is to be imagined, Butler insinuates the commonwealthmen forgot, when they submitted to the government of a single individual, in the person of Oliver Cromwell, and permitted him to establish house of peers of his own. V. 165-6. Did they not swear to live and die With Essex, and straight laid him by?] The Elegy on the death of King Charles has the following lines: "Now harden'd in revolt you next proceed By pacts to strengthen each rebellious deed: Whose sacred knot you plainly did untie, When you with Essex swore to live and die." V. 175. And since of all the three, &c.] That is, king, lords, and commons. V. 179-80. And after turn'd out the whole house full Of Peers, as dang'rous and unuseful.] It might be his interest after the restoration to lament the downfall of the house of peers, but certainly a man of Butler's sagacious and penetrating mind could have no great reason to lament the loss of the titled legislators who formed the upper house in the days of Charles I. with the exception of the Lord Viscount Falkland, (a name omni exceptione major,) Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, the Lord Digby, afterwards Earl of Bristol, (whose virtues and whose talents compensated for all his foibles and eccentricities,) and a few others, the house of peers might be regarded as a dead member; or, perhaps, something worse, as a putrescent member of the state. V. 181-2-3-4. So Cromwell with deep oaths and vows, Swore all the Commons out o' th' House; Vow'd that the red coats would disband, Ay, marry would they, at their command.] Cromwell has been taxed by a great variety of writers with profound dissimulation, and that, from the very commencement of the civil war, the object he laboured at was the possession of supreme power. This character of him, however, seems to have been founded in prejudice rather than truth. Cromwell's forte lay in watching and seizing opportunities, not in creating or inventing them. By the former method a man swims with the tide of human affairs, and is assisted by it; by the latter he must stem and encounter it. Mrs. Hutchinson's portrait of the government of Cromwell is, perhaps, the best that has been drawn, and the freest from exaggeration and party malignity. "Cromwell and his army (says she) grew wanton with their power, and invented a thousand tricks of government, which, when nobody opposed, they themselves fell to dislike and vary every day. First, he calls a parliament out of his own pocket, himself naming a sort of godly men for every county, who meeting, and not agreeing, a part of them, in the name of the people, gave up the sovereignty to him. Shortly after, he makes up several sorts of mock parliaments, but not finding one of them absolutely for his turn, turned them off again. He soon quitted himself of his triumvirs, and first thrust out Harrison, and then took away Lambert's commission, and would have been king but for fear of quitting his generalship. He weeded, in a few months time, above a hundred and fifty godly officers out of the army, with whom many of the religious soldiers went off, and in their room abundance of the king's dissolute soldiers were entertained, and the army was almost changed from that godly religious army, whose valor God had crowned with triumph, into the dissolute army they had beaten, bearing yet a better name. His wife and children were setting up for principality, which suited no better with any of them, than scarlet on the ape; only to speak the truth of himself, he had much natural greatness, and well became the place he had usurped, His daughter Fleetwood was humbled, and not exalted with these things, but the rest were insolent fools. Cleypoole, who married his daughter, and his son Henry, were two debauched ungodly cavaliers. Richard was a peasant in his nature, yet gentle and virtuous, but became not greatness. His court was full of sin and vanity, and the more abominable, because they had not yet quite cast away the name of God, but profaned it by taking it in vain upon them. True religion was now almost lost, even among the religious party, and hypocrisy became an epidemical disease, to the sad grief of all true-hearted christians and Englishmen. Almost all the ministers every where fell in and worshipped this beast, and courted and made addresses to him. So did the city of London, and many of the degenerate lords of the land, with the poor spirited gentry. The cavaliers, in policy, who saw that while Crom well reduced all the exercise of tyrannical power under another name, there was a door opened for the restoring of their party, fell much in with Cromwell, and heightened all his disorders. He at last exercised such an arbitrary power, that the whole land grew weary of him, while he set up a company of mean silly fellows, called major-generals, as governors in every county. These ruled, according to their wills, by no law but what seemed good in their own eyes, imprisoning men, obstructing the course of justice between man and man, preventing right through partiality, acquitting some that were guilty, and punishing some that were innocent as guilty. Then he exercised another project to raise money, by determination of the estates of all the king's party, of which action it is said Lambert was the instigator. At last he took upon him to make lords and knights, and wanted not many fools, both of the army and gentry, to accept of, and strut in, his mock titles. Then the Earl of Warwick's grandchild, and the Lord Falconbridge married his two daughters: such pitiful slaves were the nobles of those days. At last, Lambert, perceiving himself to have been all this while deluded with hopes and promises of the succession, and seeing that Cromwell now intended to confirm the government in his own family, fell off from him, but behaved himself very pitifully and meanly, was turned out of all his places, and returned again to his house of Wimbleton, where he fell to dress his flowers in his garden, and work at the needle with his wife and his maids, while he was watching an opportunity to serve again his ambition, which had this difference from the projectors; the one was gallant and great, the other had nothing but an unworthy pride, most insolent in prosperity, and as abject and base in adversity." V. 185-6. And troll'd them on, and swore, and swore, commons. Till th' army turn'd them out of door.] Before the trial of the king, ninety members were excluded from the house of But Butler more particularly alludes to the dissolution of the parliament by Cromwell, at the head of a party of soldiers, as is thus related by Smollet. "Cromwell started up from the council, with marks of violent indignation in his countenance, and hastened to the house with a detachment of three hundred soldiers, whom he posted at the door, and in the lobby. He then entered, and addressing himself to his friend St. John, told him, he was come to do that which, to his great grief of soul, the Lord had imposed upon him. After having sat some time to hear the debates, when the speaker was about to put the question, he suddenly rose up, and, in the most opprobious terms, reviled them for their ambition, tyranny, extortion, and robbery of the public. After this torrent of general obloquy, he stamped upon the floor, and the soldiers entered the house; then addressing himself to the members,' Get you gone,' said he, ‘give place to honest men; you are no louger a parliament; I tell you, you are no longer a parliament, the Lord has done with you.' Sir Henry Vane rising up to remonstrate this outrage, Cromwell exclaimed, 'O Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane, the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!' He took hold of Martin by the cloak, saying, Thou art a whore-master.' Another he reproached as an adulterer; a third as a drunkard; and the fourth as an extortioner. 'It is you,' added he,' that have forced me upon this, I have sought the Lord night and day, that he would rather slay me than put me upon this work.' Pointing to the mace, he bade a soldier 'Take away this bauble.' Then he turned out all the members, ordered the door to be locked, and putting the key in his pocket, retired to his lodging in Whitehall." Bonaparte's military dissolution of the Council of Five Hundred was the exact counterpart of this scene. 66 V. 210. Than mere saluting of the book.] Many of the saints of those days," says Dr. Grey, "were of the mind of that man, who made a conscience both of an oath and a law-suit, yet had the wit to make a greater conscience of losing an estate for want of suing and swearing to defend it; so that, upon consulting the chapter of dispensations, he compounded the matter with certain salvos and reserves. 'Thou talks,' says he, to a friend of his, 'of suing and swearing; why, for the one, it is my attorney sueth; and then, for the other, what signifies kissing a book with a calve's skin cover and a paste-board stiffening betwixt a man's lips and the text?" V. 211. Suppose the Scriptures are of force.] Walker, in his History of Independency, observes, "That they professed their consciences to be the rule and symbol both of their faith and doc trine. By this Lesbian rule they interpret, and to this they confirm the Scriptures, not their consciences to the Scriptures, setting the sun-dial by the clock, not the clock by the sun-dial." V. 212. They're but commissioners of course.] A satire on the liberty the parliament officers took of varying from their commissions, on pretence of private instructions; or upon the remarkable method of granting commissions in those times; for, notwithstanding, at the trial of Colonel Morris, who pleaded that he acted by virtue of a commission from the Prince of Wales, they declared that the prince had no power to grant commissions; yet, when a party of horse were ordered to be raised and listed under Skippon, to suppress the Earl of Holland and his forces, then in arms against them; by virtue of this order Skippon granted commissions to diverse schismatical apprentices, to raise men under hand, and authorised the said apprentices to grant commissions to other apprentices under them, for the like purpose. V. 219-20. Quakers (that, like to lanterns, bear Their light within them) will not swear.] Quakers refuse to swear, and in all cases, except criminal cases, their simple affirmation is held sufficient in a court of justice. Dryden, in his fable of the Hind and Panther, says, "Among the tim'rous kind, the quaking hare Profess'd neutrality, but would not swear." By inward light, our author means the gifts, revelations, workings of the spirit, and other enthusiastic fancies which distinguished the founders of this sect. V. 221-2. Their gospel is an accidence By which they construe conscience.] Warburton says the meaning of this passage is, "that they interpret Scripture almost literally." V. 223-4. And hold no sin so deeply red, As that of breaking Priscian's head.] Alluding to their using the words thee and thou for you. Priscian was a famous grammarian, who flourished at Constantinople in the early part of the sixth century. V. 225-6. The head and founder of their order, of That stirring hats held worse than murder.] One the whimsical or senseless peculiarities of the Quakers is refusing 1 |