BITTER REFLECTIONS 391 had prevented his opponents from taking their seats. He had, in defiance of the Magna Carta, instituted a special tribunal for the trial of his opponents, and had imprisoned and sold to slavery British citizens without any trial at all. Nevertheless, the king died the death of a criminal, and the successful soldier was reigning in Whitehall. The hand and seal of the one man were on the death-warrant of the other. These were arguments too evident to escape attention, too true to be refuted, and too serviceable not to be used by the royalist party as well as by the republicans, who bitterly accused Cromwell and his partisans of betraying the good old cause. CHAPTER XXII Richard Cromwell Protector. His Parliament. Vane's Speeches. On the Protector's Office. On Captives sent to Barbadoes. Military Cabals. Richard dissolves his Parliament. He resigns his Office. Restoration of the Long Parliament. RICHARD quietly succeeded to the power of the great protector, as the generals had agreed for the time to support him, and the nation knew that they could not resist the army. A letter of Henry Cromwell's from Dublin to his brother, as well as some written by Thurloe, prove that they had little expectation that the government would remain long in their hands. All the dissonant parties, which Oliver Cromwell had held under, now began to scheme and plot as if the existing government counted for nothing. While the republicans held secret meetings, the officers of the army met at Wallingford House, the residence of General Fleetwood; and but six weeks after the death of Oliver a deputation of two or three hundred officers, with Fleetwood at their head, appeared to demand that some experienced person should be made commanderin-chief, and that no officer should be cashiered without the sentence of a court-martial. Richard, in his reply, which had been prepared by Thurloe, his father's able adviser, observes: "You know the difficulties my father all this time wrestled with, and I believe no man RICHARD CALLS A PARLIAMENT 393 thinks that his death has lessened them." In truth he was asked to give up his power by the only men who could help him to maintain it. While Richard's refusal was accepted for the moment, his conciliatory language showed his weakness. Oliver had died seven months after dissolving his last parliament; the treasury was empty, the army in arrears, and as Richard's advisers did not feel their position strong enough to enforce his abitrary method of levying taxes and contributions, they felt themselves compelled to call a parliament. It was determined that the distribution of seats agreed on by the Long Parliament, and practised by Cromwell, should be abandoned, and that the writs of election should be issued according to what was called the ancient law, principally because, as Ludlow tells us, "it was well understood that mean and decayed boroughs might be much more easily corrupted than the numerous counties and considerable cities." It was determined that 30 members should be returned for Scotland and as many for Ireland, and the government arranged that they should be elected for places where the military garrisons could influence the course of the elections. All the arts of a corrupt government were put into play to procure partisans of the protector to be chosen. All the appointments in the army and civil list were in his hands. The officers of the admiralty and navy had the power of pressing at their pleasure the men of the seaport towns into their fleet. The sheriffs, who were men mostly chosen for their subserviency, made themselves very useful to the protectorate, disposing of the writs to whom they pleased, and acting as judges of the fitness of voters. As it was known that the members returned would be required to take an oath of fidelity to Richard Cromwell, the opposing parties had to consider how their scruples could be overcome. The Cavaliers were expressly directed by Charles Stuart to try to procure seats, and it was determined, after much deliberation amongst the republicans, to contest a number of places and sit in the House if elected. The influence of the government seems to have been principally directed against the republican party. Great efforts were made to prevent the election of Sir Henry Vane, who was believed to have gained a majority both in Bristol and Hull, two of the largest towns in the kingdom, though the sheriffs refused to return him; but, in spite of the threats of the court faction, he was elected for the small borough of Whitchurch, in Hampshire. Ludlow, too, was elected, and managed to keep his seat without taking any oath. Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Mr Thomas Scot, Bradshaw, Nevil, and some other well-known republicans, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, then in league with the commonwealth men, and Lord Fairfax, were also elected. Out of a House of 564 members, 504 of whom came from England, there were about 50 determined republicans and from 100 to 140 members who wavered between the protector and a republic, and perhaps 200 supporters of the government. The rest were persons of neutral or unknown opinions. The number of Cavaliers who found their way into the parliament was small, from which it may be concluded that their party had not yet become popular. The Upper House, as made up by Oliver Cromwell, was also summoned to assemble. The RICHARD'S UNEASY POSITION 395 parliament was solemnly convoked by Richard Cromwell, February 27, 1659. Vane, Hesilrige, and Ashley Cooper, the leaders of the Opposition, lost no time in directing against the government of the new protector a vigorous criticism, which his friends had neither the ability to confute, nor the power to silence. The title of Richard Cromwell was disputed; his right to call representatives from Scotland and Ireland questioned, and the upstart House of Lords turned into derision. was M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador, writes to Mazarin :1 "The more moderate among the republicans assert that it will be advisable to grant the protector the same prerogatives which accepted by the late king when the Long Parliament treated with him in the Isle of Wight," and it would have been well, as events proved, if such an arrangement could have been made and held to. Richard was not personally unpopular. "I never knew any gall or guile in him," said Hesilrige, his father's bitter and resolute opponent. He was just the sort of man to make a good constitutional king in quiet times, but was too fond of an easy life not to wish to escape being baited by republican orators, or bullied by unruly generals like his uncle, Desborough, or his brother-in-law, Fleetwood. On the bill entitled an Act of Recognition of Richard to be protector of the commonwealth being ready for the second time, there was a long silence. Hesilrige, moving himself upon his seat, was called 1 Bordeaux's Letters are printed in the Appendix of the History of Richard Cromwell, and the Restoration, London, 1856. |