The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

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services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to the person

of the sovereign by some lords of manors.


The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men,

accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the

world: and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this

change would produce much misery and crime, that the discharged

veterans would be seen begging in every street, or that they

would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result

followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating

that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed

into the mass of the community. The Royalists themselves

confessed that, in every department of honest industry the

discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was

charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an

alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted

notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability

one of Oliver's old soldiers


The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and

enduring traces in the public mind. The name of standing army was

long held in abhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling

was even stronger among the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads.

It ought to be considered as a most fortunate circumstance that,

when our country was, for the first and last time, ruled by the

sword, the sword was in the hands, not of legitimate princes, but

of those rebels who slew the King and demolished the Church. Had

a prince with a title as good as that of Charles, commanded an

army as good as that of Cromwell, there would have been little

hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily that instrument

by which alone the monarchy could be made absolute became an

object of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party,

and long continued to be inseparably associated in the

imagination of Royalists and Prelatists with regicide and field

preaching. A century after the death of Cromwell, the Tories

still continued to clamour against every augmentation of the

regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of a national militia.

So late as the year 1786, a minister who enjoyed no common

measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome their

aversion to his scheme of fortifying the coast: nor did they ever

look with entire complacency on the standing army, till the

French Revolution gave a new direction to their apprehensions.


The coalition which had restored the King terminated with the

danger from which it had sprung; and two hostile parties again

appeared ready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed as to the

propriety of inflicting punishment on some unhappy men who were,

at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell was

no more; and those who had fled before him were forced to content

themselves with the miserable satisfaction of digging up,

hanging, quartering, and burning the remains of the greatest

prince that has ever ruled England.


Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found

among the republican chiefs. Soon, however, the conquerors,

glutted with the blood of the regicides, turned against each

other. The Roundheads, while admitting the virtues of the late

King, and while condemning the sentence passed upon him by an

illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his administration had

been, in many things, unconstitutional, and that the Houses had

taken arms against him from good motives and on strong grounds.

The monarchy, these politicians conceived, had no worse enemy

than the flatterer who exalted prerogative above the law, who

condemned all opposition to regal encroachments, and who reviled,

not only Cromwell and Harrison, but Pym and Hampden, as traitors.

If the King wished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must

confide in those who, though they had drawn the sword in defence

of the invaded privileges of Parliament, had yet exposed

themselves to the rage of the soldiers in order to save his

father, and had taken the chief part in bringing back the royal

family.


The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During

eighteen years they had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful

to the Crown. Having shared the distress of their prince, were

they not to share his triumph? Was no distinction to be made

between them and the disloyal subject who had fought against his

rightful sovereign, who had adhered to Richard Cromwell, and who

had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts, till it

appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the tyranny

of the army? Grant that such a man had, by his recent services,

fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services, rendered at the

eleventh hour, to be put in comparison with the toils and

sufferings of those who had borne the burden and heat of the day?

Was he to be ranked with men who had no need of the royal

clemency, with men who had, in every part of their lives, merited

the royal gratitude? Above all, was he to be suffered to retain a

fortune raised out of the substance of the ruined defenders of

the throne? Was it not enough that his head and his patrimonial

estate, a hundred times forfeited to justice, were secure, and

that he shared, with the rest of the nation, in the blessings of

that mild government of which he had long been the foe? Was it

necessary that he should be rewarded for his treason at the

expense of men whose only crime was the fidelity with which they

had observed their oath of allegiance. And what interest had the

King in gorging his old enemies with prey torn from his old

friends? What confidence could be placed in men who had opposed

their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him, and who, even

now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame and contrition,

vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to think that they

had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just stopping short

of regicide? It was true they had lately assisted to set up the

throne: but it was not less true that they had previously pulled

it down, and that they still avowed principles which might impel

them to pull it down again. Undoubtedly it might he fit that

marks of royal approbation should be bestowed on some converts

who had been eminently useful: but policy, as well as justice and

gratitude, enjoined the King to give the highest place in his

regard to those who, from first to last, through good and evil,

had stood by his house. On these grounds the Cavaliers very

naturally demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, and

preference in the distribution of the favours of the Crown. Some

violent members of the party went further, and clamoured for

large categories of proscription.


The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious

feud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A short time

before the commencement of the civil war, his father had given a

reluctant assent to a bill, strongly supported by Falkland, which

deprived the Bishops of their seats in the House of Lords: but

Episcopacy and the Liturgy had never been abolished by law. The

Long Parliament, however, had passed ordinances which had made a

complete revolution in Church government and in public worship.

The new system was, in principle, scarcely less Erastian than

that which it displaced. The Houses, guided chiefly by the

counsels of the accomplished Selden, had determined to keep the

spiritual power strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They

had refused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was

of divine origin; and they had provided that, from all the Church

courts, an appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament.

With this highly important reservation, it had been resolved to

set up in England a hierarchy closely resembling that which now

exists in Scotland. The authority of councils, rising one above

another in regular gradation, was substituted for the authority

of Bishops and Archbishops. The Liturgy gave place to the

Presbyterian Directory. But scarcely had the new regulations been

framed, when the Independents rose to supreme influence in the

state. The Independents had no disposition to enforce the

ordinances touching classical, provincial, and national synods.

Those ordinances, therefore, were never carried into full

execution. The Presbyterian system was fully established nowhere

but in Middlesex and Lancashire. In the other fifty counties

almost every parish seems to have been unconnected with the

neighbouring parishes. In some districts, indeed, the ministers

formed themselves into voluntary associations, for the purpose of

mutual help and counsel; but these associations had no coercive

power. The patrons of livings, being now checked by neither

Bishop nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the

cure of souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the

arbitrary intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own

authority, a board of commissioners, called Triers. Most of these

persons were Independent divines; but a few Presbyterian

ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate of the

Triers stood in the place both of institution and of induction;

and without such a certificate no person could hold a benefice.

This was undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever done by

any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, without

some such precaution, the country would be overrun by ignorant

and drunken reprobates, bearing the name and receiving the pay of

ministers, some highly respectable persons, who were not in

general friendly to Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he

had been a public benefactor. The presentees whom the Triers had

approved took possession of the rectories, cultivated the glebe

lands, collected the tithes, prayed without book or surplice, and

administered the Eucharist to communicants seated at long tables.


Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricable

confusion. Episcopacy was the form of government prescribed by

the old law which was still unrepealed. The form of government

prescribed by parliamentary ordinance was Presbyterian. But

neither the old law nor the parliamentary ordinance was

practically in force. The Church actually established may be

described as an irregular body made up of a few Presbyteries and

many Independent congregations, which were all held down and held

together by the authority of the government.


Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many were

zealous for Synods and for the Directory, and many were desirous

to terminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had

long agitated England. Between the bigoted followers of Laud and

the bigoted followers of Knox there could be neither peace nor

truce: but it did not seem impossible to effect an accommodation

between the moderate Episcopalians of