Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

The following letter was addressed to Colonel Hammond, then governor of the Isle of Wight. The colonel had been distressed by his scruples at the extreme course the army was disposed to take, and had solicited this appointment to the Isle of Wight as a retreat from the scene of faction and violence. But it was precisely in this quiet little island that the king took refuge; his perplexities, therefore, were increased and not diminished. Cromwell writes to him to remove his scruples, and makes a characteristic allusion to this circumstance—improves it, as we should say.

We must apprise the reader, however, that it would be dangerous to form any opinion upon the religious sincerity or insincerity of Cromwell, upon extracts from his letters and speeches, or even upon any single letter or speech. From the incongruity we feel between the solemnity of the subject of religion, and the manner and occasion in which it is introduced, and from the use of certain expressions long since consecrated to ridicule, it is impossible for a modern reader, on falling upon some isolated passages, not to exclaim, that this is cant and hypocrisy! But when the whole series, or the greater part of it, is read—when the same strain of thought and feeling, in season and out of season, is constantly observed—it is equally impossible not to feel persuaded that these letters and speeches body forth the genuine character of the man, and that the writer was verily a solemn and most serious person, in whom religious zeal was the last quality which needed reinforcement.

"Dear Robin,—No man rejoiceth more to see a line from thee than myself. I know thou hast long been under trial. Thou shalt be no loser by it. All things must work for the best.

"Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee, I am such a one as thou did formerly know, having a body of sin and death; but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is no condemnation though much infirmity; and I wait for the redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and sweet consolation through the Spirit. And find abundant cause every day to exalt the Lord and abase flesh—and herein I have some exercise.

"As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have not been without our share of beholding some remarkable providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been amongst us, and by the light of his countenance we have prevailed (alludes to the battle of Preston.) We are sure the goodness of Him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us; and we can humbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is well-pleasing in His eye-sight.

"I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical majority, &c. &c.

"To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,' 'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond, through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army, and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends' actings.

"Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee thither, and that person (the king) to thee; how, before and since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And, laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to them. No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and their partakers.

"As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that supposed principle—I wonder not at that. If a man take not his own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if involved by so near a relation of love and Christian brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me to satisfy; but I hold myself bound to lay my thoughts before so dear a friend. The Lord do His own will.

"You say, 'God hath appointed authorities among the nations, to which active or passive obedience is to be yielded. This resides, in England, in the Parliament. Therefore, active or passive resistance,' &c. &c.

"Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This or that species is of human institution, and limited some with larger, others with stricter bands, each one according to its constitution. But I do not therefore think that the authorities may do any thing, and yet such obedience be due. All agree that there are cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so, your ground fails, and so likewise the inference. Indeed, dear Robin, not to multiply words, the query is,—Whether ours be such case? This, ingenuously, is the true question.

"To this I shall say nothing, though I could say very much; but only desire thee to see what thou findest in thy own heart to two or three plain considerations. First, Whether Salus populi be a sound position? Secondly, Whether, in the way in hand (the parliamentary treaty with the king,) really and before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, this be provided for—or if the whole fruit of the war is not likely to be frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it was, and worse? And this contrary to engagements, explicit covenants with those who ventured their lives upon those covenants and engagements, without whom, perhaps in equity, relaxation ought not to be? Thirdly, Whether this army be not a lawful power, called by God to oppose and fight against the king upon some stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose one name of authority, for those ends, as well as another name—since it was not the outward authority summoning them that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was lawful in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justified in foro humano. But truly this kind of reasoning may be but fleshly, either with or against: only it is good to try what truth may be in them. And the Lord teach us.

"My dear friend, let us look into providences; surely they mean somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln malice against God's people, now called 'saints,' to root out their name;—and yet they these poor saints getting arms and therein blessed with defence and more! I desire he that is for a principle of suffering (passive obedience) would not too much slight this. I slight not him who is so minded; but let us beware lest fleshly reasoning see more safety in making use of this principle than in acting! Who acts, if he resolve not through God to be willing to part with all? Our hearts are very deceitful, on the right and on the left.

"What think you of providence disposing the hearts of so many of God's people this way—especially in this poor army, wherein the great God has vouchsafed to appear! I know not one officer but is on the increasing side (come over to this opinion.) …

"Thou mentionest somewhat as if by acting against such opposition as is like to be, there will be a tempting of God. Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering of difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting before and without faith. If the Lord have in any measure persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness, nay of the duty,—this persuasion prevailing upon the heart is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more the difficulties are the more the faith. And it is most sweet that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that are, and judge not; and this will free thee from the trouble of others' actings, which thou sayest adds to thy grief....

"Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts whether we think that after all these dispensations, the like to which many generations cannot afford, should end in so corrupt reasonings of good men, and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point out to this? Or to teach his people to trust in Him and wait for better things—when, it may be, better are sealed to many of their spirits (indubitably sure to many of them.)

"This trouble I have been at because my soul loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve or lose any glorious opportunity the Lord puts into thy hand. The Lord be thy counsellor. Dear Robin, I rest thine,

"Oliver Cromwell."

For ourselves, we cannot read this, and other letters breathing the same spirit, without being convinced that Cromwell fully shared in those fanatical sentiments which prompted the army to insist upon the king's death. A contemporary account, from which Mr Carlyle, some pages before this letter occurs, has quoted largely, represents this chief of the Puritans in exactly the same point of view. The officers of the army had made certain overtures to the king, certain efforts at a reconciliation, which had been fruitless; and which had been, moreover, attended with much division and contention amongst themselves. They had turned aside, it seems, from "that path of simplicity they had been blessed in, to walk in a politic path," and were, accordingly, afflicted, "as the wages of their backsliding hearts," with tumults, and jealousies, and divisions. But the godly officers, says the pious record of Adjutant Allen, met at Windsor Castle! "and there we spent one day together in prayer; inquiring into the causes of that sad dispensation. And, on the morrow, we met again in the morning; where many spake from the Word and prayed; and the then Lieutenant-General Cromwell did press very earnestly on all there present, to a thorough consideration of our actions as an army, and of our ways particularly as private Christians; to see if any iniquity could be found in them; and what it was; that, if possible, he might find it out, and so remove the cause of such sad rebukes as were upon us, (by reason of our iniquities, as we judged,) at that time. And the way, more particularly, the Lord led us to herein was this: to look back and consider what time it was when, with joint satisfaction, we could last say, to the best of our judgments, The presence of the Lord was amongst us, and rebukes and judgments were not, as then, upon us.... By which means we were, by a gracious hand of the Lord, led to find out the very steps, (as were all there jointly convinced,) by which we had departed from the Lord, and provoked Him to depart from us, which we found to be those cursed carnal conferences, our own conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with the king and his party. And at this time, and on this occasion, did the then Major Goffe, (as I remember was his title,) make use of that good word, Proverbs 1st and 23d, Turn you at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you." In fine, their "iniquities," their want of faith, their carnal conferences—that is to say, all desire for peace, all humanity, all moderation, all care for their country—were cast aside, and they came to the solitary gloomy resolution, "That it is our duty to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations."

Let no one suppose that, because Cromwell, and other officers of the army, had been negotiating with the king, bidding for him, in fact, against the Parliament, and offering terms such as it was mere infatuation upon his part not to accept, that they were, therefore, not sincere in this their fanaticism, which now so clearly told them they should be doing the express will of God in putting him to death. Those who have paid attention to this disease of the mind, know well, that while nothing is more violent at one moment, nothing is more flexible at another. Against the assaults of reason it is rock,—it is adamant; but to self-interest, or a covert passion, it is often surprisingly ductile. The genuine fanatic is gifted with a power which will equally uphold him, whether he walks to the right or to the left, and lets him change his course as often as he will. He has a logic that is always triumphant—which proves him always in the right—whether he would advance or recede. Success—it is God's own sanction; failure—it is what you please,—God's disapproval if you would retreat—a trial only of your faith, if you have the heart to advance. In the present case, our pious army, having found it impossible to treat with the king, has but to spend "its day in prayer," and its fierce zeal resumes its former channel with greater violence than ever. It has been led astray, it finds, by carnal reasonings and sinful weakness; and, rushing back to its old "path of simplicity," it raises the cry of death!

This account, which Adjutent Allan gives of diseased piety and perilous fanaticism, Mr Carlyle accompanies with interjections of applause, and cheers of encouragement. To him, also, it seems quite fit that the army should return to its path of "simplicity." The King must die.

How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,—the mere peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered, and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,—our compassion, very little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We are strangely fashioned—kings, and all of us—made up of fragments of virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the traditionary maxims and manœuvres of a subtle policy. Nor was it ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous passions which had been conjured up around him! He was fencing with the whirlwind. Perhaps no prince, trained in a court, can be a match for the rude adversaries which revolutionary times raise up against him. What chance is there that he should ever learn the nature of his new and terrible enemy? You have taught him, according to all the laws of woodcraft, to chase the stag and the fox, and now you let loose upon him the wild beast of the forest! How was Charles to learn what manner of being was a Puritan, and how it struck its prey? His courtiers would have taught him to despise and ridicule—his bishops to look askance with solemn aversion,—but who was there to teach him to fear this Puritan?—to teach him that he must forthwith conciliate, if he could not crush?

It is worth while to continue the narrative a little further. We adopt Mr Carlyle's words. "At London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis. The resumed debate, 'shall the army remonstrance be taken into consideration?' does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on Thursday the 31st, it comes out negative, by a majority of ninety. 'No, we will not take it into consideration.' 'No?' The army at Windsor thereupon spends again 'a day in prayer.' The army at Windsor has decided on the morrow, that it will march to London; marches, arrives accordingly, on Saturday, December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in St James's, 'and other great vacant houses in the skirts of the city and villages about, no offence being given any where.' In the drama of modern history, one knows not any graver, more note-worthy scene; earnest as very death and judgment. They have decided to have justice, these men; to see God's justice done, and his judgments executed on this earth."

Adjutant Allen and Mr Carlyle are both of the same mind,—take the same views of public matters, political and religious. But the Adjutant himself would open great eyes at the sentence which next follows:—

"The abysses where the thunders and splendours are bred—the reader sees them again laid bare and black. Madness lying close to the wisdom which is brightest and highest;—and owls and godless men who hate the lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no judges of the actions of heroes! Shedders of blood? Yes, blood is occasionally shed. The healing surgeon, the sacrificial priest, the august judge, pronouncer of God's oracles to man, these and the atrocious murderer are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl's eye, that, except for the dresses they wear, discerns no difference in these! Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our chronology and swift course of events."

By forcibly expelling more than one hundred of the members of Parliament, and thus converting a minority into a majority, these "sacrificial priests" contrived to accomplish their very righteous act. In the face of raving such as this, it would be absurd to enter seriously upon any consideration, moral or political, touching the King's death. We would rather that Mr Carlyle occupied the field alone. We saw him just now dealing with his "abysses," and his "lightning;" we quote his concluding comment on this event, which will present a specimen of his more facetious style of eloquence, and the singular taste he is capable of displaying:—

"This action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of flunkeyism universally in this world. Whereof flunkeyism, cant, cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas! not till a new genuine hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to degenerate into a flunkeyism and cloth-worship again! which I take to be a very long date indeed.

"Thus ends the second civil war: in regicide, in a Commonwealth, and keepers of the liberties of England: In punishment of delinquents, in abolition of cobwebs;—if it be possible, in a government of Heroism and veracity; at lowest of anti-flunkeyism, anti-cant, and the endeavour after heroism and veracity."

Flunkeyism! Such is the title which our many-sided man thinks fit to bestow on the loyalty of England! But serious indignation would be out of place. A buffoon expression has this advantage, it is unanswerable. Yet will we venture to say, that it is a losing game this which you are playing, Mr Carlyle, this defiance of all common sense and all good taste. There is a respectability other than that which, in the unwearying love of one poor jest, you delight to call "gig respectability," a respectability based on intelligence and not on "Long-Acre springs," whose disesteem it cannot be wise to provoke, nor very pleasant to endure.

The Commonwealth is proclaimed by sound of trumpet. The king and the lords are cashiered and dismissed. A house of representatives and a council of state form the constitution of England. Cromwell is one of the council. But for the present the war in Ireland carries him away from the scene of politics.

On this Irish campaign, Mr Carlyle breaks out, as may be supposed, in a strain of exultation. He always warms at blood and battle. His piety, or his poetry—not admirable whichever it may be—glows here to a red heat. We are as little disposed perhaps as himself, to stand "shrieking out" over the military severities of this campaign, but if we could bring ourselves to believe that Mr Carlyle is really serious in what he writes, we should say that the most impracticable maudlin of peace societies, or "Rousseau-sentimentalism," were wisdom itself compared to his own outrageous and fanatical strain. If the apologist of Cromwell will be content to rest his case on the plain ground open to all generals and captains on whom has devolved the task of subjecting a rebellious and insurrectionary country—on the plain ground that the object is to be more speedily effected, and with less bloodshed and misery to the inhabitants, by carrying on the war at the commencement with the utmost severity, (thus breaking down at once the spirit of insurrection,) than by prolonging the contest through an exercise of leniency and forbearance—we are not aware that any decisive answer can be given to him. It is an awful piece of surgery to contemplate—one may be excused, if one shudders both at it and the operator—but, nevertheless, it may have been the wisest course to pursue. As a general rule, every one will admit that—if war there must be—it is better that it should be short and violent, than long and indecisive; for there is nothing so mischievous, so destructive of the industry and moral character of a people, as a war which, so to speak, domesticates itself amongst them. Put aside "the saint" entirely,—let us see only the soldier,—and Cromwell's campaign in Ireland may present nothing more terrible than what elsewhere, and in the campaigns of other generals, we are accustomed to regard as the necessary evils of war; nothing more than what a Turenne, a Condé, or a Frederic of Prussia, might have applauded or practised. But this is precisely the last thing our editor would be disposed to do; any so common-place, and commonsense view of the matter, would have been utterly distasteful: he does bring the saint very prominently upon the field, and we are to recognise in Cromwell—"an armed soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing God's judgments on the enemies of God!"

"It is a phenomenon," he continues, "not of joyful nature; no, but of awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a phenomenon which you are taught to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at sight:—thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing; worthy to do other than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven's lightning, then; and say to it, Godlike One? Is thy own life beautiful and terrible to thee; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal plendours?"—(Vol. ii. p. 53.)