a six weeks' siege, captures Pembroke, and crushes the movement".

Tumults occur in London and many other places, and an army is raised in Kent, in favour of the king.

The duke of Hamilton P induces the
Scots to espouse the royal cause.
The young duke of York escapes
from St. James's, April 22.

The Kentish rising occurs, May 23; six ships of war in the Downs mount the king's flag, and repair to Holland. The prince of Wales takes the command, and appears at the mouth of the Thames with a fleet of nineteen ships, early in July.

Fairfax defeats the Kentish men at Maidstone, June 1. A party of them, under the earl of Norwich (George Goring), endeavour to enter London, but being foiled by the vigilance of Skippon, retire into Essex, and occupy Colchester, June 12.

Colonel John Morris surprises Pontefract Castle, June 3; he holds it for the king.

The Scots enter England, July 5, where Berwick and Carlisle are in the hands of the royalists under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Cromwell and Lambert advance, and totally defeat them near Preston, Aug. 17; the duke of Hamilton is captured at Uttoxeter, Aug. 20, but Langdale conceals himself in London, and escapes to the Continent'.

The earl of Holland appears in arms at Kingston, July 5. He is defeated and put to flight, July 7, and captured at St. Neot's, July 10.

Colchester surrenders to Fairfax, Aug. 27. Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, two of the prisoners, are shot by virtue of the parliamentary

ordinances, the same evening. The earl of Norwich and Lord Capel' are reserved for trial.

The prince's fleet retires to Holland, at the end of August, without attempting to rescue the king.

On the proposition of the Peers, (Sept. 11,) negotiations are resumed with the king. They were opened at | Newport, Sept. 18, and continued until Nov. 27, when the king agreed to most of the terms demanded".

The marquis of Ormond returns to Ireland, Sept. 29.

Cromwell advances into Scotland, in September, and disperses some new levies of the royalists. He retakes Berwick, and Carlisle, and returns to London, Dec. 6, when he establishes himself at Whitehall.

The Levellers, while the negotiations are carried on, demand the blood of the king more vehemently than before. He is seized at Newport, by order of the council of the army, Nov. 30, and imprisoned in Hurst Castle.

The council of officers publish a declaration accusing the parliament of perfidy, and desire all well-affected members to resort to them, Nov. 30. At the same time several regiments march into London.

The parliament vote, after a three days' debate, that the king's concessions are a sufficient ground for a settlement, Dec. 5. On the next day, the House is "purged" by Colonel Thomas Pride, when 47 members are seized and imprisoned", and 96 excluded from the House.

The remains of the parliament (known as the Rump) vote the late treaty with the king dishonourable and dangerous, Dec. 13; and afterwards

of the parliament; to leave also the reduction of Ireland in their hands; to pass an act of oblivion; to abolish episcopacy, take the Covenant, and receive the Assembly of Divines and the Directory. The political propositions the king agreed to; he also consented to allow, for a limited period, of the Assembly and the Directory, but he refused to subscribe the Covenant, or to deny the divine origin of episcopacy, though he was willing, probably from deference to the views of Archbishop Usher, to

strip bishops of their property, and to be satisfied

with a bare recognition of an inherent difference between their order and that of presbyters.

* He was originally a drayman. He was made one of Cromwell's House of Peers, and died Oct. 23, 1658.

Lord Grey of Groby pointed them out.

It mustered only about fifty members, and appears to have been at the absolute disposal of the army.

These were, to leave the militia at the disposal

NOTE.

THE HIGH COUrt of Justice.

MOST writers agree that this court was the mere tool of the army, but Mrs. Hutchinson maintains the direct contrary, in a passage which deserves attention :

"The gentlemen that were appointed his (the king's) judges, and divers others, saw in him a disposition so bent on the ruin of all that opposed him, and of all the righteous and just things that they had contended for, that it was upon the consciences of many of them, that if they did not execute justice upon him, God would require at their hands all the blood and desolation which should arise by their suffering him to escape, when God had brought him into their hands. Although the malice of the malignant party and their apostate brethren seemed to threaten them, yet they thought they ought to cast themselves upon God, while they acted with a good conscience for Him and for their country. Some of them afterwards, for excuse, belied themselves, and said they were under the

He had for some years been an associate of the parliamentarians, and had taken the Covenant.

The delay is believed to have been occasioned

I lived to see that saying of Christ fulfilled, He that will save his life shall lose it, and he that for My sake will lose his life shall save it,' when afterwards it fell out that all their prudent declensions saved not the lives of some nor the estates of

others.

"As for Mr. Hutchinson, although he was very much confirmed in his judgment concerning the cause, yet herein being called to an extraordinary action, whereof many were of several minds, he

addressed himself to God by prayer, desiring the Lord that if, through any human frailty, he were led into any error or false opinion in these great transactions, He would open his eyes, and not suffer him to proceed, but that He would confirm his spirit in the truth, and lead him by a right enlightened conscience; and finding no check, but a confirmation in his conscience that it was his duty to act as he did, he, upon serious debate, both privately, and in his addresses to God, and in conferences with conscientious, upright, unbiassed persons, proceeded to sign the sentence against the king."

therefore did forbear to name me, though
I was then in so great an employment
under them;" and he was not only con-
tinued in his post, but was almost imme-
of State.
diately after appointed one of the Council

On the other hand, however, we have the statement of Thomas Waite, one of the regicides, made after his surrender, and now remaining in the Public Record Office. He alleges that he was sent for to parliawhen he found himself named as a member ment by menacing letters, and was amazed of the court. That he attended on the first day only, but that eight or ten days after he was forced by Cromwell to subscribe his name; and that he was always after looked on suspiciously, from his known unwillingness. The plea, however, did not avail him, and he remained in the Tower till the year 1664, when he and several others were delivered to one Capt. Lambert "for transportation," but where they were sent, or what became of them, does not appear.

Mrs. Hutchinson's statement, that men were "neither persuaded nor compelled" to take part in the proceedings, is, in substance, made also by Whitelock. He was, he says, named one of the committee of thirty-eight to draw up the charge, but he never attended, and when his advice was requested by the rest, withdrew into the One hundred and fifty persons were country, taking his fellow-commissioner of named in the ordinance as commissioners the great seal (Sir Thomas Widdrington) of the court, but many of them never sat; with him; in consequence he was left out others withdrew at different stages of the of the ordinance, which named the com- proceedings, and only fifty-eight signed the missioners: "I having declared my judg-death-warrant, the first three names being ment in the house against this proceeding those of John Bradshaw, Thomas Grey, .. so that they knew my mind, and and Oliver Cromwell.

• Tower Records, in Thirtieth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, App., p. 342.

THE USE O

CANTILE LENI

CUATION,

THE government of England might have been with propriety styled a Commonwealth from the 4th of January, 1649, when the Lower House of Parliament voted that the supreme authority resided in themselves alone as the representatives of the people, but the title was not formally assumed until the day of the murder of King Charles.

The House of Peers, reduced to less than twenty sitting members, was in a few days after voted useless, and all power appeared to reside in the Com

mons, and a Council of States which they had created. They were, however, in reality, but the puppets of the "grandees of the army," and of these, one man was so conspicuously the chief, that the ensuing ten years may be correctly described as the reign of Oliver Cromwell".

This remarkable man, born at Huntingdon, April 25, 1599, was the son of Robert Cromwell, and the grandson of Sir Henry Williams (or Cromwell). of Hinchinbrook, who claimed descent from the ancient princes of Wales.

The members of the first council were, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke, Salisbury, lords Grey of Werke and Grey of Groby; Sir Thomas Fairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Ludlow, and Hutchinson, soldiers; Bradshaw, Rolles, St. John, Whitelock, and Wilde, lawyers; Sir Arthur Hasilrigge, Sir Harry Vane, Pennington (formerly lord mayor), and 22 others of less note. The palace of Whitehall was assigned to them; they were to hold office for one year only. They divided themselves into five committees, for the army, navy, Ireland, foreign affairs, and law, and the minutes of their proceed-racter of King Cromwell." ings are preserved in the Public Record Office:

Walter Frost was their general secretary, and John Milton their secretary for foreign tongues. With some changes in the men, effected by ballot, this was the executive until Cromwell dispersed the parliament, but that event had been preceded by fierce dissensions between the civilians and the military members.

b Such seems to have been the view of his con temporaries; as Whitelock mentions, under date Dec. 18, 1649, the seizure of "a packet of scanda lous books," one of which was named "The Cha

Oliver was in 1616 sent to Sidney Sus- | Fairfax, the lord-general, gave himself sex College, Cambridge, and subse-up blindly to the bidding of Cromwell, quently professed to study the law in suffered the parliament to be reduced London, but was not distinguished for to a mere committee of the army, and orderly conduct or application in either. saw the king put to death without an He soon retired to the country, and effort to save him; but he would not married; obtained, by bequest from make war on his fellow-Presbyterians an uncle, a considerable addition to of Scotland, and thus resigned his his property; and held largely as a command, which, as a matter of course, lessee from the bishop of Ely. He had became the prize of Cromwell. A short now become a Puritan, but was named space sufficed for him to overthrow a justice of the peace for his native the Irish, the Scots, and the young town in a new charter granted in king himself; when the parliament at1630. He was member for Hunting- tempted to reduce the army, they fell don in the first three parliaments of also, and Cromwell became lord-proCharles I., and was a person of suffi- tector, and aspired to the higher name cient consequence to greatly impede of king, but this his own officers * the drainage of the Fen district, which would not allow him to assume. had been granted to the earl of Bedford, with powers that were generally regarded as too extensive. On the failure of his kinsman Hampden's attempt to resist the payment of shipmoney, many Puritan families (Hampden's and Cromwell's among them) attempted to retire to New England, but were obliged to disembark from their ships.

Cromwell sat in the Long Parliament as member for Cambridge, and when the civil war broke out he soon distinguished himself by his courage and address. The compact organization of the eastern counties, known as the Association, was mainly his work, although Lord Kimbolton was the nominal head. Cromwell, however, would not long be his subordinate; quarrels ensued, and the result was the Selfdenying Ordinance, which removed Essex and the Presbyterians, remodelled the army, gained the victory of Naseby, and extinguished the war.

The principal of these were Desborough, his brother-in-law; Fleetwood, his son-in-law; Lambert, Ludlow, and Harrison.

Foreign conquests had been so long unknown to England, that these acquisitions greatly strengthened his government. Waller, the poet, who from a royalist (see A.D. 1643) had become the panegyrist of the Protector, exclaims:

"Our dying hero from the continent

The republicans, whom Cromwell had overthrown, had governed with vigour, and had raised the reputation of the country abroad; the Protector followed a like course. He speedily concluded the Dutch war, on his own terms, saw his alliance sedulously courted by both France and Spain, chastised the insolence of the Barbary corsairs and the petty Italian states, and did much to redeem his declaration that "he would make the name of an Englishman as much feared as that of a Roman had ever been." He turned his arms, on no very evident provocation, against the Spaniards, wrested both Jamaica and Dunkirk from them, and captured or destroyed their treasure-ships. He allied himself with France, and obliged the intriguing Mazarin" to consent to exclude the royalist exiles, as the price of his assistance in the Low Countries; he also compelled him to protect the Protestant Vaudois against the cruelty

Nor hath he left us prisoners to our isle;
Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.
From civil broils he did us disengage,
Found nobler objects for our martial rage;
And, with wise conduct, to his country show'd
The ancient way of conquering abroad."

h Julius Mazarin, of a Sicilian family, was borry in 1602, at Piscina, in the Abbruzzi. By a long course of intrigue he attained the direction of affairs in France, trained up Louis XIV. in ideas of en croachment on his neighbours, and prepared the way for his conquests. His views were less grand than those of Richelieu, but he was at least as

Ravish'd whole towns; and forts from Spaniards cruel, and more cunning. Mazarin became a car

dinal, aggrandised his family, and died in 1661, entitled, as his only commendation, to the praise of a patron of letters.

Cromwell interested himself warmly in favour of these people. He offered them lands in Lic