Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/360

346 British dominions, and Charles Stuart, his brother, the duke of York, Ormond, Hyde, and fifteen others of the prince's adherents, were to be excluded from France 

CHAPTER VIII.

opened the year 1656 amid a multitude of plots and discontents. The enemies of the republic, royalists, anabaptists, levellers, were all busy in one quarter or another. Cleveland, the poet, who had been taken prisoner nine years before by David Leslie, at Newcastle, and expected to be hanged for his tirades against the Scotch, but had been dismissed by Leslie with the contemptuous words, "Let the poor knave go and sell his ballads," was now seized by colonel Haynes for seditious writings at Norwich, but Cromwell also dismissed him with like indifference.

At the close of the year the Jews, who had been forbidden England, hopeful from the more liberal mercantile notions of Cromwell, petitioned to be allowed to reside in this country, under certain conditions. Cromwell was favourable to the petition, which was presented by Manasseh Ben Israel, a great Portuguese Jew, of Amsterdam, though his council was against it on Scripture grounds; but Cromwell silently took them under his protection. There was also a great committee of trade in the house, under the earnest advocacy of the protector, for promoting commerce. Meantime, Cromwell vigorously prosecuted the war against Spain. Blake and Montague were ordered for the coast of Spain, to destroy the shipping in the harbour of Cadiz, and to see whether Gibraltar could not be seized, which Cromwell, in his letter to the admirals, pointed out as admirably adapted to promote and protect our trade, and keep the Spaniard in check. Yet even this project was not carried out without trouble from the malcontents. Some of the captains of the fleet, tampered with by Charles's emissaries, declared their disapproval of the enterprise, contending that we, and not the Spaniards, were in fault. Cromwell sent down Desborough to them, who weeded them out, and put others in their places. Blake and Montague then set sail, and reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz and Gibraltar in April, but found their defences too strong; they then proceeded to Lisbon, and brought the treaty with the Portuguese to a termination, and afterwards made an alarming visit to Malaga, and to Bailee, to curb the Moors. In July they returned to the Tagus, and in September a part of the fleet under captain Stayner, fell in with and defeated a fleet of eight sail, coming from America. He destroyed four of the vessels, and captured two, containing treasure worth from two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds.

Before this treasure reached England, Cromwell, who had exhausted his finances to fit out the fleet and prosecute the war with Spain, was compelled to call a parliament, not only to obtain supplies, but to take measures for the security of the nation against the designs of the royalists and their coadjutors, the levellers. This met on the 17th of September, 1656. But Cromwell did not allow all the members elected to sit in this parliament, any more than in the former ones. He knew well that his government and such a parliament could not exist together. The members elected, therefore, were not admitted to sit except they had a certificate of their approval by the council from the chancery clerk. By the withholding of such certificates, nearly one-fourth of the members were excluded. This created a terrible outcry of invasion of parliamentary privileges. Haselrig, Scott, Ashley Cooper, and many other violent republicans were excluded. The excluded members signed an indignant protest, and circulated it in all parts of the country, with the list of their names appended.

The protector opened this purged parliament with a very long speech, which, so far from being a farrago of the unmeaning, unintelligible, and entangled stuff' which Hume represents it, is one of the most remarkable speeches ever addressed to parliament by any ruler. Carlyle truly observes of it, "No royal speech like this was ever delivered elsewhere in the world! It is, with all its prudence—and it is very prudent—sagacious, courteous, right royal in spirit; perhaps the most artless, transparent piece of public speaking this editor has ever studied. Rude, massive, genuine, like a block of unbeaten gold. The man himself, and the England he presided over, there and then, are to a singular degree visible in it.—open to our eyes, to our sympathies. He who would see Oliver, will find more of him here, than in most of the history books yet written about him."

There was, in fact, displayed in it a depth and breadth of policy, an active, earnest spirit of national business, a comprehension of and desire for the establishment of such principles and prosperous measures, a recognition of the rights of the whole world, as affected by the conduct of this one great nation, which have no parallel for true Christian philosophy since the days of Alfred. "We have since then had great and valiant warriors, our Edwards and Henrys, but not a man who combined with the highest military genius and success, a genuine, lofty, and loving Christian sentiment, and an earnest business-like mind like Cromwell. He at once laid down the principle, that all hostility to the commonwealth originated in the hatred of its free and Christian character; and he showed that all these enemies, of whatever theories, had united themselves with Spain. That Spain was the grand adversary of this country, and had been so from the reformation, because she was bigotedly wedded to the system of popery, with all its monks, Jesuits, and inquisitors. He recapitulated its attempts to destroy Elizabeth and her religion; the vain attempts of the Long Parliament to make peace with it, because in any treaty where the pope could grant absolution, you were bound and they were loose, the murder of Ascham, the Long Parliament's ambassador, and no redress to be obtained: and now he informed them, and offered to produce the proofs, that Charles Stuart had put himself in league with Spain,