mind divided against itself easily falls under the sway of others, and the absence of Cromwell and Ireton left the field open to his Presbyterian wife and to the Presbyterian ministers whose counsel he sought. For a moment it seemed as if there would be opportunity for him to persist in his old course, and that he might defend England loyally from a Scottish invasion. The resolution of the Council of State to invade Scotland put an end for ever to the delusion. To invade Scotland was to attack the person of the young King and to shatter those hopes of a future constitutional understanding which Fairfax had never at any time wholly thrown aside.' (Pp. 293–295.)

The obstacle to any such constitutional understanding was for the time not the Parliament, with its wild political theories, but the army, with Cromwell at its head. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate had their foundations, not in the goodwill of the English people, but in the valour and military skill which triumphed at Drogheda, at Dunbar, and at Worcester.

But it was one of the ironies of the national situation that it was not only moderate men who regarded the state of affairs with misgiving; some of those who had been strenuous opponents of monarchical tyranny were equally opposed to the rule of the army, which they were keen enough to perceive was as much a bar to individual freedom as was the power of an absolute king. But their ideas were too visionary to enable them to see that there was in the existing temper of the people no middle way between the continuance of military rule and the return of a Stuart. Lilburne and the Levellers were in this position:

'Advocating direct government by a democratic Parliament and the fullest development of individual liberty, the Levellers looked with suspicion on the Council of State as a body which might possibly be converted into an executive authority independent of Parliament, and thoroughly distrusted Cromwell as aiming at military despotism. Wellintentioned and patriotic as they were, they were absolutely destitute of political tact, and had no sense of the real difficulties of the situation, and, above all, of the impossibility of rousing the popular sympathy on behalf of abstract reasonings.' (P. 33.)

But Lilburne, who had suffered at the hands of the Star Chamber, was not the man to fear even Cromwell and his soldiers, and he threw himself heartily into an agitation to obtain the reappointment of agitators and the revival of 'the disused general council of the army, in order that these 'agitators might again have an equal voice with the officers in determining the political action of the army.' Lilburne also asked, in a publication with the suggestive title of England's New Chains,' that the Council of State might be

superseded by committees of short continuance, frequently and exactly accountable for the discharge of their trusts, and he also asked that parliament should put in practice the Selfdenying Ordinance, and pointed out how dangerous it was for one and the same person to be continued long in the highest 'command of a military power.' The book was declared by Parliament to be a seditious publication, and to tend to mutiny in the army, and its author was to be proceeded against for treason. It would be without substantial advantage to follow the doings and writings of Lilburne throughout that year; the latter, such as the Outery of the Young Men,' were all published with the same end, to protest, to use his own words, against the military power being thrust into the very office and seat of civil authority,' and ⚫ our Parliament put down, and the name and power thereof 'transmitted to a picked party of your forcible selecting.' They are important as showing the feelings of the time and the difficulties which lay in the path of the Parliament and Cromwell. These difficulties were not lessened when in November Lilburne was placed on his trial before a special commission at the Guildhall, and was pronounced by the jury not guilty. From every part of the crowded hall a loud and unanimous shout arose in triumph.'

'The cry of the citizens in Guildhall was substantially identical with the cry which eleven years later was to call for a Free Parliament, and thereby to bring about the Restoration. In the meanwhile it might be permitted to those who had to face the immediate dangers of the situation to ask how the government was to be carried on. It is certain that few, if any, of the men in possession of power contemplated a permanent tenure of it at the will of the military commanders. They imagined it possible that at no distant time they would be able to retire in favour of another Parliament chosen by a new constituency, as free, if not quite as democratic, as that which Lilburne declared to be the sole legitimate representative of the nation.' (P. 189.)

Lilburne was released by the Council of State; his acquittal showed that there was no probability of national contentment as long as the country was under the inflexible rule of a stern and disciplined army. It was the need for such an army in Ireland, and subsequently in Scotland, which was the true safeguard for the time of the new constitution.

In truth, the position of the Parliament was humiliating in the extreme; a body which had removed a king to give liberty to a people was obliged to use the very methods. against which in his hands it would have been eager to protest. Thus, on July 9, it passed a resolution 'declaring

'all ministers to be delinquents if they preached or prayed against the present government, publicly mentioned Charles or James Stuart, or refused to keep days of humiliation, or to publish acts and ordinances of Parliament.' This resolution was directed, not against the Royalist, but against the Presbyterian clergy, and was an attempt to put down criticism of the acts of the government. Such an attempt was not only useless but irritating to the country. The resolution was passed on July 9, and was followed in September by an act based on the same policy of repression, which enacted that no book or pamphlet was to be published without a license, and enumerated various penalties for publishing scandalous or libellous books. But such an act, as is usually the case, did not deter determined men from appealing to the people, and it tended rather to whet than to weaken the appetite of readers for seditious or critical literature.

'It was easier to pass such an Act than to enforce it. With London hungry for writings which would turn the laugh against the Government, unlicensed presses easily kept themselves in existence. Of the three principal Royalist newspapers, one, "Mercurius Eleneticus," disappeared after November 5. The other two, "Mercurius Pragmaticus" and "The Man in the Moon," were still in full swing at the end of the year. Nor was it easy to stop the flow of political pamphlets directed against the Commonwealth. Clement Walker, for instance, issued, under the title of "Anarchia Anglicana," a second part of his "History of Independency," in which he virulently attacked the existing Government. On October 24, Parliament ordered the arrest of the author, and on November 13, undeterred by its failure in Lilburne's case, sent him to the Tower and ordered him to be tried for high treason.' (P. 194.)

It is possible that these attempts to gag the press and to prevent free speech would have been less resented if it had not been for the substantial grievance that the cost of maintaining the army pressed upon every section of the nation. We ought not to set too much weight on what may be called the constitutional objections to the policy of Parliament when we bear in mind the common-sense dislike to it which was created in the mind of every one who had to pay for it. The king was dead, and the author of the Civil War was therefore no more. Why, then, many a man asked himself, should he have to bear the burden of a standing army, a weight heavier than had been yet imposed? The troops were entitled to free quarter; thus the country felt, as it were, in the power of a hostile army:

On the 6th [of March] the Council of State reported that the army

in England should consist of 32,000 men, besides 12,000 for Ireland. The pay of both armies would be 120,000l. a month, that is to say, 1,440,000l. a year. On the 8th Parliament resolved that three-fourths of this sum, amounting to 90,000l. a month, should be assessed on the counties, and the remainder raised in some manner not yet specified.' (Pp. 26-27.)

This was an immense sum for the country to find in those days, more especially after a period of civil war, which had ruined many of the foremost men in England. The Commonwealth, with its enormous army to keep up, 'was in grievous financial straits.' In April a deputation from Parliament went into the City to ask the merchants of London to lend some part of the 30,000l. a month which was left uncovered by the assessments. But in London there was no enthusiasm for the cause of Parliament, as, in spite of the arguments which were addressed to the meeting, not a penny could be obtained in the City, and Parliament had to fall back on hastening the sale of the deans and chapters' estates in order to raise the money 'required' (p. 45). It is impossible to doubt that, in such a state of affairs, a country monarchical in opinion yet in the hands of a weak republican government, annoyed by restrictions on all sides on its freedom, pressed to find money for a huge army which was always in evidence, would scarcely have tolerated the continuance of the nonmonarchical system had it not been, as we have said, for the military prowess of Cromwell in defeating the enemies of England in Ireland and Scotland. The difficulties in Ireland were, in truth, the opportunity of the republic.

So early in the year 1649 as January Rupert was at Kinsale, in March Charles had decided to go himself to Ireland if he could obtain sufficient money for the expedition, and at the end of May Ormond and Inchiquin started to reduce Dublin with an army of 10,000 men. In July Drogheda surrendered to Inchiquin, and on the 24th of the same month Monk was obliged to surrender Dundalk to the same leader. On June 28 Ormond invited Charles to cross over to Ireland, with a view to settle the difficulties which he foresaw were certain to arise between the Protestants and Catholics, who for a time had combined to obtain possession of Ireland. England was thus menaced, if Dublin fell, by a hostile invasion.

'The danger of an Irish invasion of England was greater in appearance than in reality; but history is full of examples of menaces which become formidable if they are not met with vigour and decision.

Cromwell at least had no doubt as to the necessity of putting an end for ever to threats which had been suspended over England since the utterance of those hasty words which more than anything else had cost Strafford his head. Another Royal Lord Lieutenant appeared to be repeating Strafford's words: "Your Majesty hath an army in Ireland which you may employ to reduce this kingdom." Yet Cromwell, eager as he was to set forth, was still tied to Westminster by his financial needs, perhaps, too, by the necessity of assuring himself that there was no immediate risk of a Scottish invasion.' (P. 103.)

It was not till August that Cromwell was able to obtain from Parliament the funds necessary for the payment of his troops. On the 15th he landed at Dublin, gladdened with the intelligence which he received, when on the point of embarkation, that Colonel Jones, who was defending Dublin, had decisively defeated Ormond's forces at Rathmines. It was time for vigorous measures, and Cromwell was not likely to fail in this particular. Dublin alone was in the hands of the parliamentary forces, and it was Cromwell's task to end once and for ever the raising of the Royalist standard in Ireland. How thoroughly he performed that work is well known; but Mr. Gardiner's clear and impartial narrative of the Irish campaign will remain a sure guide for the student of this period. To regard Cromwell's conduct as evidence of high military capacity would be a mistake; he led a disciplined and veteran army against undisciplined and somewhat raw troops; he was supreme in his command, he had no dissensions in his ranks to trouble him, and he had the sea as his base of operations, from which he could draw a permanent supply of munitions of war. Cromwell's first operation was to besiege and capture Drogheda. On September 11 the place was stormed, and all who were in arms were put to the sword. Historical controversy has raged around this act of Cromwell; how it came about is so shortly and powerfully described by Mr. Gardiner that it is desirable to give his account of it.

'Whilst the mass of the defeated garrison fled hurriedly down the sloping streets to gain the bridge, Aston and his principal officers, followed by some three hundred of the soldiers of the garrison, climbed the lofty steep of the Mill Mount, either to seek a refuge or to sell their lives as dearly as they could. It is possible that Cromwell, heated by the passion of the fight, ascribed their action to the latter motive. Cromwell's rages were never premeditated, and it always required some touch of concrete fact to arouse the slumbering wrath which lay coiling about his heart. Was the struggle, he may well have thought, not to be ended after he had burst over wall and entrenchment? At all events, it was not till he reached the foot of that