and cowardly patience of the remaining company, all was abandoned to his pleasure; with the old hulk, and new mis-shapen and disagreeing pieces of his own, he made up, with much ado, that piratical vessel which we have seen him command, and which, how tight indeed it was, may best be judged by its perpetual leaking. force or policy, but of the divine justice and pre destination; and, though we see a man, like that which we call Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must, needs be convinced, that the hand is moved by some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so violent, that the strong"First then, (much more wicked than those fool- est men in the world cannot draw up against it; ish daughters in the fable, who cut their old father and none are so weak, but they may sail down into pieces, in hope by charms and witchcraft to with it. These are the spring-tides of public make him young and lusty again) this man en-affairs, which we see often happen, but seek in deavoured to destroy the building, before he vain to discover any certain causes : could imagine in what manner, with what materials, by what workmen, or what architect, it was to be rebuilt. Secondly, if he had dreamt himself to be able to revive that body which he had killed, yet it had been but the insupportable insolence of an ignorant mountebank; and thirdly (which concerns us nearest), that very new thing, which he made out of the ruins of the old, is no more like the original, either for beauty, use, or duration, than an artificial plant, raised by the fire of a chymist, is comparable to the true and natural one which he first burnt, that out of the ashes of it he might produce an imperfect similitude of his own making. "Your last argument is such (when reduced to syllogism, that the major proposition of it would make strange work in the world, if it were received for truth; to wit, that he who has the best parts in a nation, has the right of being king over it. We had enough to do here of old with the contention between two branches of the same family what would become of us, when every man in England should lay his claim to the government? And truly, if Cromwell should have commenced his plea, when he seems to have begun his ambition, there were few persons besides, that might not at the same time have put in theirs too. But his deserts, I suppose, you will date from the same term that I do his great demerits, that is, from the beginning of our late calamities (for, as for his private faults before, I can only wish, and that with as much charity to him as to the public that he had continued in them till hisdeath, rather than changed them for those of his latter days); and therefore we must begin the consideration of his greatness from the unlucky era of our own misfortune; which puts me in mind of what was said less truly of Pompey the Great, Nostrâ miseriâ magnus es. But, because the general ground of your augmentation consists in this, that all men who are effecters of ex traordinary mutations in the world, must needs have extraordinary forces of nature, by which they are enabled to turn about, as they please, so great a wheel; I shall speak first a few words upon this universal proposition, which seems so reasonable, and is so popular, before I descend to the particular examination of the eminences of that person which is in question. "I have often observed (with all submission and resignation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence) that when the fulness and maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human -Omnia fluminis In mare, nunc lapides adesos, Cùm fera diluvies quietos Irritat amnes. Hor. 3 Carm. xxix. "And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be so); but it is God that breaks up He did not assemble the setpents and the monsters of Africa, to correct the pride of the Egyptians; but called for his armies of locusts out of Ethiopia, and formed new ones of vermin out of the very dust; and because you see a whole country destroyed by these, you will argue from thence they must needs have both the craft of foxes, and the courage of lions? those who are born for the erection of new empires. "And, I confess, I find nothing of that kind, no not any shadow (taking away the false light of some prosperity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it. And certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of the former, than by men's actions; or of the latter than by their writings or speeches. As for these latter (which are least in merit, or rather which are only the instruments of mischief, where the other are wanting) I think you can hardly pick out the name of a man who ever was called great, besides him we are now speaking of, who never left the memory behind him of one wise or witty apophthegm even amongst his domestic servants or greatest flatterers. That little in print, which remains upon a sad record for him, is such, as a satire against him would not have made him say, for fear of trans "It is easy to apply this general observation to the particular case of our troubles in England: and that they seem only to be meant for a temporary chastisement of our sins, and not for a total abolishment of the old, and introduction of a new government, appears probable to me from these considerations, as far as we may be bold to make a judgment of the will of God in future events. First, because he has suffered nothing to settle or take root in the place of that, which hath been so unwisely and unjustly removed, that none of these untempered mortars can hold out against the next blast of wind, nor any stone stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have refused, be made again the head of the corner. For, when the indisposed and long-tor-gressing too much the rules of probability. mented commonwealth has wearied and spent itself almost to nothing, with the chargeable, various, and dangerous experiments of several mounte-banks, it is to be supposed, it will have the wit at last to send for a true physician, especially when it sees (which is the second consideration) most evidently (as it now begins to do, and will do every day more and more, and might have done perfectly long since) that no usurpation (under what name or pretext soever) can be kept up without open force, nor force without the continuance of those oppressions upon the people, which will at last tire out their patience, though it be great even to stupidity. They cannot be so dull (when poverty and hunger begins to wet their understanding) as not to find out this no extraordinary mystery, that it is madness in a nation to pay three millions a year for the maintaining of their servitude under tyrants, when they might live free for nothing under their princes. This, I say, will not always lie hid, even to the slowest capacities; and the next truth they will discover afterwards is, that a whole people can never have the will, without having at the same time the power, to redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not look (me thinks) as if God had forsaken the family of that man, from whom he has raised up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all other commendable qualities, as ever lived perhaps (for so many together, and so young) in any other family in the whole world. Especially, if we add hereto this consideration, that by protecting and preserving some of them already through as great dangers as ever were past with safety, either by prince or private person, he has given them already (as we may reasonably hope it to be meant) a promise and earnest of his future favours. And lastly (to return closely to the discourse from which I have a little digressed) because I see nothing of those excellent parts of nature, and mixture of merit with their vices, in the late disturbers of our peace and happiness, that uses to be found in the persons of I know not what you can produce for the justification of his parts in this kind, but his having been able to deceive so many particular persons, and so many whole parties; which if you please to take notice of for the advantage of his intellectuals, I desire you to allow me the liberty to do so too when I am to speak of his morals. The truth of the thing is this, that if craft be wisdom, and dissimulation wit, (assisted both and improved with hypocrisies and perjuries) I must not deny him to have been singular in both; but so gross was the manner in which he made use of them, that, as wise men ought not to have believed him at first, so no man was fool enough to believe him at last: neither did any man seem to do it, but those who, thought they gained as much by that dissembling, as he did by his. His very actings of godliness grew at last as ridiculous, as if a player by putting on a gown, should think he represented excellently a woman, though his beard at the same time were seen by all the spectators. If you ask me, why they did not hiss, and explode him off the stage; I can only answer, that they durst not do so, because the actors and the door-keepers were too strong for the company. I must confess that by these arts (how grossly soever managed, as by hypocritical praying and silly preaching, by unmanly tears and whinings, by falsehoods, and perjuries even diabolical) he had at first the good-fortune (as men call it, that is, the ill-fortune) to attain his ends; but it was because his ends were unreasonable, that no human reason could foresee them; which made them, who had to do with him, believe, that he was rather a wellmeaning and deluded bigot, than a crafty and malicious impostor : that these arts were helped by an indefatigable industry, (as you term it) I am so far from doubting, that I intended to object that diligence, as the worst of his crimes. It makes me almost mad, when I hear a man commended for his diligence in wickedness. If I were his son, I should wish to God he had been a more lazy person, and that > the empire; it was boldly done, to set the me tropolis of the whole world on fire, and undauntedly play upon his barp whilst he saw it burning; I could reckon up five hundred boldnesses of that great person (for why should not he, too, be called so?) who wanted, when he was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed any woman in the like necessity. he might have found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us, "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood," Isai. lix. 7." He travels with iniquity," Psal. vii. 14." He deviseth mischief upon his bed," Psal. xxxiv. 4. "They search out iniquity, they accomplish a diligent search," Psal. Ixiv. 6. and in a multitude of other places. And would it not seem ridiculous, to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his inde-I may venture, I think, to affirm, that no man fatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilst the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too are all asleep; "It would look (I must confess) like envy,or too much partiality, if I should say that personal kind of courage had been deficient in the man we speak of; I am confident it was not: and yet ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the rate of fewer wounds and dangers of his own body; and though his valour might perhaps have given a just pretension to one of the first charges in an army, it could not certainly be a sufficient ground for a title to the command of three nations. "What then shall we say? that he did all this by witchcraft? He did so, indeed, in a great measure, The chartreux wants the warning of a bell within. was "And, if the diligence of wicked persons be so much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggeration of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can avoid the same censure. If the undertaking bold, and vast, and unreasonable designs can deserve that honourable name, I am sure, Faux and his fellow gun-powder friends, will have cause to pretend, though not an equal, yet at least the next place of honour: neither can I doubt but if they too had succeeded, they would have found their applauders and admirers. It was bold unquestionably for a man in defiance of all human and divine laws (and with so little probability of a long impunity) so publicly and so outrageously to murder his master; it was bold with so much insolence and affront to expel and disperse all the chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power; bold to violate so openly and so scornfully all acts and constitutions of a nation and afterwards even of his own making; it was bold to assume the authority of calling, and bolder yet of breaking, so many parliaments: it was bold to trample upon the patience of his own and provoke that of all neighbouring countries; it was bold, I say, above all boldnesses, to usurp this tyranny to himself: and impudent above all impudences, to endeavour to transmit it to his posterity. But all this boldness is so far from being a sign of manly courage, (which dares not transgress the rules of any other virtue) that it is only a demonstration of brutish madness or diabolical possession. In both which last cases there used frequent examples to appear of such extraordinary force as may justly seem more wonderful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell; neither is it stranger to believe that a whole nation should not be able to govern him and a mad army, than that five or six men should not be strong enough to bind a distracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wickedness, but it gives him the boldness to attempta greater. It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother, and all the chief nobility of But, truly, and unpassionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person, which might be thought to have produced those of his fortune, I can espy no other but extraordinary diligence and infinite dissimulation; and believe he was exalted above his nation, partly by his own faults, but chiefly for ours. "We have brought him thus briefly (not through all his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped authority; and because you say it was great pity be did not live to command more kingdoms, be pleased to let me represent to you, in a few words, how well I conceive he governed these. And we will divide the consideration into that of his foreign and domestic actions. The first of his foreign, was a peace with our brethren of Holland (who were the first of our neighbours that God chastised for having had so great a hand in the encouraging and abetting our troubles at home): who would not imagine at first glimpse that this had been the most virtuous and laudable deed, that his whole life could have made any parade of? but no man can look upon all the circumstances, without perceiving, that it was purely the sale and sacrificing of the greatest advantages that this country could ever hope, and was ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private interests of his covetousness and ambition, and the security of his new and unsettled usurpation. No sooner is that danger past, but this Beatus Pacificus is kindling a fire in the northern world, and carrying a war two thousand miles off westwards. Two millions a year (besides all the rails of his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice now either his avarice or his prodigality, as the two hundred pounds were, that he was born to. He must have his prey of the whole Indies both by sea and land, this great alligator. To satisfy our Anti-Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalein) we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus, as well as Sylla, of our nation, whom God never forsook in any of his undertakings) I desire them to consider, bow, since the English name was ever heard of, it never received so great and so infamous a blow as un. der the imprudent conduct of this unlucky Faustus; and herein let me admire the justice of God in this circumstance, that they who had enslaved their country (though a great army, which I wish may be observed by ours with trembling) should be so shamefully defeated by the hands of forty slaves. It was very ridiculous to see how prettily they endeavoured to hide this ignominy under the great name of the Conquest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should have the impudence to brag afterwards of the victory, because, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet they quartered that night in a village of the enemy's. The war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly; and how much we have gotten by it let the custom-house and exchange inform you; and, if he please to boast of the taking a part of the silver fleet, (which indeed nobody else but he, who was the sole gainer, has cause to do) at least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which is the only loser) to complain of the loss of twelve hundred of her ships. "But because it may here perhaps be answered, that his successes nearer home have extinguished the disgrace of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more to be remembered for his glory, than St. Domingo for his disadvantage; I must confess, as to the honour of the English courage, that they were not wanting upon that occasion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly against their master) to the upholding of the renown of their warlike ancestors. But for his particular share of it, who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly abroad, I can only say, that, for less money than he in the short time of his reign exacted from his fellowsubjects, some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their own persons) have added to the dominion of England, not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself. And this being all considerable as concerning his enterprizes abroad, let us examine in the next place, how much we owe him for his justice and good government at home. “And, first, he found the commonwealth (as they then called it) in a ready stock of about 800,000 pounds; he left the commonwealth (as he had the impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and an half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed indeed, in comparison of the golden times of our late princes; he left it as much again more decayed than he found it : and yet not only no prince in England, but no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infamous means to raise monies. I shall only instance in one that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy of it. That which he put in practice was decimation ; which was the most impudent breach of all public faith By decimation, is here meant, not the putting to death of every tenth man (which is the usual sense of this term), but the levying of the tenth penny on the estates of the Royalists. The word is so used by sir John Denham. Hurd. that the whole nation had given, and all private capitulations which himself had made, as the nation's general and servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history, from any of the most barbarous generals of the most barbarous people. Which, because it has been most excellently and most largely laid open by a whole book written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look upon that author, when you would recollect all the particulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The other design, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the calling in and establishment of the Jews at London; from which he was rebuked by the universal outcry of the divines,and even of the citizens too, who took it ill, that a considerable number at least amongst themselves were not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for this design, they say, he invented (oh Antichrist! Hovgov and Movngos! to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could have reach'd to the purchase. And this indeed, if he had done only to reward that nation, which had given the first noble example of crucifying their king, it might have had some appearance of gratitude: but he did it only for love of their mammon; and would have sold afterwards for as much more St. Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God, that he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that heathenish way of the Common-prayer book. But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for getting money; when every penny, that for almost five years he took every day from every man living in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery, as if it had been taken by a thief upon the highways? Was it not so? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assistance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to the command of all men's purses, than he might have had to any one's whom he had met and been too strong for upon a road? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr. Coney3, to be disputed by a legal trial, he (which was the highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned the counsel of the plaintiff'; that is, he shut up the law itself a close prisoner, that no man might have relief from, or access to it. And it ought to be remembered, that this was done by those men, who a few years before had so bitterly decried, and openly opposed, the king's regular and formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money. But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of justice, it cannot be denied that he set up new ones; and such as they were, that as no virtuous prince before would, so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many hundred years under such a form of justice as has been able regularly to punish all men that offended against it; and is it so deficient just now, that we must seek out new ways how to proceed 3 Which the reader may see in lord Clarendon, H. P. vol. iii. fol. p. 596. HURD against offenders? The reason, which can only | be given in nature for a necessity of this, is, because those things are now made crimes, which were never esteemed so in former ages; and there must needs be a new court set up to punish that, which all the old ones were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses (which if I should undertake to do, I should never get to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross. Let any man show me (for, though I pretend not to much reading, I will defy him in all history) let any man show me (I say) an example of any nation in the world (though much greater than ours) where there have, in the space of four years, been made so many prisoners, only out of the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination. I grant you, that Marius and Sylla, and the accursed triumvirate after them, put more people to death; but the reason, I think, partly was, because in these times that had a mixture of some honour with their madness, they thought it a more civil revenge against a Roman, to take away his life, than to take away his liberty. But truly in the point of murder too, we have little reason to think that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples that have ever been set it in other countries. Our judges and our courts of justice have not been idle: and, to omit the whole reign of our late king (till the beginning of the war), in which no drop of blood was ever drawn but from two or three ears, I think the longest time of our worst princes scarce saw many more executions, than the short one of our blest reformer. And we saw, and smelt in our open streets (as I marked to you at first) the broiling of human bowels as a burnt-offering of a sweet savour to our idol; but all murdering, and all torturing (though after the subtilest invention of his predecessors of Sicily) is more humane and more supportable, than his selling of Christians, Englishmen, gentlemen; his selling of them (oh monstrous! oh incredible) to be slaves in America. If his whole life could be reproached with no other action, yet this alone would weigh down all the multiplicity of crimes in any of our tyrants; and I dare only touch, without stopping or insisting upon, so insolent and so execrable a cruelty, for fear of falling into so violent (though a just) passion, as would make me exceed that temper and moderation, which I resolve to observe in this discourse with you. "These are great calamities; but even these are not the most insupportable that we have endured; for so it is, that the scorn, and mockery, and insultings of an enemy, are more painful | than the deepest wounds of his serious fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwittily and ungracefully merry) with our sufferings: he loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to show his power of doing or saying any thing It would ill befit mine, or any civil mouth, to repeat those words which he spoke concerning the most sacred of our English laws, the Petition of Right, and Magna Charta 4, To In the case of Coney, before mentioned. day, you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst come near him: to morrow, dinging of cushions, and playing at snowballs, with his servants. This month, he assembles a parlia ment, and professes himself with humble tears to be only their servant and their minister; the next month, he swears by the living God, that he will turn them out of doors, and he does so, in his princely way of threatening, bidding them, "Turn the buckles of their girdles behind them." The representative of whole, nay of three whole nations, was in his esteem so contemptible a meeting, that he thought the affronting and expelling of them to be a thing of so little conse quence, as not to deserve that he should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall we call this? boldness or brutishness? rashness cr phrensy? There is no name can come up to it; and therefore we must leave it without one. Now a parliament must be chosen in the new manner, next time in the old form, but all cashiered still after the newest mode. Now he will govern by major-generals, now by one house, now by another house, now by no house; now the freak takes him, and he makes seventy peers of the land at one clap (extempore, and stans pede in uno); and, to manifest the absolute power of the potter, he chooses not only the worst clay he could find, but picks up even the dirt and mire, to form out of it his vessels of honour. It was said anciently of Fortune, that, when she had a mind to be merry and to divert herself, she was wont to raise up such kind of people to the highest dignities. This son of Fortune, Cromwell, (who was himself one of the primest of her jests) found out the true haut goust of this pleasure, and rejoiced in the extravagance of his ways, as the fullest demonstration of his uncontroulable sovereignty. Good God! What have we seen? and what have we suffered? what do all these actions signify? what do they say aloud to the whole nation, but this (even as plainly as if it were proclaimed by heralds through the streets of London), "You are slaves and fools, and so I will use you!" "These are briefly a part of those merits which you lament to have wanted the reward of more kingdoms, and suppose that, if he had lived longer, he might have had them: which I am so far from concurring to, that I believe his seasonable dying to have been a greater good-fortune to him, than all the victories and prosperities of his life. For he seemed evidently (methinks) to be near the end of his deceitful glories; his own army, grew at last as weary of him as the rest of the people; and I never passed of late before his palace (his, do I call it? I ask God and the king pardon) but I never passed of late before Whitehall, without reading upon the gate of it, “Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin ." But it pleased God to take him from the ordinary courts of men, and juries of his peers, to his own high court of justice; which being more merciful than ours below, there is a little room yet left for the hope of his friends, if he have any; though the outward unrepentance of his death afford but small materials for the work of charity, especially if he designed even then to entail his own injustice upon his children, § Dan. v. 25. |