XIII. 1647. decorous, that the commons should commit them- CHAP. selves with the lords without examination in this point? Nothing could be more proper than that the lawyers in the house should be called on for their opinion. And the direction that the committee should sit daily, argues but little in favour of the idea of a studied delay. The addition, that the lawyers were to be called upon "to debate the matter pro and con," it will easily be seen, was the mere colouring of Lilburne's informer, or of Lilburne himself. Certain it is however that Cromwel was at this time little inclined to engage in any proceeding hostile to the house of lords. sassinate In the mean while Lilburne's attention was Plan to asprincipally confined to the injustice under which him. he was suffering. He had, by a naked vote of the house of lords, been condemned to an imprisonment of seven years. He had sought by every means to attract the attention of the commons, of Cromwel, and of the army, to his hardships. So far as he went out of himself, he saw the public suffering from the same cause, from which he suffered. Cromwel had professed a bold and energetic feeling for the general cause, and had, it seems, made to Lilburne many fair promises. But now he was in cabal with the most venal of the followers of the king; and the house of lords, of which Cromwel had often spoken in terms of unmeasured contempt, were his white boys. He had sold himself, so Lilburne was taught to be II. 1647. BOOK lieve, for titles and ribbands, and had resolved to replace the king in the full plenitude of his authority, under whom he would henceforth act the part of the most corrupt and slavish courtier England had ever seen. Under these circumstances Lilburne determined by one daring blow to deliver his country from slavery, and to avenge the multiplied contempts and delusions he had himself experienced. Wildman heartily concurred with him in the project. What other accomplices were engaged in the conspiracy we are not told. A considerable degree of obscurity hangs over this plot. We are not told by what means it was discovered, nor how it was defeated. Be this as it will, the clemency and magnanimity of Cromwel, it seems, passed it over as if nothing * The information we possess on this subject is extremely slender; but the conclusions to be drawn from it appear to be strong. It consists merely of two passages from Berkeley and Hollis; the first general, the second particular. Berkeley says, p. 42, Cromwel "conjured us at this time not to come so frequently to his quarters, but to send privately, the suspicions of him being grown to that height, that he was afraid to lie in his own quarters." Upon this it is only necessary to observe, that Cromwel was not a man to profess fear where he did not feel it, or to feel it without cogent and unquestionable grounds of apprehension. The passage in Hollis is more precisely to the purpose. "Cromwel, Ireton, and the rest of their creatures and instruments, appeared for the king's interest in the house, seeming to desire his restitution. But the party would not give way to this; hatred to the king, envy and jealousies against their aspiring leaders, and a violent desire of having the work done at once, made them break out, fly in CHAP. XIII. 1647. Partial of Lil had happened. Lilburne made the same proposal to the house of commons under his hand and seal on the fourth of October', which he had made to Cromwel in the preceding month; and on the liberation fifteenth Marten's committee made its report ac- burne. cording to order. The result was the appointment of a further committee on the same day, and the care of the business was particularly referred to Maynard, the celebrated lawyer, who accordingly became chairman of this committee. Lilburne had twice a special hearing before Maynard"; and on the ninth of November it was ordered by the house of commons, that he should have liberty from day to day to come abroad, to attend the committee and to instruct his counsel, without a keeper o. their faces, discover many of their villanies, and, as appears by that business of Lilburne and Wildman, even resolve to take Cromwel out of the way, and murder him for an apostate." Hollis, §. 177, 178. The date of Hollis's book is, 14 February 1648. This evidence is material. Hollis certainly had no intention to flatter Cromwel, or to make him appear an object of obloquy to his party, in any degree beyond the fact. But what is most observable, he does not speak of the thing as a mere conjecture, a matter that might or might not be true, but as an affair of perfect notoriety. He infers the secret disposition of the party, from what “appeared in that business of Lilburne and Wildman, of a purpose to murder Cromwel." There must therefore have been proofs at the time, more than are now known to exist. Hollis, we are sure, was not a man to invent an assassination-plot of this sort. Journals. Additional Plea to Maynard, p. 20. n Oct. 20 and 28. • Journals. 436 II. 1647. Mutiny in CHAPTER XIV. MUTINY IN THE ARMY.-AGENTS OF CERTAIN BOOK THE project for the assassination of Cromwel had no sooner been detected, than Lilburne and Wildman turned their thoughts to another, and, as the army. they trusted, a no less effectual way of counteracting the treachery and perfidy of the leading Considera- officers of the army. There were in the most reby whom it spectable classes persons, who, while they judged ble persons was encou raged. as unfavourably of the conduct of Cromwel and Ireton and Vane, as these conspirators had done, were men of too pure and liberal a disposition to endure the thought of taking them off clandestinely. Such were Rainsborough, and Ewer, and Scot. Colonel Rainsborough was an officer of distinguished merit, and had recently been appointed by the parliament vice-admiral, or com mander of the fleet ". Lieutenant-colonel Isaac Ewer was of the family of the barons Ewer of CHAP. XIV. Wilton in the bishopric of Durham. The third, 1647. major Thomas Scot, was a member of the house Witton-le-Wear of commons, son-in-law of sir Thomas Maleverer, and one of the most inflexible republicans of this memorable period. He afterwards made a very distinguished figure in the history of the commonwealth. by which The views of these men were of the purest and Principles noblest sort. They convinced themselves that they were Cromwel and Ireton had become apostates from animated. a Journals of Commons, Sep. 27. of Lords, Oct. 1. b Heath, P. 198. The name is spelled Eyre in Rushworth, Vol. VII, p. 875, and in Whitlocke. But nothing is so uncertain as the orthography of names at this period: I find that of the celebrated Blake written Blague even in the Order Book of the Council of State; and Judge Berkeley is spelled Bartlet in the Journals of the Commons, Feb. 6, 1641, et alibi. The title of the baron is most commonly written Eure. Add to which, and this seems conclusive, the name of the governor of Hurst Castle (undoubtedly the same person commonly written Ewer) is spelled Eyre, Journals of Commons, Dec. 14, 1648. с Noble, Lives of Regicides, Vol. II, p. 197. The son-in-law of Maleverer is however stiled colonel in 1646 (see Noble); the mutineer therefore is supposed by this author to be his son. Meanwhile it is to be observed, that the mutineer was a member of parliament (Journals of Lords, Nov. 16); and there is but one Thomas Scot in the list of the house of commons in Browne's Notitia Parliamentaria, who was undoubtedly the son-in-law of Maleverer, as further appears from the same document (Noble, Vol. II, p. 197) in which he is stiled colonel. This document is an inscription on the tomb of his wife, and may have been put up after Scot, from a major, had in the course of promotions been made a colonel, |