should betroubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves toPresbyterial government;" but they did "from their very souls abhor sucha general and vast Toleration" as one of the Propositions seemed toprovide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all thesectaries of the time, " whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, orIndependents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to thenew sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not toinclude "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists, " where was thesecurity that these might not at least print and publish theirblasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels aremoved, &c. !"--There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, aftera torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whomhe had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of hisfriend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Somethingof the kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentousPaper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length preventedimmediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the"aspersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be "forbornefor the future. " This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec. 20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assignedthe gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been"more pathetique than ordinarily. " Nevertheless from that moment theconnexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissionerswas totally severed. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 15-21. ]

What had become of the third party concerned, the English Army?--Thegeneral Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of War at Putney, inconsequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament(_antč_, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartiteRendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to bereviewed on different days and at different places. The first of theseReviews was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which theKing's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each ofseven regiments then present according to order there was read aRemonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline, condemning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts tomake the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution ofhimself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights, but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which wasmutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of eachregiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience, As nothingwas said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mentiononly made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a ReformedRepresentative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts ofthe regiments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fitsoldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field thathad come without orders--Colonel Harrison's horse-regiment and ColonelRobert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state ofexcitement, with copies of the _Agreement of the People_ stuck intheir hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had comedown to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way Johnhad expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax andthe other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinousemblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which haddriven away most of its officers, remained sulky and vociferous, tillCromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing fromtheir hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from theranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and oneof the three shot. After this turn given to the first Review, the otherspassed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was theminor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the commonsoldiers, with temporary restraint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough, Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, theofficers who had been most implicated in the revolt. --So, at the expenseof but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra-Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson wasthat, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it wasbest for England that the Army should still serve the constitutedauthority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Iretonhad hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been forteaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democraticspirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had beennecessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets oftwo-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through November and December thegreat aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters atWindsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore harmony. Rainsborough, Ewer, Scott, and the other ultra-Democratic officers hadbeen restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strongrecommendations had gone to Parliament that Rainsborough, who, before theMutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (inrecollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in thathigh appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and greatprayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took aconspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into ahappy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Commissioners with theArmy described as "a sweet and comfortable agreement, the whole matter ofthe kingdom being left with Parliament. " And so, while the two Houseswere arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isleof Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 791-799 and 805-822; Godwin, II. 462-8; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 254;Rushworth, VII. 951. ]

On Friday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners ofthe two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Billsand the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, anddelivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, aProtest against the English Bills and Propositions. For the day or twofollowing, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty thanthe English Commissioners; but on the 28th the English Commissionersreceived from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterlyunfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else exceptafter a complete and deliberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of theScottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been noother. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, andit was read in both Houses on the 3lst. The effects were extraordinary. On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by amajority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or addresses shouldbe made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications tohim by any person whatsoever should be made without leave of the Housesunder the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the Kingshould be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carrysuch. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Resolutions, only Manchesterand Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thusdeclared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burstinto applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in thecommon cause. 

One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiarbody which, under the name of "The Committee of the two Kingdoms, " hadhitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive forthe Parliaments of England and Scotland (_antč_, p. 41). As Scotlandhad broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so, on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-AddressResolution, they resolved "That the powers formerly granted by bothHouses to the Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms ofEngland and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the members of bothHouses only that are of that Committee. " In other words, Lords Loudounand Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wantedin England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being themselves of thesame opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that theywere about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sentManchester and Warwick "to wish them a good journey, " assure them thatany arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attendedto, and express a desire for "the continuance of the brotherly union andgood correspondency between the two nations. " Actually, a few daysafterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Housesappointed six Commissioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, andallay, if possible, any ill feeling that might be caused there by theirrepresentation of recent occurrences. 

Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less! Ithad not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland againstthe English Bills and Propositions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdalehad made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of theEnglish Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them forsome time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court; and, when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only theProtest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a moremomentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. Actually on the 26thof December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissedwith the unfavourable Answer to the English Parliament, this document hadbeen signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and byLoudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark on the other. Not daring to bring it outof the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wraptup in lead and buried in a garden whence they could recover itafterwards. And little wonder! It was A SECRET TREATY BETWEEN CHARLES ANDTHE SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS, in which his Majesty bound himself, on theword of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or mighttake it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirmPresbyterian Church-government and the Westminster Directory of Worshipin England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c. , forhimself and his household), and moreover to see to the suppression of theIndependents and all other sects and heresies; while the Scots, inreturn, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoringhim, on these conditions, to his full Royalty in that kingdom! Thus atlast Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of hisadversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it waswith the Scots, all but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition ofEpiscopacy and the establishment of strict Presbytery in England!![Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals; Parl. Hist. III. 827-837; Burnet'sHamiltons (for correspondence between the King and Lanark) 412-423;Stevenson's Hist. Of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1840, p. 586 (forLoudoun's account of the substance of the Treaty); Clarendon, 634-637. Clarendon's account of the Treaty is full; and, though he condemns it as"monstrous, " he gives the apology that had reconciled the King to it inhis despair. It was that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had themselvesargued that the Treaty would turn out mere waste paper. After theScottish Army should be in England, and the Royalists in England roused, "there would be nobody to exact all those particulars, but everybodywould submit to what his Majesty should think fit to be done!"]

Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles hadbeen permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at hispleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as atHampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned bysome stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammondhad at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same timeeither to remove the King to some other place or else to dischargehimself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. Withthis last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continuein his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty wasnot to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receiveunauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle andthe line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in hisservice, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to bedismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strictregulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles'slife in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straitercaptivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He hadthe liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, weresufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "goodair and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land. " For his solaceand recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, aspacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, wasconverted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled, " at oneside of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement. "This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon andafternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden, "within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isleof Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries andobtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had hisset times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and hisfavourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, wereagain in request. Though he still declined the services of anyPresbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily ontheological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed DoomsdaySedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he hadwritten, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree ofLife for the healing of the Nations, " he ordered him to be admitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it tothe author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep afterhaving written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basinclose to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, andof subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57-67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not ObadiahSedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely. ]

The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had theScottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than theywere obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done inthe Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun andLauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle ofWight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the wholesubject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universallydiscussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee ofEstates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention ofthe Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority wentpassionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went withthem; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, includingmost of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were theHAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there astrong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottishclergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, inthe Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that theCommissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that theconditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in realityevaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just causefor war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied withMalignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodyingthese views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang withdenunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from ProvincialSynods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; hadthe entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS wouldhave been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from theHamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted toecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliamentadhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not inEngland only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40, 000 Scots wasto be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for aninvasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded inchief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for hisLieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595;Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435. ] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement withthe King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVILWAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread overfour years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as manymonths (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concernus here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative. 

The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen HenriettaMaria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to allthose dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected totake leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after thisfashion:--(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England andWales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising inwhich London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable forsuch an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengefulremains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of thePresbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. ThePresbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and largenumbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to questionwhether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament werealtogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers insome things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better thancontinuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with aDemocratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on itsresources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mindthe promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the verypretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including theCity of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particulardistricts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in Englandor able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, whereimmediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir MarmadukeLangdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for theWest, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich(formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord FrancisVilliers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being thenbut boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to theirgreat estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the namethey bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as thecommissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when theyshould be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings inthe first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had donehim good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and hisParliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) Therewas to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or followthe Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have beenin circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been thatit would be "no wonder to see 10, 000 merry souls, then lying there, andcursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to makeone cast more for the King. " Certain it is that in the following monthsthere was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France andHolland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and thePrince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, SecretaryNicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedlypoor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make anexpedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, ifhe did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldestdaughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all hecould for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of hisStadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French onefor the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Mostwould be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for exampleOrmond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what wasspecially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by beingamong the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and eitherremaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen wasemphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI. , where the pre-arrangement ofthe new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to differentpersons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, thananywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. Seealso Rushworth for Feb. , March, and April, 1648. ]

Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite comeup to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable. 

The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer, governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a ColonelLaughern, also in Parliamentary employment, revolted as early as the endof February. Ostensibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliamentfor disbanding supernumeraries; but, before the end of April, the affairbecame a Royalist outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, andCardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppressthis rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments ofhorse and three of foot; which, with the forces already in the region, would make an army of about 8, 000 men. Before he went, risings of lessimportance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there hadbeen one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of "For God andKing Charles!" (Sunday, April 9. ) It had been suppressed only by street-charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing Cross. Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the IrishRebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealousParliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Dukeof York. By the contrivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whiskedaway from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes, to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age; but his father hadinstructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had beendesignated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful. 

All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales; but hardly had he gone whenthere came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by SirMarmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave andSir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying inEdinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with theDuke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed, announced himself as commissioned General for the King in the fivenorthern counties, and the business of watching against his advance laywith Lambert, the Parliamentarian General in those parts, assisted by SirArthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle. 

Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in thehands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon--Fairfax now no longer mere SirThomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to hisfather Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon ashard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales andLambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed thecounties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for thedisbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendourof his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and KingCharles" was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or lessof Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection inKent was of independent origin, and was the most extensive and hence Ithad been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by RogerL'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales; but the Earl of Norwich had come intoKent to take the lead. Canterbury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles ofDeal and Walmer, had been won for the King; there were communicationsbetween the insurgents and the Londoners, and in the end of May some10, 000 or 12, 000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices fromLondon in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums andbanners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went outto Blackheath, May 29; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the twowere at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of theirhard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county;and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thamesinto Essex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, LordLoughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gatheredinto that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of aroundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, Theswift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) compelled themto change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12), adding some 4, 000 or 5, 000 armed men to the population of that doomedtown. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault, resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their sideresolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfaxin Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both forthemselves and for the general cause, the SIEGE OF COLCHESTER (June l2--Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war. 

An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of theFleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off theKentish coast, Royalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, andwith such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Rainsborough, who had beenashore Defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on boardhis own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27thof May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed thePresbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, andsent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry ofthe sailors was, "We will go to our own Admiral, " meaning the young Dukeof York in Holland. Actually, some ten warships, having ejected all theirParliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about thecoasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection inthose parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early inJune, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for theworld of Royalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with thewooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country. Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague toHelvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the petof the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accidentto the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raisedotherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Rupert, Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. Hearrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet, and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Princeand Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was ajoyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal ofdifference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means. 

About the time of the Revolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received otherbad news. Pontefract had been seized for the King, June 2, and otherimportant places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Throughthe rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands, so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had beensuccesses, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell washopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his smallforces against Langdale in the north; Colchester was beginning to bedistressed in the grip of Fairfax; but still, with the whole of Englandin Royalist or semi-Royalist palpitation, and the City of London actuallyheaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton andhis army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border? There had beendelays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of theArgyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been bythe most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. Atlast, however, it _had_ been got together; and now England was fullof the rumour of its coming. Lo! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, thedesignated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could notchoose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham, young Lord Francis Villiers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the DutchColonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he startedup at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July; addressed a formalDeclaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as wellas a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester; and called onall Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however, lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under SirMichael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. LordFrancis Villiers and Dalbier were slain; the Duke of Buckingham and theEarl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Hollandhimself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner. 

On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) theScots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth, marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40, 000, but the advancedportion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numberedabout 20, 000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in greatstate, preceded by trumpeters "all in scarlet cloaks full of silverlace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie came next with horseand foot; and the Earl of Callander brought up the rear. Joined by SirMarmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather saunteredon, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1?), the waryLambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion, skirmishing when he could, and waiting anxiously for the arrival ofCromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales(July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. OffKendal, a body of about 3, 000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major-general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with anunderstanding that Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly fromhimself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best toadvance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into Yorkshire. It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved, the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over theirravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding themto explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue theKing, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establishPresbytery, and put down "that impious Toleration settled by the twoHouses contrary to the Covenant!"

While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, thePrince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's ideathat he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering aboutthe south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased tonineteen sail; it had been provisioned by the Prince of Orange; and therewere 2, 000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was offYarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view torelieve Colchester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames, to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of theirships. Precisely at the time when the Westmorland and Lancashire peoplewere grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners werein consternation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman andseveral other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by theirowners the Prince demanded huge sums of money, intimating at the sametime (Aug 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until theLondoners declared for the King, or Parliament agreed to a cessation ofarms on certain loyal conditions. [Footnote: In the summary givenin the text of the incidents of the Civil War from March to August 1648, I have tried to reduce into chronological connexion the information givendisconnectedly in Rushworth, VII. 1010-1220, and at large in Clarendon, Book XI. There have been references, for dates and facts, to theParliamentary History and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, Godwin'sCommonwealth, and Carlyle's Cromwell. ]

Through these four or five months of Royalist risings coalescing at lastin a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much moreentangled (April-Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament? Ithad been very odd indeed. 

Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, andespecially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No-Address Resolutions of Jan. 1-15. Thus, on the 11th of February, theCommons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had beenprepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten, setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communication with the King. They published the document without consulting the other House. It wasthe severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forthby either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reignwas reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as "acontinued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms, " and there waseven the horrible insinuation that he had connived with the Duke ofBuckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document--so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the Kinghimself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey--who couldhave expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to hisMajesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, theCommons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, andprosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to therecent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of theWestminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism_. [Footnote: The Revision of the _Confession of Faith_ by the twoHouses was completed June 20, 1648, when, with the exception of certainportions about Church-government held in reserve, it was passed andordered to be printed: not, however, with the title "Confession ofFaith, " but as "Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed byboth Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divinesby authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster. " The Revision, thoughdetailed, was much a matter of form, paragraph after paragraph passingwithout discussion. On at least one point, however, there was a divisionin the Commons (Feb. 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. Of theConfession, entitled _Of Marriage and Divorce_. The question waswhether the House should agree to the last clause of the 4th paragraph ofthat Chapter--"The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer inblood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindrednearer in blood than of her own. " For the _Yea_ there voted 40 (SirRobert Pye and Sir Anthony Irby, tellers); for the _No_ 71 (SirWilliam Armyn and Mr. Knightley, tellers); in other words, the House by amajority of 31 doubted the ecclesiastical doctrine of forbidden degreesof _affinity_ in marriage. ] The attendance during these monthsranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of theArmy, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April, however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of theScottish invasion and the signs of Royalist movement in England, no fewerthan 306 members appeared in their places, Many of these seem to havebeen Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by theirleaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Royalty in connexion withPresbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 thetide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterianascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April, it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that itwould not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons; also, by 108 to 105, that "the matter of thePropositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of bothkingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of thekingdom; also, by 146 to 101, that the No-Address Resolutions of Januaryshould not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything thatmight tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly wasa change of policy; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effectedby a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by astupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Religiousquestion. On the 1st of May (the very day on which Cromwell was orderedoff to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was broughtup in the Commons an "_Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies andHeresies_, " which the Presbyterians had been long urging and labouringat in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists hadhitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the Housethat day; next day it passed the Lords; and, accordingly, under date May2, 1648, this is what stands in the Lords Journals as thenceforward to bethe Law of England:--

"For the preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresy and Blasphemy:Be it ordained ... That all such persons as shall, from and after thedate of this present Ordinance, willingly, by preaching, teaching, printing, or writing, maintain and publish that there is no God, or thatGod is not present in all places, doth not know and foreknow all things, or that He is not Almighty, that He is not perfectly Holy, or that He isnot Eternal, or that the Father is not God, the Son is not God, or thatthe Holy Ghost is not God, or that They Three are not One Eternal God; orthat shall in like manner maintain and publish that Christ is not Godequal with the Father, or shall deny the Manhood of Christ, or that theGodhead and Manhood of Christ are several natures, or that the Humanityof Christ is pure and unspotted of all sin; or that shall maintain andpublish, as aforesaid, that Christ did not die, nor rise from the dead, nor is ascended into Heaven bodily, or that shall deny His death ismeritorious in the behalf of Believers; or that shall maintain andpublish, as aforesaid, that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God; or thatthe Holy Scripture, _videlicet_ [here comes in the entire list ofthe Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments], is not the Word ofGod; or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead;or that there is no Day of Judgment after death:--All such maintainingand publishing of such Error or Errors, with obstinacy therein, shall, byvirtue hereof, be adjudged Felony: And all such persons [here isexplained the process by which they are to be accused and brought totrial].. And in case the indictment be found and the party upon his trialshall not abjure the said Error, and defence and maintenance of the same, he SHALL SUFFER THE PAINS OF DEATH, AS IN CASE OF FELONY, WITHOUT BENEFITOF CLERGY... "

"Be it further ordained, by the authority aforesaid, That all and everyperson or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any ofthe several Errors hereafter ensuing, _videlicet_ [here a longenumeration of _minor_ forms of Religious Error, such as "that manby nature hath free will to turn to God, " that God may be worshipped bypictures and images, that there is a Purgatory, "that man is bound tobelieve no more than by his reason he can comprehend, " "that thebaptizing of infants is unlawful, " that the observation of the Lord's Dayis not obligatory, or "that the Church-government by Presbytery is Anti-Christian or unlawful"], shall be [ordered to renounce their Error orErrors in public congregation, and, in case of refusal, ] COMMITTED TOPRISON.... "

Imagine _that_ going forth, just as the Second Civil War had begun, as the will and ordinance of Parliament! One wonders that the Concordatbetween Parliament and the Army, arranged by Cromwell and the other Army-chiefs in the preceding November, was not snapped on the instant. Onewonders that the Army did not wheel in mass round Westminster, haul thelegislating idiots from their seats, and then undertake in their own nameboth the war and the general business of the nation. The behaviour of theArmy, however, was more patient and wise. Parliament could be reckonedwith afterwards; meanwhile let it pass what measures it liked, so long asit did not absolutely throw up its trust and abandon all to the King!Till Parliament should do that, the fighting which the Army had to do atany rate might as well be done in the name of the Parliament!

Really there seemed a chance that even the last extremity of faint-heartedness would be reached, and that Parliament _would_ throw upits national trust. Here, for example, were some of its proceedings inJune and July, of which Cromwell must have heard, with rather strangefeelings, in the midst of his hard work in Wales, Lambert in his watchagainst the Scots in the north, and Fairfax and Ireton in their siege ofColchester. June 3, 7, and 8, the two Houses, of their own accord, or onearnest Petitions from the City, agreed to drop all the impeachments andother proceedings voted in the preceding year at the instance of the Armyagainst members of their own body, and against City officials implicatedin the Presbyterian tumults in London, and in particular to invite theSeven peccant Peers and the survivors of the Eleven peccant Commoners toreturn to their places. June 30 and July 3 the proposal to re-open aTreaty with the King was after much intermediate debating, brought to abearing by a formal agreement of the two Houses to rescind their No-Address Resolutions of January, and by a vote of the Commons that thePropositions to be submitted to the King for his assent before farthertreaty should be these three--Presbytery for three years, the Militiawith Parliament for ten years, and the Recall by the King of allProclamations and Declarations against the Parliament. Even this, so muchmore favourable to the King than former offers, the Lords thought tooharsh; and they refused (July 5) to make the Treaty conditional on theKing's prior assent to the three Propositions. Nor was this the onlyproof that the bravery of the Lords had evaporated even more completelythan that of the Commons. On July 14, when it was known that Hamilton'sArmy of Scots was actually in England, the Commons did vote that theinvaders were public enemies, and that all Englishmen who should abetthem should be accounted traitors; but the Lords (July 18) refused toconcur in that vote. Were the soldiers of Parliament, then, to befighting against invaders whom one of the Houses did not regard as publicenemies?--In short, the fact had come to be that, in the beginning ofAugust, the forces of Fairfax, Lambert, and Cromwell, were conducting awar in the name of Parliament which Parliament and the City of Londonwere taking every means to stop. A Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City, presented to the Lords Aug. 8 (the lastof scores of Petitions in the same sense that had for a month or two beenpoured in), expressed the general Presbyterian feeling. "The governmentof the Church still unsettled; blasphemy, heresy, schism, and profanenessincreased; the relief of bleeding Ireland obstructed; the war, to theirgreat astonishment, renewed; the people of England thereby miserablyimpoverished and oppressed; the blood of our fellow-subjects spilt likewater upon the ground; our Brethren of Scotland now entered into thiskingdom in a hostile manner, his Highness the Prince of Wales commandingat sea a considerable part of the Navy, and other ships under his power, having already made stay of many English ships with merchandise andprovisions to a very great value:"--these were the complaints; and thePetitioners humbly conceived there was no visible remedy but the "speedyfreeing of his Majesty" from restraint, and "a Personal Treaty" with himfor "restoring him to his just rights. " The City was to have its will. The Commons (July 28) had abandoned, by a majority of 71 to 64, theirintention to require assent to the three Propositions in preparation fora Treaty, and had agreed to a general and open Treaty, such as the Lordsdesired; communications on the subject had been made to the King; and, though his Majesty would have preferred to treat in London, he consented(Aug. 10) that the place should be Newport in the Isle of Wight. --Notealso two contemporary incidents of deep significance. On the 2nd ofAugust Major Robert Huntingdon, Cromwell's former Major, presented to theLords, in the form of a Paper of "Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay downhis Commission, " what was really a series of charges of High Treasonagainst Cromwell; the Paper was that day duly entered in the LordsJournals for future occasion; and it was with the utmost difficulty, andmuch contrivance of the Speaker, that the same Paper was kept out of theCommons. Such was the first incident; the other is thus given byRushworth under date Aug. 14: "Colonel Denzil Holles came this day to theHouse and sat. " This means that the chief of the Eleven, the Arch-Presbyterian of the House, the man who hated Cromwell worse than poison, had come back at this juncture to re-assume the Presbyterian leadership. After that Major Huntingdon's charges against Cromwell were not likely tobe kept long out of the Commons by any contrivance of the Speaker. [Footnote: The facts in this account of the conduct of Parliament fromFeb. To Aug. 1648 are from the Parliamentary History, the Lords andCommons Journals, and Rushworth. The dates given will indicate the exactplaces in these authorities. ]

If ever a General fought for his country with the rope round his neck, that General was Cromwell, as he now fought for England. No one knew thisbetter than himself, when, with his hardy troops hurried north from theirsevere service in Wales, he joined Lambert among the Yorkshire hills(Aug. 10 or thereabouts), to deal with the army of Hamilton and Langdale. Let him fail in this enterprise, let him succeed but doubtfully in it, and, in the relapse into Royalism which would then be universal, thefirst uproar of execration would be against _him_, and London wouldeither never see him again or see him dragged to death. Fail!-succeed butdoubtfully! When the wicked plot against the just and gnash upon him withtheir teeth, doth not the Lord laugh at them and see that their day iscoming? It was in this faith that Cromwell, descending westward from theYorkshire hills after his junction with Lambert, hurled himself, with hislittle army of not more than 9, 000 in all, right athwart the track ofHamilton and his 24, 000 of mixed Scots and English advancing throughLancashire. The result was THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF PRESTON (Aug. 17-19), in which the Scots and their English allies were totally ruined. About 3, 000 were slain; 10, 000 were taken prisoners; of the host offugitives only a portion succeeded in attaching themselves to Monro, whohad been lying considerably to the rear of the main battle and now pickedup its fragments for a retreat northwards; the rest were dispersedmiserably hither and thither, so that for weeks afterwards poor Scotswere found begging about English farmhouses, either pretending to be dumblest their speech should betray them, or trying vainly to pass forYorkshiremen. Hamilton, with a fraction of the fugitives, made his wayinto Staffordshire, but had to surrender himself a prisoner Aug. 25. 

The collapse of the King's cause, begun in Lancashire Aug. 17-19, was tobe absolute within the next fortnight. On the 28th of August the Princeof Wales withdrew from his useless hovering about the south-east coastand sailed back with his fleet to Holland; whence most of the ships wererecovered in due time, the officers remaining in exile, but the crewsonly too glad to return to their allegiance to Parliament. On the sameday the town of Colchester, after a siege of more than six weeks, duringwhich the most hideous extremities of famine had been endured by the poortownsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3, 000 soldiers, withtheir officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, SirCharles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected for special reasons, wereshot immediately after the surrender by order of the Council of War; theothers, including the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel, were reserved forthe disposal of Parliament. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1225-1248; Parl. Hist. III. 992-1002; Lords and Commons Journals; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 279-299. ]

 Thus, in the end of August 1648, the SECOND CIVIL WAR, with theexception of a few relics, was trampled out. Events then resolvedthemselves into two distinct courses, running parallel for a time, butone of which proved itself so much the more powerful that at last itdisdained the pretence of parallelism with the other and overflooded thewhole level. 

In the first place, there was the progress of that TREATY OF NEWPORT towhich the two Houses had pledged themselves while the war was going on. Delays had occurred in arranging particulars with the King, and it wasnot till Sept. 1 that the Commissioners of the two Houses were appointed. They were, for the Lords, the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Middlesex, and Viscount Saye and Sele, and, for theCommons, Viscount Wenman (of the Irish Peerage), Denzil Holles, Glynn, Vane the younger, William Pierrepoint, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Sir JohnPotts, John Crewe, Samuel Browne, and John Bulkley. Their instructionswere to proceed to the Isle of Wight, and there, all together or anyeight of them (of whom two must be lords), to treat with the King forforty days on the Propositions formerly presented to him at HamptonCourt, taking these Propositions in a fixed order and doing their best toget his Majesty to agree to them, but receiving any counter-proposals hemight make, and transmitting these to the two Houses. All demands on theKing and all answers or proposals from him were to be in writing; but thedebates might be oral between the Commissioners and his Majesty. Not topartake in these debates, but to be present at them by permission, and toform a kind of Council with whom the King might retire to consult ondifficult points, were to be a largish body of Royalist lords, divines, lawyers, and others, to whom, at his special request, leave had beengiven to repair to the island and to be in attendance on him throughoutthe Treaty. Among these were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis ofHertford, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, Bishops Juxon, Duppa, andDr. Saunderson, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir Thomas Gardiner, and Mr. Geoffrey Palmer. Finally, the King was to be on his parole not to attemptan escape during the Treaty, nor for twenty days afterwards. More thanone attempt of the kind had been made during the four months of the CivilWar. The wonder is that, while the Prince of Wales was off the Englishcoast with his fleet, a rescue of the King had not somehow been effected. [Footnote: Parl. Hist III. 1001-4; Commons Journals, Sept. 1. ]

Not till Friday Sept. 15 did the Parliamentary Commissioners arrive inthe Isle of Wight. They were accompanied by Messrs. Marshall, Nye, Vines, Seaman, and Caryl, from the Assembly of Divines. The Treaty began onMonday the 18th, in a house in the town of Newport selected as the mostsuitable for the purpose. At the head of a table, under a canopy ofstate, sat the King; the lords, divines, and lawyers, permitted to bepresent as listeners in his behalf, stood grouped behind his chair; theParliamentary Commissioners sat at the sides of the table, with a spacebetween them and his Majesty. It was hoped at first by the Commissionersthat the Treaty would be a short one. That the King would accept thePropositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as theycould be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holles, Glynn, and theother Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to theirhorror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highestkingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Overthe Proposition first presented--that for annulling all declarations andacts against Parliament--he was so dilatory that not till Sept. 25 was itcompletely passed, and then only with the proviso that his assent to itshould have no force until the whole Treaty should be concluded. On theChurch question, also brought forward the first day, he was morehopelessly unimpressible. The Proposition on this question being complex, he framed his first Answer so as to include only some of the points andevade the others. He consented to the establishment of Presbytery forthree years, but not to the perpetual alienation of the Bishops' lands;and as to the abolition of Episcopacy and the obligation of the Covenanthe said not a word. Then, these points being pressed, he argued and re-argued, day after day, conceding only that Episcopacy should be limited, and the like, till the Commissioners, despairing of any full agreement onthat Proposition, left it, and passed to others (Oct. 9). On some ofthese others, including that on the Militia, he chose to acquiesce atonce; but a second block occurred on the Proposition relating toDelinquents (Oct. 13-17). All this while, the King was the sole speakeron his side, retiring now and then to consult with his advisers, and ofcourse framing his written Papers with their advice, but always resumingthe oral debate himself, and showing an ability both in actual reasoningand in the conduct of the business generally which surprised some of theCommissioners. The necessity of continual reference to the two Housesincreased the delay. There had been various debates in both on theprogress of the Treaty as reported by the Commissioners, and on the 12thof October the Commons had voted the King's answer on the Church questionunsatisfactory. The King, in consequence, revised his Answer on thisquestion, and offered, among other things, to consent to the abolition ofArchbishops and all other grades of the hierarchy, if the single officeof Bishops were preserved. This revised Answer the Commons votedunsatisfactory, Oct. 26, the Lords agreeing substantially next day; andon the 30th of October the Commons passed a similar vote respecting theAnswer on Delinquents. At this point, therefore, the Treaty may beconsidered to have come to a stop. At the same time there came to a stopa written controversy on the Church question, which had been going oncollaterally between his Majesty and the Divines of the Assemblyattending the Commissioners. The controversy was a repetition of thatbetween the King and Henderson at Newcastle. It had begun Oct. 2, and itwas wound up by his Majesty in a long last Paper Nov. 1. 

It was mainly on the Episcopacy question that the Treaty was wrecked; orrather it was on this question that the King had chosen that there shouldbe the appearance of wreck. For, in truth, the Treaty on his side, likehis former Treaties, had been all along a pretence. Though his doom wasstaring him in the face, he could not see it, but had again beenmustering up wild hopes of some great turn of the wheel in his favour ifhe could but procrastinate enough. Had not the Marquis of Ormond, forexample, effected a landing in Wexford, with a view to a junction withthe Irish Roman Catholic Confederates? Might not something come out ofthat? Or might there not be some help yet from the Prince of Wales inHolland, or from the Queen's and Jermyn's plottings at Paris, or from theScots after all? To take advantage of any or all of these contingencies, a temporary refuge on the Continent might be necessary; and so, when thetime of his parole should be over, a means of escape must be devised!Such having been Charles's mood when he began the Treaty, one does notwonder at finding that he had been behaving with his usual duplicitywhile it was in progress. "To deal freely with you, " he had secretlywritten to one correspondent on the day when he had accepted theProposition on the Militia question, "the great concession I made thisday was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I wouldnot have done it. " Again to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, "Though youwill hear that this Treaty is near, or at least most likely to be, concluded, yet believe it not; but pursue the way you are in with allpossible vigour: deliver also that my command to all your friends, butnot in public way. " With such a man, now as ever, a Treaty was absurd. 

Parliament did not break off the Treaty, even when its failure had becomeapparent, but allowed it to straggle on. The term of forty days firstfixed had been prolonged to Nov. 4, and on that day most of theCommissioners left Newport on their return to London. Six of them, however, remained behind, on the chance that his Majesty might yet seehis way to more complete concessions on the Church question. On this merechance the Treaty was prolonged to Nov. 18, and again to Nov. 25; and, ashis Majesty had begged Parliament that he might have the assistance ofsuch new advice on the Church question as could be given by Usher, ex-Bishops Brownrigg, Prideaux, and Warner, and Drs. Ferne and Morley, leavehad been granted to these divines to proceed to Newport. Nothing to thepurpose came of their advice; for in the King's final letters fromNewport to the two Houses, dated Nov. 18 and Nov. 21, he is as firm asever on the necessity and Apostolical origin of the order of Bishops, quotes 1 Timothy v. 22 and Titus i. 5 in that behalf, and protests thathe can go no farther than his previous offer of a reduction of Episcopacyto its barest Apostolical simplicity. On Friday the 24th of Novemberthese letters were voted unsatisfactory by both Houses, but it wasresolved (not without a division in the Commons) to allow the King twodays more. The Treaty was to be considered at an end on the night ofMonday the 27th, and on the next day, with or without satisfaction, theCommissioners still on duty were to take their leave. By the King'sparole he would be bound not to attempt an escape from the island tilltwenty days after that. Colonel Hammond, observing signs that the Kingmeant to assume that the terms of his original parole had ceased to bebinding, had prudently insisted on its public renewal. [Footnote: For theaccount of the treaty of Newport my authorities have been--Parl. HistIII. 1013-1133, with references at the chief dates to Rushworth and theLords and Commons Journals; Works of King Charles I. (1651), pp. 191-286of third paging; Godwin, II. 608-618. ]

Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiationbetween Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had beenforming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, andhurry all to a real catastrophe. 

The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and theArmy-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name of_The Concordat (antč_, pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement ofthe Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democraticmanifestations of the Army and its pretensions to political dictation, leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, aswe saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediatedemocratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The politicalviews of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictlyconstitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a largeincrease of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Biennial Parliaments, and a thoroughly Reformed System of Representation--such had been theideal of the Army-chiefs in their _Heads of Proposals_ of August1647; the Levellers had gone a good deal farther in their _Agreement ofthe People_ in Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditaryprivileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a singleRepresentative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscienceand Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should beso recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit ofEpiscopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, andSectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to bethe silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on thereligious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise itsown political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That thishad not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once ofheading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance inParliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For severalmonths, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat. Especially in January 1647-8, when the two Houses broke off theirabortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their No-Address Resolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army. But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagementwith the King began to rouse Royalists and Presbyterians alike for a newwar, and the absent Presbyterians of the Commons came back to theirplaces to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty withthe King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disbandment of theArmy, and the suppression of Sects, --then what could the Army do butspurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the Kinghimself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certainbeliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument ofthose whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could notbe right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were calledan Army! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequentlythat the whole Army had them by heart--the principle "That every singleman is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom, " andthe principle "That the interest of honest men is the interest of thekingdom"? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of thematter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poorfellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Rendezvous at Ware been insome sense a martyr? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary thatat least _something_ of the spirit of the Levellers, _some_ ofthose proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh andpremature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into thegeneral creed of the Army?

That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such questionings as tothe course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before theoutbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence, but nowhere more strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer-meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at Windsor Castlein March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of thisrecord, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards, and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in thehistory of the Army and of the nation. At that time, he says, the Armywas "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects" andthere were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and anew war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist nolonger, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into oneof individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that moreremained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at theirinstance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with mostremarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to thecauses of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the secondday Cromwell proposed, as the best method of inquiry among themselves, that they should all simultaneously engage in silent retrospection, bothupon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians, " and alsoupon their "public actions as an Army. " If they should each and all beled, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of timeas that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former countenance and thingshad begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity? Andlo! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review ofthe past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which theirdeparture from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. Itwas a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay amongthose prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally outof which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Allen, in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited wisdom, our fears, andwant of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with theKing and his Party. " And with this unanimous agreement on the questionwhere the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as tothe right course of future duty. "We were led and helped, " says Allen, "to a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissenting, That it wasthe duty of our day, with the forces we had, to go out and fight againstthose potent enemies which that year in all places appeared againstus... ; and we were also enabled then, after serious seeking His face, tocome to a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large theredebated amongst us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought usback again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to anaccount for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmostagainst the Lord's Cause and People in these poor Nations. " [Footnote:See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length inCarlyle's Cromwell, I. 263-266. ]

This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor mostprobably in April 1648, or just before Cromwell went off to suppress theRoyalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in thebosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War(May-Aug. ). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolutionformally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints camefrom those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of theArmychiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of theseIndependents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott forone declaring that "a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince"was an impossibility; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by thePresbyterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, justas the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept. 11)an extraordinary document purporting to be "The humble Petition ofThousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent. "This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely adenunciation of the Treaty; it was a detailed democratic challenge. Itproclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England, "and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this, that England had fought and struggled for six years; and, after a severelecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen tothe full height of this principle, it enumerated twenty-seven thingswhich were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were therepudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords toresist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for AnnualParliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the"exemption of matters of Religion and God's worship from the compulsiveor restrictive power of any authority upon earth, " and the consequentrepeal of the recent absurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerningopinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, othersHeresies. " Such a Petition, signed by about 40, 000 persons, in or nearLondon, hitherto pre-eminently the Presbyterian city, was a signal forsimilar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came aPetition in the same sense from "many thousands" of the well-affected inOxfordshire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions fromNewcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset. [Footnote: Parl. Hist, III. 1005-11; Whitlocke, II. 413, 419. ]

These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spokeout at last. Since Sept. 16 the headquarters of the Army had been at St. Alban's; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters fromFairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from theOfficers and Soldiers of different regiments had been presented to him, or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, inparticular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial andspeedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same faultmay have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in thepoorest Commoner. " Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped inupon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the nextfortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was fromColonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It alsodemanded "immediate care that justice should be done upon the principalinvaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party;" it demanded, moreover, that "sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given tofuture Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it wenton to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these thingsfrom Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council ofthe Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was thepractical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which allthe regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitationsabout complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliamentimmediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking forsome last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time ofthe Treaty again and again in the vain chose of this last chance; but inanother matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their "half-heartedness" became apparent. At the very time when the Independents ofLondon and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army, were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the latewar, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority inthe Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were thenin custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the EnglishPeerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of100, 000_l. _, with imprisonment till it should be paid; and for theEarls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and fourothers, simple banishment! Resolutions to this effect passed the CommonsNov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, thoughprepared for almost anything from the "half-heartedness" of theParliament, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive"amazement. " What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Armyitself as a whole should step forward, call its masters to a reckoning, and either compel them to be the instruments of a better policy, or takeaffairs into its own hands? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could notdecline the responsibility: and accordingly a General Council of theOfficers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It hadsat about a week when (Nov. 16) a GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, to bepresented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted. [Footnote:Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1811-12, and 1830; Commons Journals, Nov. 101618, Whitlocke, II. 436. ]

This GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE of Nov. 1648 is another of those documentsfrom the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporarylumber with which they are associated, and to be carefully studied onaccount of their supreme interest in English History. The document is ofmost elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages ofthis volume; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House ofCommons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation, setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme ofaction on which they had resolved:--There is first an exposition of therule _Salus Populi lex suprema_, a rule admitted to be capable ofabuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a realmeaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliamentand the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, itis added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual; mostreluctant were they to break it. But what had happened? Had notParliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Resolutions of tenmonths ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat? Had they not, within a few months after passing those Resolutions, utterly forgottenthem, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A PersonalTreaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fearsthat had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless--though theLord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they hadceased to trust and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabledto shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aidedby an invasion from Scotland--even after this rebuke from God, were theynot still pursuing the same phantom of an Accommodation? Here theRemonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down theprinciple that in every State the care of all matters of public concernmust be in a Supreme Representative Council or Parliament, freely electedby the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such officeinstituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such SupremeCouncil for special ends and within special limits, and that any oneholding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringlyabused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, mayjustly be called to account. They appeal to the entire recollection ofCharles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woeand war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason. But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonablechance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. "Ifthere were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that hiscoming in again were with a new or changed heart, " then, they say, "hisperson might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodationwith him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaidpoints of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitableconstruction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial. " But no suchground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles. Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his completesecond ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating, secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Rebels? If such aman were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees, the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, ofthe new situation would be his; he would figure for a while as the Fatherof his People, the Restorer of would be forgotten, or would be rememberedonly as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short timethere would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a newspider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him atthis play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite atit?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing onewith the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the politicalthoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up. --Towards the end come thespecific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they wereresolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets:--I. _ImmediateDemands_. These are five. First of all, it is demanded "That thecapital and grand author of our troubles, the Person of the King, bywhose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and forwhose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles havebeen, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought tojustice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of. "Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince ofWales and the Duke of York may return to England and render themselves:with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declaredincapable for ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are tobe treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards theyare found in England; and also that, if they do return within the limitedtime, their cases are to be severally considered, and their pastdelinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and "in appearance next untohis father's") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be foundfit; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown besequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, withreserve of a reasonable provision for the Royal Family and for old Crown-servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chiefinstruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, in capitalpunishment. With this satisfaction to justice the Remonstrants would becontent; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clementtreatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetualbanishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who shouldremain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Army are broughtforward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of theirdamages and arrearages. --II. _Prospective Demands_. These point tothe future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Armydemand (1) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonabletime; (2) a guaranteed succession of subsequent Parliaments, annual orbiennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and ofredistribution of constituencies as should make them reallyrepresentative of the whole people; (3) the temporary disfranchisementand disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provisionthat Parliament, as the representative body of the people, shouldhenceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestion thepolicy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on thefoundations of common Right, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provisionit is definitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship bekept up in England, it should be as an elective office merely, everysuccessive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, andshould have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament. [Footnote: See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Parl. Hist. III. 1077]

This vast document, signed officially by John Rushworth, "by theappointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council ofOfficers, " was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfaxhimself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputationof officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, andfor some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of theIndependents among the members spoke manfully in favour of theRemonstrance; others were for temporizing; but the more resolutePresbyterians, among whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented theRemonstrance as an insolence "subversive of the law of the land and thefundamental constitutions of the kingdom, " and protested that "it becamenot the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of theNation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council ofSectaries in Arms. " Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of theHouse, but only this entry: "Ordered, That the debate upon theRemonstrance of the General and his General Council of Officers beresumed on Monday next. " That "Monday next" was the 27th of November, thevery day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with theKing at Newport should finally cease. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1648; Whitlocke, same date; Parl. Hist. III. 1127-8 (where extractsare given from a contemporary account of the in the _MercuriusPragmaticus_). ]

 Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediatescene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17-19), he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from theScots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces underMonro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Government asthat no more should be feared from that quarter. 

His task had been easy. The "Engagement" with the King, and theconsequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest, had been, as we know (_antč_, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottishparty then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had beenvehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun, backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of theScottish clergy. When, therefore, the news of the disaster at Prestonreached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against theGovernment of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it withreproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark, who had been left as the chief of the Government after the capture of hisbrother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monroand the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field withtheir joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of thewestern shires, nicknamed _Whigs_ or _Whigamores_, having obeyed thesummons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, andmarched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces ofthe Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6, 000 men, thecommand of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with DavidLeslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them, moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling; therewere some skirmishes; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality, however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heartfor the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to bedesperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotlanditself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, incommunication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready tocross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after somenegotiation, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of thisTreaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special portion of thetroops; but otherwise both armies were to be disbanded, Lanark and allwho had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from allplaces of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in thehands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constitutedthemselves the new Committee of Estates _de facto_. 

Although this arrangement had been effected without Cromwell's directinterference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, havingcrossed the Tweed on the 2lst of September with an army of horse andfoot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, asa Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed inthe name of the Committee by their Chancellor Loudoun. The new Governmentof Scotland most handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisleand Berwick, with apologies for the conduct of their predecessors inhaving seized them; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to seeall duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax andSpeaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing thatthere was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party ofScotland" and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however, that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personalpresence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins ofthat of the Hamiltons. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enterEdinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig intheir company. They were escorted into the city with all ceremony by theauthorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, thefinest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people ofEdinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity ofstudying the features of the great English Independent as he came out orwent in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For theWhigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates andcity clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the opportunitieswere, of course, still closer; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7)there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, atwhich the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and otherlords of the Committee of Estates were present. 

So ended Cromwell's memorable first visit to Edinburgh; and, his realobject having been accomplished (which was to pledge, the new Governmentof Scotland, and especially Argyle, to alliance in future with theadvanced English party), he began his return journey southwards on thesame day, only leaving Lambert, with two regiments of horse and twotroops of dragoons, to be at the service of the Argyle Government so longas they might be wanted. A week later (Oct. 14) he was at Carlisle, seeing after the surrender of that town; and in the beginning of Novemberhe was at Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. TheCastle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, stillheld out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitiveCavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actualdesperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had beenfrequent; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, aparty of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far asDoncaster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Rainsboroughthere, under pretence of bringing him letters from Cromwell, and left himstabbed dead (Sunday, Oct. 29). The business of pacifying Yorkshire, which otherwise might have been left to Bainsborough, thus devolved uponCromwell. He summoned Pontefract Castle to surrender Nov. 9; and, thesurrender having been refused, he remained at Pontefract all the rest ofthat month, superintending the siege. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons(edit. 1852), 465-482; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 299-333; Rushworth, VII. 1314-15. The first open occurrence of the word _Whig_ in BritishHistory was, I believe, in the circumstances described in the text atp. 621. The original _Whigs_ were the zealous Covenanting peasants, or true-blue Presbyterians, of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and other westernScottish counties; and the nickname was derived, it is supposed, eitherfrom the sound _Whigh_ (meaning _Gee-up_) used by the peasantryof those parts in driving their horses, or simply from the word_Whey_ (in Anglo-Saxon _hwęg_), by comparison to the solemnPresbyterians to the sour watery part of milk separated from the curd inmaking cheese. ]

Thus, through the three months in which the English Army and Independentswere waxing more and more indignant at the Treaty with the King atNewport, and determining to break it down, and to bring the King to trialfor his life with or without the concurrency of Parliament, Cromwell, aswe said, was away from the immediate scene of action. There is not theleast doubt, however, that he was aware generally of the proceedings ofhis friends in the south, and that one of their encouragements was theknowledge that Cromwell was with them. There are, however, actual proofs. Thus, about the middle of September, or just after the presentation tothe Commons of the great London Petition asking the Commons to declarethemselves the supreme authority of England, one finds Henry Marten, theframer of that Petition, on a journey to the north, for the purpose ofconsulting with Cromwell, then on his way to Scotland. Their consultationcannot have boon for nothing. At all events, after Cromwell returned intoEngland and engaged in the siege of Pontefract Castle, his letters attesthis interest in the proceedings of Ireton and the other Army officers atSt. Alban's. In one letter, dated "near Pontefract, " Nov. 20, heexpresses his own anger and that of his officers at the recent lenientvotes of the Commons in the case of the Duke of Hamilton and the othereminent Delinquents. On the same day he writes in the same sense toFairfax, and forwards Petitions from the regiments under his command inaid of those which Fairfax had already received from the southernregiments. When these letters were written Cromwell had not heard of theadoption at St. Alban's of the Grand Army Remonstrance drawn up by hisson-in-law, or at least did not know that on that very day it had beenpresented to the Commons. Before the 25th of November, however, he hadreceived this news too, and had a full foresight of what it portended. For that is the date of one of the most remarkable letters he ever wrote, his letter from "Knottingley near Pontefract "to Colonel Robert Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight. This young Colonel, upon whom the soretrial had fallen of having the King for his prisoner, was, as we havesaid, one of Cromwell's especial favourites, and the long letter whichCromwell now addressed to him was in reply to one just received fromHammond, imparting to Cromwell his doubts respecting the recentproceedings of the Army, and his own agony of mind in the difficult andcomplicated duties of his office in the Isle of Wight. Cromwell's letter, so occasioned, begins "Dear Robin, " and is conceived throughout in termsof the most anxious affection, struggling with a half-expressed purpose. He reasons earnestly with Hammond on his doubts and scruples, sympathizing with them so far, but at the same time combating them, andsuggesting such queries as these--"_first_, Whether _Salus Populi_ be asound position? _secondly_, Whether in the way in hand [_i. E. _ theParliamentary rule as then experienced], really and before the Lord, before whom Conscience has to stand, this be provided for?... _thirdly_, Whether this Army be not a lawful Power, called by God to oppose andfight against the King upon some stated grounds, and, being in power tosuch ends, may not oppose one Name of Authority, for these ends, as wellas another Name?" [_i. E. _ may not oppose Parliament itself as well as theKing. ] He refers to the Grand Army Remonstrance, of the publication ofwhich he has just heard. "We could perhaps have wished the stay of ittill after the Treaty, " he says, for himself and the officers of hisnorthern part of the Army; "yet, seeing it is come out, we trust torejoice in the will of the Lord, waiting His further pleasure. " Againreturning to the main topic, Hammond's scruples, he pleads almostyearningly with him: "Dear Robin, beware of men; look up to the Lord. "Had Hammond really reasoned himself, with other good men, into thatexcess of the passive-obedience principle which maintained that as muchgood might come to England by an accommodation with the King as bybreaking with him utterly? "Good by this Man, " Cromwell exclaims, "against whom the Lord has witnessed, and whom _thou_ knowest!" Then, after a few more sentences: "This trouble I have been at, " he concludes, "because my soul loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve, or loseany glorious opportunity the Lord puts into thy hand. " [Footnote:Rushworth, VII. 1265; Lords Journals, Nov. 21 (Hammond's Letter);Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 333-345. ]

Cromwell's letter to Hammond was too late for its purpose. At Fairfax'shead-quarters at St. Alban's it had been resolved that, until thereshould be a satisfactory answer from the Commons to the Army'sRemonstrance, the Army must secure the main object of that Remonstranceby taking the King's person into its own custody. For the management ofthis business it was most important that the officer in command in theIsle of Wight should be one of unflinching Army principles. Hence, as theamiable Hammond's scruples were well known, and had indeed beencommunicated by him to Fairfax as well as to Cromwell, it had beenresolved, partly in pity to him, partly in the interest of the businessitself, to withdraw him from the Isle of Wight at that critical moment. Accordingly, on the 2lst of November, Fairfax had penned a letter toHammond from St. Alban's, requiring his presence with all possible speedat head-quarters, and ordering him to leave the island meanwhile incharge of Colonel Ewer, the bearer of the letter. This letter did notreach Hammond till Nov. 25 (the very day when Cromwell was writing to himfrom Yorkshire); and it was not then delivered to him by Colonel Ewer inperson, but by a messenger. The next day, Sunday, Nov. 26, Hammond wrotefrom Carisbrooke Castle to the two Houses of Parliament, informing themof what had happened, enclosing a copy of Fairfax's letter, andsignifying his intention of obeying it. This communication was brought toLondon with all haste by Major Henry Cromwell, Oliver's second son, thenserving under Hammond, and was the subject of discussion in both Houseson the 27th. Fairfax's intervention between Parliament and one of itsservants was condemned as unwarrantable; a letter to that effect, but inmild terms, was written to Fairfax; and Major Cromwell was sent back witha despatch from both Houses to Hammond, instructing him to remain at hispost. Before this despatch reached Hammond, however, there had been ameeting between him and Ewer, and some intricate negotiations, the resultof which was that he and Ewer left the island together, Nov. 28, boundfor the Army's head-quarters (then removed to Windsor)--Hammondentrusting the charge of the island in his absence, with strict care ofthe King's person, to Major Rolph and Captain Hawes, his subordinates atNewport, in conjunction with Captain Bowerman, the commandant atCarisbrooke Castle. Ewer having thus succeeded in withdrawing Hammondfrom his post, and having doubtless made other necessary arrangementswhile he hovered about the island, the execution of what remained wasleft to other hands, and principally to Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and aCaptain Merryman. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Nov. 27 and 30; Parl. Hist. III. 1133 _et seq. _; Rushworth. VII. 1338 _et seq. _ In mostmodern accounts Ewer simply comes to the Isle of Wight, displacesHammond, and removes the King. Not so by any means. It was a complicatedtransaction of seven or eight days; Ewer was _in_ the trans-action, and perhaps the principal in it; but, except in his interview withHammond, he keeps in the background. ]

 Not till the evening of Thursday, Nov. 30, does any suspicion of whatwas intended seem to have been aroused in the mind of the King. He wasthen still in his lodgings in Newport. The Treaty had come to an endthree days before; the Parliamentary Commissioners for the Treaty hadreturned to London; most of the Royalist Lords and other Counsellors whohad been assisting the King in the Treaty had also gone; only the Duke ofRichmond, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, and some few others, remained. The stir through the island attending the close of the Treatyand the departure of so many persons had probably covered the coming andgoing of Ewer, his interview with Hammond, and certain arrivals andshiftings of troops which he had managed. But on the Thursday evening, about eight o'clock, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Lindsey, and acertain Colonel Cook, who was with them, were summoned from theirlodgings in the town to the King's. A warning had that moment beenconveyed to his Majesty that there were agents of the Army at hand tocarry him off. Immediately Colonel Cook went to Major Rolph's room, andinterrogated him on the subject. The answers were cautious andunsatisfactory. The fact was, though Major Rolph dared not then divulgeit, that he and his fellow-deputies, Captain Hawes and Captain Bowerman, knew themselves to be superseded by Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and CaptainMerryman, who had arrived that day with a fresh warrant from Fairfax andthe Army Council, empowering them to finish what Ewer had begun. Onlyinferring from Rolph's uneasiness that something was wrong, Colonel Cookreturned to the King and the two Lords. There was farther consultation, and a second call on Rolph; after which Cook volunteered to go toCarisbrooke Castle for farther information. It was an excessively darknight, with high wind and plashing rain; and the King consented to theColonel's going only after observing that he was young and might take noharm from it. The Colonel, accordingly, groped his way through the darkand rain over the mile and a half of road or cross-road interveningbetween Newport and the Castle. His object was to see the commandant, Captain Bowerman. After some considerable time, spent under the shelterof the gateway, he was admitted and did see Captain Bowerman, but only tofind him sitting sulkily with about a dozen strange officers, who wereevidently his masters for the moment, and prevented his being in theleast communicative. Nothing was left for the Colonel but to grope hisway back to Newport. It was near midnight when, with his clothes drenchedwith wet, he reached the King's lodgings; and there, what a change!Guards all round the house; guards at every window; sentinels in thepassages, and up to the very door of the King's chamber, armed withmatchlocks and with their matches burning! Major Rolph, glad to be out ofthe business, had gone to bed. They managed to rouse him, and to get thesentinels, with their smoke, removed to a more tolerable distance fromthe King's chamber-door. Then, for an hour or more, there was an anxiouscolloquy in the King's chamber, the Duke of Richmond and the Earl ofLindsey urging some desperate attempt to escape, but the King dubious andfull of objections. Nothing could be done; and, about one o'clock, theEarl and the Colonel retired, leaving the King to rest, with the Duke inattendance upon him. There were then several hours of hush within, disturbed by sounds of moving and tramping without; but between five andsix in the morning there came a loud knocking at the door of the King'sdressing-room. When it had been opened, after some delay, a number ofofficers entered, headed by Colonel Cobbet. Making their way into theKing's chamber, they informed him that they had instructions to removehim. On his asking whither, they answered, "To the Castle;" and, on hisfarther asking whether they meant Carisbrooke Castle, they answered, after some hesitation, that their orders were to remove him out of theisland altogether, and that the place was to be Hurst Castle on theadjacent Hampshire mainland. Remarking that they could not have named aworse place, the King rose, was allowed to summon the Earl of Lindsey andall the rest of his household, and had breakfast. At eight o'clockcoaches and horses were ready, and the King, having chosen about a dozenof his most confidential servants to accompany him, and taken a farewellof the rest of the sorrowing company, placed himself in charge of ColonelGobbet and the troop of horse waiting to be his escort. Having seatedhimself in his coach, he invited Mr. Harrington, Mr. Herbert, and Mr. Mildmay to places beside him. Colonel Gobbet, as the commander of theparty, was about to enter the coach also, when his Majesty put up hisfoot by way of barrier; whereupon Cobbet, somewhat abashed, contentedhimself with his horse. The cavalcade then set out, gazed after by allNewport, the Duke of Richmond allowed to accompany it for two miles. Ajourney of some eight miles farther brought them to the western end ofthe island, a little beyond Yarmouth; whence a vessel conveyed them, overthe little strip of intervening sea, to Hurst Castle that same afternoon(Dec. 1). The so-called Castle was a strong, solitary, stone blockhouse, which had been built, in the time of Henry VIII. , at the extremity of along narrow spit of sand and shingle projecting from the Hampshire coasttowards the Isle of Wight. It was a rather dismal place; and the King'sheart sank as he entered it, and was confronted by a grim fellow with abushy black beard, who announced himself as the captain in command. Thepossibility of private assassination flashed on the King's mind at thesight of such a jailor. But, Colonel Cobbet having superseded the roughphenomenon, the King was reassured, and things were arranged ascomfortably as the conditions would permit. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1344-8 (narrative of Colonel Cook); _Ib. _ 1351 and Parl. Hist. III. 1147-8 (Letter to Parliament from Major Rolph and Captains Hawes andBowerman); and Sir Thomas Herbert's Memoirs of Charles I. 112-124. Theday of the King's abduction from Newport has been variously dated byhistorians. It was really Friday, Dec. 1. ]

Meanwhile Fairfax and the Army, by whose orders, all punctually writtenand dated, this abduction of the King had been effected, were on the moveto take advantage of it. On Monday the 27th of November, the Commons, instead of taking up the consideration of the Grand Army Remonstrance asthey had proposed, had again adjourned the subject. On Wednesday the29th, accordingly, there was a fresh manifesto from Fairfax and hisCouncil of Officers at Windsor. After complaining of the delays over theRemonstrance and of the continued infatuation of the Commons over thefarce of the Newport Treaty, they proceeded. "For the present, as thecase stands, we apprehend ourselves obliged, in duty to God, thiskingdom, and good men therein, to improve our utmost abilities, in allhonest ways, for the avoiding those great evils we have remonstrated, andfor prosecution of the good things we have propounded;" and theyconcluded with this announcement, "For all these ends we are now drawingup with the Army to London, there to follow Providence as God shall clearour way. " This document, signed by Rushworth, reached the Commons on the30th. They affected to ignore it, and still refused, by a majority of 125to 58, to proceed to the consideration of the Army's Remonstrance. Nextday, Friday Dec. 1, the tune was somewhat changed. The advanced guards ofthe Army were then actually at Hyde Park Corner, and the City and the twoHouses were in terror. Saturday, Dec. 2, consummated the business. Despite an order bidding him back, Fairfax was then in Whitehall, hishead-quarters close to the two Houses, and his regiments of horse andfoot distributed round about. London and Westminster were, in fact, oncemore in the Army's possession. Nevertheless both Houses met that day indue form, and there was a violent debate in the Commons over the Treatyas affected by the new turn of affairs. The debate broke off late in theafternoon, when it was adjourned till Monday by a majority of 132 to 102. The news of the abduction of the King to Hurst Castle had not yet reachedLondon, and Cromwell was still believed to be at Pontefract. [Footnote:Commons and Lords Journals of Nov. 27 to Dec. 2, 1648: Parl. Hist. III. 1134-1146; Rushworth, VII. 1349-59. ]

CHAPTER II. 

TROUBLES IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITIONSUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATHOF MILTON'S FATHER--SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS-ITALIANREMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLYTO THE LAST OF THEM--PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWNPUPILS: LADY RANELAGH--EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIBAGAIN: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY--REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN--MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THEHOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THEEXPECTANT REPUBLICANS--STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS:TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES:MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST--ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OFNINE PSALMS FROM THE HEBREW--MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HISPERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TOFAIRFAX--BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI. 

The two years and four months of English History traversed in the lastchapter were of momentous interest to Milton at the time, were preparingan official career of eleven years for him at the very centre of affairs, and were to furnish him with matter for comment, and indeed with risk andresponsibility, to the end of his days. While they were actually passing, however, his life was rather private in its tenor, and we have to seekhim not so much in public manifestations as in his household and amonghis books. 

PROBLEMS IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITIONSUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATHOF MILTON'S FATHER

We left the household in Barbican a rather overcrowded one, consistingnot merely of Milton, his wife, their newly-born little girl, his father, and his two nephews, but also of his Royalist father-in-law Mr. Powell, with Mrs. Powell, and several of their children, driven to London by thewreck of the family fortunes at Oxford. For some months, we now find, thestate of poor Mr. Powell's affairs continued to be a matter of anxiety toall concerned. 

On the 6th of August, 1646, or as soon as possible after Mr. Powell'sarrival in London, he had applied, as we saw, to the Committee atGoldsmiths' Hall for liberty to compound for that portion of hissequestered Oxfordshire estates which was yet recoverable. Milton'syounger brother, Christopher, we saw, was at the same time engaged in asimilar troublesome business. Ho too was suing out pardon for hisdelinquency on condition of the customary fine on his property; and, according to his own representation to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, the sole property he had consisted of a single house in the city ofLondon, worth 40_l. _ a year. 

The Goldsmiths' Hall Committee being then overburdened with similarapplications of Delinquents from all parts of England, the cases of Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had waited their turn. 

The case of Christopher Milton came on first. His delinquency had beenvery grave. He had actually served as one of the King's Commissioners forsequestrating the estates of Parliamentarians in three English counties. There seems, therefore, to have been a disposition at head-quarters to besevere with him. On the 24th of September the Committee at Goldsmiths'Hall did fix his fine for his London property at 80_l. _ (_i. E. _ a tenthof its whole value calculated at twenty years' purchase), receiving thefirst moiety of 40_l. _ down, and accepting "William Keech, of FleetStreet, London, goldbeater, " as Christopher's co-surety for the paymentof the second moiety within three months. But they do not seem to havebeen satisfied that the young barrister had given a correct account ofhis whole estate; and it was intimated to him that, while the 80_l_. Would restore to him his London property, the House of Commons would lookfarther into his case, and he might have more to pay on other grounds. Infact, his case was protracted not only through the rest of 1646, but forfive years longer, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee never letting himcompletely off all that while, but instituting inquiries repeatedly inBerks and Suffolk, with a view to ascertain whether he had not concealedproperties in those counties in addition to the small London property forwhich he had compounded. [Footnote: It is rather difficult to followChristopher Milton's case through the Composition Records and othernotices respecting it; but here is the substance of the first of them:--_Aug. _ 7, 1646, Delinquent's Application to Compound, with statement ofhis property, referred to Sub-Committee (Hamilton's Milton Papers, 128, 129); _Aug. And Sept. _ 1646, Various proposals of the Committee as to theamount of his fine--at 80_l. _ or "a tenth, " at 200_l. _ or "a third"--ending, ending Sept. 24, in the imposition of a fine of 80_l. _ for hisLondon property, with a hint that there might be farther demand(Hamilton, 62 and 129-30, and Todd. I. 162-3); _Undated, but seeminglyafter Dec. _ 1646, Note of Christopher Milton as a defaulter for thelatter moiety of his fine (Hamilton, 62). The case runs on throughsubsequent years to 1652; nay, as late as Feb. 1657-8 there is trace ofit (Hamilton, 130, Document lxvi. ). ]

Mr. Powell's case, for different reasons, was more complex. On the 2lstof Nov. 1646, or somewhat more than three months after he had petitionedthe Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for leave to compound, he sent in thenecessary "Particular of Real and Personal Estate" by which hiscomposition was to be rated. He had been living all the while in his son-in-law's house in Barbican; and the delay may have arisen from thosecircumstances of perplexity, already known to the reader (_antč_, pp. 473-483), which rendered it difficult for him to estimate what the amountof his remaining property might really be. In the "Particular" now sentin, though he still designates himself "Richard Powell of Forest-hill, "the Forest-hill mansion and lands are totally omitted, as no longer hisproperty in any practical sense, but transferred by legal surrender tohis creditor Sir Robert Pye. All that he can put on paper as his own isnow (1) his small Wheatley property of 40_l. _ a year; (2) his "personalestate in corn and household stuff, " left at Forest-hill before the siegeof Oxford, and estimated at 500_l. _ if it could be properly recovered andsold; (3) his much more doubtful stock of "timber and wood, " also left atForest-hill, and worth 400_l. _ on a similar supposition; and (4) debtsowing to him to the amount of 100_l. _ Against these calculated assets, ofabout 1, 800_l. _ altogether, he pleads, however, a burden of 400_l. _, witharrears of interest, due to Mr. Ashworth by mortgage of the Wheatleyproperty, and also 1, 200_l. _ of debts to various people, and a specialdebt of 300_l. _ "owing upon a statute" to his son-in-law Mr. John Milton. As a reason for leniency, the fact is moreover stated that he had lost3, 000_l. _ by the Civil War. Actually, if his account is correct, he wasinsolvent; or, if his debt to his son-in-law were regarded as cancelled, he had but about 200_l. _ left in the world. In criticising his account, however, the Committee would be sharp-sighted. They would remember thatit was his interest, on the one hand, to rate his debts and losses at thehighest figure, and, on the other hand, to represent at the lowest figureall his remaining property, except those items of "corn and householdstuff, " and "timber and wood, " which he held to have been illegallydisposed of by Parliamentary officials, and for the recovery of which hemight bring forward a claim against Parliament. How the Committee, or thesub-Committee to whom the case was referred Nov. 26, did proceed in theircalculations can only be conjectured; but the result was that theycharged Mr. Powell on his whole returned property, without any allowancewhatever for his debts. This appears from three documents in the StatePaper Office, all of date Dec. 1646. On the 4th of that month Mr. Powellwent through the two formalities required by law of every Delinquentbefore composition. He subscribed the National Covenant in the presenceof "William Barton, minister of John Zachary" (the same clergyman who hadadministered the Covenant to Christopher Milton seven months before); andhe took the so-called "Negative Oath" in presence of another witness. Onthe same day, before a third witness, he took another and more specialoath, to the effect that the debts mentioned in his return to theGoldsmiths' Hall Committee were genuine debts, "truly and really owing byhim, " and that the estimate of his losses by the Civil War there set downwas also just. Nevertheless, in the paper drawn up on the 8th of Decemberby two of the Goldsmiths' Hall officials, containing an abstract of Mr. Powell's case, in which his own statements are accepted, and notice istaken of a request he had made for an allowance of 400_l. _ off the valueof the Wheatley property on account of the mortgage to that amount withwhich it was burdened, the fine is fixed by these ominous words at theclose: "Fine at 2 yeeres value, 180_l. _" The officials had been strict asShylock. Taking the Wheatley property at Mr. Powell's own valuation of40_l. _ a year, without allowing his claim of a half off for the Ashworthmortgage, they had added 50_l. _ a year as the worth of the remaining1, 000_l. _ made up by the three other capital items in his return, andthus appraised him as worth 90_l. _ a year in all. At the customary rateof two years' value, his fine therefore was to be 180_l. _ The debts ofthe Delinquent might amount to more than his estimated property, as hesaid they did; but that was a matter between himself and the world atlarge, and not between him and the Commissioners for Compositions. [Footnote: The documents the substance of which is here given will befound in the Appendix to Hamilton's Milton Papers (pp. 76-78). --The Rev. William Barton seems to be the person of that name already known to us asauthor of that Metrical Version of the Psalms which the Lords favouredagainst Rous's (_antč_, pp. 425 and 512). He may have been anacquaintance of Milton's; at all events, as minister of a church inAldergate Ward, he was conveniently near to Barbican. ]

Either the decision of the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee broke Mr. Powelldown unexpectedly, or he had been ailing before it came. It is possible, indeed, that he had been confined to Milton's house during thenegotiation, signing the Covenant and other necessary documents there, and unable to walk even the little distance between Barbican andGoldsmiths' Hall. Certain it is that he died there on or about the 1st ofJanuary, 1646-7, leaving the following will, executed but a day or twobefore:--

"In the name of God, Amen!--I, Richard Powell, of Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxon, Esquire, being sick andweak of bodie, but of perfect minde and memorie, I praise God therefore, this thirtieth daie of December in the yeare of our Lord God one thousandsix hundred fortie and six, doe make and declare this my will andtestament in manner and forme following:--First and principallie, Icomend my soule to the hands of Almighty God my Maker, trusting by themeritts, death, and passion of his sonn Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, tohave life everlasting; and my bodie I comitt to the earth from whence itcame, to be decentlie interred according to the discretion of my Executorhereafter named. --And, for my worldlie estate which God hath blessed ruewithall, I will and dispose as followeth:--_Imprimis_, I give andbequeathe unto Richard Powell, my eldest son, my house at Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxford, with all the householdstuffe and goods there now remaining, and compounded for by me since atGoldsmiths' Hall, together with the woods and timber there remaining; andall the landes to my said house of Forresthill belonging and heretoforetherewith used, together with the fines and profitts of the said landesand tenements, to the said Richard Powell and his heires and assignes forever: to this intent and purpose, and it is the true meaning of this mylast will, that my landes and goods shalbe first employed for thesatisfieing of my debts and funerall expenses, and afterwards for theraiseing of portions for his brothers and sisters soe far as the estatewill reach, allowing as much out of the estate abovementioned unto mysaid sonn Richard Powell as shall equal the whole to be devided amongsthis brothers and sisters, that is to saie the one halfe of the estate tohimselfe and the other halfe to be devided amongst his brothers andsisters that are not alredie provided for; in which devision my will isthat his sisters have a third parte more than his brothers. --My will anddesire is that my said sonn Richard doe, out of my said landes andpersonall estate herein mentioned, satisfy his mother, my dearely-belovedwife Ann Powell, that bond I have entered into for the makeing her ajoynture, which my estate is not in a condition now to dischardge. --And, lastlie, I doe by this my last will and testament make and ordaine mysonn Richard Powell my sole executor of this my last will, and I doehereby revoke all former wills by me made whatsoever. And my will fartheris that, in case my sonn Richard Powell shall not accept theexecutorshipp, then I doe hereby constitute and appointe, and doeearnestly desire, my dearely beloved wife Ann Powell to be my soleexecutrix, and to take upon her the mannageing of my estateabovementioned to the uses and purposes herein expressed. And, in caseshe doe refuse the same, then I desire my loveing friend Master JohnEllston of Forresthill to take the executorshipp uppon him and toperforme this my will as is herebefore expressed; to whom I give twentieshillings, to buy him a ring. And my earnest desire is that my wife andmy sonn have no difference concerning this my will and estate. --_Item_, I give and bequeathe to my sonn Richard Powell all my housesand landes at Whately in the countie of Oxford, and all other my estatereall and personall in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, tothe use, intent, and purpose above herein expressed: And my desire isthat my daughter Milton be had a reguard to in the satisfieing of herportion, and adding thereto in case my estate will beare it. And, forthis estate last bequeathed, in case my sonn take not upon him theexecutorshipp, then my will is my beloved wife shall be sole executrix, unto whom I give the landes and goods last abovementioned, to the usesand purposes herein mentioned. In case she refuses, then I appoint MasterJohn Ellstone my executor, to the uses and purposes above-mentioned. --Inwitness hereof I have hereto put my hand and seale the daie and yearefirst above-written. --For the further strengthening of this my last will, I doe constitute and appoint my loveing friends, Sir John Curson and SirRobert Pye the elder, Knights, to be overseers of this my last will, desireing them to be aiding and assisting to my executor to see my lastwill performed, according to my true meaning herein expressed, for thegood and benefitt of my wife and children; and I give them, as a token ofmy love, twentie shillings apiece, to buy them each a ring, for theirpaines taken to advise and further my executor to performe this my will. "RICHARD POWELL. 

"Subscribed, sealed, and acknowledged to be his last will, in thepresence of

"JAMES LLOYD, JOHN MILTON, HENRY DELAHAY. " [Footnote: Found by me atDoctors' Commons. --The date assigned for Mr. Powell's death depends onhis widow's statement on oath, four years afterwards (Feb. 27, 1650-1), that "said Richard Powell, her late husband, died near the first day ofJanuary, in the year of our Lord 1646, at the house of Mr. John Miltonsituate in Barbican, London. " (Todd, I. 57. )]

While this is clearly the will of a dying man whose property is in such astate of wreck and confusion that he knows not whether any provisionwhatever will arise out of it for his wife and family, there are certainsuggestions in it of a contrary tenor. It is evident, for example, thatMr. Powell had not given up all hope that his main property, the mansionand lands of Forest-hill, might ultimately be recovered. Though these areentirely omitted in the Particular of his Estate given in a month beforeto the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for Compositions, they figure in hiswill so expressly that one sees the testator did not consider them quitelost. This, followed by the kindly mention of Sir Robert Pye in the endof the will, and the appointment of that knight as one of the overseersto assist the executor in carrying out the will, confirms a guess whichwe have already hazarded (_antč_, pp. 475-6): viz. That the entry ofSir Robert Pye into possession of the Forest-hill estate during the siegeof Oxford was not the harsh exercise of his legal right to do so, noreven only the natural act of a prudent creditor seeing no other way ofrecovering a large sum lent to a neighbour, but in part also a friendlyprecaution in the interests of that neighbour himself and his family. That Forest-hill, if it were to be alienated from the Powells, shouldpass into the possession of Sir Robert Pye, an old friend of the family, might be for their advantage in the end. Though nominally proprietor, hewould regard himself as interim possessor for the Powells; and, shouldthey ever be able to reclaim their property, and to pay the 1, 400_l. _ andarrears of interest for which it had been pledged, they would find SirRobert or his family more accommodating than strangers would have been. Something of this kind must have been in Mr. Powell's mind when he madehis will. He clung to the Forest-hill property; it was worth much morereally than the sum for which it had been alienated; he looked forward tosome arrangement in that matter between his heir and Sir Robert Pye, inwhich Sir Robert himself would advise and assist. Then, as the smallerWheatley property was also really worth more than the 40_l. _ a year atwhich it was rated, and as, besides other chances only vaguely hinted, the family had immediate claims for 500_l. _ on account of goods left atForest-hill, 400_l. _ on account of timber, and l00_l. _ in miscellaneousdebts, why, on the whole, with patience and good management, should therenot be enough to discharge all obligations, and still leave somethingover for the heir, the widow, and the other eight or nine children, inthe proportions indicated? Alas! if this were the possibility, it had tobe arrived at, the testator foresaw, through a dense medium of presentdifficulties. The very items of most importance in the meantime, if hiswidow and children were to be saved from actual straits, were the itemsof greatest uncertainty. The household goods, the timber, and the debtsdue, were estimated together at 1, 000_l. _ of cash; but it was cash whichhad to be rescued from the four winds. Nay, most of it had to be rescuedfrom worse than the four winds--from the Parliamentary Government itself, and from its agents in Oxfordshire. The household stuff and goods atForest-hill! Had they not been sold in June last by the Oxfordshiresequestrators to Matthew Appletree of London, carted off by that dealer, and dispersed no one knew whither? The timber at Forest-hill! Had notthat also vanished, most of it voted in July last by the two Houses ofParliament themselves to the people of Banbury for repairs of theirchurch and other buildings? To be sure, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, by accepting these portions of Mr. Powell's property at his own valuationand including them in their calculation of his fine for Delinquency, hadvirtually pledged Government that they should be restored. But then thefine had not been paid. Notwithstanding the statement in Mr. Powell'swill that he had compounded for his property, the case was not really so. The Committee had fixed his composition at 180_l. , _ and so had admittedhim to compound; but, as he had not yet paid the usual first moiety, thetransaction was really incomplete at his death. Who was to pursue thematter to completeness, undertaking on the one hand to pay thecomposition to Government, and on the other obliging Government toreproduce the value of the goods and timber that had been made away withby itself or by its Oxfordshire agents? All this too was in thetestator's mind, and hence his difficulty in fixing on an executor. Hiseldest son and heir, Richard, then a youth of five-and-twenty, was tohave the first option of this office; if he shrank from it, then thewidow was to be the sole executrix; but, if she also shrank from it, acertain "Master John Ellston of Forest-hill, " in whom Mr. Powell hadconfidence, was entreated to take it up. This Ellston, it is implied, understood the business, and, as acting for the family, might expect theadvice of Sir Robert Pye and Sir John Curzon. [Footnote: The "Ellston" ofthe will may be the "Eldridge" mentioned in a previously quoted document(_antč_, p. 478) as having 100_l. _ worth of Mr. Powell's timber on hispremises. If so, Mr. Hamilton (92) has miscopied "Eldridge" for "Ellston"or "Ellstone" in that document. ]

The eldest son did shrink from the hard post of executor under the will;but the widow did not. This appears from the probate of the will, datedMarch 26, 1647, when she appeared as executrix before Sir Nathaniel Brentof the Prerogative Court, took the oath, and had the administrationcommitted to her. [Footnote: Probate attached to the will in Doctors'Commons. There is a _second_ Probate in the margin, dated May 10, 1662, showing that then the eldest son, Richard Powell, at the age offorty-one, reclaimed the executorship, and was admitted to it, the formerProbate being set aside. This fact does not concern us at present. ] Itwas, as we shall find, a legacy of trouble and vexation to her, andcollaterally to Milton as her son-in-law, for many years; and, as weshall also find, she fought in it perseveringly and bravely. The troubleand vexation, however, so far as records revive it, do not begin withinour limits in this volume. For the present it is enough to add that, sometime after Mr. Powell's death and burial, his widow and children removedfrom Milton's house in the Barbican, and quartered themselves elsewhere. They can hardly have gone back to Oxfordshire. Not only was Forest-hillno home for them now, but the smaller tenement and grounds at Wheatley inthe same county seem to have been equally unavailable. There isdocumentary proof, at least, that immediately after Mr. Powell's death, in the same month of January 1646-7, his relative Sir Edward Powell, Bart. , took formal possession of that property in consequence of hislegal title to it from non-payment of the sum of £300 which he hadadvanced to Mr. Powell, on that security, five years before (see Vol. II. P. 497). [Footnote: Document, dated Aug. 28, 1650, among the CompositionPapers given by Hamilton (86, 87). ] This transaction, by a relative, may, like the similar transaction by Sir Robert Pye, have had some meaning infavour of the Powells; but, on the whole, though Mrs. Powell may havemanaged to dispose of some of her children, especially the elder boys, byappeal to relatives, the probability is that she remained in London andkept most of them with her. There is evidence that she had to live on inmost straitened circumstances. Relatives probably did something for her;and Milton, as we shall find, performed his part. 

Little more than two months after the burial of Mr. Powell, and possiblybefore the removal of his widow and children from the house in Barbican, there was another funeral from that house. It was that of Milton's ownfather. Father-in-law and father had gone almost together, and the housewas in double mourning. 

Who can part with this father of one of the greatest of Englishmenwithout a last look of admiration and regret? Nearly fifty years ago, inthe last years of Elizabeth's reign, we saw him, an "ingeniose man" fromOxfordshire, detached from his Roman Catholic kindred there, and settingup in London in the business of scrivenership, with music for his privatetaste, and a name of some distinction already among the musicians andcomposers of the time. Then came the happy days of his married life inBread Street, all through James's reign, his business prospering andmusic still his delight, but his three surviving children growing upabout him, and his heart full of generous resolves for their education, and especially of pride in that one of them on whose high promiseteachers and neighbours were always dilating. Then to CambridgeUniversity went this elder son, followed in time by the younger, thefather consenting to miss their presence, and instructing them to spareno use of his worldly substance for their help in the paths they mightchoose. It had been somewhat of a disappointment to him when, after sevenyears, the elder had returned from the University with his originaldestination for the Church utterly forsworn, and with such avowedloathings of the whole condition of things in Church and State as seemedto bar the prospect of any other definite profession. There had been therecompense, indeed, of that son's graceful and perfected youth, of thehaughty nobleness of soul that blazed through his loathings, and of hisacquired reputation for scholarship and poetry. And so, in the countryretreat at Horton, as age was beginning to come upon the good father, andhe was releasing himself from the cares of business, how pleasant it hadbeen for him, and for the placid and invalid mother, to have their elderson wholly to themselves, their one daughter continuing meanwhile inLondon after her first husband's decease, and then younger son alsomainly residing there for his law-studies. What though the son sodomiciled with them was plowing up to manhood, still without aprofession, still absorbed in books and poetry, doing exactly as heliked, and in fact more the ruler of them than they were of him? Whocould interfere with such a son, and why had God given them abundance butthat such a son might have the leisure he desired? All in all, one cannotdoubt that those years of retirement at Horton had been the most peacefulon which the old man could look back. But those years had come to an end. The sad spring of 1637 had come; the invalid wife had died; and he hadbeen left in widowhood. Little in the ten years of his life since thenbut a succession of shiftings and troubles! For a while still at Horton, sauntering about the church and in daily communion with the grave itcontained, his younger son and that son's newly-wedded wife coming tokeep him company while the elder was on his travels. Then, after theelder son's return, the outbreak of the political tumults, and the sadconvulsion of everything. In this convulsion his two sons had takenopposite sides, the elder even treasuring up wrath against himself by hisvehement writings for the Parliamentarians. How should an old man judgein such a case? The Horton household now broken up, he had gone for atime with Christopher and his wife to Reading, but only to be tossed backto London and the safer protection of John. We have seen him under thatprotection in Aldersgate Street, all through the time of Milton'smarriage--misfortune and the Divorce pamphlets. There was some comfort, on the old man's account, in the picture given of him by his grandsonPhillips, then in the same house, as living through all that distraction"wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least troubleimaginable. " All the same one fancies him having his own thoughts in hissolitary upper room, contrasting the now with the then, and feeling thathe had become feeble and superfluous. A cheerful change for him may havebeen the larger house in Barbican, with his son's forgiven wife in herproper place in it and more numerous pupils going in and out, and at lastthe birth of the infant-girl that made his grandfatherhood complete inall its three branches. He had been about eighteen months in this house. The Civil War had come to an end, and the King had been surrendered bythe Scots at Newcastle and shifted to the second stage of his captivityat Holmby House, and Christopher Milton had returned ruefully to Londonfrom Exeter to sue out pardon for his delinquency, and the impoverishedPowells also had come to the house from Oxford. Old Mr. Powell and oldMr. Milton had been a good deal together, and at length, when Mr. Powellwas dying, old Mr. Milton may have assisted, scrivener-like, in theframing of his will. Only two months afterwards his own turn came. Nowill of his has been found, and probably he had made a will unnecessaryby previous arrangements. His Bible and music-books left in his room mayhave been the mementoes of his last occupations. He was buried, March 15, 1646-7, in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, not farfrom Barbican; and the entry "John Milton, Gentleman, 15" among the"Burialls in March 1646" may be still looked at with interest in theRegisters of that parish. [Footnote: To the courtesy of the Rev. P. P. Gilbert, M. A. , Vicar of the parish, I owe a certified copy of the burial-entry. ]

Nothing came from Milton's pen on the occasion; but one remembers hisLatin poem "_Ad Patrem, _" written fifteen years before, and thelines with which that poem closes may stand fitly here as the epitaph forthe dead:--

 "At tibi, care Pater, postquam non aqua merenti Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis, Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato Percensere animo, fidęque reponere menti. Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Orco, Forsitan has laudes decantatumque parentis Nomen, ad exmplum, sero servabitis ęvo. "[Footnote: It seems to me not improbable that the poem, as originallywritten, ended at the word "menti. " and that the last six lines, beginning "Et vos, " were an addition when Milton published his Poems in1645 his father then residing with him. ]

SONNET XIV, AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS. 

Since the removal from the Aldersgate Street house to that in Barbican, Milton, as we know, had ceased from prose pamphleteering; and all that hehad done of a literary kind, besides publishing his volume of collectedPoems, had been his two Divorce Sonnets, his Sonnet to Henry Lawes, andhis Sonnet with the scorpion tail, entitled _On the Forcers ofConscience_. To these have now to be added, as written since Aug. 1646, two other scraps--viz. : the Sonnet marked XIV. In most of ourmodern editions of his Poems, and the Latin Ode to John Rous whichgenerally appears at or near the end of the Latin portion of theseeditions. 

Sonnet XIV. , though printed without a heading by Milton himself in theSecond or 1673 edition of his Poems, and often so printed still, existsfortunately in two drafts in his own hand (one of them erased) among theMilton MSS. At Cambridge, and bears there this heading, also in his ownhand: "_On the Religious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christianfriend, deceased 16 Decemb. _ 1646. " We have no other information aboutthis Mrs. Catherine Thomson than is conveyed by these words and theSonnet itself; and the fact that we know of her existence only by chancesuggests to us how many friends and acquaintances of Milton there mayhave been in London whose very names have perished. One may suppose herto have been a neighbour of Milton's, and rather elderly. That he had noordinary respect for her appears from the fact that he felt moved towrite something in her memory. If written exactly at the time of herdeath, it was while his house was full of the Powells, and Mr. Powell wasgrieving over the state of his affairs and perhaps known to be dying. There is a suggestion, however, in the wording, that it may have beenwritten later. 

 "When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load Of death, called life, which us from Life doth sever. Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod; But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams And azure wings, that up they flew so drest, And speak the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams. "

Certainly written in Barbican between the death of Mr. Powell and that ofMilton's father, but in a very different strain from the foregoing, isthe Latin Ode to Rous, the Oxford Librarian. The circumstances werethese:--

Milton, we have had proof already, cared enough both about his opinionsand about his literary reputation to adopt the common practice of sendingpresentation-copies of his books to persons likely to be interested inthem. He had sent out, we have seen, such presentation-copies of Lawes's1637 edition of his "Comus, " and of some of his pamphlets individually. We find, however, that in 1645 or 1646, when he had published no fewerthan eleven pamphlets in all, and when moreover his English and LatinPoems had been issued by Moseley, he must have taken some pains to securethat copies of the entire set of his writings, as then extant, should bein the hands of eminent book-collectors and scholars. Thus, in theLibrary of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a small quarto volumecontaining ten of the pamphlets bound together in this order--"OfReformation, " "Of Prelatical Episcopacy, " "The Reason of Church-government, " "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence, " "An Apologyagainst a modest Confutation, " "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, ""The Judgment of Martin Bucer, " "Colasterion, " "Tetrachordon, ""Areopagitica;" and the volume exhibits (in a slightly mutilated form, owing to clipping in the re-binding) this inscription in Milton'sautograph: "_Ad doctissimum virum, Patricium Junium, Joannes Miltoniushęc sua, unum in fasciculum conjecta, mittit, paucis hujusmodi lectoribuscontentes_" ("To the most learned man, Patrick Young, John Miltonsends these things of his, thrown together into one volume, content withfew readers were they but of his sort") The volume, therefore, though ithas found its way to Dublin, originally belonged to the Scotchman PatrickYoung, better known by his Latinized name of Patricius Junius, one of themost celebrated scholars of his time, especially in Greek, and for morethan forty years (1605?-1649) keeper of the King's Library in St. James's, London. Milton, it is clear, did not intend the gift for theRoyal Library, unless Young chose to put it there. He meant it for Younghimself, with whom he had probably some personal acquaintance, and whowas of Presbyterian sympathies, and in fact then under the orders ofParliament. [Footnote: There is a facsimile of the inscription to Youngin Sotheby's Milton Ramblings, p. 121; but I am indebted for a moreparticular account of the volume, with a tracing of the inscription, tothe Rev. Andrew Campbell of Dublin. There is a memoir of Young in Wood'sFasti, I. 308-9]

About the time when Milton sent this collection of his pamphlets toPatrick Young, or perhaps a little later, he sent a similar gift toanother librarian, expressly in his official capacity. This was JohnRous, M. A. , chief Librarian of the Bodleian at Oxford from 1620 to 1652, Milton, there is reason to believe, had known Rous since the year 1635(see Vol. I. P. 590); at all events an acquaintance had sprung up betweenthem, as could hardly fail to be the case between a reader like Miltonand the keeper of the great Oxford Library; and, as Rous's politicalleanings, Oxonian though he was, were distinctly Parliamentarian, therewas no reason for coolness on that ground. Accordingly, Rous, it appears, had asked Milton for a complete copy of his writings for the Bodleian, and had even been pressing in the request. Milton at length haddespatched the required donation in the form of a parcel containing twovolumes--the Prose Pamphlets bound together in one volume, and the Poemsby themselves in the tinier volume as published by Moseley. On a blankleaf at the beginning of the larger volume he had written very carefullywith his own hand a long Latin inscription, "_Doctissimo viro, proloquelibrorum ęstimatori, Joanni Rousio_" &c. ; which may be given intranslation as follows: "To the most learned man, and excellent judge ofbooks, John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford, on histestifying that this would be agreeable to him, John Milton gladlyforwards these small works of his, with a view to their reception intothe University's most ancient and celebrated Library, as into a temple ofperpetual memory, and so, as he hopes, into a merited freedom from ill-will and calumny, if satisfaction enough has been given at once to Truthand to Good Fortune. They are--'Of Reformation in England, ' 2 Books; 'OfPrelatical Episcopacy, ' 1 Book; 'Of the Reason of Church-government, ' 2Books; 'Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence, ' 1 Book; 'Apologyagainst the same, ' 1 Book; 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, ' 2Books; 'The Judgment of Bucer on Divorce, ' 1 Book; 'Colasterion, ' 1 Book;'Tetrachordon: An Exposition of some chief places of Scripture concerningDivorce, ' 4 Books; 'Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Freedom of thePress;' 'An Epistle on Liberal Education;' and 'Poems, Latin andEnglish, ' separately. " Here, it will be seen, Milton sends to Rous thesame pamphlets he had sent to Patrick Young, and in the same order, onlyadding the Letter on Education to Hartlib, and the Moseley volume ofPoems. Now, all the pieces so enumerated, with the inscription, had dulyreached Rous in the Bodleian, with one exception. In the carriage of theparcel to Oxford the tiny volume of Poetry had somehow dropped out orbeen abstracted; so that Rous, counting over the pieces by the inventory, found himself in possession only of the eleven prose-pamphlets. He hadintimated this to Milton, and petitioned for another copy of the Poems tomake good the loss of the first. Milton complied; but, as the loss of thefirst copy had amused him, he took the trouble of writing a mock-heroicLatin ode on the subject to Rous, and causing this ode, transcribed on asheet of paper in a secretary hand of elaborate elegance, to be insertedby the binder in the new copy, between the English and the Latin portionsof the contents. This is the _Ode to Rous_ of which we have spokenas, with the exception of _Sonnet XIV. , _ the sole known productionof Milton's muse during those eight months of his Barbican life whichhave brought us to our present point. When he printed it in the second or1673 edition of his Poems, he prefixed the exact date, "Jan. 23, 1646"(_i. E. _ 1646-7). It was written, therefore, in the interval betweenMr. Powell's death and his father's--three weeks after the one, and sixor seven weeks before the other. The manuscript copy sent to Rous stillexists in the Bodleian in the volume into which it was inserted; and inthe same library they show also the volume of the eleven collected prosepamphlets, with the previous inscription to Rous in Milton's autograph. [Footnote: Warton's Note on the Ode to Rous (Todd's Milton, IV. 507-9);Milton's Poems ed. 1678, Latin portion, p. 90; Sotheby's MiltonRamblings, pp. 113-121, where there is a fac-simile of the inscription inthe Bodleian volume of the prose pamphlets, and also a fac-simile of aconsiderable portion of the Latin Ode to Rous from the MS. Copy in theother Bodleian volume. The "inscription" is indubitably Milton'sautograph; Mr. Sotheby thinks the "ode" also to be in his penmanship, though not in his usual hand, but in a "beautiful secretary hand" whichhe assumed for the special purpose. Judging from the fac-simile, I doubtthis, and think the transcript may have been by some professionalscribe. --According to Warton's account, it is by accident that these twoprecious volumes have been preserved in the Bodleian. In 1720 a number ofbooks, whether as being duplicates or as being thought useless, wereweeded out of the Library and thrown aside, and a Mr. Nathaniel Crynes, one of the Esquire Bidels and a book collector, was permitted to have thepick of these for himself on the understanding that he was to leave theLibrary a valuable bequest. Fortunately Mr. Crynes did not care for theMilton volumes, and so they went back to the shelves. ]

The ode is headed "_Ad Joannem Rousium, Oxoniensis AcademięBibliothecarium: de Libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mittipostulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecā publicā reponeret, Ode_" ("To John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford: An Ode ona lost Book of Poems, of which he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, thathe might replace it beside our other books in the Public Library"). 

What strikes one first in reading the Ode is the strange metricalstructure. Evidently in a whim, and to suit his mock-heroic purpose, Milton chose a peculiar form of mixed verse, distantly suggested by thechoruses of the Greek dramatists, and more closely by some precedents inLatin poetry. There are three Strophes, each followed by an Antistrophe, and the whole is wound up by a closing Epodos. In an appended prose noteMilton calls attention to this novelty, and explains moreover that he hadtaken considerable liberties with the verse throughout, pleasing his ownear, and regarding rather the convenience of modern reading than ancientprosodic rules. Altogether, in this respect, the poem was a boldexperiment, for which Milton has been taken to task by purists among hiscommentators down to our own time. 

It is the _matter_, however, that interests us most here. The odeopens half-humorously with an address to the little book he was sendingto Rous. It is described as a pretty little book enough, with two sets ofcontents and a double arrangement of paging to match, neatly but simplybound (_fronde licet geminā, munditieque nitens non operosā_), andcontaining the juvenile productions of a certain Poet of no superlativemerit (_haud nimii poetę_), written partly in Britain and partly inItaly, partly in English and partly in Latin. [Footnote: Critics haveobjected to Milton's volume, phrase "_fronde licet geminā_, " on theground that "_fronte_" would be the better Latin word for "title-page. " But Milton did not mean only that there were two title pages inthe volume, one to the English and one to the Latin poems; he meant alsothat these two sets of poems were paged separately throughout. His phrase"_fronde geminā_, " ("with double leafing") was therefore perfectlyexact. ] Then the Antistrophe asks what had become of the former copy ofthe same, on its way to the sources of the Thames and the great seat oflearning there established. The second Strophe and Antistrophe continuethe strain, with a hope that now at length the wretched civil tumults maycease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with areturn of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volumebetween London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might havefallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment toRous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in theworld, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missingvolume replaced, so that it might have a chance of readers in suchglorious company and in all-famous Oxford. The closing Epode may be givenin the skilful, though rather lax, rendering of Cowper:--

 "Ye, then, my Works, no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced, Expect at last, the rage of envy spent, An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find, And whence the coarse unlettered multitude Shall babble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age, Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught, Shall furnish minds of power To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Cooler heads and sounder hearts, Thanks to Rous, if aught of praise I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim. "

ITALIAN REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'SREPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM. 

Our next trace of Milton, through anything written by himself in hisBarbican abode, belongs to April 1647, the month after his father'sdeath. We owe it also perhaps to the fact that the publication of hisPoems by Moseley had given him an opportunity of distributingpresentation-copies of some of his former writings. 

A feature in that volume, it may be remembered, was its richness inItalian reminiscences. Not only were there included among the EnglishPoems the five Italian Sonnets and the Italian Canzone which Milton isbelieved to have written in Italy; not only were the encomiums of hisItalian friends, Manso of Naples, Salzilli and Selvaggi of Rome, andFrancini and Dati of Florence, prefixed to the Latin Poems, with a noteof explanation; not only among these Latin poems did he print the threepieces to the singer Leonora, the Scazontes to Salzilli, and the finefarewell to Manso; but in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, or pastoral onCharles Diodati's death, which ended the volume, and which had beenwritten immediately after his return to England, there were referencesthroughout to his Italian experiences, and passages of express mention ofDati, Francini, the Florentine group generally, and the venerable Manso. What more natural than to have sent copies of such a volume to thevarious Italian friends named in it, to remind them of the Englishman towhom they had been so kind. The venerable Manso, indeed, was by this timedead; Salzilli seems to have been dead; the great Galileo, whom Miltonhad at least once visited near Florence, had died in 1642; but most ofthe Florentine group were still alive. To these last, all of them poetsthemselves more or less, Milton might have been expected to send copiesof his volume. Or, if he did not trouble them with the English part, which they could not read, he might have sent them at least the Latinpart, which had been separately paged, and provided with a separate titleand imprint, precisely in order that it might be so detached. For areason which will appear Milton did not even do this. He seems, however, to have procured from the printer some copies of the last eleven pages ofthe Latin part, which contained the _Epitaphium Damonis_ by itself, and to have sent these to Florence. Either so, or by some priortransmission of this particular poem to his Florentine friends, unaccompanied by any letter, copies of it _had_ reached them. Thiswe learn from the sequel. 

Of all Milton's Florentine friends none had remembered him morefaithfully than young Carlo Dati (see Vol. I. Pp. 724-5). Only nineteenyears of age when Milton had visited Florence in 1638-9, but then aleading spirit in the literary Academies of the city, and especiallyenthusiastic in his attentions to strangers, he had outgone all theothers, except Francini, in his admiration of the Englishman who had comeamong them, and in the extravagance of his parting adieu. The admirationwas real; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought ofhim, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and ofGaddi's more private Academy of the Svogliati, often wondered what he wasdoing in his native land. Three times at intervals he had written toMilton; but all the letters had miscarried. Conceive, then, Dati'spleasure, when, some time in 1646 (if that is the correct supposition), acopy of the _Epitaphium Damonis_ reached him from London, and heread the passage there in which Milton had made such affectionate mentionof his Florentine friends of 1638-9, and of himself and Francini inparticular. Immediately he wrote to Milton a fourth time; and thisletter, more fortunate than its predecessors, did arrive at itsdestination. Milton, on his part, though the letter must have reached himabout the time of his father's death, had peculiar pleasure in receivingit and returning an answer. The answer was in Latin, and may betranslated as follows:--

"To CHARLES DATI, Nobleman of Florence. 

"With how great and what new pleasure I was filled, my Charles, on theunexpected arrival of your letter, since it is impossible for me todescribe it adequately, I wish you may in some degree understand from thevery pain with which it was dashed, such pain as is almost the invariableaccompaniment of any great delight yielded to men. For, on running overthat first portion of your letter, in which elegance contends so finelywith friendship, I should have called my feeling one of unmixed joy, andthe rather because I see your labour to make friendship the winner. Immediately, however, when I came upon that passage where you write thatyou had sent me three letters before, which I now know to have been lost, then, in the first place, that sincere gladness of mine at the receipt ofthis one began to be infected and troubled with a sad regret, andpresently a something heavier creeps in upon me, to which I am accustomedin very frequent grievings over my own lot: the sense, namely, that thosewhom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a uselesskind, has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or by the tie oflaw (_sive casu, sive lege, conglutinavit_), _they_ are the persons, though in no other respect commendable, who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, all but plague me to death whenever they arejointly in the humour for it, whereas those whom habits, disposition, studies, had so handsomely made my friends, are now almost all denied me, either by death or by most unjust separation of place, and are so for themost part snatched from my sight that I have to live well nigh in aperpetual solitude. As to what you say, that from the time of mydeparture from Florence you have been anxious about my health and alwaysmindful of me. I truly congratulate myself that a feeling has been equaland mutual in both of us, the existence of which on my side only I wasperhaps claiming to my credit. Very sad to me also, I will not concealfrom you, was that departure, and it planted stings in my heart which nowrankle there deeper, as often as I think with myself of my reluctantparting, my separation as by a wrench, from so many companions at once, such good friends as they were, and living so pleasantly with each otherin one city, far off indeed, but to me most dear. I call to witness thattomb of Damon, ever to be sacred and solemn to me, whose adornment withevery tribute of grief was my weary task, till I betook myself at lengthto what comforts I could, and desired again to breathe a little--I callthat sacred grave to witness that I have had no greater delight all thiswhile than in recalling to my mind the most pleasant memory of all ofyou, and of yourself especially. This you must have read for yourselflong ere now, if that poem reached you, as now first I hear from you itdid. I had carefully caused it to be sent, in order that, however small aproof of talent, it might, even in those few lines introduced into itemblem-wise, [Footnote: See the lines themselves in the translation ofthe _Epitaphium Damonis_, Vol. II. P. 90. ] be no obscure proof of my lovetowards you. My idea was that by this means I should lure either yourselfor some of the others to write to me; for, if I wrote first, either I hadto write to all, or I feared that, if I gave the preference to any one, Ishould incur the reproach of such others as came to know it, hoping as Ido that very many are yet there alive who might certainly have a claim tothis attention from me. Now, however, you first of all, both by this mostfriendly call of your letter, and by your thrice-repeated attention ofwriting before, have freed the reply for which I have been some whilesince in your debt from any expostulation from the others. [Footnote:Although I have supposed that the copies of the _Epitaphium Damonis_ sentby Milton to Italy were from the sheets of the Moseley volume of 1645 asit was passing through the press, the reader ought to note, with me, the_possibility_ (already hinted, and now implied in this passage of theletter to Dati) that Milton had sent copies in some form at an earlierdate--say immediately after the poem was written, and when his partingfrom his Italian friends was quite recent. ] There was, I confess, anadditional cause for my silence in that most turbulent state of ourBritain, subsequent to my return home, which obliged me to divert my mindshortly afterwards from the prosecution of my studies to the defenceanyhow of life and fortune. What safe retirement for literary leisurecould you suppose given one among so many battles of a civil war, slaughters, flights, seizures of goods? Yet, even in the midst of theseevils, since you desire to be informed about my studies, know that wehave published not a few things in our native tongue; which, were theynot written in English, I would willingly send to you, my friends inFlorence, to whose opinions I attach very much value. The part of thePoems which is in Latin I will send shortly, since you wish it; and Iwould have done so spontaneously long ago, but that, on account of therather harsh sayings against the Pope of Rome in some of the pages, I hada suspicion they would not be quite agreeable to your ears. Now I beg ofyou that the indulgence you were wont to give, I say not to your ownDante and Petrarch in the same case, but with singular politeness to myown former freedom of speech, as you know, among you, the same you, Dati, will obtain (for of yourself I am sure) from my other friends whenever Imay be speaking of your religion in our peculiar way. I am reading withpleasure your description of the funeral ceremony to King Louis, in whichI recognise your style (_Mercurium tuum_)--not that one of street bazaarsand mercantile concerns (_compitalem ilium et mercimoniis ad dictum_)which you say jestingly you have been lately practising, but the righteloquent one which the Muses like, and which befits the president of aclub of wits (_facundum ilium, Musis acceptum, et Mercurialium virorumpręsidem_). [Footnote: The production of Dati to which Milton refers, andof which a copy had probably accompanied Dati's letter, was an Italiantract or book, entitled "Esequie del la Maestą Christianiss: di LuigiXIII. Il Giusto, Re di Francia e di Navarra, celebrate in Firenze dallaltezza serenissima di Ferdinando Granduca di Tose. , e discritte da CarloDati: 1644. " Louis XIII. Of France had died May 14, 1643, and the GrandDuke of Tuscany had ordered a celebration in his honour at Florence. --Thehint that Dati was now engaged in mercantile business is confirmed bysubsequent evidence. ] It remains that we agree on some method and plan bywhich henceforth our letters may go between us by a sure route. This doesnot seem very difficult, when so many of our merchants have frequent andlarge transactions with you, and their messengers run backwards andforwards every week, and their vessels sail from port to port not muchseldomer. The charge of this I shall commit, rightly I hope, toBookseller James (_Jacobo Bibliopolę_), or to his master, my veryfamiliar acquaintance (_vel ejus hero mihi familiarissimo_). [Footnote: Ihave translated this as well as I can, but it is obscure. Did Miltonrefer to some Florentine "Jacopo, " a bookseller (the publisher of Dati's_Esequie_?), and playfully entrust the arrangement of the future means ofcorrespondence to Dati himself, as master of the services of thisperson?] Meanwhile farewell, my Charles; and give best salutations in myname to Coltellini, Francini, Frescobaldi, Malatesta, Chimentelli theyounger, anyone else you know that remembers me with some affection, and, in fine, to the whole Gaddian Academy. Again farewell!

London: April 21, 1617. " [Footnote: This letter to Dati is the tenth ofMilton's _Epistolę Familiares_, as published by himself in 1674, andreprinted in the collected editions of his works. By a curious chance, however, a MS. Copy of it exists in Milton's own hand--either a draftwhich Milton kept at the time, or perhaps the actual copy sent to Dati. It is one of some valuable Milton documents in the possession of Mr. JohnFitchett Marsh of Warrington, who has described it in his _MiltonPapers_, printed for the Chetham Society in 1851, and given there afac-simile of the beginning and end of it. There is a copy of this fac-simile in Mr. Sotheby's _Milton Ramblings_ (p. 122). Mr. Marsh, whois inclined to think that the MS. Is the actual letter as it reachedDati, has favoured me with an exact list of some verbal variations in itfrom the printed copy. They are slight, but rather confirm the idea thatthe printed copy is from the draft which Milton kept and that the MS. Wasthe transcript actually dispatched to Italy. Thus, while the printed copyis headed merely "_Carolo Dato, Patricio Florentino_, " the MS. Isheaded "Carolo Dato, Patricio Florentino, Joannes Miltonius, Londinensis, S. P. D. " Again, at the close, instead of the printed dating "_Londino, Aprilis 21, 1647_, " the MS. Presents the dating "_Londini: Pascatisferia tertia, MDCXLVII_, " ("London: the third feast day of Easter, 1647. ") On this Mr. Marsh, in a note to me, remarks ingeniously, "Datingfrom the feast-day, according to the Roman Catholic usage, in writing toan Italian friend, indicates a tolerance and politeness worth noticing. "Easter in 1647 fell on Sunday, April 18, so that the third day, orEaster-Tuesday, was April 20. The printed copy is dated a day later. ]

There are passages in this letter which we can interpret now better thanDati can have done then. The sentences in which Milton speaks of his hardfate in being tied by accident or law to the constant companionship ofpeople with whom he had no sympathy, while those whom he really cared forwere distant or dead, may have been read by Dati with only a vaguegeneral construction of their meaning, and perhaps would not have beenwritten by Milton to any one capable of a more exact construction fromknowledge of the circumstances. We can now discern in them, however, areference by Milton to his domestic troubles, to the worry brought on himby the whole Powell connexion, and perhaps also to the recent loss of hisfather. Altogether the letter is a melancholy one. One sees Milton, as hewrote it in Barbican in the spring of 1647, the gloomy master of anuncomfortable household. 

PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH. 

Yet precisely this spring of 1647, if we are to believe his nephewPhillips, was Milton's busiest time with his pupils. "And now, " saysPhillips, after mentioning the death of Milton's father, and thedeparture at last of the Powell kindred from the house in Barbican, "thehouse looked again like a house of the Muses only, though the accessionof scholars was not great. Possibly his proceeding thus far in theeducation of youth may have been the occasion of some of his adversariescalling him Pedagogue and Schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he neverset up for a public school to teach all the young fry of a parish, butonly was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, andthe sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends, besides thatneither his converse, nor his writings, nor his manner of teaching eversavoured in the least anything of pedantry; and probably he might havesome prospect of putting in practice his academical institution, according to the model laid down in his sheet Of Education!" Taking thispassage in connexion with prior passages already quoted from the samememoir, we are to conclude that, though Milton's practice in teaching hadbegun as far back as 1639-40, when he gave lessons to his two nephews inhis lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, and although the practice hadbeen kept up all through the time of his residence in Aldersgate Street, when his nephews boarded with him and other pupils were gradually added(1640-45), yet it was in the Barbican house, and there more especially in1647, that his employment in pedagogy was most engrossing. The house hadbeen taken expressly that there might be accommodation for additionalpupils, and such pupils had come in--not in any considerable number, noryet miscellaneously from the neighbourhood, but rather by way of favouron Milton's part to select boys whose parents knew him well, and wereanxious that they should have the benefit of his instructions. 

As to Milton's theories and methods of education we are alreadysufficiently informed. This may be the place, however, for a list ofthose who can be ascertained to have had the honour of being his pupils. Perhaps that honour may have been shared by as many as twenty or thirtyyouths in all, afterwards distributed through English society in theseventeenth century, and some of them living even into the eighteenth;but I have been able to recover only the following:--[Footnote: It is tobe understood that Milton may have continued the practice of pedagogy, inindividual cases at least, after the Barbican period of its fullestforce, and hence that one or two of the pupils in my present list may nothave been in the Barbican house, but may be strays afterwards undertakenby him, on special request, in those later days and those other housesinto which we have yet to follow him. As it is not worth while, however, to break up such a list, I present all Milton's known pupils, of whateverdate, in one cluster. ]

EDWARD PHILLIPS (the elder nephew):--Not ten years old when he firstreceived lessons from Milton in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, thiselder nephew, after five years of board in Aldersgate Street, and about ayear and a half in Barbican, had reached his seventeenth year. He hadreceived the full benefit so far of his uncle's method of teaching; and, if he were to go to the University, it was about time that he should bepreparing. About two years after our present date, or in March 1648-9, bywhatever management of his uncle, or of his mother and step-father, Mrs. And Mr. Agar, he did enrol himself in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The rest ofhis life will concern us hereafter. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. , IV. 760, andGodwin's Lives of the Phillipses, p. 12. ]

JOHN PHILLIPS (the younger nephew):--This nameson of Milton's, firstcommitted to his entire charge in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, hadbeen as long under training as his elder brother, and had now reached hissixteenth year. He was to remain a more unmixed example of his uncle'straining, for he never went to any University. He also will reappear inthe subsequent course of his uncle's life. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. , IV. 764, and Godwin. ]

RICHARD HEATH, OR HETH:--That a person of this name was among Milton'spupils, rests on the evidence of one of Milton's own _EpistolęFamiliares_, dated Dec. 1652, and addressed "Richardo Hetho. " As hewas then a minister of the Gospel somewhere, it is to be inferred that hewas one of the earliest pupils of the Aldersgate Street days. I have notbeen able to identify him farther. 

----PACKER:--"Mr. Packer, who was his scholar, " is one of Aubrey'sJottings about Milton, written in 1680 or thereabouts. This is a veryinsufficient clue. A John Packer, who had taken the degree of Doctor ofPhysic at Padua, was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford, Feb. 19, 1656-7. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes on Milton's Life (Godwin's reprint, p. 349); Wood's Fasti, II. 196. ]

CYRIACK SKINNER:--He was the third son of William Skinner, a Lincolnshiresquire (son and heir of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knt. , of Thornton College, co. Lincoln) who had married Bridget Coke, second daughter of the famouslawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke. As his father died in 1627, Cyriackmust have been at least twenty years of age in 1647: he had, therefore, been one of the Aldersgate Street pupils. The fact that he was a grandsonof the great Coke was one of his distinctions through life; but he was tobecome of some note in London society on his own' account. The connexionformed between him and Milton continued, as we shall find, unbroken andaffectionate through future years. Indeed, there came to be associations, presumably through Cyriack, between Milton and other persons of the nameof Skinner. A Daniel Skinner, and a Thomas Skinner, presumably relativesof Cyriack's, are heard of as merchants in Mark Lane, London, from 1651onwards. This Daniel Skinner, merchant, had a son, Daniel Skinner, junior, whose acquaintance with Milton in the end of his life led tocurious and important results. Care must be taken, even now, not toconfound this far future Daniel Skinner, junior (not born till about1650), with our present Cyriack, his senior, and probable kinsman. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes; Wood's Ath. , III. 1119; Skinner's Pedigree inIntrod. To Bishop Sumner's Translation of Milton's Treatise on ChristianDoctrine (1825); Hamilton's Milton Papers, 29 _et seq. _ and 131-2. Wood(Fasti, I. 486) has confounded Cyriack Skinner in one particular with themuch later Daniel Skinner junior, and the mistake has been kept up. ]

HENRY LAURENCE:--There is no positive attestation, as in the other cases, that this person, certainly intimate with Milton in subsequent years, began acquaintance with him as one of his pupils. The presumption is sostrong, however, that I risk including him. He was the second son ofHenry Laurence, of St. Ives, Hunts, member for Westmoreland in the LongParliament, known in 1647 as a thoughtful man, and author of "A Treatiseof our Communion and War with Angels, " and afterwards a staunchOliverian, President of Cromwell's Council (1654), and one of his Lords(1657). He had an elder son, Edward, who was fourteen years of age in1647, and died in 1657, when Henry became the heir. Therefore, if we areright in supposing Henry to have been Milton's pupil in the Barbican, hecannot have been older than twelve or thirteen at the time. [Footnote:Wood's Ath. , IV. 63, 64; note by Bliss. ]

SIR THOMAS GARDINER, OF ESSEX:--That a person of this name was amongMilton's pupils in the Barbican, either with the title already, or havingit to come to him, seems to be implied in a statement of Wood, quoted inthe next paragraph. 

RICHARD BARRY, 2ND EARL OF BARRIMORE:--"To this end that he might put itin practice, " says Wood, after describing Milton's system of education asexplained in his Letter to Hartlib, "he took a larger house, where theEarl of Barrimore sent by his aunt the Lady Ranelagh, Sir Thomas Gardinerof Essex, to be there with others (besides his two nephews) under histuition. " [Footnote: Wood's Fasti (edit. By Bliss), I. 483. The sentenceis exactly in the same form in earlier editions. ] The pointing andstructure of the sentence make it obscure; but I take the meaning to bethat Wood had heard of two of Milton's pupils in the Barbican housespecially worth naming on account of their rank--the Earl of Barrimoreand Sir Thomas Gardiner--and that he had also been informed that it wasthe Earl of Barrimore's aunt, the Lady Ranelagh, that had placed thatyoung Irish nobleman under Milton's charge. The full significance of thiswas clear when Wood wrote, for Lady Ranelagh was then still alive, andknown as one of the most remarkable women of her century; but readers nowmay need to be informed who Lady Ranelagh was. --Her husband was ArthurJones, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish peerage; but that was not herchief distinction. By birth she was a Boyle, one of the daughters of thatRichard Boyle, an Englishman of Kent, who, having gone over to Ireland in1588, had risen there, by his prudence and integrity through threereigns, to be successively Sir Richard Boyle, Lord Boyle of Youghall, Viscount Dungarvan, and Earl of Cork, with the office of Lord HighTreasurer of Ireland, and with vast estates both in Ireland and England. This great Earl, dying in good old age in 1643, after some final serviceagainst the Irish Rebellion, left four sons mid six daughters survivingout of a total family of fifteen. The eldest surviving son, Richard, tillthen Viscount Dungarvan, succeeded to the Earldom of Cork, and wasafterwards created Lord Clifford of Lanesborough (1644) and Earl ofBurlington (1664) in the English peerage; the second, Roger, createdBaron Broghill in his father's lifetime, bore that title till theRestoration, with a high character for wisdom and literary talent, whichhe maintained afterwards as Earl of Orrery; the next, Francis, aftergiving proof of his Royalism both in England and in exile, received aplace with his brothers in the Irish peerage as Viscount Shannon; and thefourth and youngest, born Jan. 25, 1626-7, was called to the end of hisdays merely "The Hon. Mr. Robert Boyle, " but became the most famous ofthem all as "the divine philosopher, " and founder of English Chemistry. So also, among the daughters, though all were "ladies of great piety andvirtue and an ornament to their sex, " one was the paragon. This wasCatharine, Viscountess Ranelagh, born March 22, 1614-15, or twelve yearsbefore her brother Robert. Of her reputation for "vast reach both ofknowledge and apprehension, " "universal affability, " and liberality bothof mind and of purse, there is the most glowing tradition, interspersedwith facts and anecdotes; and the singularly strong mutual affection thatsubsisted between her and her brother Robert till the close of theirlives runs like a silver thread through that philosopher's biography. Atour present date she was yet a young woman, but her influence among themembers of her family was already recognised. Since the Irish Rebellionthe fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?)London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her;and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning upbrown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his sixyears of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. He had remainedin her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate ofStalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he continued mainly till 1650, corresponding with her from amid his speculative studies and hisapparatus for chemical experiments. --One other service, if Anthony Wood'sinformation is correct, Lady Ranelagh must have rendered about the sametime to another member of her family. Most of her sisters had marriedinto noble English or Irish houses; but the eldest of them, Alice, LadyBarrimore, had been left a widow with three young children by the deathof her husband, David, first Earl of Barrimore. This death had occurredbefore that of her father the great Earl of Cork, and in that Earl'swill, dated Nov. 24, 1642, he had shown his concern for this unexpectedwidowhood of his eldest daughter by special bequests to her threechildren. Two of them, being daughters, were to receive 1, 000_l. _apiece; and for the behoof of the only son there was this provision: "Forthat I have ever cordially desired the restitution and recovery of theEarl of Barrimore's noble and anciently honourable house, that hisposterity may raise the same to its former lustre and greatness again, and in regard that in my judgment there is no way so likely and probable(God blessing it) to redeem and bring home the encumbered and disjointedestate of the said Earl, and his house and posterity, as by giving anoble, virtuous, and religious education to the said now young Earl, mygrandchild, who, by good and honourable breeding, may (by God's grace)either by the favour of the prince, or by his service to the King andcountry, or a good marriage, redeem and bring home that ancient andhonourable house, which upon the marriage of my daughter unto the lateEarl I did with my own money freely clear: I do hereby, for hislordship's better maintenance and accommodation in the premises, bequeathunto my said grandchild, Richard, now Earl of Barrimore, from the time ofmy decease, for, during, and until he shall attain the full age of 22years, one yearly annuity of 200_l. _" This was the boy who, a yearor two afterwards, was sent to Milton's in the Barbican for tuition. Hisaunt Ranelagh had heard of Milton, or had come to know him personally;and she thought he was the very man to give the boy the training whichhis wise grandfather had desired for him. --There will be proof in timethat Lady Ranelagh did know Milton well, saw him often, and entertained ahigh regard for him, which he reciprocated. Meanwhile we may anticipateso far as to say that she was not content with having obtained Milton'sinstructions for her nephew, the Earl of Barrimore, but secured them alsofor her only son, Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earlof Ranelagh. This nobleman, who lived to as late as 1712 withconsiderable distinction of various kinds, and on the site of whose lasthouse at Chelsea Ranelagh Gardens were established, is also to bereckoned, we shall find, in the list of Milton's pupils. It is justpossible he may have begun his lessons, with his cousin Barrimore, in theBarbican house; but, as he was but seven years of age in 1647, this ishardly probable. [Footnote: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to the1714 edition of Boyle's Works in five volumes folio (pp. 1-20); Collins'sPeerage by Brydges, VII. 134 _et seq. (Boyle, Lord Boyle)_, and VI. L84; Irish Compendium or Rudiments of Honour (1756), for Barrimorefamily, Debrett's Peerage, for Ranelagh family; Worthington's Diary, byCrossley, I, 164-7; Cunningham's Handbook of London, 373 and 418;Phillips' Memoir of Milton; and four letters "_Nobili AdolescentiRichardo Jonslo_" in Milton's _Epistolę Familiares. _]

EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIB AGAIN: THE INVISIBLECOLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY. 

There may be something in Phillips's guess that his uncle, about 1647, had some idea of putting in practice his system of Pedagogy on a largerscale than a mere private house permitted, by becoming the head of somesuch public Academy as that which he had described three years before inhis Letter to Hartlib. 

The question of a Reform of the apparatus for national Education hadnever quite vanished from the public mind even in the midst of theengrossing struggle between the Presbyterians and the Independents, and afresh interest was imparted to the subject by the Ordinance of Parliamentin May 1647 for a Visitation and Purgation of the University of Oxford(_antč_, pp. 545-6). Hartlib, for one, was again on the top of thewave. The claims of this indefatigable man to some reward for his longand various services had at length been brought before Parliament. On the25th of June, 1646, on the report of a Committee, the House of Commonshad voted him 100_l. _ and in April 1647 the two Houses fartheragreed in a resolution to pay him 300_l. _ "in consideration of hisgood deserts and great services to the Parliament, " with a recommendationthat, on account of his special merits "from all that are well-wishers tothe advancement of learning, " he should be provided with some post ofemolument at Oxford. [Footnote: Commons Journals of June 25, 1646, andMarch 31, 1647; and Lords Journals of April 1, 1647. ] Nothing came of thelast suggestion, and Hartlib lived on in London as before, still onlyventilating his ideas of Educational Reform in a general way, amid theother novelties of all sorts which he patronized. 

Hartlib's hero-in-chief on the Educational subject, the great Comenius, though doubtless remembered, had practically gone out of view. Labouringat Elbing on that piece of mere drudgery for which Oxenstiern and othershad persuaded him to lay aside his Pansophic dreams (_antč_, p. 228), he had indeed compiled, in four years, a large recast of his LatinDidactics under the title of _Novissima Linguarum Methodus_, and hadreturned to Sweden in 1646 to present the mass of manuscript to hisemployer Ludovicus de Geer. The Swedish critics do not seem to have yetbeen satisfied with the performance, and Comenius had carried it awaywith him again for corrections and additions, not any longer in Elbing, but in his old Polish home. [Footnote: Comenius's Preface to the SecondPart of his _Opera Didactica_, between 1627 and 1657. ] No chance forHartlib, then, of co-operating again with Comenius in the foundation of aPansophic College in London! Hartlib's faculty of making newacquaintances, however, was as versatile as his passion for new lights;and a certain "_Invisible College_" which had already some habitatin London, had become the substitute in his fancies for the unbuiltPansophic Temple of the distant Slavonian sage. Since 1645 there had beenheld, sometimes in Wood Street, sometimes in Cheapside, and sometimes inGresham College, those humble weekly meetings of a few "worthy personsinquisitive into Natural Philosophy, " out of which there grew at lengththe great Royal Society of London. Theodore Haak, a naturalized German, had originated the club; and among the first members were Dr. John Wallis(the clerk of the Westminster Assembly, but with other things in his headthan what went on there), the afterwards famous Wilkins, and thephysician Dr. Jonathan Goddard. If Hartlib, the fellow-countryman andfriend of Haak, was not an original member, he knew of the meetings fromthe first; and the _Invisible College_ of his imagination seems tohave been that enlarged future association of all earnest spirits for theprosecution of real and fruitful knowledge of which this club might bethe symbol and promise. The _Invisible College_, at all events, wasthe temporary form of his ever-varying, and yet indestructible, zeal forprogress. It figures much in his correspondence at this time with one newfriend, who, though not more than twenty years of age, had that in himwhich made his friendship as precious to Hartlib as any he had yetformed. This was young Robert Boyle, recently returned to England fromhis foreign travels, and dividing his time between philosophicalretirement at his house in Dorsetshire and occasional visits to London. In a letter to a Cambridge friend written in Feb. 1646-7, during one ofthose London visits, Boyle says: "I have been every day these two monthsupon visiting my own ruined cottage in the country; but it is such alabyrinth, this London, that all my diligence could never yet find my wayout on't.... The cornerstones of the _Invisible_, or, as they termthemselves, _Philosophical College_, do now and then honour me withtheir company, which makes me as sorry for those pressing occasions thaturge my departure as I am at other times angry with that solicitousidleness that I am necessitated to during my stay: men of so capaciousand searching spirits that school-philosophy is but the lowest region oftheir knowledge, and yet, though ambitious to lead the way to anygenerous design, of so humble and teachable a genius as they disdain notto be directed by the meanest, so he can but plead reason for hisopinion, --persons that endeavour to put narrowmindedness out ofcountenance, by the practice of so extensive a charity that it reachesunto everything called man, and nothing less than an universal goodwillcan content it. ... I will conclude their praises with the recital oftheir chiefest fault, which is very incident to almost all good things;and that is that there is not enough of them. " The first extant lettersof Boyle to Hartlib were written from his Dorsetshire retreat immediatelyafter this visit to London, and are in reply to letters received therefrom Hartlib. A new system of Real characters or Universal Writing;Pneumatical Engines or Wind-guns; Mr. Durie, his Church-conciliationScheme, and a Discourse on the Teaching of Logic he had brought out; theingenious Utopian Speculations of a certain young Mr. Hall; theCopernican Astronomy (to which Mr. Boyle was "once very much inclined");the French mathematicians, Mersenne and Gassendi; Oughtred's _ClavisMathematica_; a Cure for the Stone suggested by Hartlib, or rather byMrs. Hartlib: such are some of the topics of the correspondence, but withthe _Invisible College_ irradiating all. Thus, May 8, 1647, Boyle, writing to Mr. Hartlib, to congratulate him on the 300_l. _ he hadbeen voted by Parliament, says: "You interest yourself so much in the_Invisible College_, and that whole society is so highly concernedin all the accidents of your life, that you can send me no intelligenceof your own affairs that does not, at least relationally, assume thenature of Utopian. " In the same letter Boyle expresses his anxiety tohave a copy of a pamphlet of Hartlib's which had just appeared. He namesit rather vaguely; but I have ascertained it to be "_A Briefe Discourseconcerning the Accomplishment of our Reformation: tending to shew that byan Office of Publicke Address in spirituall and temporall matters theGlory of God and the Happiness of this Nation may be greatlyadvanced. _" It consisted of a preface, addressed by Hartlib toParliament, and 59 pages of text, explaining the said Office of PublicAddress to be a kind of universal Register House "whereunto all men mightfreely come to give information of the commodities they have to beimparted to others. " The pamphlet was out in May 1647. [Footnote: Birch'sLife of Boyle, pp. 20-25; Worthington's Diary by Crossley, 1. 313; andcopy of Hartlib's pamphlet in the British Museum, with MS. Note of dateof publication. ]

While Hartlib was writing on all things and sundry to young Boyle, theEducation subject included, there was another new acquaintance of his, only three years older than Boyle, with whom he seems to have beendiscussing the Education subject more expressly. William Petty, afterwards so famous as "the universal genius, Sir William Petty, " hadreturned from France at the age of twenty-three. The considerable stockof knowledge which he had taken abroad with him when he left his nativeHampshire, eight years before, a pushing boy of fifteen, had beenincreased by his studies at foreign Universities, his readings withHobbes in Paris, his commercial dealings, and his inquisitiveness intothe processes of all trades and handicrafts by which men earn theirlivings. He came back a tall, slender youth, with a very large head, tobe spoken of in London as an encyclopędia of information, a wonderfulmathematician and mechanician, teeming with schemes of all sorts, and yetshrewd, practical, and business-like. He was an invaluable addition tothe Invisible College, and a delightful discovery for Hartlib; and hetook to Hartlib at once, as every one else did. What occupied himespecially at the moment was a machine for double writing, _i. E. _for making two copies of any writing at once. He hoped to obtain a patentfor this invention from Parliament; and such a patent, for seventeenyears, he did obtain in March 1647-8. While the thing was in progress, however, Hartlib was his chief confidant. This appears from a tract ofhis, of 26 pages, published Jan. 8, 1647-8, and entitled "_The Adviceof W. P. To Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the advancement of some particularparts of Learning. _" The invention for double writing is described inthe tract, but it also sets forth Petty's ideas on Hartlib's favouritesubject of a Reformation of Schools. In fact, in any collection ofseventeenth-century tracts on that subject, it ought to be bound up withHartlib's own older tracts in exposition of Comenius, and with the Letteron Education which Hartlib had elicited from Milton in 1644. Petty'snotions, as may be supposed, differ considerably from Milton's. He is fora universal education in what he calls _Ergastula Literaria_ orLiterary Workhouses, "where children may be taught as well to dosomething toward their living as to read and write;" and, though he doesnot undervalue reading and writing, or book-culture generally, he laysthe stress rather on mathematical and physical science, manual dexterity, and acquaintance with useful arts and inventions. Besides reading andwriting, he would have all children taught drawing and designing; hewould rather discourage the learning of languages, both because peoplemay have all the books they want in their mother-tongue, and because theuse of real characters, or an ideographic system of writing, would lessenthe necessity of knowing foreign tongues; but, so far as languages mighthave to be learnt, their acquisition, as well as that of the simple artsof reading and writing, might be much facilitated by improved methods. Inshort, in Petty's project of Education, with much of the same generalspirit of innovation, utilitarianism, contempt of tradition, as inMilton's, there is a characteristic difference of detail and even ofprinciple. You are to be made expert in "graving, etching, carving, embossing, and moulding in sundry matters, " in "grinding of glassesdioptrical and catoptrical, " in "navarchy and making models for buildingand rigging of ships, " in "anatomy, making skeletons, and excarnatingbowels;" but you miss all that Milton would have taught you of Latin andGreek, Poetry and Philosophy, Italian and Hebrew, moral magnanimity andspiritual elevation, the History of Nations, and the ways of God to men. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. , IV. 214; Worthington's Diary by Crossley, I. 294-8; and Pett's own Tract. On its title-page are the words "London: Printedanno Dom 1648;" but a copy in the British Museum bears the MS. Note"London, 8 January, 1647-8. "]

REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN. 

It would have been no surprise if Milton, on the skirts of the InvisibleCollege as he was, and in sympathy with many of their aims, had exertedhimself about this time in setting up a great Academy for younggentlemen, embodying some of the new utilitarian fancies even to thesatisfaction of Petty, but fulfilling also his own higher ideal. He waspeculiarly fond of Pedagogy; and his notion of an institution combiningthe School with the University, and so tending to the abolition ofUniversities, seems to have been coming more and more into favour. 

Not only, however, did Milton abandon the experiment of which Phillipsthinks there was then some prospect; but, precisely in 1647, he broke uphis actual pedagogic establishment in Barbican, and went into a newhouse, where he either ceased to teach altogether, or had no pupilsremaining but his two nephews. What may have been his reasons for thestep we do not know; but it is not unlikely that the change of hiscircumstances by his father's death had something to do with it. No willof the ex-scrivener having been found, it is not known what property heleft; but there is reason to believe that he left something considerable, and that, whatever it was, it came more completely to the two sons, andtheir sister Mrs. Agar, than while the old man lived. [Footnote: We mayremember here Phillips's and Aubrey's hints as to the scrivener'sprosperity in business. Phillips's information is that he "gained acompetent estate, whereby he was enabled to make a handsome provisionboth for the education and maintenance of his children;" and he adds suchparticulars as that his mother, Mrs. Phillips, "had a considerable dowrygiven her" on her first marriage, and that the lease of the scrivener'shouse in Bread Street--the Spread Eagle, where he had carried on hisbusiness, and where his children had been born (or at least of some housein that street)--became in time part of the poet's estate. Aubreydistinctly reckons the Spread Eagle house as the scrivener's property, besides another house in the same street called The Rose, " and otherhouses in other places. " Christopher Milton, as we know, owned a house inLondon called the Cross Keys, worth 40_l. _ a year, while his fatherwas alive. ] At all events, the fact of Milton's change of residencewithin a few months after his father's death is certified by Phillips. "It was not long, " says Phillips, "after the march of Fairfax andCromwell through the City of London, with the whole Army, to quell theinsurrections Browne and Massey, now malcontents also, were endeavouringto raise in the City against the Army's proceedings, ere he left hisgreat house in Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open backward into Lincoln's-Inn Fields. " The date ofthat famous march of the Army through London, to tame the tumultuousPresbyterianism of the City, rescue Parliament from its domination, andcompel a policy more favourable to Independency and Toleration, wasAugust 6 and 7, 1647 (see _antč, _ pp. 553-4). Milton's removal fromBarbican may be assigned, therefore, to September or October in the sameyear. 

Change we, then, from those eastern purlieus of Aldersgate Street andBarbican, where we have been observing Milton for seven years, to a scenefarther west, more within the cognisance of Londoners generally, andnearer to those two Houses of Parliament which the Army had rescued forthe time from Presbyterian leadership within and Presbyterian mob-lawwithout. Holborn was not then the dense continuity of houses it is now;there were more spaces in it of gardens and greenery, and the houses hadnot crept as far as Oxford Street; but it was, as now, the familiarthoroughfare of relief from the narrower and noisier Fleet Street andStrand, and the part of it which Milton had chosen was the mostconvenient. The actual house which he took may be still extant, wedgedsomewhere in the labyrinthine block between Great Turnstile and LittleTurnstile; but one could judge but poorly from present appearances howpleasant may have been its old outlook to the rear. The fine open area ofLincoln's-Inn Fields was then only partly built round, and was used as alounge and bowling-green by the lawyers and citizens. The houses in theneighbourhood were mostly new ones. [Footnote: Cunningham's London:_Holborn_ and _Lincoln's-Inn Fields_. ]

MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'SSYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THE EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS. 

When Milton removed to High Holborn, with his wife, their infantdaughter, and the two nephews, the King was in the third and leastdisagreeable stage of his captivity. His detention with the Scots atNewcastle, and his subsequent residence under Parliamentary custody atHolmby House, were affairs of the Barbican period; and, by Joyce's act ofthe previous June, his Majesty had been for some months in the keeping ofthe Army, very generously treated, and permitted at last to reside, withmuch of restored state-ceremony, at his own palace of Hampton Court. Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army-chiefs, from their head-quarters at Putney, were negotiating with him; and, the march of the Armythrough London having disabled the ultra-Presbyterians for the moment andtransferred the ascendancy to the Independents, people were lookingforward to a settlement on the basis of an established PresbyterianChurch for the nation at large, but with liberty of conscience and ofworship for Dissenters. For Milton, among others, this was a pleasantprospect. His sympathies, nay his personal interests, were wholly withthe Independents; all that the Army had done had his approbation; and, whatever he might have had to say now (with the strong new lights he hadobtained since 1641) as to the propriety of a Presbyterian Establishmenton its own merits, he was probably prepared to accept such anEstablishment, if with a sufficient guarantee of Toleration. Now, although he cannot have retained, more than other people, any strongconfidence in Charles personally, any real hope of his voluntary andunreserved assent to a system of kingly government limited by greatconstitutional checks, yet a Treaty with Charles by the Independentsrather than the Presbyterians must have seemed to him the most feasibleway of reaching the end in view. Hence, while the King was at HamptonCourt, and the Army-chiefs, with Cromwell most prominent among them, wereplying his royal mind with arguments to bring him round, there can havebeen no private person more interested in their endeavours, more willingto believe them in the right, than Milton. Hardly had he been settled inhis new house in High Holborn, however, when there came the snap of allthose negotiations by the King's flight from Hampton Court to the Isle ofWight (Nov. 11, 1647). Then, I conceive, Milton's mood changed, in exactunison with the change of mood at the same time among the Army-chiefs andother leading Independents. For a month or two, indeed, there may havebeen some interest, some faint prolongation of hope, in attending to theproceedings of Parliament in pursuit of the King, and their attempt toobtain his assent to the Four Bills. But, from the moment when thatattempt failed, and the two Houses passed their indignant resolutionsthat there should be no more communications with the King (Jan. 1647-8), all hesitation must have ceased. From that moment Milton was a Republicanat heart. From that moment he was one of those who, with Vane, Marten, Cromwell, Ireton, and the Army officers generally, had forsworn allfuture allegiance to the Man in the Isle of Wight, and looked forward, through whatever intermediate difficulties, to his deposition andpunishment, and the conversion of England iinto some kind of freeCommonwealth. In such a matter, it could not, of course, be expected thata private citizen like Milton, who had no ambition to rank with Lilburneand other London Levellers of the coarser order, would anticipateCromwell, Vane, and Ireton. He expressly says himself that, though he hadbeen so prominent as a speculative politician, had made certain greatquestions of the time more peculiarly his own, had written largely onthem and publicly identified his name with them, yet he had not hithertotaken any direct part in the immediate practical question of the futureconstitution of the State, but had left it to the appointed authorities[Footnote: _Df. Sec. Pro Pop. Angl. _, published in 1654]. Not theless are we to imagine that the time of his residence in High Holborn, while the King was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, was the time whenthose high and semi-poetic Republican sentiments which seem always tohave been congenial to him, and which his classic readings may havenurtured, took a definite shape applicable to England. From the end of1647, I should say, Milton has to be reckoned as a foremost spirit in theband of expectant English Republicans. 

Whether the issue was to be a Republic or not was a question which Miltonhad to leave in the hands of the Army and Parliament. While they wereslowly working it out, what could he do but occupy himself, as patientlyas possible, with his books and studies? There is evidence, accordingly, that three pieces of work, already begun or projected by him inAldersgate Street or Barbican, were prosecuted with some increaseddiligence in his house in High Holborn. One of these was the collectionof materials for a _Thesaurus Linguę Latinę_, or _Latin Dictionary_, which he hoped some time to complete. Another was the composition of a_History of England_, or _History of Britain_, from the earliest times tothe Norman Conquest:--nay, though that was the form it ultimately took, the original project was nothing less than Hume anticipated, or acomplete _History of England_, brought down in a continuous thread fromthe remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third wasthe long-meditated _Body of Divinity_, or _Methodical Digest of ChristianDoctrine_. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hackworkhung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for suchlabours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking forpedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were theyso regarded by Milton. To amass gradually by readings in the Latinclassics a collection of idioms and choice references, with a view to aDictionary that should be an improvement even on that of Stephanus, was aside-labour to which a scholar, who was also a poet, might well dedicatea bit of each day or a week or two at intervals. To write a completeHistory of England, or even to compile, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, and the old chroniclers, a popular summary of the early legendary Historyof Britain, and of the History of the Saxon Kings and Church, was ablending of daily recreation with useful labour. Above all, thecompilation of a System of Divinity was no mere dry drudgery for Milton, but a business of serious personal interest. From an early date he hadresolved on some such compendium for his own use; he had ever since keptit in view and made notes for it; but his notions of the form it shouldtake had undergone a change. "I entered, " he says, "upon an assiduouscourse of study in my youth, beginning with the books of the Old and NewTestament in their original languages, and going diligently through a fewof the shorter Systems of Divines, in imitation of whom I was in thehabit of classing under certain heads whatever passages of Scriptureoccurred for extraction, to be made use of hereafter as occasion mightrequire. At length I resorted with increased confidence to some of themore copious Theological Treatises, and to the examination of thearguments advanced by the conflicting parties respecting certain disputedpoints of faith. " Apparently he was still in this stage of his design inthe Aldersgate period; for then, as we have seen (_antč_, pp. 254-5), oneof his exercises with his pupils on Sundays was the dictation to them ofa Tractate on Christian Divinity digested from such approved ProtestantDivines as Amesius and Wollebius. But this method, he tells us, hadceased to satisfy him. Often he had found the theologians quibbling andsophistical, more anxious to "evade adverse reasonings" and establishforegone conclusions than to arrive at the truth. "According to myjudgment, therefore, " he adds, "neither my creed nor my hope of salvationcould be safely trusted to such guides; and yet it appeared highlyrequisite to possess some methodical Tractate of Christian Doctrine, orat least to attempt such a disquisition as might be useful inestablishing my faith or assisting my memory. I deemed it thereforesafest and most advisable to compile for myself, by my own labour andstudy, some original treatise which should be always at hand, derivedsolely from the Word of God itself, and executed with all possiblefidelity, seeing I could have no wish to practise any imposition onmyself in such a matter. " In all probability the preparations for thework on this new plan began in the house in High Holborn. For some yearsEngland had been in such a state of theological ferment that it wasimpossible not to inquire how much of the traditional Orthodoxy had realwarrant in the Bible and how much was mere matter of inveterate opinion;in one important particular Milton, to his own surprise, had foundhimself standing out publicly as the champion of what was thought ahorrible heresy; might it not be well to go over the whole ground, andfix one's whole Christian creed so as to be able to give an account ofit, when called upon, in every other particular? The WestminsterAssembly, like other Assemblies before it, had laboured out a Confessionof Faith which it wished to impose on the entire community; but, as "itwas only to the individual faith of each man that God had opened up theway of eternal salvation, " was it not the duty of every Englishman toexamine that Confession before accepting it as his own, or even tocompile his own private Confession first and let the comparison follow atleisure? [Footnote: Phillips's Memoir at several points; Milton's _Def. Sec_. ; and Preface to his posthumous "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"(Sumner's Translation, 1825). Phillips mentions expressly the _History ofEngland_ as occupying Milton in High Holborn; but the most interestingallusion to it is Milton's own in his _Def. Sec. _, where the words are"Ad historiam gentis, ab ultimā origine repetitam, ad hęc usque tempora, si possem, perpetuo filo deduoendam, me converti. "]

STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS: TESTIMONY OF THE LONDONMINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST. 

Alas! Milton, busy with these occupations in his room looking out uponLincoln's-Inn Fields, could not shut out the continued hue and cry afterhim on account of his Divorce heresy. It was more than two years sincehis wife had returned to him; he had then closed the controversy so faras it was a personal one; he was now respectably in routine, as a marriedman with one child. But the world round about, more especially theclerical part of it, had not forgiven him his Divorce Pamphlets. Werethey not still in circulation, doing infinite harm? Had not theirinfamous doctrine become one of the heresies of the age, counting otherunblushing exponents, and not a few practical adherents? Keep silence ashe now might, move as he might from Aldersgate Street to Barbican andfrom Barbican to High Holborn, would not his dark reputation dog him, sitat his doorstep, and gaze in at his windows? Actually it did. The seriesof attacks on Milton for his Divorce Doctrine, begun by Herbert Palmerand other mouthpieces of the Westminster Assembly in 1644, and continuedin that and subsequent years by the Stationers' Company, Featley, Paget, Prynne, Edwards, Baillie, and others, had not ceased at the close of1647. One fresh attack, of some significance in itself, may be instancedas a sample of the rest. 

London, it is to be remembered, was now under Presbyterian Church-government. In every parish there was the Parochial or CongregationalCourt, consisting of the minister and lay-elders, charged with all theecclesiastical concerns of the parish, and with the right of spiritualcensure over the parishioners. The parishes were also grouped intoClasses of ministers and lay-elders. At last there had come intooperation even the crowning device of Provincial Synods for all London, in which representative ministers and elders met to discuss metropolitanChurch affairs generally and to revise the proceedings of Classes andCongregations. The first of these Provincial Synods, with Dr. Gouge forProlocutor, had met in St. Paul's in May 1647, and had continued itssittings twice a week in Sion College till November 8, 1647, when itshalf-year of office expired, and it was succeeded by the SecondProvincial Synod, under the Prolocutorship of Dr. Lazarus Seaman. Now, had London been perfect in its Presbytery according to the extreme rigourof the Scottish model, Milton could not possibly have escaped the clutchof one or other of these Church-judicatories. As a resident in Barbican, he had been, I think, in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldersgate;and, when he removed to High Holborn, he came into the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn. Had the Scottish strictness prevailed in London, theminister of either of these parishes would have felt himself bound tobring Milton before the parochial consistory for his Divorce heresy[Footnote: From Newcourt's _Repertorium_ and Wood's Ath. III. 812, Ilearn that the Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, "in the laterebellious times, " was George Hall, a son of Bishop Hall and himselfpromoted to the Bishopric of Chester after the Restoration; and theRector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, before the civil troubles was Dr. JohnHacket, already well known to us (Vol. II. 225-8), and also afterwards aBishop. Both of these, as strenuous Prelatists, must have beendispossessed from their charges long before the time with which we arenow concerned; and I have not been able to ascertain who were theirPresbyterian successors at this exact date. --There may be somesignificance in the fact that the parish minister before whom Milton'sbrother Christopher and his father-in-law Mr. Powell performed thenecessary ceremony of taking the Covenant, with a view to their admissionto compound for their Delinquency, was William Barton, minister of JohnZachary (_antč_, p. 485 and p. 634). The parish of St. John Zacharywas one of the parishes of Aldersgate Ward, and the church stood at thenorth-west corner of Maiden Lane, till it was burnt down in the GreatFire of 1666; after which it was not rebuilt, and the parish of St. JohnZachary was united to that of St. Ann in the same ward. Had Milton foundMr. Barton of John Zachary's a more convenient minister to have dealingswith than other ministers of the Aldersgate Street and Barbicanneighbourhood; and did he attend Mr. Barton's church when he attendedany? If so, and if we are right in identifying this William Barton withthe minister of the same name whose Metrical Version of the Psalms waspreferred by the Lords to Rous's (see _antč_, p. 425), their metricalsympathies may have had something to do with the connexion. --The factthat a son of Bishop Hall's was Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, at the time when the Bishop and another son of his wereattacking Milton for his part in the Smectymnuan controversy, andspeaking of him as then living in a "suburb sink about London, " andcollecting gossip about him, was not known to me when I was engaged onthat part of the Biography (Vol. II. P. 390 et seq. ); but it may be worthremembering even now. ]; or, if the duty had been neglected, Classis IV. , to which the parish of St. Botolph belonged, or Classis VIII. , to whichthe parish of St. Andrew belonged, would have interfered; or, finally, inthe case of so notorious an offender, the Provincial Synod itself wouldnot have been asleep. True, the censure that could have been inflictedwould only have been spiritual; but, by zealous management, especially ifthe culprit were obstinate, such spiritual censure might have led tofarther prosecution by the secular courts. Certainly, if Milton had beenin Scotland, this would have happened. Certainly it would have happenedin London if the English Presbyterians had succeeded in subjecting thatcity to the grip of their absolute or ideal Presbytery. But they had notsucceeded, and it was their constant lamentation that they had not. Though the Presbyterian organization of London had been voted on trial, the Congregationalist principle still asserted itself in the existence ofmany independent congregations and meeting-houses; though sometimesinterfering with the less respectable of these, Parliament and the law-courts had taken no steps for their general suppression; and, bybelonging to one of them, a Londoner of peculiar opinions might have thecomfort and respectability of being a church-goer like his neighbours, and yet avoid unpleasant inquisitorship. Then, again, through what theultra-Presbyterians regarded as the Erastian backwardness of Parliament, those offences for which the parochial or other Church-judicatories mightinflict even spiritual censures had been very strictly defined. Only forcertain faults of ignorance or of scandalous life, enumerated andspecified by Act of Parliament, could the Presbyterian Church-judicatories debar from the communion; in any case lying beyond thatrange they could not act without reference to the superior authority of agreat Parliamentary Commission (_antč_, pp. 399, 405, 423). Sore had beenthe complaints of the Presbyterians over this limitation of the powers ofChurch discipline, as well as over the negligence of Parliament in nothaving yet passed such an Act against Heresies and Blasphemies as mightenable the State to use the sterner discipline of fines, imprisonment, scourging, and hanging, in aid of true Christianity. Even as things were, however, it may be wondered that some zealot did not try to bringMilton's case within the powers actually assigned to the Church-courts, or to push it on the notice of the secular judges in virtue of such Actsas did exist against Heresy. There was very good reason, however, for notmaking the experiment. It had already been tried and bad failed. Twicehad Milton's case been brought before Parliament, and Parliament haddistinctly declined to trouble him. Evidently, whatever the hotterPresbyterians desired, Milton was safe in the respect entertained for himpersonally by some of those who were at the head of affairs, or in anopinion prevailing in high quarters that the publication of a newspeculation on Divorce was not an offence for which a man otherwiseeminent ought to be questioned at law. 

What cannot be done in one way, however, may sometimes be done inanother. Not only was London the central stronghold of EnglishPresbyterianism; the power of Presbyterianism there centralized was akind of Proteus. One of its forms was the Westminster Assembly, a largenucleus of which consisted of ministers from London and the suburbs;another, since May 1647, was the London Provincial Synod. But, in aid ofthese two bodies, and including many that belonged to both, there was athird, of vaguer character, in that Sion College conclave which theLondon clergy had instituted of their own accord for the concoction ofnotions that might take shape in the Assembly or the Synod (_antč_, p. 394). Now, in December 1647, this Sion College conclave, "since theycould do no more, " sent forth a Presbyterian manifesto of some magnitude. It was "_A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our SolemnLeague and Covenant; as also against the Errors, Heresies, andBlasphemies of these times, and the Toleration of them: wherein isinserted a Catalogue of the said Errors, &c. : subscribed by the Ministersof Christ within the Province of London, Dec. 14, 1647. _"

This Testimony, which was immediately published, [Footnote: London:Printed by A. M. For Tho. Underhill at the Bible in Wood Street: 1648. ]bore the signatures of 58 London ministers in all, of whom 41 signed tothe whole document, while 17, being members of Assembly, abstained fromsigning to those parts that related particularly to the Confession ofFaith and the Directory of Worship, not because they did not thoroughlyapprove of those parts, but because they thought themselves precluded, byconstitutional etiquette, from publicly affirming portions of theAssembly's work which still waited full Parliamentary sanction. All the58, however, subscribed to that main portion of the Testimony whichconsisted in an enumeration, and condemnation of certain "abominableerrors, damnable heresies, and horrid blasphemies. " Among the seventeenmembers of Assembly so subscribing were Dr. Lazarus Seaman of Allhallows, Bread Street (Milton's native parish), then Prolocutor of the LondonProvincial Synod; Dr. Gouge of Blackfriars, ex-Prolocutor of the same;Dr. Hoyle of Stepney, Dr. Tuckney, and Messrs. Gataker, Calamy, Ashe andCase; and among the forty-one others were Samuel Clarke of Benetfink, Christopher Love of Anne's, Aldersgate, John Downam of Allhallows, ThamesStreet, Henry Roborough, one of the scribes of the Assembly and ministerof Leonard's, Eastcheap, and John Wallis, sub-clerk of the Assembly, nowuniting as well as he could the duties of that office and the parish-cureof Gabriel's, Fenchurch Street, with his mathematical proclivities andhis association with the "physicists" of the Invisible College. And whatwere the errors, heresies, and blasphemies, thus publicly certifiedagainst by these London divines and the rest? They were classified withgreat punctuality under nineteen heads, each head being subdivided intospecific varieties of error, and the chief heretics under each openlynamed. First came Anti-Scripturism, or "Errors against the divineauthority of Holy Scriptures, " associated with the names of John Goodwilland Laurence Clarkson; then, in four heads and their subdivisions, cameAnti-Trinitarianism, or "Errors against the nature and essence of God, against the Trinity, against the Deity of the Son of God, and against theDeity and divine worship of the Holy Ghost, " the culprits named for chiefcondemnation in this department being Biddle and Paul Best; and so on thecatalogue proceeds through various forms of Arminianism, Antinomianism, Seekerism, Anti-Sabbatarianism, Antipędobaptism, Anabaptism, Materialismor Mortalism, ending in Tolerationism. Among the Arminians denounced asnotorious are Paul Best again, Paul Hobson, but especially John Goodwinagain, and the Episcopalian and Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond, whose_Practical Catechism_, published in 1644, is cited as full of Arminianerror. Among the Antinomians are denounced Randall, Simson, Eaton, Crisp, and Erbury; among the Seekers, Saltmarsh and Jos. Salmon; among the Anti-Sabbatarians, Saltmarsh again; among the Antipędobaptists andAnabaptists, Saltmarsh again, Tombes, and Webb. In a special group, asopposing magistracy and lawful oaths, are mentioned Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton, and Dr. Henry Hammond again; the chief representative ofthe tremendous doctrine of Materialism or the Denial of the Immortalityof the Soul is R. O. , the anonymous author of the tract on _Man'sMortality_; and among the leading Tolerationists or representatives ofthe grand error of Liberty of Conscience, "patronizing and promoting allother errors, heresies, and blasphemies whatsoever, " are named RogerWilliams again and Paul Best again. --One head or department in this longblack list we have reserved. It is the 17th in order, including "Errorstouching Marriage and Divorce. " Here the anonymous author of a pamphletcalled _Little Nonsuch_, published in 1646, bears the brunt of theobloquy, on account of the opinion that, as "that marriage is most justwhich is made without any ambitious or covetous end, " so, "if this likingand mutual correspondency happen betwixt the nearest of kindred, then itis also the most natural, the most lawful, and according to the primitive(Patriarchal) purity and practice. " But Milton comes in company with this_Little Nonsuch_, as hardly less worthy of execration on account of hisDivorce Doctrine. The main proposition of his _Doctrine and Discipline ofDivorce_ is extracted textually from page 6 of the Second or 1644 Editionof that treatise, to show what a dreadful doctrine had been theremaintained; but, in case this should not seem enough, the TestifyingDivines, in the marginal note where they give the reference, add thewords, "Peruse the whole book. " They do not name Milton fully, but onlyby his initials "J. M. , " as on the title-page of his Treatise. [Footnote:There is a general account of this _Testimony_ of the London ministers inDec. 1647 in Neal's Puritans, III. 359-363; but the account in the textis from the published copy of the Testimony itself. ]

Sold at the shop of that very Underhill in Wood Street who had been thepublisher of three of Milton's own pamphlets in the SmectymnuanControversy in 1641 (_antč_, p. 450), this _Testimony_ of the Londonministers had an extensive circulation. It was adopted, in fact, as theauthorized manifesto of all the English Presbyterianism then mostmilitant for that full right of ecclesiastical and civil control overheresy and its dissemination which Parliament hitherto had refused torecognise. In a short time, accordingly, it received the adhesion of 64ministers in Gloucestershire, 84 in Lancashire, 83 in Devonshire, and 71in Somersetshire. Nor was this subscription of the same printed documentby 360 of the most active Presbyterian ministers throughout England amere appeal to public opinion. It was intended as an aid toPresbyterianism in its anxious endeavour to obtain even yet all it wantedfrom Parliament. One observes, for example, that, within a month afterthe manifesto of the London ministers had gone forth from Sion College, _i. E. _ on the 12th of January, 1647-8, a petition was presented toParliament by the London Provincial Synod itself, praying for variousextensions and amendments of the Presbyterian system in the City, amongwhich was the better establishment of Church censures for notorious andscandalous offenders. [Footnote: Neal's Puritans, III. 359-363; and LordsJournals, Jan. 12, 1647-8; but see also Halley's _Lancashire and itsPuritanism_ (1869), I. 467 _et seq. _]

At least two of the heretics denounced in the Sion College manifestopublished replies. The Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond thought it worth whileto defend his _Practical Catechism_ in a tract called _Views of someExceptions, &c. _ [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 494-5. ] John Goodwin ofColeman Street, who had been more largely attacked, and who indeed hadreason to believe that the manifesto was mainly directed against himself, replied with his usual cool stoutness in a pamphlet called _Sion CollegeVisited_. He there rebukes his accusers for their uncharitableness, unfairness, and malice in seeking to "exasperate the sword of the civilmagistrate" against pious and peaceable citizens who had done them noinjury. [Footnote: Jackson's Life of Goodwin. 172-175. ] In effect, thisreply of Goodwin's answered for the others as well as for himself. Milton, at all events, let the thing pass unnoticed. Entering his housein High Holborn, it may have been enough for him to repeat to himself, byway of comment, the lines he had already written--

 "I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, arid dogs;"

or perhaps, by way of more determinate conclusion, his other and everfamous line, "New _Presbyter_ is but old _Priest_ writ large. "

ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS FROM THEHEBREW. 

Exactly at this time, when the repeated attentions of _New Presbyter_ inEngland must have been annoying Milton, he had a friendly gleam from theland of the _Old Priest_. Carlo Dati had duly received his Latin Epistleof the previous April, and had acknowledged it in a long Italian letter, dated Nov. 1, 1647, but which may not have reached Milton till Jan. 1647-8, or even later. The letter still exists in Dati's own hand, and thefollowing is a translation of as much of it as can interest us here:--

_All Illmo. Sig. Gio. Miltoni, Londra_ [meaning literally "To themost illustrious Signor John Milton, London;" but this is merely thepolite Italian form of correspondence, and implies no more than "To Mr. John Milton, London. "]

When all hope of receiving letters from you was dead in me, most keen aswas my desire for such, lo! there arrives one to delight me more than Ican express with this most grateful pen. O what feelings of boundless joythat little paper raise in my heart--a paper written by a friend soadmirable and so dear; bringing to me, after so long a time and from sodistant a land, news of the welfare of one about whom I was as anxious asI was uncertain, and assuring me that there remains so fresh and so kinda remembrance of myself in the noble soul of Signor John Milton! AlreadyI knew what regard he had for my country; which reckons herself fortunatein having in great England (separated, as the Poet said, from our world)one who magnifies her glories, loves her citizens, celebrates herwriters, and can himself write and discourse with such propriety andgrace in her beautiful idiom. And precisely this it is that moves me toreply in Italian to the exquisite Latin letter of my honoured friend, whohas such a very singular faculty of reviving dead tongues and makingforeign ones his own; hoping that there may be something agreeable to himin the sound of a language which he speaks and knows so well. I will takethe same opportunity of earnestly begging you to be please to honour withyour verses the glorious memory of Signor Francesco Rovai, adistinguished Florentine poet prematurely dead, and, to the best of mybelief, well known to you: this having already been done at my request bythe very eminent Nicolas Heinsius and Isaac Vossius of Holland, peculiarly intimate and valued friends of mine, and famous scholars ofour age. [Footnote: About Nicolas Heinsius (1620-1681) and his intimacywith Dati and the other Florentine wits, see Vol. I. 721 2. Both he andIsaac Vossius (1618-1688) will reappear in closer connexion with Miltonhimself. ] Signor Francesco was noble by birth, endowed by nature with agenius of the highest kind, which was enriched by culture and byunwearied study of the finest sciences. He understood Greek excellently, spoke French, and wrote Latin and Italian wonderfully. He composedTragedies, and excelled also in lyrical Canzoni, in which he praisedheroes and discountenanced all vice, particularly in one set of sevenmade against the seven capital sins. He was well-bred, courteous, afavourite with our Princes, or uncorrupted manners, and most religious. He died young, without having published his works: a splendid obituaryceremonial is being prepared for him by his friends, faulty only in thefact that the charge of the funeral oration has been imposed upon me. Should you be pleased to send me, as I hope, some fruit of your charminggenius for such a purpose, you will oblige me not only, but all mycountry; and, when the Poems of Signor Francesco are published, with theeulogisms upon him, I will see that copies are sent you. --But, since Ihave begin to speak of our language and our poets, let me communicate toyou one of the observations which, in the leisure-hours left me from mymercantile business, I occasionally amuse myself with making on ourwriters. The other day, while I was reflecting on that passage inPetrarch's _Triomf' d'Amor_, C. 3:

 "Dura legge d'Amor! mą benchč obliqua, Servar conviensi, perņ ch' ella aggiunge Di cielo in terra, universale, antiqua, "[Footnote: "Hard law of Love! but, however unjust, it must be kept, because it reaches from heaven to earth, universal, eternal. "]

I perceived that already the gifted Castelvetro had noted in it someresemblance to the lines in Horace, Ode I. 33:

 "Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea Sęvo mittere cum joco, "--[Footnote: "So it seemed good to Venus; whose pleasure it is, in savagejest, to bind unlike forms and minds in a brazen yoke of union. "]

excellently imitated by the reviver of Pindaric and Anacreontic poesy, Gabriello Chiubrera, in Canzonetta 18:

 "Ah! che vien cenere Penando un amator benche fedele! Cosi vuol Venere, Nata nell' ocean, nume crudele. "[Footnote: "Ah that there should be ashes from the torture of a lover, though faithful! So Venus wills it, the ocean-born, a cruel deity. "]

To me these verses look like a little bit taken from Horace, as theremainder is taken from Tibullus, not without a notable improvement; forin Tibullus, Eleg. I. 2, one reads this threat against the revealers ofLove's secrets:--

 "Nam, fuerit quicumque loquax, is sanguine natam, Is Venerem e rapido sentiet esse mari. "[Footnote: "For whosoever is indiscreet with his tongue, he shall feelthat Venus was born of blood and came from the rapid sea. "]

[Dati then suggests the reading of _rabido_ in the last line anddiscusses the subject in six folio pages, with passages from Catullus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Claudian, Homer, Tasso, &c. ; and thenproceeds as follows]:

I communicate to you these considerations of mine, sure of being excused, and kindly advised by your exquisite learning in such matters as Isubmit, urgently begging you to pardon me if excess of affection, thesense of being so long without you, and our great intimacy, have made meexceed the limits proper for a letter. --It is an extreme grief to me thatthe convulsions of the kingdom have disturbed your studies; and Ianxiously await your Poems, in which I believe I shall have large roomfor admiring the delicacy of your genius, even if I except those whichare in depreciation of my Religion, and which, as coming from a friendlymouth, may well be excused, though not praised. This will not hinder mefrom receiving the others, conscious as I am of my own zeal for freedom. Meanwhile I beg Heaven to make and keep you happy, and to keep me in yourremembrance, giving me proofs thereof by your generous commands. Allfriends about me send you salutations and very affectionate respects. 

Your most devoted, Florence, 1st Nov. 1647. CARLO DATI [Footnote: The original of thisletter is in the possession of Mr. J. Fitchett Marsh of Warrington, whohas printed facsimiles of the opening and closing words ("_All' Illmo. Sig. Gio. Miltoni, Londra_, " and "_Ser. Devotino. Carlo Dati_")in his Milton Papers. To Mr. Marsh's kindness I owe the transcript fromwhich I have made the translation; and the words within brackets, describing the omitted portion in the middle, are Mr. Marsh's own. ]

Circumstanced as Milton was when he received this letter, he can hardlyhave been in a mood to respond sufficiently to its minute and overflowing_dilettantismo. _ The amiability and polite affectionateness, perceptible even yet through the dilettantism, may have been pleasant tohim; and he may have noted the subtle and delicate expression of sympathywith his domestic unhappiness which seems to be conveyed in the passagesquoted, as if by accident, from Petrarch, Horace, Chiabrera, andTibullus. Dati may have been there replying to that portion of Milton'sletter in which he had vaguely intimated his private melancholy in beingdoomed to unfit companionship; or he may have heard more particularrumours in Florence of Milton's marriage-mishap and its consequences. Atall events, there is no trace of any answer by Milton to this longepistle from Dati, or of any poetical contribution sent by him, as Datihad requested, to the exequies of the interesting Rovai. 

About the time when Milton should have been answering Dati's epistle, enclosing the requested tribute to the memory of Rovai, and also theexquisite comments which Dati expected on his quotations from Petrarch, Horace, Chiabrera, and Tibullus, his occupation, we find, was verydifferent. "_April_, 1648, _J. M. Nine of the Psalms done intoMetre, wherein all but what is in a different character are the verywords of the Text translated from the Original;_" such is the headingprefixed by Milton himself to the Translations of Psalms LXXX. -LXXXVIII. Which are now included among his Poetical Works. [Footnote: The headingstands so in the Second Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems, published by himself in 1678. ] Through some mornings and evenings of thatmonth, therefore, we can see him, in his house in High Holborn, with theHebrew Bible before him, making it his effort to translate, as literallyas possible, these nine Psalms into English verse. On looking at theresult, as it now stands among his Poems, with Hebrew words printedoccasionally in the margin, and every phrase for which there is not avoucher in the original printed carefully in italics, one has littledifficulty in perceiving one of the motives of Milton in this metricalexperiment. It was his knowledge of the interest then felt in the chanceof some English metrical version of the Psalms that should supersede, forpopular purposes and in public worship, the old version of Sternhold andHopkins. Rous's version, with amendments, had been recommended by theWestminster Assembly, and approved by the Commons (_antč, _ 425); theLords were still standing out for Barton's competing version (_antč, _512); other versions were in the background, but had been heard of. Inthese circumstances, might not a true poet, attending to all theessential conditions, and especially to the prime one of exactness to theHebrew original, exhibit at least a specimen of a better version than anyyet offered?

Unfortunately, if this was Milton's intention, it cannot be said that hesucceeded. By all the critics it is admitted that his version of thoseNine Psalms is inferior to what we should have expected from him; nor isit, I think, the mere prejudice of habit that leads those that have beenaccustomed to one particular revision of Rous's version--that which hasbeen the Scottish authorized Psalter since 1650--to prefer Psalms LXXX. -LXXXVIII. As there given, rude though the versification is, to theTranslations of the same Psalms proposed even by Milton. Something ofthis impression may have prevailed even in 1648, if, as is likely enough, Milton took the trouble of showing his translations to some who wereinterested in the question of the new Psalter, and wavering betweenRous's and Barton's. On the faith of dates, however, there is anotherinterest to us now in these careful translations by Milton of PsalmsLXXX. -LXXXVIII. In April 1648. Why did he choose those particular Psalms?Not for metrical experiment only, but also because their mood fitted him. He needed the strong Hebrew of those Psalms himself, and he drank it inafresh from the text that he might reproduce it for himself and others. Petrarch, Tibullus, Horace, Chiabrera! silence all such for the time, andlet the Hebrew Psalmist speak! Thus (Psalm LXXX. ):--

 "Turn us again; thy grace divine To us, O God, vouchsafe; Cause thou thy face on us to shine, And then we shall be safe. "

Or again, with reference to the dangers then gathering roundParliamentary England (Psalm LXXXIII. ):--

 "For they consult with all their might, And all as one in mind Themselves against thee they unite, And in firm union bind. The tents of Edom, and the brood Of scornful Ishmael, Moab, with them of Hagar's blood That in the desert dwell, Gebal and Ammon, there conspire, And hateful Amalec, The Philistims, and they of Tyre, Whose bounds the sea doth check. With them great Asshur also bands And doth confirm the knot All these have lent their armed hands To aid the sons of Lot. Do to them as to Midian bold That wasted all the coast, To Sisera, and, as is told Thou didst do to Jabin's host, When at the brook of Kishon old They were repulsed and slain, At Endor quite cut off, and rolled As dung upon the plain. "

Or perhaps, with closer personal reference, such lines as these (PsalmLXXXVII. ):--

 "The Lord shall write it in a scroll That ne'er shall be outworn, When He the nations doth enroll, That this man there was born: Both they who sing and they who dance With sacred songs are there; In thee fresh brooks and soft streams glance, And all my fountains clear. "

MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HIS PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, ANDDELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TO FAIRFAX. 

While these translations were being written, there was the ominous rumourof the Engagement between the Scots and the King in the Isle of Wight, terrifying all men's minds with the prospect of a Second Civil War. Wehave seen what effects this prospect had on the English Parliament--howthe resolute mood of the winter of 1647-8 was changed into a mood oftimidity; how negotiations with the King were again talked of; how thePresbyterians recovered from their temporary submission to theIndependents, and began to turn on them rather than on the King; how, inorder to repudiate the Republican sentiments appearing in the Army andelsewhere, the Commons pledged themselves to a continuance of Royalty andthe House of Lords, and, in order to please the English Presbyterians andthe Scots, the two Houses passed at length the tremendous Ordinanceagainst Heresies and Blasphemies, making the least of them punishablewith imprisonment and the graver punishable with death. This lastOrdinance, passed May 2, 1648, the very day before the meeting of theThird Provincial Synod of London in Sion College, must have given greatsatisfaction to that body, but may well have spread alarm through generalsociety. Beyond a doubt, most of those persons who had been denounced asnotorious heretics and blasphemers in the Sion College manifesto of thepreceding December were, by this Ordinance, liable to death if they didnot recant. With due zeal on the part of the prosecution, nothing couldhave saved from the scaffold such of Milton's co-heretics as Biddle, PaulBest, the anonymous Mortalist R. 0. (Richard Overton, or ClementWrighter?), or even perhaps John Goodwin. Milton's particular heresy notbeing specifically named in the Ordinance, it would have been moredifficult to apply it to him; but, if the terrible Presbyteriandiscipline which the Ordinance favoured were once imposed upon London, there would have been ingenuity enough to include Milton somehow amongthose worthy of minor punishment. 

The comfort was that, before the Ordinance could come into real effect, before the terrible Presbyterian discipline it promised could be set up, the SECOND CIVIL WAR had to be fought through. How would that war end?Would it end in a triumph of Presbyterianism in hypocriticalreconciliation with Royalty; or, despite the ugly mustering of forces inall parts of England to aid Duke Hamilton and his Scottish invasion, would it end, after all, in the triumph of that little English Army ofIndependents and Sectaries which had always beaten before, and might now, though distrusted and discountenanced by its own masters, prove once moreits matchless mettle? With what anxiety, through May, June, July, andAugust 1648, must Milton, with myriads of other Englishmen, have revolvedthese questions! With what anxiety must he have watched Fairfax'smovements round London, his preliminary smashings of the RoyalistInsurrection in Kent and Essex, and then the concentration of his efforts(June 12) on the siege of Colchester! With what anxiety must he havefollowed Cromwell into Wales, heard of his doings against the insurgentsthere, and then of his rapid march into the north (Aug. 3--10), to meetthe invading Scottish Army under Duke Hamilton! But O the relief at last!O the news upon news of that glorious month of August 1648! Hamilton andthe Scots utterly routed by Cromwell in the three days' battle of Preston(Aug. 17-19); Colchester at last surrendered to Fairfax (Aug 28); thePrince of Wales a fugitive back to Holland with his useless fleet (Aug. 28); the little English Army of Independents and Sectaries were moreeverywhere the victor, and the Parliament and the Presbytery-besottedLondoners ruefully accepting the victory when they would have been nearlyas glad of a defeat! No fear now of any very violent execution of theOrdinance against Heresies and Blasphemies, or of a Presbyteriandiscipline of absolutely intolerable stringency! The Army and theIndependents were once more supreme. 

The sole piece of Milton's verse that has come down to us from the timeof the Second Civil War is an expression of his joy at its happyconclusion. It is in the form of a Sonnet to Fairfax. The Sonnet isgenerally printed with the mere heading "_To the Lord GeneralFairfax_;" but in the original in Milton's own hand among theCambridge MSS. One reads this heading through a line of erasure; "_Onye Lord Gen. Fairfax at ye seige of Colchester_. " This assigns theSonnet to the end of August, or to September, 10-48. 

 "Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings, And fills all mouths with envy or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings, Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays Her broken League to imp their serpent wings: O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand, For what can War but endless war still breed, Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed, And public Faith cleared from the shameful brand Of public Fraud! In vain doth Valour bleed, While Avarice and Rapine share the land. "[Footnote: For obvious reason, Milton could not print this Sonnet in theSecond or 1673 Edition of his Minor Poems. It was first printed byPhillips at the end of his Memoir of Milton prefixed to the Englishtranslation of Milton's State Letters in 1688; and Toland inserted it inhis Life of Milton in 1698. ]

Through the later months of 1648 Milton's heart must have been whollywith Fairfax and the other Army-chiefs, as he saw them driving things, cautiously at first, but more and more boldly by degrees, into the exactcourse marked out by this Sonnet. Their very professions were that, having finished the war and crushed the Hydra-heads of the newrebellions, they must and would proceed to the yet nobler task ofpreventing future wars, by freeing Truth and Right once for all fromViolence, and clearing the public Faith of England from the brand ofpublic Fraud. Hence, from September to December, the adoption by the Armyof that peculiarly intrepid policy which has been described in our lastchapter. Though the Parliament began their new Treaty with the King inthe Isle of Wight, there were significant signs from the first that theArmy regarded the Treaty with utter disdain; as the Treaty proceeded, regiment after regiment spoke out, each with its manifesto calling forjustice on the King, and otherwise more or less democratic; and so tillthe Army rose at last collectively, issued its great Remonstrance andprogramme of a Democratic Constitution (Nov. 16), dragged the King fromhis unfinished Treaty at Newport to safer keeping in Hurst Castle (Dec. 1), and itself marched into London to superintend the sequel (Dec. 2). Nominally in the centre of all this was the Lord General Fairfax, withIreton as his chief adviser. Cromwell had not yet returned from his workin the north. 

BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI. 

In the very midst of these thrilling public events there inserts itself alittle domestic incident of Milton's life in Holborn. Oct. 25, 1648, hissecond child was born, two years and three months after the first. Thisalso was a daughter, and they called her Mary after her mother. From thatdate on to our limit of time in the present volume we have no distinctincident of the Holborn household to record, unless it be the receipt ofanother letter from Carlo Dati. Although the amiable young Italian hadreceived no answer to his last, of Nov. 1647, there had meantime readiedhim, by some slow conveyance, those copies of the Latin portion ofMilton's published volume of Poems which had been promised him as longago as April of the same year. This occasioned the following letter:--

_Illmo. Sig. E Pron Osso_ [literally, "Most Illustrious Sir and MostHonoured Master, " but the phrase is merely one of custom]. 

As far back as the end of last year I replied to your very courteous andelegant letter, thanking you affectionately for the kind remembrance youare pleased to entertain of me. I wrote, as I do now, in Italian, knowingmy language to be so dear and familiar to you that in your mouth itscarcely appears like a foreign tongue. Since then I have received twocopies of your most erudite Poems, and there could not have reached me amore welcome gift; for, though small, it is of infinite value, as being agem from the treasure of Signor John Milton. And, in the words ofTheocritus:--

 [Greek: hę megala chariz eoro xiyn holigo, panta de gimanta ta par' philon. ]

 "Great grace may be In a slight gift: all from a friend is precious. "

I return you therefore my very best thanks, and pray Heaven to put it inmy power to show my devoted appreciation of your merit. There are somepieces of news which I will not keep from you, because I am sure, fromyour kindness, they will be agreeable to you. The most Serene Grand Dukemy master has been pleased to appoint me to the Chair and Lectureship ofHumanity in the Florentine Academy, vacant by the death of the verylearned Signor Giovanni Doni of Florence. This is a most honourableoffice, and has always been held by gentlemen and scholars of thiscountry, as by Poliziano, the two Vettori, and the two Adriani, luminaries in the world of letters. Last week, on the death of the MostSerene Prince Lorenzo of Tuscany, uncle of the reigning Grand Duke, Imade the funeral oration; when it is published, it shall be my care tosend you a copy. I have on hand several works, such as, please God, maylead to a better opinion of me among my learned and kind friends. SignorValerio Chimentelli has been appointed by his Highness to be Professor ofGreek Literature in Pisa, and there are great expectations from him. Signors Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Francini, Galilei, and many others unitein sending you affectionate salutations; and I, as under more obligationto you than any of the others, remain ever yours to command. [Nosignature, but addressed on the outside, _All Illmo. Signor e PronOsso, Il Signor Giovanni Miltoni, Londra. _] [Footnote: The Italianof this letter is printed in the Appendix to Mr. Mitford's Life of Miltonprefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, and was communicated, I believe, by the late Mr. Watts of the British Museum from the originalin that collection. It is doubtless the copy which Milton received. Ofthe Doni mentioned in the letter, as Dati's predecessor in the chair ofBelles Lettres at Florence, we had a glimpse Vol. I. P. 746. He died, Mr. Watts says, in Dec. 1647, and left to Dati the charge of publishing hisworks. Frescobaldi, Coltellini, and Francini are already known (Vol. I. 725-9); the Galilei mentioned is not the great Galileo, who had died in1642, but his natural son Vincenzo Galilei, also a man of talent. --As wetake leave of Dati at this point, for some time at least, I may quote aninteresting sentence, respecting one of his intentions in later life, from the notices of him in Salvini's _Fasti Consolari dell' AccademiaFiorentina_ (1717): "He had particularly in view the publication ofthe letters which he had received from various literary men, such as JohnMilton, Isaac Vossius, Paganino Gaudenzio, Giovanni Rodio, ValerioChimentelli, and Nicolas Heinsius: from the last he had a very largenumber. " When he died, Jan. 11, 1675, a few months after Milton, he hadnot fulfilled this intention; but it is likely, as we have seen(_antč_, p. 655), that there has survived from among his papers onlythe one letter of Milton to him which Milton himself published. ]Florence, Dec. 4, 1648. 

While this letter was on its way to Milton, and possibly before it couldhave reached him, there had enacted itself, close within his view in HighHolborn, that final catastrophe of a great political drama the boom ofwhich was not to stop within the British Islands, but was to be heard inItaly itself and all the foreign world. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING:PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES--THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TOWINDSOR: ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE:CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT--THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OFTHE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS: THE SENTENCE--LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'SLIFE: HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. 

In taking the King out of the Isle of Wight, and lodging him for a timein the solitary keep of Hurst Castle on the Hampshire coast, the Army hadproclaimed their intention of bringing him to public justice, and it wasthat they might compel this result that they had marched into London withFairfax at their head. As they desired that the proceedings should beregular, they had resolved that the two Houses of Parliament, or at leastone of them, should conduct the business. 

THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: THEIR FINAL EFFORTS FOR THEKING: PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

Here was their difficulty. On Dec. 2, 1648, when the Army took possessionof London, there were nineteen Peers present in their places in the Houseof Lords: viz. The Earl of Manchester, as Speaker; the Earls of Pembroke, Rutland, Salisbury, Suffolk, Lincoln, Mulgrave, Middlesex, Stamford, Northumberland, and Nottingham; Viscount Save and Sele; and Lords Howard, Maynard, Dacres, Montague, North, Hunsdon, and Berkeley. From such a bodythe Army could not hope much. Three or four of them might be reckoned onas thorough-going; but to most a crisis had come which was too terrible. Ah! had they foreseen it six years before, had they then foreseen thattheir own order and all the pleasantness of their aristocratic liveswould go down in the contest to which they were lending themselves, wouldtheir choice between the two sides have been the same? To have sat onthrough those six years, a mere residuary rag of the English Peerage, atvariance with the King and the vast majority of their own order; to havefigured through the struggle as nominally the superior House, but reallythe mere ciphers of the Commons; to have had to throw all theiraristocratic dignity and all their permissible conservatism at last intothe miserable form of partisanship with a despotic Presbyterianism andzeal for the suppression of Sects, Heresies, and Independency:--here wasa retrospect for men of rank, men of ambition, men of pride in theirpedigrees! And now to have an Army of these Independents, Sectaries, andHeretics, holding them by the throat, and prepared to dictate to them thealternative of their own annihilation or their assent to a deed ofhorror!--Such being the position of the Lords, how was it with theCommons? In that House about 260 members were still giving attendance, orwere at hand to attend when wanted. On the 2nd of December there were 232in the House. A staunch minority of these were Independents in leaguewith the Army; but the decided majority were men of the Presbyterianparty, full of regrets at the failure of the Treaty of Newport, but readyto resume negotiations with the King on the basis of the terms offeredhim in that Treaty, or indeed now on any other basis on which there couldbe agreement. Detestation of the Army was, therefore, the ruling feelingin this House too: but the detestation was mingled with dread. Withregiments at their doors, with regiments posted here and there on theskirts of the City, all alert against any symptom of a rising of thePresbyterian Londoners, they could not hope now for any chance of seeingthe Army overmastered for them by the only means left-popular tumult anda carnage in the streets. All that the Commons could do, therefore, wasto be sullen, and offer a passive resistance. [Footnote: Lords andCommons Journals of Dec. 2, 1648; and Records of Divisions in CommonsJournals through the previous month. There were thirteen divisions inthat month, showing an attendance ranging from 80 to 261. ]

It was on Monday the 4th and Tuesday the 5th of December that theattitude which the two Houses meant to take towards the Army wasdefinitely ascertained. On the first of these days, the news of theKing's removal to Hurst Castle having meanwhile arrived, there was afierce debate in the Commons over that act of the Army, the Presbyteriansprotesting against its "insolency, " and at length carrying, by a majorityof 136 votes to 102, a Resolution that it had been done "without theknowledge or consent" of the House. On the same day the House proceededto a debate, continued all through the night, and till nine o'clock nextmorning, on the results of the Treaty of Newport. The Presbyterianspeakers, such as Sir Robert Harley, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, HarbottleGrimstone, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, and Clement Walker, contended that theKing's concessions were satisfactory; the negative was maintained by asuccession of speakers, among whom were the two Vanes. The Presbyterians, having originally put the question in this form, "Whether the King'sAnswers to the Propositions of both Houses be satisfactory, " did not riska division on so wide an issue, but thought it more prudent to divide onthe previous question, "Whether this question shall now be put. " Havingcarried this in the negative by 144 to 93, they were enabled to shape thequestion in this likelier form, "That the Answers of the King to thePropositions of both Houses are a ground for the House to proceed uponfor the Settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom;" and it was on thequestion in this form that the debate was protracted through the night ofthe 4th and into the 5th. The most extraordinary incident of the debateon the 5th was the appearance made by Prynne. He had been a member of theHouse only a month, having taken his seat for Newport in Cornwall on the7th of November; and he now came forward, the poor indomitable man, witha speech of vast length and most elaborate composition, in favour of thatsovereign whose reign had been to him of all men ruinous and horrible. With his face muffled to hide the scars of his old mutilations by thehangman's knife, he stood up, and, after a touching recitation of allthat he had suffered, denounced the Army and its outrages onParliamentary freedom, expounded his views of Presbyterianism and rightconstitutional government, and pleaded earnestly for a reconciliationwith Charles. His speech, if it was actually delivered as it is printed, must have occupied four or five hours in the delivery; but one mustsuppose he gave only part of it and reserved the rest for the press. Hewas heard, he says, with great attention, and had the satisfaction notonly of pleasing his own party, but also of making converts. At one timeor another during the debate there had been, he says, as many as 340members present; but many of these had been wearied out by the longnight-sitting. Accordingly in the final vote on Tuesday morning therewere 129 for the affirmative in the question, and only 83 for thenegative: _i. E. _ in a House of 212 there were three-fifths for areconciliation with the King, and two-fifths for complying with the Armyand bringing the King to justice. The concurrence of the Lords with themajority in the Commons was a matter of course. It was given the sameday, _nem. Con. _, Manchester being in the chair, and only fourteenother Peers present. By way of tempering the whole result as much aspossible, a Committee was appointed by the Commons to wait on Fairfax andhis officers that afternoon, with a view to "the keeping and preserving agood correspondence" between Parliament and the Army. [Footnote: Commonsand Lords Journals of the days named; Clement Walker's Hist, of Indep. Part. II. Pp. 28, 29; and Parl. Hist. III. 1147-1239. Of these 92 closelyprinted columns of the Parl. Hist. 86 are taken up with a reprint ofPrynne's speech, as published by himself in the end of Jan. 1648-9. Theeditor remarks on the fact that, with the exception of Clement Walker, none of the contemporary writers mention Prynne's speech at all. Thisconfirms the supposition that it cannot have been so large in delivery asit is in print. Yet that it must have been very large appears not onlyfrom Prynne's own account, but also from who says: "This he held on theaffirmative with so many strong and solid reasons, arguments, andprecedents both out of Divinity, Law, History, and policy, and with soclear a confutation of the opposite argument, that no man took up thebucklers against him. "]

The Army had their own plan for bringing about a "good correspondence, "and they put it in operation on the two following days, Dec. 6 and 7. Nottroubling themselves with the Lords--who met for mere form on each ofthese days (only seven present on the first and eight on the other)--theyapplied their plan to the Commons. It consisted in what was calledPRIDE'S PURGE, the style of which was as follows:--On the morning of the6th, when the members were going into the House, they found all theentrances blocked by two or three regiments of soldiers, under thecommand of Colonels Pride, Hewson, and Sir Hardress Waller. Every member, as he came up, was scrutinized by these armed critics, and especially byColonel Pride, who had a list of names in his hand, and some people abouthim to point out members he did not know. If a member passed thisscrutiny, they let him in; if not, they begged him not to think of takinghis place in the House, and, if he persisted, hauled him back, and lockedhim up in one of the empty law-courts conveniently near. Mr. Prynne, whomade a conspicuous resistance, was locked up in this way; Sir RobertHarley, Sir William Waller, Sir Samuel Luke, Sir Robert Pye, GeneralMassey, Clement Walker, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, andothers and others, including even Nathaniel Fiennes, who had shownmomentary weakness, were similarly disposed of; till at length themembers who had presented themselves were sifted into two divisions--agoodly band regularly within the House, and forty-one fuming outside asprisoners in the law-courts. Messages passed and repassed between the twodivisions, and the House made some faint show of protest and of anxietyfor the release of the arrested. Any decided motion to this effect, however, was prevented by a communication to the House from Fairfax andhis General Council of Officers. Colonel Axtell and some other officers, being admitted, announced the message verbally, and it was subsequentlypresented in writing by Colonel Whalley. Under the name of "HumbleProposals and Desires, " this paper reminded the House of their formervotes for expelling and disabling Denzil Holles, General Massey, and therest of the Presbyterian Eleven impeached by the Army in 1647, anddemanded that these members, irregularly and scandalously re-admitted totheir places, should be again excluded and held to trial. It fartherdemanded that about 90 members, alleged to have been more or less incomplicity with the Scots in their late invasion of England, should bedisabled; it prayed for an immediate repeal of the Votes on which theTreaty of Newport had proceeded, and of the Vote of the previous day forreliance on that Treaty; and it begged all truly patriotic members toform themselves visibly into a phalanx, apart from the others, that theymight be counted and known. In fact, the message not only adopted Pride'srough measure of that day as authorized by the whole Army, butrepresented it as only a friendly interposition, doing for the House inpart what the House must be anxious to do more fully for itself. So theafternoon passed, the forty-one, still remaining in durance, visited byvarious persons who had Fairfax's or Pride's permission, and especiallyby Hugh Peters. He took a list of their names, discoursed with them, released Rudyard and Fiennes, and promised the rest that they should beremoved to fit quarters for the night in Wallingford House. As night cameon, however, and Wallingford House was not available, they were taken, under guard, to a common victualling-house near, jocularly called_Hell_; and here, some of them walking about, and others stretchedon benches and chairs, or on the floor, in two upper rooms, they spentthe night "reading and singing psalms to God. " Next day there were againrequests from the House to Fairfax for their release. It could not begranted; but they were marched through the streets to betteraccommodation in two inns in the Strand, called the Swan and the King'sHead. Meanwhile Pride's watch at the doors of the House had beeneffectively continued. There were several new arrests on the 7th; manymembers, not arrested, were forcibly turned back; and many more, amongwhom was Denzil Holies, kept prudently out of the way. Altogether, thenumber of the arrested was 47, and that of the excluded 96. It was apurgation quite sufficient for the Army's purpose. This was proved by avote actually taken in the House on the 7th, after the purgation wascomplete. "The question being propounded, That the House proceed with theProposals of the Army, " it was carried by 50 to 28 that the questionshould be put and the Proposals proceeded with. As most of the minorityin this division withdrew in consequence, the House was reduced from thatmoment to just such a tight little Parliamentary body as the Armydesired. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of days named; Rushw. VII. 1353-1356; Parl. Hist. III. 1240-1249 (a careful compilation ofcontemporary accounts). ]

Cromwell was again among them. He had returned to town on the evening ofthe 6th, and he was in his place in the Commons on the 7th, receiving thethanks of the House, through the Speaker, for his "very great andeminently faithful services" in Wales, Scotland, and the North ofEngland. He had not been concerned in the design of Pride's Purge, andthe business was half over before his arrival in town; but he quiteapproved of what had been done, and said he would maintain it. Theyounger Vane, on the other hand, had been so staggered by the proceedingthat he had withdrawn from the scene, to avoid further responsibility. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec. 7; Parl. Hist. III. 1246; and Godwin, III. 31. ]

For a fortnight after Pride's Purge, the two Houses, reduced now to suchdimensions as might suit the Army's purpose, went on transacting variousbusiness. The attendance in the Lords had dwindled to five, four, andeven to three, raised on one occasion to seven. In the Commons theattendance does not seem to have ever exceeded 50 or 60. It is in theproceedings of this House, of course, that one sees the steady directionof affairs towards the end prescribed by the Army. There were all kindsof items of employment during the fortnight, including orders about theNavy, orders in mercantile matters, discharges of some of the secludedand imprisoned members, votes condemning those who continued contumaciousand had ventured on protests in print, receptions of petitions andaddresses of confidence from various public bodies, and attendance bysuch as chose on a special Fast-day Sermon preached by Hugh Peters. Butthrough these miscellaneous proceedings one notes the main track in suchvotes as these:--Dec. 12, Vote for repealing all former votes and actscondoning the faults of Denzil Holles and the rest of the impeachedPresbyterian leaders, and on the same day a Vote declaring the re-openingof a Treaty with the King in the Isle of Wight to have been dishonourableand apparently destructive to the good of the kingdom; Dec. 13, A fartherVote, in compliance with the Army's Proposals, disowning entirely theTreaty in the Isle of Wight, and repealing the Vote of the previous weekfor proceeding to a settlement on the grounds supplied by the King'sAnswers in that Treaty; Dec. 23, Resolution, "That it be referred to aCommittee to consider how to proceed in a way of justice against the Kingand other capital offenders, and that the said Committee do present theiropinions thereupon to the House with all convenient speed. " The Committeeso appointed consisted of 38 members of the House, among whom were St. John, Whitlocke, Skippon, Lord Grey, Lord Lisle, Sir Henry Mildmay, Pennington, and Henry Marten. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals fromDec. 8 to Dec. 23; Parl. Hist. III. 1247-1253; Whitlocke, Dec. 23. ]Cromwell was not of the Committee, and some of those put upon it were notlikely to attend. Indeed, though the Resolution passed without adivision, the reluctance of some who were present had appeared in thecourse of the debate. They argued that there was no precedent in Historyfor the judicial trial of a King, and that, if the Army were determinedthat Charles should be punished capitally, the business should be left tothe Army itself as an exceptional and irregular power. 

THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR: ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIALPASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE: CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT. 

Some days before the Resolution of Dec. 23 was adopted by the Commons, the Army had taken steps for bringing the King nearer to London, to abidethe issue. He had been in Hurst Castle for about a fortnight, ratherpoorly lodged in the old apartments of the keep, and complaining of thefogs that rose from the salt-water marshes around, with their beds ofooze and sea-kelp. His amusement had been in the sight of the passingships, in his daily walk along the narrow neck of shingle connecting thecastle with the mainland, and in the companionship of his selectattendants in the evenings, when the drawbridge was up, the guard set, the woodfires blazing indoors, and the candles lit. He had brought withhim from Newport fourteen personal attendants in all, including his twogentlemen of the bedchamber, Mr. James Harrington (afterwards known asthe author of _Oceana_) and Mr. Thomas Herbert. Both thesegentlemen, though their principles and connexions were originallyParliamentarian, had, in the course of their long attendance on the royalcaptive, contracted a respectful affection for him. Harrington, indeed, had been speaking out so openly in praise of his Majesty's conduct in theNewport Treaty, and of the talent he had shown in his debates with thePresbyterian divines, that those who were in charge had thought it unsafeto let him remain in the service. He had therefore been dismissed, andthe duty of immediate waiting on the King had been left entirely to Mr. Herbert. 

It was at midnight on the 16th or 17th of December that this gentleman, asleep in the little room he occupied next to the King's chamber, wasroused by hearing the drawbridge outside let down, and some horsemenenter the Castle. Next morning he found that the King had heard the noisetoo, and was curious to know the cause. Mr. Herbert went out to inquire, and came back with the information that Major Harrison had arrived in thenight. Nothing more was said at the moment, and the King went to prayers;but later in the day the King seemed very much discomposed, and toldHerbert that Harrison was the very man against whom he had mostfrequently received private warnings. He had never, to his knowledge, seen the Major, but he had heard much of the wild enthusiasm of hischaracter; and, if assassination were intended, and this man were to bethe agent, what likelier place than the lonely sea-keep where they thenwere? To relieve his Majesty's mind if possible, Mr. Herbert went out tomake farther inquiries. He soon returned with the intelligence that thepurpose of Harrison's visit was to arrange for his Majesty's removal toWindsor Castle. Nothing could be more agreeable to the King than theprospect of "leaving the worst to enjoy the best Castle in England;" andall fear vanished. 

After two nights, Major Harrison left the Castle mysteriously as he hadcome, and without having seen the King or spoken to any of hisattendants. He had made the necessary arrangements, and the actualremoval of the King was to be superintended by the same Colonel Cobbetwho had managed his abduction from the Isle of Wight. This officer, arriving two days afterwards, formally announced his business; and, hisMajesty being very willing, there was no delay. Passing along the spit ofland from Hurst Castle to Milford, they found a body of horse therewaiting; and, under this convoy, they rode inland through Hampshire, gradually leaving the sea behind. By a route through the New Forest andpast Romsey, they reached Winchester, where they made some stay, theMayor, Aldermen, and Clergymen of the City, and many of the gentry round, coming in dutifully to pay their respects. Thence to New Alresford, andso to Farnham in Surrey. It was on the road between these two towns thatthey passed another troop of horse drawn up in good order, whichimmediately closed up in the rear and went on with them. The King wasparticularly struck with the appearance of the commander of this troop, aman gallantly mounted, with a velvet montero on his head, a new buff-coat, and a crimson silk scarf round his waist, who, as the King passedat an easy pace, saluted him splendidly "_alia soldado_" andreceived a gracious bow in return. Inquiring of Mr. Herbert who he was, the King was greatly surprised to learn he was the dreadful MajorHarrison. He looked a real soldier, the King said, and, if there might betrust in men's faces, was not the man to be an assassin. On arriving atFarnham, where they spent the night in a private house, the King tookcare to pay considerable attention to Harrison. Standing by the firebefore supper, in a large wainscoted room full of people, he singled outHarrison at the other end, beckoned him to come up, took him by the arm, and led him to a window-recess, where they conversed for half an hour. Apparently Harrison's words were not so satisfactory as his looks. Hedisowned indignantly any such design against the King as had been imputedto him, but added something to the effect that great and small alike mustbe subject to Law, and that Justice could pay no respect to persons. TheKing, who had never yet brought himself to imagine the possibility of hispublic trial in any form, saw no particular significance in Harrison'swords, but thought them "affectedly spoken, " and broke off theconversation. He was very cheerful at supper, greatly to the delight ofhis suite. Next day, taking Bagshot on the way and dining at LordNewburgh's house there, they arrived at Windsor, and were received byColonel Whichcot, the officer in command. It was the very day, SaturdayDec. 23, on which the Commons had appointed their Committee forconsidering the means of bringing the King to justice, and the Committeewere holding their first meeting in Westminster that afternoon. The newshad probably not yet reached Windsor, or it remained unknown to the King. He took up his abode in his royal apartments in the Castle; and the nextday, as he paused in his Sunday walk round the exterior, he looked withno especial anxiety Londonwards, but rejoiced once more in the view ofthe Thames flowing by Eton, and the far expanse of lull and valley, villages and fair houses, noble even in its wintry leaflessness and thedull gloom of the December air. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 126-145;Rushworth VII. 1371; Parl. Hist. III. L26. ]

Christmas-week having passed, and the Committee for justice on the Kinghaving had several meetings, the Commons, on the 1st of January 1648-9, passed a Resolution and an Ordinance. The Resolution was "That, by thefundamental laws of this kingdom, it is Treason in the King of Englandfor the time being to levy war against the Parliament and Kingdom ofEngland;" the Ordinance was one beginning "Whereas it is notorious thatCharles Stuart, the now King of England, " and ending with the appointmentof a High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King, to consist of about150 persons named as Commissioners and Judges expressly for the purpose. Five Peers were named first on this Commission; then Chief Justices Rolleand St. John and Chief Baron Wylde; then Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, andmany more members of the Commons and Army Officers; but a considerableproportion of those named were Lawyers, Aldermen, and Citizens, notmembers of the House. Any twenty of the Commissioners were to be aquorum. --On the following day (Jan. 2), the Resolution and Ordinancehaving been sent up to the Lords for their concurrence, there was a sceneof agony in that House. As many as twelve Peers had mustered for theoccasion, including four of the five whom the Commons had named first inthe dreadful Commission. Unanimously and passionately all the Peerspresent rejected both Resolution and Ordinance, the Earl of Denbighdeclaring he "would be torn in pieces rather than have any share in soinfamous a business, " and the Earl of Pembroke, who came nearest toneutrality, saying he "loved not businesses of life and death. " Havinghurled this defiance at the Commons, the Lords were powerless for more, and adjourned for a week. 

It was a week of rapid action and counter-defiance by the Commons. Not afew of the feebler spirits, indeed, had taken leave of absence. Whitlocke, for one, had gone into the country. The Clerk of the House, Mr. Elsyng, had feigned ill-health and resigned. Nevertheless, with atemporary substitute to do Mr. Elsyng's duty, the House pushed on. Jan. 3, they sent two of their number to inspect the Journals of the Lords andascertain formally the proceedings of that House on the preceding day. When these were reported, some were for impeaching the twelve Peers asco-Delinquents with the King. To the majority, however, such a courseappeared quite unnecessary; it was enough to declare that, as the Lordswould not concur, the Commons would act without their concurrence. Jan. 4, after a debate with locked doors, this momentous Resolution waspassed: "That the Commons of England in Parliament assembled do declare, That the People are, under God, the original of all just power; and doalso declare, That the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, beingchosen by and representing the People, have the supreme power in thisnation; and do also declare, That whatsoever is enacted, or declared forlaw, by the Commons in Parliament assembled hath the force of a law, andall the People of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consentand concurrence of the King, or House of Peers, be not had thereunto. "The Ordinance for a High Court of Justice for the King's trial hadmeanwhile been re-introduced, with the omission of the five Peers, thethree Judges, and some other reluctant persons named in the originalOrdinance, and with the addition of two eminent lawyers not there named;so that Fairfax, Cromwell, and Treton now stood at the top of a totallist of 135 judicial Commissioners. Hurried through the proper threestages, this Bill became law by the authority of the Commons alone, Jan. 6, --On the 9th of January, when the Peers re-assembled after theiradjournment, seven being present, they made a faint attempt to recoverinfluence. They sketched out an Ordinance to the effect that whatsoeverKing of England should _in future_ levy war against the Parliamentand the Kingdom should be guilty of High Treason, and they appointed aCommittee to prepare such an Ordinance. At the same time, ignoring thevirtual abolition of their House by the Commons, they endeavoured torenew communications between the two Houses in the usual manner, bysending a message about various matters of mere ordinary business thathad been pending between the two. This led to a curious proof that evenin the thoroughgoing body that now constituted the Commons there wasstill a difference between most thoroughgoing and moderatelythoroughgoing. There was first a division on the question whether themessengers from the Lords should he received at all; and, while 31 votedfor admitting them, a minority of 18, with Henry Marten and Ludlow fortheir tellers, voted _No_. Then, after the messengers had beenreceived and had delivered their message, it was debated whether theyshould be dismissed with the customary answer that the House would replyin due course by messengers of their own. Out of 52 present, 19 voted_No_ (Ireton one of the tellers), and 33 voted for keeping up theusual courtesy. But, though a majority were thus for treating the Lordsas still extant, practically the whole House was in the same ultra-democratic temper. That very day, for example, on the report of aCommittee, orders were given for the engraving of a new Great Seal, withinstructions that on one side there should be a map of England andIreland, with the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, also the English andIrish arms, and the words "The Great Seal of England: 1648, " and on thereverse a representation of the House of Commons sitting, and the motto"In the First Year of Freedom by God's blessing restored: 1648. " Thedeviser of these emblems was the Republican Henry Marten. [Footnote:Lords and Commons Journals of days named; Rushworth, VII. 1379 _etseq. _; Parl. Hist. III. 1253-1258; Whitlocke under dates given. ]

Not even yet did Charles realize the extent of his danger. Well-treatedat Windsor, and allowed the liberty of walking on the terrace and in thegrounds, he had kept up his spirits wonderfully, and had been heard tosay he "doubted not but within six months to see peace in England, and, in case of not restoring, to be righted from Ireland, Denmark, and otherplaces. " Even after information of the proceedings of the Commons andtheir rupture with the Lords had reached him, he scouted the idea of thepublic trial which was threatened. They dared not do such a thing! At theutmost, he expected that the Commons might venture to depose him, confinehim in the Tower or elsewhere, and call upon the Prince of Wales, orperhaps the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester, to assume thesuccession! [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 145-156; Whitlocke, II. 488. ]

Meanwhile the Court appointed to try the King had met to constituteitself. Formal proclamation of its authority and of its business had beenmade in various public places in London; and, in a series of meeting heldin the Painted Chamber in Westminster, preliminaries had been arranged. Not so many as half of the Commissioners appointed by the Ordinance seemto have attended at any of these meetings. Fairfax, who was present atthe first (Jan. 8), recoiled then and there, and never went back. [Footnote: In Notes and Queries for July 6, 1872, Mr. William J. Thornsgave a carefully prepared list of the 135 persons named King's Judges bythe Second Ordinance for the Trial, so printed as to show which of themreally took part in the business thus assigned them, and to what extent, and which of them abstained wholly or withdrew before the close of theproceedings. ] For President of the Court, with the title "Lord HighPresident, " there was chosen John Bradshaw, one of the lawyers added inthe second form of the Ordinance, to make up for the omission there ofthe three Judges from the regular Law-Courts who had been appointed inthe first Ordinance, but had been excused. He was over sixty years ofage; had been eminent for some time in his profession; and had recentlybeen one of a group of lawyers raised to the serjeantcy, with a view totheir promotion to the Bench. As counsel for the prosecution, fourlawyers, not on the Commission, were appointed, one of them John Cook, and another the learned Dutchman Dr. Dorislaus. Although thesearrangements had been made before the 12th of January, another weekelapsed before the Court was quite ready. The vaults under the PaintedChamber, which was to be the ordinary place of meeting of the Court, whennot sitting in Westminster Hall for the open trial, had to be searchedand secured against any attempt of the Guy Fawkes kind; a bullet-proofhat, it is said, had to be made for Bradshaw: the Mace and Sword of Statehad to be brought from their usual repositories; &c. The two Houses ofParliament meanwhile met from day to day, four or five Peers stillkeeping up the pretence of their corporate existence, and about 50Commoners transacting this or that business as it happened, without theleast reference to the Peers. Prynne, from his confinement in the King'sHead Tavern in the Strand, had issued a defence of the King in the formof _A Brief Memento to the Present Unparliamentary Juncto_; and agood deal of the time of the Commons was taken up with notices of thispamphlet and votes for the prosecution of its author. [Footnote:Rushworth, VII, 1389-1394; Lords and Commons Journals; and Godwin's Hist. Of the Commonwealth, II. 621 and 664-668. ]

THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS:THE SENTENCE. 

On Friday, Jan. 19, Charles was brought from Windsor in a coach, guardedby a body of horse under Harrison's command, and conveyed throughBrentford and Hammersmith to St. James's Palace. That same night he wasremoved to Whitehall; and, on the afternoon of Saturday the 20th, he wastaken thence to Cotton House, adjoining Westminster Hall. This greathall, used for Strafford's trial, had now been fitted up for the King's, and the High Court of Justice were already assembled in it, waiting theirprisoner. Bradshaw was in the chair, and sixty-six more of theCommissioners were present. Among them were Cromwell, Ireton, HenryMarten, Edmund Ludlow, General Hammond, Lord Grey of Groby, severalBaronets and Knights, Colonels Ewer, Hawson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Pride, Hutchinson, Purefoy, Sir Hardress Waller, and Whalley, with MajorHarrison, Alderman Pennington of London, and three barristers. The hallwas crowded with spectators, both on the floor and in the galleries; andorder was kept by a guard of red-coats under Colonel Axtell. As the Courtwas forming itself, there had been a rather startling interruption by awoman's voice from one of the galleries. It was that of Lady Fairfax, whohad gone in indignant curiosity, and, on hearing her husband's name readin the Commission, called out loudly to this effect, "He is not here, andwill never be; you do him wrong to name him. " This interruption was over, and the Court composed, when Charles was brought in by Colonel Hacker, and a select guard of officers armed with halberts. The Serjeant-at-Armsreceiving him, and preceding him with the mace, he was conducted to thebar, where a chair of crimson velvet had been set for him. Some of hisown servants followed him and stood round him. He looked sternly at theCourt and at the people in the galleries; then sat down, keeping on hishat; then stood up, and turned round to look at the soldiers and themultitude; then sat down again, still with his hat on. He was now face toface with his judges. He looked at them carefully, and recognised abouteight as personally known to him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1394-1399, and Herbert, 150-161. It is strange to find some points of contradictionbetween these two trustworthy accounts. Herbert, after apparentlyimplying that the King had been brought from Windsor to St James's_before_ the 19th, makes his removal from St. James's to Whitehalloccur on that day. Rushworth brings him to St. James's exactly on the19th, and removes him to Whitehall next morning. Again, Herbert makes theKing conveyed from Whitehall to Cotton House "in a sedan or close chair, "and describes the walk through the posted guards, along King Street andPalace Yard, adding that only he himself was allowed to go with the Kingthat way; whereas Rushworth says that the King was brought to CottonHouse from Whitehall by water, "guarded by musketeers in boats. "Rushworth's accounts, written at the moment, ought to be more accurate insuch particulars, and especially in dates, than Herbert's, written fromrecollection; but Herbert can hardly have been wrong in the matter of thesedan chair. Perhaps, while the King went in such a chair, Herbertaccompanying him, most of the King's servants went by water. For thenames of all the sixty-seven King's Judges present on the first day ofthe Trial see Mr. Thomb's list in _Notes and Queries_, July 6, 1872. The figure 20 there appended to a name intimates presence that day. --Among those of the 135 appointed Judges who did not attend on that day oron any subsequent one, and therefore must be supposed to have agreed withFairfax in disowning the entire business, we may note Skippon, Sir ArthurHaselrig, Sir William Brereton, Desborough, Lambert, Overton, Lord Lisle, and Algernon Sidney. ]

The proceedings of the Trial will be best exhibited in the followingcondensed account of the particulars of each day:--

_Saturday, Jan. 20_:--The President, in a brief address to the King, informed him of the business on which the Court had met, and called onhim to hear the Charge against him. Solicitor Cook, standing within thebar, on the King's right, then began to state the Charge, but wasinterrupted by the King, who held out a stick which he had in his hand, and laid it softly twice or thrice on the Solicitor's shoulder, biddinghim stop. Bradshaw having interfered, the Solicitor continued hisstatement, and delivered in his Charge in writing, which Bradshaw calledon the Clerk of the Court to read. Charles again interrupted, andcontinued to interrupt; but, Bradshaw telling him that he would be heardafterwards if he had anything to say, the document was at length read. Itaccused Charles Stuart, King of England, of having "traitorously andmaliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the Peopletherein represented;" and it supported the Charge by a recitation ofspecific acts of the King done in the First Civil War from June 1642 to1646, and again more generally of acts done in 1648 before and during theSecond Civil War. Charles had smiled often as the Charge was read; and, when the President at the close asked what answer he had to give, beggedto know by what authority he had been brought thither. He had been intreaty with Parliament in the Isle of Wight; he had been forcibly takenthence; he saw no Lords present; the crown of England was hereditary andnot elective; in whose name was this Court held? "In that of the Commonsof England, " Bradshaw replied; and there ensued a skirmish between himand the King on the question of authority, which Bradshaw ended byadjourning the Court till Monday at ten o'clock. 

_Monday, Jan. 22_:-After a consultation in the Painted Chamber, theCourt met in Westminster Hall, _seventy_ members present, andanswering to their names. The skirmish between Bradshaw and the King wasrenewed: Bradshaw requiring the King's Answer to the Charge "either byconfessing or denying, " and the King refusing the Court's jurisdiction, not for his own sake alone, he said, but "for the freedom and liberty ofthe people of England, " imperilled by the assumption of the Court'slegality. "Sir, I must interrupt you, " said Bradshaw; "which I would notdo, but that what you do is not agreeable to the proceedings of any Courtof Justice. " No Court, he said, could permit its own authority to bequestioned; the King must not go out into such wide discourses; he mustgive a punctual and direct answer. No such answer would the King give; hewould have law and reason for his being in that place at all. "Sir, youare not to dispute our authority, " again interrupted Bradshaw; "you aretold it again by the Court: Sir, it will be taken notice of you that youstand in contempt of the Court, and your contempt will be recordedaccordingly. " The King "did not know how a King might be a delinquent byany law he ever heard of;" but any Delinquent might put in a demurrer. And so on and on for a considerable time, the Clerk of the Court readingout the Resolution of the Court that the King should give his answer, andthe King still insisting on giving reasons why he would not. "Serjeant, take away the prisoner, " said the Lord President at last; and the King, still talking, was removed to Cotton House. ----He left in writing, forsubsequent publication, the reasons he wanted to state to the Court thatday. The chief of them was that no earthly power could justly call a Kingto account. He quoted, as Scripture authority, Eccles. Viii. 4: "Wherethe word of a King is, there is power; and who may say unto him, Whatdost thou?" But he appealed also to the Law and Custom of England. 

_Tuesday, Jan. 23_:-The Court again met in Westminster Hall, 63Commissioners present. Solicitor Cook moved that, the King having refusedto plead either Guilty _or_ Not Guilty, the rule for such cases ofcontumacy should be applied to him, his refusal taken _pro confesso_, andjudgment pronounced. The Lord President, calling the King's attention tothis motion, offered him another opportunity of pleading, which he usedonly to return to the discourses of the two previous days. "Clerk, doyour duty!" said Bradshaw at last. "Duty, Sir!" exclaimed the King; and, the Clerk having again read out a paper requiring the King's positiveanswer to the Charge, and the King still refusing, "Clerk, record "thedefault, " said Bradshaw, "and, gentlemen, you that took "charge of theprisoner, take him back again. " That night, like the preceding, was spentin Cotton House. 

_Wednesday, Jan. 24, and Thursday, Jan. 25_:--No public meetings ofthe Court in Westminster Hall on these days; but more private sessions inthe Painted Chamber for the purpose of receiving the depositions ofwitnesses, --the Court having determined that, though not obliged to thatcourse, they would adopt it for their own satisfaction. Accordingly therewere examined more than thirty witnesses from various parts of England--"W. C. , of Patrington in Holderness, in the county of York, gentleman, aged 42;" "W. B. , of Wixhall, in the county of Salop, gentleman;" "H. H. , of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire;" "R. L. , of Cotton inNottinghamshire, tiler;" "J. W. , of Ross in Herefordshire, shoemaker;""S. L. , of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years;" "A. Y. , citizen andbarber-surgeon of London, aged 29;" "H. G. , of Gray's Inn, in the countyof Middlesex, gentleman;" &c. &c. They deposed to various acts of theKing seen by themselves, from the setting up of his standard atNottingham onwards. Papers in the King's own hand, or by his authority, were also produced and read. Finally, the Court, "taking intoconsideration the whole matter, " resolved to proceed to sentence on theKing as "a tyrant, traitor, and murderer, " and as "a public enemy to theCommonwealth of England. "

_Friday, Jan. 26_:--A private sitting of the Court in the PaintedChamber, in which the Sentence was drafted, agreed to, and ordered to beengrossed. 

_Saturday, Jan. 27_:--First another private meeting in the PaintedChamber to settle the procedure of the Court for the day, and givePresident Bradshaw instructions for his behaviour in any contingency thatmight arise, one of them being that he "should hear the King say what hewould before the sentence, and not after. " Then, about one o'clock, anadjournment to full state in Westminster Hall. The Lord President was nowrobed in scarlet, and there were 67 Commissioners present. The Courthaving been opened, Charles, whose presence had not been required on thethree preceding days, was brought in. As he went to his place, thesoldiers in the Hall called out "Justice, " "Justice, " and "Execution!"till the Court commanded silence. The King, in his usual posture, withhis hat on, immediately began to speak. The President told him he wouldhave liberty to do so, but must hear the Court first. After some fartherattempts to speak then, the King submitted; and Bradshaw, reminding himof what had passed in the first three meetings of the Court, related thesubsequent action of the Court, and their conclusion on the whole matter, and called upon him to say anything he pleased in bar of judgment, provided it were in his own defence, and not in renewed challenge of theCourt's jurisdiction. With difficulty keeping off the forbidden topic, Charles dwelt on the dangers of a hasty sentence, and urged a specialrequest which he had reserved for the occasion. It was that, beforesentence was read, he should be permitted to have a conference with theLords and Commons in the Painted Chamber. Bradshaw, though he gave it ashis opinion that the request only tended to delay, and was in fact afarther declining of the jurisdiction of the Court, yet announced thatthe Court would withdraw to consider it. There was therefore a privateconsultation for half an hour in the Court of Wards, the King meanwhilebeing removed from the Great Hall. When the Court had returned thither, and the King had been brought back, Bradshaw intimated that theconsultation had been _pro forma_ only, that the request could notbe granted, that the Court must proceed to sentence. There was anotherpainful altercation, the King pressing his request for delay, and seemingto hint he had some important proposal to make to the Lords and Commons(abdication in favour of the Prince of Wales, it was afterwards guessed);and Bradshaw trying to stop him. At length, the King ceasing tointerrupt, Bradshaw's words took continuous form for a minute or two inthat kind of address which a Judge makes to a capital criminal beforepassing sentence. "Make an _O yes, _" he said in conclusion to theofficers, "and command silence while the Sentence is read. " The Clerkthen read out the sentence as it had been engressed on parchment, asfollows:--"_Whereas the Commons of England in Parliament, &c. _ [astatement of the purpose of the Court, an insertion of the Charge againstCharles, and a record of his refusal to plead and the consequentproceedings of the Court], _ this Court doth adjudge that the saidCharles Stuart, as a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a Public Enemy, shallbe put to death by the severing of his head from his body. _ "ThePresident then said, "The sentence now read and published is the act, sentence, judgement, and resolution of the whole Court;" whereupon allthe Commissioners stood up to express their assent. "His Majesty thensaid, Will you hear me a word, Sir? _President_: Sir, you are not to beheard after the sentence. _King_: No, Sir? _President_: No, Sir, by yourfavour. Sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner. _King_: I _may_ speak aftersentence, by your favour, Sir; I _may_ speak after sentence, ever. Byyour favour, hold [the guard, one must suppose, now hustling aroundCharles]. The sentence, Sir--I say Sir, I do--I am not suffered to speak;Expect what justice other people will have. " As he passed out with theguard, there were again cries from the soldiers of "Justice, " "Justice, "and some brutes among them puffed their tobacco-smoke in front of him, and threw their pipes in his way. He was taken to Whitehall and thence toSt. James's. [Footnote: Abridged mainly from Rushworth's collection ofaccounts in 30 folio pages (VII. 1395-1425). The _sixty-seven_ of theKing's judges who were present in Westminster Hall on the 27th, when thesentence was pronounced, are to be regarded as the men most resolute inthe business, the committed Regicides. Two of these (George Fleetwood andThomas Wayte) came in at the last moment, not having attended any of theprevious meetings of the Court from the beginning of the Trial on the20th. On the other hand, some nine or ten who had been present on one, two, or even all of the three previous public days of the Trial (the20th, 22nd, and 23rd), had dropped off before the sentence; among themwhome I note Alderman Isaac Pennington. He had been present all the threeprevious days; but could not reconcile himself to the conclusion. Of thesixty-seven who did reconcile themselves to it, _fifty-one_, as I reckon, are conspicuous for their unswerving steadiness throughout theproceedings, never having missed a day in their attendance from the 20thto the 27th inclusively. Among these are Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, General Hammond, Ludlow, Lord Grey of Groby, Sir John Danvers, Pride, Purefoy, Hewson, Hutchinson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Sir HardressWaller, Whalley, Harrison, Sir M. Livesy, and Thomas Scott. Several ofthose, however, who had missed one or even two of the days of the Trialhad done so accidentally, or for some reason of business, and not fromflinching. Finally, of the sixty-seven who were present at the sentence, and stood up when it was pronounced to signify their concurrence, severalwere either reluctant at the time, or at all events afterwards wishedpeople to believe that they were. ]

LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'S LIFE: HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. 

The last two days and three nights of Charles's life were spent by him inthe utmost possible privacy. From the first day of his trial, by an orderof the Commons, procured by the intercession of Hugh Peters, he had beenallowed to have Dr. Juxon, ex-Bishop of London, constantly in attendanceupon him; and there was a fresh order continuing this favour after thesentence. Except Juxon and the faithful gentleman of the bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, the King did not desire company; and it was a relief tohim when, on the remonstrances of these two with Hacker, that officerdesisted from his intention of placing two musketeers on guard in hischamber. [Footnote: Commons Journals of the 20th and the 27th, andHerbert, 182-3. ]

On the evening of the 27th, the day of the sentence, the King's nephew, the Prince Elector, who had special permission to see him, came for thepurpose, accompanied by the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, and some other noblemen. They hadto be content with a message of thanks through Herbert, and wentsorrowfully away. The same evening there also arrived Mr. Henry Seymour, with a letter from the Prince of Wales, dated from the Hague a few daysbefore. This messenger, having been admitted by Colonel Hacker, did seethe King, and knelt passionately at his feet, while he read the letter, and returned some verbal answer. There then remained only Herbert andJuxon with the King; but, as the night came on, Herbert was sent out on amessage. He was to take a ring which the King gave him, an emeraldbetween two diamonds, and deliver it to a lady living in Channel Row, whowould know what it meant. The night was very dark; but Herbert, havinggot the pass-word from Colonel Tomlinson, who was in command outside, made his way through the sentries to the house indicated. He saw thelady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. Itwas a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges andGarters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King'slaundress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Returning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the Kingalone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had donesince the beginning of the trial, a pallet-bed having been brought in forthe purpose by the King's order, and placed near his own bed. As always, the wax-light in the silver basin was kept faintly burning. [Footnote:Herbert, 170-178; and Wood's Ath. IV. 28-31. Wood's account was derivedfrom Herbert himself, and substantially is the same as Herbert's own inhis published _Memoirs_, but with additional particulars, of whichsome are peculiarly interesting. ]

Of the next day, Sunday the 28th, there is nothing to record, save thatin the morning the King opened the cabinet of jewels, and that the restof the day was passed in hearing a sermon from Juxon on Romans ii. 16, and in private readings and devotions. Clement Walker, indeed, foistsinto this day a myth he had heard about a certain "paper-book" tenderedto the King by "some of the grandees of the Army and Parliament, "offering him his "life and some shadow of regality" on conditions of sucha portentous character, so "destructive to the fundamental Government, Religion, Laws, Liberties, and Properties of the People, " that hisMajesty firmly refused them. The air was full of such myths. [Footnote:Clement Walker's Hist. Of Independency, Part II, 109, 110. ]

On Monday, the 29th, the two royal children then in England, the PrincessElizabeth, thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester, a boy ofeight, came to St. James's to bid their father farewell. The Princess, asthe elder, and the more sensible of her father's condition, was weepingexcessively; the younger boy, seeing his sister weep, took the likeimpression, and sobbed in sympathy and fright. He sat with them for sometime at a window, taking them on his knees and kissing them, and talkingwith them of their duty to their mother, and to their eldest brother thePrince of Wales, who should be rightful King of England in long futureyears, when they would hardly remember their dead father. He distributedto them most of the jewels from the recovered casket; and at last, whenthe time allotted for the interview was over, and the door was openedfrom without, he rose hastily, again kissed them and blessed them, andthen turned about to hide his own tears, while they departed cryingmiserably. [Footnote: Herbert, 178-180. In one particular there is adiscrepancy between Herbert's account of the two days immediatelysucceeding Charles's sentence and the account found in Rushworth andothers. Herbert says that on Saturday, after the sentence, Charles wastaken from Westminster Hall back to Whitehall, "whence after two hours'space he was removed to St. James's. " Accordingly it is at St. James's, as in the text, that Herbert represents Charles as passing the Saturdaynight and the Sunday and Monday. In Rushworth, on the other hand, theKing remains at Whitehall through Saturday night and Sunday; and it isnot till Monday that he is removed to St. James's, where he sees hischildren. Herbert's surely is the better authority in this matter. ]

And what of surrounding London, what of England, what of the threekingdoms, and the world beyond the seas? A King condemned as a Traitorand a Murderer by a fraction of his subjects; his children takingfarewell of him; his time on earth now measured by hours, and the hoursby the ticks of a clock; the hum close at hand of carpenters at work inhideous, unnameable preparations! Was there then to be no arrest, mightthere be no delay? Would not the very stones of London rise and mutiny;might not the land around, even if led but by popular fury, surge in tothe rescue; from beyond the seas might there not come execrationsufficient, and some foreign voice to stop?

Nearly eight weeks, it is to be remembered, had elapsed since the Armyhad assumed the absolute political mastery by Pride's Purge of theCommons; and somewhat more than three weeks since the small stump of theCommons which they had fitted for their purpose had voted the Peers afarce, declared all power to reside in itself, and appointed the HighCourt of Justice for the Trial of the King. If there was to beinterposition for Charles, from within Great Britain or from abroad, there had therefore been time for it before his Trial actually began, orat least before his Sentence. What had been the appearances? Amongforeign powers and potentates a mere curious amazement, a feeling thatthe strange Islanders had gone mad, too mad to be meddled with: in Franceperhaps, where Mazarin had his own notions, even a pleasure in the senseof being unable to interfere and a willingness to see the English furyburn itself out in its own way. The French Ambassador in England had, indeed, conveyed a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria, addressed to theSpeaker of the House of Commons; but the House had passed it by, and leftit unanswered. Then, among the English Royalists abroad! Among_them, _ of course, a phrenzy unutterable, --passionate pacings ofrooms and courtyards in the foreign towns that quartered them; wildclamours of grief wherever a few of them were gathered together; mingledsobbings, curses, prayers, gnashings of teeth, at the thought of what waspassing in the home-island beyond their reach! But what within thatisland itself? What of England and London? The population, as we know, consisted of three sections--the numerous Independents and Sectaries; themultitudinous Presbyterians; and the suppressed and all but silencedPrelatists, or adherents of the old Church of England, What had been thesigns from these three sections? Well, while petitions had come in to theCommons from the "well-affected, " _i. E. _ the Independents andSectaries, of various counties, praying for justice on Delinquents ofwhatever rank, and therefore virtually adhering to the Army; while theIndependents of the City of London itself had bestirred themselves in thesame sense, and, in spite of the opposition of the Lord Mayor and most ofthe Aldermen, had carried at a Guildhall meeting an Address from theCommon Council to the Commons, which the Commons received with great formand much expression of thanks; while all this had been done in the Army'sinterest, there had been much fainter counter-demonstrations, from eitherthe Prelatists or the Presbyterians, than might have been expected. ThePrelatists, believing their interference would do harm, had remained indumb horror: only Dr. John Gauden and Dr, Henry Hammond had ventured onprotestations in the King's behalf, addressed to Fairfax and the ArmyCouncil. The Presbyterians, having more liberty in the way of speech, hadcertainly not been silent. What indignation among them, what outcries, during the last seven weeks, over the suppression of all legal authority, and the monstrous usurpation of power by the Army-Grandees and theirheretical adherents! Among the Presbyterian multitudes of London therehad been no protester in this sense more brave than Prynne. Whatevercould be done with pen and ink, or by vehement verbal messages, inaddition to his published _Brief Memento_, from his durance in theKing's Head Tavern, he had done, and continued to do. Clement Walker washardly less active. From the Presbyterian Clergy of the City also, notwithstanding the exertions of Hugh Peters and others, in privateconferences with them, to keep them from interfering, there did comevoices of remonstrance. The Westminster Assembly, or what of the bodythen remained sitting, had signified their unanimous desire for theKing's release; and forty-seven ministers, meeting at Sion College, haddrawn up and signed a document, addressed to Fairfax, in which theyprotested most earnestly, in the name of Religion and general morality, and also of the Solemn League and Covenant, against the usurpation ofpower by the Army and the violence intended to the King's person. Therehad been manifestations to the same effect from Presbyterian ministers invarious parts of the country, in which, it appears, even some of theIndependent ministers had joined. Finally, there was all PresbyterianScotland. What of it? The Scottish Parliament had met in Edinburgh on the4th of January, and had been greatly agitated by the news, received fromthe Earl of Lothian, Sir John Chiesley, and William Glendinning, thenacting as Scottish Commissioners in London, "how that above 160 membersof the House of Commons were extrudit the House by the blasphemous Army, "and how there was no doubt but the King's life was in peril. There hadbeen an express to London in consequence, with instructions to theCommissioners to do their best, by every form of entreaty andremonstrance, to avert the dreaded catastrophe. Both before and duringthe Trial, accordingly, these Commissioners, aided by Mr. Blair and otherCommissioners of the Scottish Kirk, had been going to and fro in London, reasoning, threatening, and imploring. Charles Stuart was King ofScotland; the whole Scottish nation was loyal to Monarchy in him and inhis race; from all the pulpits in Scotland there were prayers for him, and forgiveness of his past errors in pity of his present state; wouldthe English nation dare, in defiance of all this, and in outrage of theLeague and Covenant, to put him to death? [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 15, 1648-9; Neal's Puritans, III. 490-6; Whitlocke Jan. 3; Walker'sHistory of Independency, Part II. 61-87; Balfour's Annals, III. 373 _etseq. _ Life of Robert Blair (Wodrow Society), pp. 213-215. ]

All this before the King's trial had actually begun, or at least beforehis sentence. And what now that the sentence had been pronounced, andCharles in St. James's was making ready for his doom? The Trial had beenswift; hardly more than the expectation of it can have reached foreignshores; of the actual sentence many parts of England were yet ignorant. Only at the centre, only in London itself, could there be interference atthis last moment. To the last there were some efforts. After the sentencethe pleadings and protests of the Scottish Commissioners became nearlyfrantic in their vehemence, the Presbyterianism of London too numb forfarther expression itself, but speaking through the Scots. All to noeffect. Nor was greater attention paid to the intercession of the onlyforeign Power that then made an effort to save Charles. The States-General of Holland had sent over a special embassy for the purpose; but, though the Ambassadors were in London on the 29th and were received thatday with most ceremonious respect by the Commons as well as by the Lords, they knew that they had come on a vain errand. 

Why was all in vain? For one very simple and yet very sufficient reason. At the centre of England was a will that had made itself adamant, byexpress vow and deliberation beforehand, for the very hour which had nowarrived, and that, amid all entreaties and pleadings of men, women, classes, corporations, and nations, would go through with the businessthat had been begun. Relentings there were near the centre, but not atthe very centre. Fairfax had relented; Pennington had relented; otherswho had taken part in the Trial had relented; Vane, St. John, Skippon, Fiennes, leaders hitherto, had withdrawn from the work, and were lookingon moodily; there was an agony over what was coming among many that hadhelped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governingEnglishmen, with OLIVER CROMWELL in the midst of them, were prepared forevery responsibility, and stood inexorably to their task. _They_were the will of England now, and they had the Army with them. Whatproportion of England besides went with them it might be difficult toestimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named, who approvedthoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While thesentenced King was at St. James's there were lying on Milton's writing-table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a pamphleton which he had been engaged during the King's Trial, and in which, invehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally, but withparticular references also to the printed protests of Prynne, the appealsof the Prelatists Hammond and Gauden, and the interferences of the Scotsand the Dutch, he was to defend all the recent acts of the Army, Pride'sPurge included, justify the existing government of the Army-chiefs andthe fragment of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate Republicanbeliefs on his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition:"_That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for anywho have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinaryMagistrate have neglected or denied to do it!_" The pamphlet was notto come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified;but, while the King was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in partwritten. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan, 22 and 29; Lords Journals, Jan. 29; Rushworth, VII. 1426-7; Milton's _Tenure of Kings andMagistrates_, and his _Def. Sec_. --That Milton's _Tenure ofKings and Magistrates_, though not published till after the King'sdeath, had been on hand before, if not completed, might be inferred fromthe pamphlet itself, the language and _tense_ of some parts of whichare scarcely explicable otherwise. But see his account of the compositionof the pamphlet in his _Def. Sec_. He there says that the book didnot come out till after the King's death, and consequently had no directinfluence in bringing about that fact; but this very statement, and thesentences which precede it, confirm what is said in the text as to thetime when the pamphlet was schemed and begun. ]

Actually on Monday, Jan. 29, while the Dutch Ambassadors were havingtheir audiences with the two Houses, the Death-Warrant was out, asfollows:--

"At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of CharlesStuart, King of England, January XXIXth, Anno Dom. 1648. 

"Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted, and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes, andsentence upon Saturday last was pronounced upon him by this Court to beput to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which sentenceexecution yet remaineth to be done: These are therefore to will andrequire you to see the said sentence executed in the open street beforeWhitehall upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant monthof January, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in theafternoon of the said day, with full effect. And for so doing this shallbe your sufficient warrant. And these are to require all Officers andSoldiers and other the good people of this Nation to be assisting untoyou in this service. Given under our hands and seals:--

"Jo. Bradshawe Ri. Deane Thos. HortonTho. Grey Robert Tichborne J. JonesO. Cromwell H. Edwardes John MooreEdw. Whalley Daniel Blagrave Gilb. MillingtonM. Livesey Owen Rowe G. FleetwoodJohn Okey William Perfoy J. AluredJ. Danvers Ad. Scrope Rob. LilburneJo. Bourchier James Temple Will. SayH. Ireton A. Garland Anth. StapleyTho. Mauleverer Edm. Ludlowe Gre. NortonHar. Waller Henry Marten Tho. ChallonerJohn Blakiston Vint. Potter Thomas WoganJ. Hutchinson Wm. Constable John VennWilli. Goffe Rich. Ingoldesby Gregory ClementsTho. Pride Will. Cawley Jo. DownesPe. Temple J. Barkestead Tho. WayteT. Harrison Isaa. Ewer Tho. ScotJ. Hewson John Dixwell Jo. CarewHen. Smyth Valentine Wauton Miles Corbet. Per. Pelham Simon Mayne

"To Colonel Francis Hacker, Colonel Huncks, and Lieutenant-ColonelPhayre; and to every of them. " [Footnote: The original of this Warrant, aparchment eighteen inches wide and ten inches deep, is in the possessionof the House of Lords, having been produced before that body by ColonelHacker in 1660, and then retained. Mr. William J. Thorns, who hasminutely inspected it, made it the subject of a curious and interestinginquiry in _Notes and Queries_, July 6 and July 13, 1872. He observesthat the date of the Warrant itself, and the words "upon Saturday last"for the day of the sentence, are written over erasures and in a differenthand from the rest, and that the word "Thirtieth" for the day ofexecution is inserted in a space too large for it; and, for this andother reasons, he arrives at the conclusion that we see the document nowin its second state, and that a good number of the signatures were notattached to it on the 29th, but had been attached to it on an earlier daywhen it was in its first state. His conjecture, on the whole, is that ithad been expected, at the private meeting of the Court on Friday the2eth, when the sentence was _agreed upon, _ that it might be _pronounced_that same day, and _executed_ the next day (Saturday the 27th), and thata warrant to that effect had then been drawn up and signed; but that, this idea having been abandoned, for whatever reason, and the Sentencenot having been pronounced till Saturday, it was thought better, at themeeting on Monday the 29th, still to use the first Warrant with itssignatures, only with the dates altered, and with additional signaturesthen obtained, than to write out a fresh warrant and apply for secondsignatures from absentees who had signed the first. --It is noteworthythat, though sixty-seven of the Commissioners had, as we have seen, virtually constituted themselves "the Regicides" by being present inWestminster Hall on Saturday when the Sentence was pronounced, and thenstanding up in assent to it, nine of these did not attach their names tothe Warrant. They were Francis Allen, Thomas Andrews, General Hammond, Edmund Harvey, William Heveningham, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, Nicholas Love, and Colonel Matthew Tomlinson. Subtract these _nine_ fromthe _sixty-seven, _ and the number of the signers to the Warrant ought tobe _fifty-eight. _ But they are _fifty-nine_. Who, then, is the _fifty-ninth_? Cromwell's young kinsman, Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, who, thougha member of the Court, had attended none of its meetings till preciselythat of the 29th, the date of the Warrant. Here comes in Clarendon'sfamous story, a distortion of some convenient rigmarole of Ingoldsby'sown in later times. Ingoldsby, says Clarendon, "always abhorring theaction in his heart, " had purposely kept away from every meeting of theCourt, till, chancing to look into the Painted Chamber on the fatal 29th, he was clutched by Cromwell, dragged to the table on which the Warrantlay, and compelled to sign it, Cromwell forcibly holding his hand andtracing the letters for him, with loud laughter at the joke! More bytoken, as Clarendon reports him, if his name on the Warrant "werecompared with what he had ever writ himself, " the difference would beseen! Unfortunately, Mr. Thoms, who has made this comparison, vouchesthat no difference can be detected, and that the name "Rich. Ingoldsby"in the Warrant "is as bold and free as signature can be, " and could neverhave been written by a hand held by another's. _Ex uno omnes_. In thehard straits that were coming eleven years hence, there were to be othersof the signers of the Warrant, besides Ingoldsby, who were to aver thatthey did it under compulsion, Cromwell and Henry Marten sitting besideeach other, smearing each other's faces with ink in their fun, andoverbearing the scrupulous with jeers or threats. The simple fact Ibelieve to be (and this I do believe) that Cromwell was anxious that theWarrant should be well signed, and reasoned, or perhaps remonstrated, with some waverers, as he had done with young Hammond of the Isle ofWight in a similar case two months before. Cromwell was now in hisfiftieth year. ]

In the King's last hours he had offers of the spiritual services ofMessrs. Calamy, Vines, Caryl, Dell, and other Presbyterian ministers, andhardly had these gone when Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street came to St. James's, all by himself, with the like offer. They were all dismissedwith thanks, the King intimating that he desired no other attendance thanthat of Bishop Juxon. Late into the night of the 29th, accordingly, theBishop remained with the King in private. After he had gone, Charlesspent about two hours more in reading and praying, and then lay down tosleep, Mr. Herbert lying on the pallet-bed close to his. For about fourhours he slept soundly; but very early in the morning, when it was stilldark, he awoke, opened the curtain of his bed, and called Mr. Herbert. The call disturbed Herbert suddenly from a dreamy doze into which he hadfallen after a very restless night; and, when he got up and was assistingthe King to dress by the light of the wax-cake that had been kept burningin the chamber as usual, the King observed a peculiarly scared look onhis face. Herbert, on being asked the cause, told his Majesty he had hadan extraordinary dream. The King desiring to know what it was, Herbertrelated it. In his doze, he said, he had heard some one knock at thechamber-door. Thinking it might be Colonel Hacker, and not willing todisturb the King till he himself heard the knock, he had lain still. Asecond time, however, the knock came; and this time, he thought, hisMajesty had heard the knock, and told him to open the door and see who itwas. He did go to the door, and, on opening it, was surprised to see afigure standing there in pontifical habits whom he knew to be the lateLord Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Laud. He knew him well, having oftenseen him in his life. The figure said he had something to say to theKing, and desired to enter. Then, as Herbert thought, the King havingbeen told who it was, and having given permission, the Archbishop hadentered, making a profound obeisance to the King in the middle of theroom, a second on coming nearer, and at last falling on his knees as theKing gave him his hand to kiss. Then the King raised him, and the twowent to the window together, and discoursed there, Herbert keeping at adistance, and not knowing of what they talked, save that he noticed theKing's face to be very pensive, and heard the Archbishop give a deepsigh. After a little they ceased to talk, and the Archbishop, againkissing the King's hand, retired slowly, with his face still to the King, making three reverences as before. The third reverence was so low that, as Herbert thought, the Archbishop had fallen prostrate on his face, andhe had been in the act of stepping to help him up when he had beenawakened by the King's call. The impression had been so lively that hehad still looked about the room as if all had been real. --Herbert havingthus told his dream, the King said it was remarkable, the rather because, if Laud had been alive, and they had been talking together as in thedream, it was very likely, albeit he loved the Archbishop well, he mighthave said something to him that would have occasioned his sigh. There wasyet more conversation between the King and Herbert by themselves, theKing selecting with some care the dress he was to wear, and especiallyrequiring an extra under-garment because of the sharpness of the weather, lest he should shake from cold, and people should attribute it to fear. While they were still conversing, poor Herbert in such anguish as may beimagined, Dr. Juxon arrived, at the precise hour the King had appointedthe night before. 

An hour or two still had to elapse before the last scene. Charlesarranged with Herbert about the distribution of some of his favouritebooks, with some trinkets. His Bible, with annotations in his own hand, and some special accompanying instructions, was to be kept for the Princeof Wales; a large silver ring-sundial of curious device was to go to theDuke of York; a copy of King James's Works, with another book, was leftfor the Duke of Gloucester; for the Princess Elizabeth Hooker'sEcclesiastical Polity, Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, and some other things. These arrangements made, the King was for an hour alone with Juxon, during which time he received the Communion. Then, Herbert having beenre-admitted, the Bishop again went to prayer, and read the 27th chapterof Matthew; which, by a coincidence in which the King found comfort, chanced to be one of the lessons in the Rubric for that day. While theywere yet thus religiously engaged, there came Colonel Hacker's knock. They allowed him to knock twice before admitting him; and then, enteringwith some trepidation, he announced that it was time to go to Whitehall. The King told him to go forth, and he would follow presently. 

It was about ten o'clock in the morning (Tuesday, Jan. 30) when theprocession was formed, from St. James's, through the Park, to Whitehall. With Bishop Juxon on his right hand, Colonel Tomlinson on his left, Herbert following close, and a guard of halberdiers in front and behind, the King walked, at his usual very fast pace, through the Park, soldierslining the whole way, with colours flying and drums beating, and such anoise rising from the gathered crowd that it was hardly possible for anytwo in the procession to hear each other speak. Herbert had been told tobring with him the silver clock or watch that hung usually by the King'sbedside, and on their way through the Park the King asked what o'clock itwas and gave Herbert the watch to keep. A rude fellow from the mob keptabreast with the King for some time, staring at his face as if in wonder, till the Bishop had him turned away. There is a tradition that, when theprocession came to the end of the Park, near the present passage fromSpring Gardens, the King pointed to a tree, and said that tree had beenplanted by his brother Henry. Arrived at last at the stairs leading intoWhitehall, he was taken, through the galleries of the Palace, to the bed-chamber he had usually occupied while residing there; and here he hadsome farther time allowed him for rest and devotion with Juxon alone. Having sent Herbert for some bread and wine, he ate a mouthful of thebread and drank a small glass of claret. Here Herbert broke down socompletely that he felt he could not accompany the King to the scaffold, and Juxon had to take from him the white satin cap he had brought by theKing's orders to be put on at the fatal moment. At last, a little aftertwelve o'clock, Hacker's signal was heard outside, and Juxon and Herbertwent on their knees, affectionately kissing the King's hands. Juxon beingold and feeble, the King helped him to rise, and then, commanding thedoor to be opened, followed Hacker. With soldiers for his guard, he wasconveyed, along some of the galleries of the old Palace, now no longerextant, to the New Banqueting Hall, which Inigo Jones had built, andwhich still exists. Besides the soldiers, many men and women had crowdedinto the Hall, from whom, as his Majesty passed on, there was heard ageneral murmur of commiseration and prayer, the soldiers themselves notobjecting, but appearing grave and respectful. 

Through a passage broken in the wall of the Banqueting Hall, or moreprobably through one of the windows dismantled for the purpose, Charlesemerged on the scaffold, in the open street, fronting the site of thepresent Horse Guards. The scaffold was hung with black, and carpeted withblack, the block and the axe in the middle; a number of persons alreadystood upon it, among whom were several men with black masks concealingtheir faces; in the street in front, all round the scaffold, werecompanies of foot and horse; and beyond these, as far as the eye couldreach, towards Charing Cross on the one side and Westminster Abbey on theother, was a closely-packed multitude of spectators. The King, walking onthe scaffold, looked earnestly at the block, and said something to Hackeras if he thought it were too low; after which, taking out a small pieceof paper, on which he had jotted some notes, he proceeded to addressthose standing near him. What he said may have taken about ten minutes ora quarter of an hour to deliver, and appears, from the short-hand reportof it which has been preserved, to have been rather incoherent. "Now, Sirs, " he said at one point, "I must show you both how you are out of theway, and I will put you in the way. First, you are out of the way; forcertainly all the way you ever have had yet, as I could find by anything, is in the way of conquest. Certainly this is an ill way; for conquest, Sirs, in my opinion, is never just, except there be a good just cause, either for matter of wrong, or just title; and then, if you go beyond it, the first quarrel that you have to it, _that_ makes it unjust at theend that was just at first. " A little farther on, when he had begun asentence, "For the King indeed I will not, " a gentleman chanced to touchthe axe. "Hurt not the axe, " he interrupted; "_that_ may hurt me, "and then resumed. "As for the King, the Laws of the Land will clearlyinstruct you for that; therefore, because it concerns my own particular, I only give you a touch of it. For the People: and truly I desire theirliberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever; but I must tell youthat their liberty and freedom consists in having of Government thoselaws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is nothaving _share_ in Government, Sirs; that is nothing pertaining tothem. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things; andtherefore, until they do that--I mean, that you put the People in thatliberty, as I say--certainly they will never enjoy themselves. " Inconclusion he said he would have liked to have a little more time, so asto have put what he meant to say "in a little more order and a littlebetter digested, " and gave the paper containing the heads of his speechto Juxon. As he had said nothing specially about Religion, Juxon remindedhim of the omission. "I thank you very heartily, my Lord, " said Charles, "for that I had almost forgotten it. In truth, Sirs, my conscience inReligion, I think it very well known to the world; and therefore Ideclare before you all that I die a Christian, according to theprofession of the Church of England as I found it left me by my father;and this honest man (the Bishop) I think will witness it. " There weresome more words, addressed particularly to Hacker and the other officers;and once more, seeing a gentleman go too near the axe, he called out, "Take heed of the axe; pray, take heed of the axe. " Then, taking thewhite satin cap from Juxon, he put it on, and, with the assistance ofJuxon and the chief executioner, pushed his hair all within it. Somefinal sentences of pious import then passed between the King and Juxon, and the King, having taken off his cloak and George, and given the latterto Juxon, with the word "Remember, " knelt down, and put his neck on theblock. After a second or two he stretched out his hands, and the axedescended, severing the head from the body at one blow. There was a vastshudder through the mob, and then a universal groan. [Footnote: Herbert'sMemoirs, 183--194; Wood's Ath. (repeating Herbert), IV. 32--36;Rushworth, VJI 1428-1431; Fuller's Church Hist. (ed. 1842) TTI. 500, 501;Disraeli's Charts J. (ed. 1831) V. 449-50; Cunningham's London, _Whitehall_. Herbert only mentions the fact of his dream in the bodyof his Memoir; but the detailed account of it in his own words, writtenin 1680, is given in the Appendix, 217-222, and in a note in Wood's Ath. As above. --The coherance of Charles's last speech seems to have struckFuller, who says that, "though taken in shorthand by one eminenttherein, " it is done defectively. I rather think it is punctuallyliteral. I find in the Stationers' Registers this entry, under date Jan. 31, 1648-9: "Peter Cole entered for his copy, under the hand of Mr. Mabbott, King Charles his Speech upon the Scaffold, with the manner ofhis Suffering, on Jan. 30, 1648. " I suppose this is the Report afterwardsrepeated by Rushworth, though objected to by Fuller. Was Rush worth thereporter?]

Immediately after the execution Juxon and the sorrowing Herbert wereallowed to take charge of the corpse. Embalmed, coffined in wood andlead, and covered with a velvet pall, it lay for some days in St. James'sPalace, where crowds came to see it. There was some difficulty about theplace of burial. Charles himself having left no directions on thesubject, Juxon and Herbert thought that the fittest place would be KingHenry the Seventh's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, containing as it didthe tombs of his four immediate predecessors, and those of hisgrandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, and his brother Prince Henry. Theauthorities, however, considering that this place was too public andwould attract inconvenient crowds, Juxon and Herbert next proposed theRoyal Chapel in Windsor, where some of his earlier predecessors had beenburied, and among them Henry VIII. To this no objection was made, and onthe 7th of February the body was conveyed from St. James's to Windsor ina hearse drawn by six horses, and followed by four mourning coaches. Colonel Whichcot, the Governor of the Castle, having been shown theorder, allowed Herbert and those with him to select whatever spot theychose. They thought first of what was called "the tomb-house, " built byCardinal Wolsey, and intended by him as a splendid sepulchre for hismaster, Henry VIII. ; but they decided against it, partly because it wasnot within the Royal Chapel, but only adjoining it, and partly becausethey were uncertain whether Henry VIII. (of whose exact place of burialthe tradition had been lost) might not actually have been buried in the"tomb-house, " and they recollected that this particular predecessor ofCharles was not one of his favourites. He had been heard, in occasionaldiscourses, to express dislike of Henry's conduct in appropriating Churchrevenues and demolishing religious edifices. They therefore fixed on thevault where Edward IV. Was interred, on the north side of the choir, nearthe altar. The vault was opened for the purpose, and preparations for theinterment there were going on, when (Feb. 8) the Duke of Richmond, theMarquis of Hertford, and the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, with Dr. Juxon, arrived from London, specially authorized by the House of Commonsto attend the funeral, and the Duke empowered to arrange all wholly as hethought fit. Herbert and those with him having then resigned the dutyinto the hands of these great persons, there was a new inquiry as to thebest spot for the grave. The "tomb-house" was again looked at, and thechoir of the Chapel diligently re-investigated. At length, a spot in thechoir having been detected where the pavement sounded hollow when struck--"being about the middle of the choir, over against the eleventh seat onthe Sovereign's side"--the stones and earth were removed, and a vault wasdisclosed; in which there were two leaden coffins close together, onevery large and the other small. From the velvet palls covering them, someportions in their original purple colour, and others turned into fox-tawny or coal-black by the damp, there was no doubt that they were thecoffins of Henry VIII. And his third wife, Lady Jane Seymour. As therewas just room for one coffin more in the vault, it was determined thatthe fact of its being the vault of Henry VIII, now accidentallydiscovered after so long a time, should be no bar to the burial ofCharles in the otherwise suitable vacancy. Accordingly, on Friday the 9thof February, the body was brought from the royal bed-chamber, where ithad been meanwhile lying, to St. George's Hall, and thence, with slow andsolemn pace, to the Chapel. It was borne on the shoulders of somegentlemen in mourning; the noblemen in mourning held up the pall; andColonel Whichcot, with several gentlemen, officers, and attendants, followed. As they were moving from the Hall to the Chapel, the sky, whichhad been previously clear, darkened with snow, which fell so fast that, before they reached the Chapel, the black velvet pall was white with theflakes. The coffin having been set down near the vault, ex-Bishop Juxonwould have read the burial-service over it according to the form of theBook of Common Prayer; but, though permission to do so seemed to beimplied in the wording of the order granted to the Duke of Richmond bythe House of Commons, and though the noblemen present were desirous thatit should be done, Colonel Whichcot did not think himself entitled toallow any service except that of the new Presbyterian Directory. Withoutany service at all, therefore, save what may have been rendered by thetears and muttered words of those who stood by, the coffin was deposited, about three o'clock in the afternoon, in the vacant space in the vault. Akind of scarf or scroll of lead, about five inches broad, had beensoldered to it, bearing this inscription in capital letters: "KINGCHARLES, 1648. " At the time of his death, King Charles was forty-eightyears, two months, and eleven days old, and he had reigned twenty-threeyears and ten months. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 194-216; CommonsJournals, Feb. 8; Fuller's, Church Hist, . III. 501-4. --In March 1813 someworkmen, employed in making a passage from under the choir of the RoyalChapel at Windsor to a mausoleum erected by George III. In the "tomb-house" described in the text, accidentally broke into the vaultcontaining the bodies of Charles I. , Henry VIII. , and Queen Jane Seymour. The fact having been reported to the Prince Regent, a careful examinationwas ordered. It was made April 1, 1813, in the presence of the PrinceRegent himself, the Duke of Cumberland, Count Munster, the Dean ofWindsor, Sir Henry Halford (Physician to the King and the Prince Regent), and Mr. B. C. Stevenson. The coffin of Charles I. Was examined with greatminuteness, and corresponded in every particular with the account givenby Herbert. When the black velvet pall had been removed, the coffin wasfound to be of plain lead, with the leaden scroll encircling it, bearingthe inscription "KING CHARLES, 1648, " in large legible characters. Asquare opening was then cut in the upper lid, so that the contents mightbe clearly seen. An internal wooden coffin was found to be very muchdecayed, and the body was found to be carefully wrapped up in cerecloth, into the folds of which there had been poured abundantly some unctuoussubstance mixed with resin. With considerable difficulty the cereclothwas removed from the face, and then, despite the discolouring and thedecay of some parts, the features of Charles I. , as represented in coinsand busts, and especially in Vandyke's portraits of him, could bedistinctly recognised. There was the oval face, with the peaked beard. When, by farther removal of the cerecloth, they had disengaged the entirehead, they found it to be loose from the body. On taking it out, they sawthat "the muscles of the neck had evidently retracted themselvesconsiderably, and the fourth cervical vertebra was found to be cutthrough its substance transversely, leaving the surfaces of the dividedportions perfectly smooth and even--an appearance which could have beenproduced only by a heavy blow indicted by a very sharp instrument. " Thehair, which was thick at the back, looked nearly black; but, when aportion of it was afterwards cleaned and dried, the colour was found tobe a beautiful dark brown, --that of the beard a redder brown. The bodywas not examined below the neck; and, the head having been replaced, thecoffin was soldered up again and the vault closed. (See account by SirHenry Halford, quoted by Bliss in his edition of Wood's Ath. IV. 39-42. )]