492 IV. 1658. Letter of CHAPTER XXIX. PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMONWEALTHSMEN. PETITION OF THE ROYALISTS. POSTURE OF LIS. BOOK THERE is a letter preserved among the papers of Pell, Cromwel's agent to the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, which throws great light upon this interesting crisis. The writer is Samuel Hartlib, a Pole settled in England, the correspondent of Milton and Boyle, the subject of the panegyric of Cowley, and one of the most en Essay IV, of Agriculture. The commendation is accompanied with a melancholy parenthesis: "So industrious and public-spirited men as I conceive Mr. Hartlib to be (if the gentleman be yet alive)." Hartlib appears to have unremittingly devoted his talents and his life to the service of his fellow-creatures, and, upon the Restoration of Charles the Second, to have been left in his old age to perish in want. Kennet, Register and Chronicle, p. 868, et seqq. XXIX. lightened and philanthropical men of his time. He CHAP. had a pension of three hundred pounds per annum during the times of the commonwealth and Cromwel, which he lost at the Restoration ". Writing to Pell, precisely one week after the dissolution, he says, "Believe me, sir, it was of such necessity, that, if the session had continued but two or three days longer, all had been in blood, both in city and country, upon Charles Stuart's account. An An army of ten thousand might have appeared with an ugly petition to the parliament for the reestablishing this person, presuming they should find a party favourable to their views in that assembly. Another army of ten thousand men was at the same time preparing to land in England, by the juggling (to say no worse) of our good neighbours on the continent. Besides, there was another petition set on foot in the city, for a commonwealth, which would have gathered like a snow-ball. But, by the resolute, sudden dissolving of the parliament, both these dangerous designs were mercifully prevented. Whether we shall have another parliament shortly, or a grand council of only optimates in the mean time, we cannot tell c." 1658. Perils atthe present tendant on crisis. It was no common advantage that the republi- Proceed b Kennet, ubi supra. Ayscough MSS in the British Museum, Letters to Pell, Vol. II, p. 48. See also Thurloe, Vol. VI, p. 781. And again, Vol. VII, p. 84. ings of the common wealths men. IV. 1658. on foot by them. cans had gained, while they had a clear majority in the representative assembly of the people of England who voted against the chief magistrate; and a great portion of them at least shewed themselves thoroughly alive and active to improve the opportunity which was thus afforded Petition set them. One of the measures they set on foot was a petition to be presented to parliament, which, without openly attacking the authority of the protector, contained such particulars as reflected most on his government, and were calculated, in proportion as they were made the subject of discussion and discourse, to wean those who entered into the sentiment they were designed to convey, from the system now in operation. The prayer of the petition recommended, among other things, that no tax might henceforth be levied upon the people but by common consent in parliament; that no persons might be reputed offenders, or proceeded against by imprisonment or otherwise, but such as were found actually transgressors of the law; that speedy consideration might be had of the case of many well-affected persons, who had been long under imprisonment, and some of them in remote places; and that no officer or soldier might be cashiered, but by regular trial, and sentence of a court-martial. Of this petition about fifty copies were printed, which had already received many thousand signatures, and, when complete, it was intended that it should be presented XXIX. by a certain number of the petitioners, fewer than CHAP. twenty, that they might not be construed as disturbers of the public peace d. 1659. the royal ists. Another petition is said to have been on the Petition of tapis, with a purpose that it should be presented i by ten thousand men, praying the parliament without delay to enter upon suitable measures for the restoration of Charles Stuart. The advocates for a republican government, and the partisans of the exiled king, had for some time been to a considerable degree mixed with each other: and, as the republicans conceived they could make use of the royalists in the first steps of a convulsion, for purposes the most remote from the intentions of the latter, so the royalists were many of them willing to believe, that their new allies were, as they professed to be, sincere converts, and disposed rather to restore the line of their ancient kings, than to sit down in inglorious neutrality under the reign of an usurper. They could not therefore persuade themselves but that, in an assembly, the majority of whom were plainly desirous of extinguishing the authority of Cromwel, they should find a party disposed to enter into their views. Coincident with these proceedings, there was Project for another, which struck immediately at the very the military d Thurloe, Vol. VI, p. 781. Ludlow, p. 598. A printed copy of this petition is to be found among the King's Tracts in the British Museum. • Hartlib, ubi supra. inducing to rise against their gene ral. IV. 1658. BOOK foundation of the protector's government. This was no less than an endeavour on the part of the republicans to seduce the military from the obedience and fidelity they had hitherto observed to their general. How far this conspiracy had proceeded has never been published. But Cromwel was the very man to meet this with the promptest and most effectual remedies, and he shewed in this and a thousand particulars on this trying occasion, that he had lost nothing of the energies that had heretofore distinguished him. He found colonel Packer, who was the major in his own regiment of horse, and Gladman, who commanded the troop in the regiment most immediately attached to his person, implicated in the intrigue Cromwel's against him. Having dissolved the parliament his officers. on Thursday, he summoned all the officers in discourse to Its effect. town to attend him at the Banqueting House on Saturday; and here, in an oration of two hours in length, he explained to them the present state of February 6. affairs, and the principle of his proceedings, in such a manner, as induced his auditors, with great fervour to profess their resolution to live and die in his cause. He then addressed himself to Packer and Gladman, and demanded an avowal of their sentiments. They answered, that they were most ready to fight against Charles Stuart and his adherents, but that they could not engage against they knew not whom, and for they knew not what. Hartlib, ubi supra. Thurloe, Vol. VI, p. 786. Ludlow, p. 599. |