Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/269

 n s. iv. SEPT. so, i9ii.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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for the well printing of the Occurrences as I collect them for this present year 1648. And do, therefore, commit it to his care. And I doe protest against any other that shall be published not to be collected by me. Luke Harruney, Cleric, [sic]."

After this, with the exception of a few- tracts by Walker's friends, Ibbitson then published Walker's work only ; all of which, of course, was carried by the " Mercury women " in their baskets, and retailed by them with the newsbooks ; for Ibbitson was a printer only, kept no bookshop, and had no publishing business, as such. When, therefore, licensed newsbooks were abolished in 1655, and Walker ceased to write, Ibbitson ceased to publish. These statements can easily be verified by an inspection of the documents credited to Ibbitson in the ' Catalogue of the Thomason Tracts.' Their internal evidence, together with the adver- tisements in Walker' s newsbooks, supplies ample proof of the facts.

When the Rump restored the freedom of the press in May, 1659, Walker, as Crom- well's old journalist, was not permitted to publish a newsbook again ; and Nedham, Cromwell's official journalist, was removed from his post, and the Anabaptist John Canne installed by Parliament in his stead. Henry Walker, therefore, was the author of this pamphlet, the first published by Ibbit- son since 1655, and he wrote it, partly in defence of Cromwell, partly in defence of himself and his friends. Not only did Walker attack the Rump in it (on p. 21), by writing :

" Oh that Instruments fit, faithful and fearing God, should ever be discountenanced and disused, whom God hath hitherto owned and honoured. And carnal men, enemies to God's work, by fair pretences like Tobia and Sanballat creep in into their room. Our leaf will quickly wither ; yea, there will be a withering every way upon these nations," &c. ;

but he also attacked his old enemies the Quakers upon p. 16. (For an account of his pamphlet war with the Quakers, mis- described by S. R. Gardiner, see the present writer's article on ' George Fox and Walker the Ironmonger,' in The Friends' Quarterly Examiner for October, 1910.)

In the reference in the pamphlet to Crom- well's son Robert (who died at Felsted in 1630 at the age of 9) the strokes show 'that Walker shared the popular idea that the Robert Cromwell executed at Tyburn in 1632 was this son :

" This Scripture did once save my life when my

eldest son died, which went as a dagger to

my heart, indeed it did."

Hardly a passage in the tract will bear analysis. It should be compared with Walker's ' Serious Observations lately made touching his Majesty ' in order to see the same texts applied to Charles II. as he applied to Cromwell.

Lingard was the first historian to quote this terribly impious panegyric ; and, noticing that one Underwood is mentioned! in the Thurloe State Papers as Cromwell's groom of the chamber, he attributed it to Underwood. Carlyle, observing that Fox the Quaker said that Charles Hervey was groom of the chamber, assigned it to the " pious Hervey " without any other justi- fication. Was Walker " then " a groom of Cromwell's bedchamber ? Very probably he was ; for on 23 June, 1658, John Storer was appointed to Walker's church of " Martin's Vintery " (George Hennessy > ' Novum Repertorium,' &c., p. 467). Evi- dently, Walker had been a failure at St.. Martin's Vintry, as in his other cures, and Cromwell must have made provision for one of his favourite preachers.

The "prayer" is the most untruthful part of the tract. Carlyle states that it is found in "many old Notebooks." It is not ; nor did people in the seventeenth century use notebooks as a rule. The placing of its date " two or three days " before Cromwell's death, and therefore in the height of a great storm (in which, the wits of the day said, the devil came for Cromwell this is why Walker antedated the prayer); its length ("something is here omitted," adds Walker) ; its carefully chosen phrases,, unlike the utterances of a dying man, and unbroken train of thought, render it astonish- ing that so many distinguished writers should have accepted it.

The following interpolation in, the prayer is clearly false :

" I may, I will come to Thee for Thy people. Thou hast made me (though very unworthy) a mean instrument to do them some good and Thea service."

The genesis of this is shown by the follow- ing quotations :

" Whether or no Peter Sterry, the Court con- fessor, when he preach' d in the chapel the very next day after his highness died and uttered in that his sermon there words ; either these, or to. this effect, viz. ' As certainly as I hold the word of God in my left hand so certainly is his late highnesse now at the right hand of God interceding for the iniquities of this sinful nation,' did not commit an high and most horrid piece of blas- phemy ? And then, whether he does not very well deserve to be a fellow-feeler of James Naylor's- sentence and to be as coarsely used as he, who yet continues at his expiatory task of pounding;