The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
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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
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
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