A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  concealed several days. Then he escaped to Heale, near Salisbury;

  where, in the house of a widow lady, he was hidden five days, until

  the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to

  convey a 'gentleman' to France. On the night of the fifteenth of

  October, accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, the King rode

  to Brighton, then a little fishing village, to give the captain of

  the ship a supper before going on board; but, so many people knew

  him, that this captain knew him too, and not only he, but the

  landlord and landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord came

  behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to be

  a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles laughed. They

  had had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and

  drinking, at which the King was a first-rate hand; so, the captain

  assured him that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed

  that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles

  should address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who

  was running away from his creditors, and that he hoped they would

  join him in persuading the captain to put him ashore in France. As

  the King acted his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors

  twenty shillings to drink, they begged the captain to do what such

  a worthy gentleman asked. He pretended to yield to their

  entreaties, and the King got safe to Normandy.

  Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of

  forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parliament would have

  gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting with any foreign enemy

  went, but for getting into trouble with the Dutch, who in the

  spring of the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a

  fleet into the Downs under their ADMIRAL VAN TROMP, to call upon

  the bold English ADMIRAL BLAKE (who was there with half as many

  ships as the Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a raging

  broadside instead, and beat off Van Tromp; who, in the autumn, came

  back again with seventy ships, and challenged the bold Blake - who

  still was only half as strong - to fight him. Blake fought him all

  day; but, finding that the Dutch were too many for him, got quietly

  off at night. What does Van Tromp upon this, but goes cruising and

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  boasting about the Channel, between the North Foreland and the Isle

  of Wight, with a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign

  that he could and would sweep the English of the sea! Within three

  months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom too; for, he

  and two other bold commanders, DEAN and MONK, fought him three

  whole days, took twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to

  pieces, and settled his business.

  Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began to complain

  to the Parliament that they were not governing the nation properly,

  and to hint that they thought they could do it better themselves.

  Oliver, who had now made up his mind to be the head of the state,

  or nothing at all, supported them in this, and called a meeting of

  officers and his own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in

  Whitehall, to consider the best way of getting rid of the

  Parliament. It had now lasted just as many years as the King's

  unbridled power had lasted, before it came into existence. The end

  of the deliberation was, that Oliver went down to the House in his

  usual plain black dress, with his usual grey worsted stockings, but

  with an unusual party of soldiers behind him. These last he left

  in the lobby, and then went in and sat down. Presently he got up,

  made the Parliament a speech, told them that the Lord had done with

  them, stamped his foot and said, 'You are no Parliament. Bring

  them in! Bring them in!' At this signal the door flew open, and

  the soldiers appeared. 'This is not honest,' said Sir Harry Vane,

  one of the members. 'Sir Harry Vane!' cried Cromwell; 'O, Sir

  Harry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!' Then he

  pointed out members one by one, and said this man was a drunkard,

  and that man a dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and so on.

  Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out of his chair, told the

  guard to clear the House, called the mace upon the table - which is

  a sign that the House is sitting - 'a fool's bauble,' and said,

  'here, carry it away!' Being obeyed in all these orders, he

  quietly locked the door, put the key in his pocket, walked back to

  Whitehall again, and told his friends, who were still assembled

  there, what he had done.

  They formed a new Council of State after this extraordinary

  proceeding, and got a new Parliament together in their own way:

  which Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon, and which he said

  was the beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth. In this

  Parliament there sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken the

  singular name of Praise God Barebones, and from whom it was called,

  for a joke, Barebones's Parliament, though its general name was the

  Little Parliament. As it soon appeared that it was not going to

  put Oliver in the first place, it turned out to be not at all like

  the beginning of heaven upon earth, and Oliver said it really was

  not to be borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament in much

  the same way as he had disposed of the other; and then the council

  of officers decided that he must be made the supreme authority of

  the kingdom, under the title of the Lord Protector of the

  Commonwealth.

  So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six hundred and

  fifty-three, a great procession was formed at Oliver's door, and he

  came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of boots, and got

  into his coach and went down to Westminster, attended by the

  judges, and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other

  great and wonderful personages of the country. There, in the Court

  of Chancery, he publicly accepted the office of Lord Protector.

  Then he was sworn, and the City sword was handed to him, and the

  seal was handed to him, and all the other things were handed to him

  which are usually handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions.

  When Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite made and

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  completely finished off as Lord Protector; and several of the

  Ironsides preached about it at great length, all the evening.

  SECOND PART

  OLIVER CROMWELL - whom the people long called OLD NOLL - in

  accepting the office of Protector, had bound himself by a certain

  paper which was handed to him, called 'the Instrument,' to summon a

  Parliament, consisting of between four and five hundred members, in

  the election of which neither the Royalists nor the Catholics were

  to have any share. He had also pledged himself that this

  Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent until it

  had sat five months.

  When this Parliament met, Olive
r made a speech to them of three

  hours long, very wisely advising them what to do for the credit and

  happiness of the country. To keep down the more violent members,

  he required them to sign a recognition of what they were forbidden

  by 'the Instrument' to do; which was, chiefly, to take the power

  from one single person at the head of the state or to command the

  army. Then he dismissed them to go to work. With his usual vigour

  and resolution he went to work himself with some frantic preachers

  - who were rather overdoing their sermons in calling him a villain

  and a tyrant - by shutting up their chapels, and sending a few of

  them off to prison.

  There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else, a man so

  able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled

  with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists

  (but not until they had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely,

  and as the times required. He caused England to be so respected

  abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it

  under kings and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of

  Oliver Cromwell's book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the

  Mediterranean Sea, to make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand

  pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects, and spoliation

  he had committed on English merchants. He further despatched him

  and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English

  ship and every English man delivered up to him that had been taken

  by pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously done; and it

  began to be thoroughly well known, all over the world, that England

  was governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow the English

  name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.

  These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to sea

  against the Dutch; and the two powers, each with one hundred ships

  upon its side, met in the English Channel off the North Foreland,

  where the fight lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this

  fight; but Monk, who commanded in the same ship with him, threw his

  cloak over his body, that the sailors might not know of his death,

  and be disheartened. Nor were they. The English broadsides so

  exceedingly astonished the Dutch that they sheered off at last,

  though the redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his own guns

  for deserting their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets engaged

  again, off the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van Tromp was

  shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and peace was made.

  Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and

  bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not only claimed a right to

  all the gold and silver that could be found in South America, and

  treated the ships of all other countries who visited those regions,

  as pirates, but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish

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  prisons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador

  that English ships must be free to go wherever they would, and that

  English merchants must not be thrown into those same dungeons, no,

  not for the pleasure of all the priests in Spain. To this, the

  Spanish ambassador replied that the gold and silver country, and

  the Holy Inquisition, were his King's two eyes, neither of which he

  could submit to have put out. Very well, said Oliver, then he was

  afraid he (Oliver) must damage those two eyes directly.

  So, another fleet was despatched under two commanders, PENN and

  VENABLES, for Hispaniola; where, however, the Spaniards got the

  better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet came home again,

  after taking Jamaica on the way. Oliver, indignant with the two

  commanders who had not done what bold Admiral Blake would have

  done, clapped them both into prison, declared war against Spain,

  and made a treaty with France, in virtue of which it was to shelter

  the King and his brother the Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent

  a fleet abroad under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the King of

  Portugal to his senses - just to keep its hand in - and then

  engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two more,

  laden with silver to the value of two millions of pounds: which

  dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to London in waggons,

  with the populace of all the towns and villages through which the

  waggons passed, shouting with all their might. After this victory,

  bold Admiral Blake sailed away to the port of Santa Cruz to cut off

  the Spanish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. There, he found

  them, ten in number, with seven others to take care of them, and a

  big castle, and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at

  him with great guns. Blake cared no more for great guns than for

  pop-guns - no more for their hot iron balls than for snow-balls.

  He dashed into the harbour, captured and burnt every one of the

  ships, and came sailing out again triumphantly, with the victorious

  English flag flying at his masthead. This was the last triumph of

  this great commander, who had sailed and fought until he was quite

  worn out. He died, as his successful ship was coming into Plymouth

  Harbour amidst the joyful acclamations of the people, and was

  buried in state in Westminster Abbey. Not to lie there, long.

  Over and above all this, Oliver found that the VAUDOIS, or

  Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne, were insolently

  treated by the Catholic powers, and were even put to death for

  their religion, in an audacious and bloody manner. Instantly, he

  informed those powers that this was a thing which Protestant

  England would not allow; and he speedily carried his point, through

  the might of his great name, and established their right to worship

  God in peace after their own harmless manner.

  Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fighting with the

  French against the Spaniards, that, after they had assaulted the

  town of Dunkirk together, the French King in person gave it up to

  the English, that it might be a token to them of their might and

  valour.

  There were plots enough against Oliver among the frantic

  religionists (who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men), and among

  the disappointed Republicans. He had a difficult game to play, for

  the Royalists were always ready to side with either party against

  him. The 'King over the water,' too, as Charles was called, had no

  scruples about plotting with any one against his life; although

  there is reason to suppose that he would willingly have married one

  of his daughters, if Oliver would have had such a son-in-law.

  There was a certain COLONEL SAXBY of the army, once a great

  supporter of Oliver's but now turned against him, who was a

  grievous trouble to him through all this part of his career; and

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  who came and went between the discontented in England and Spain,

  and Charles who put himself in alliance with Spain on being thr
own

  off by France. This man died in prison at last; but not until

  there had been very serious plots between the Royalists and

  Republicans, and an actual rising of them in England, when they

  burst into the city of Salisbury, on a Sunday night, seized the

  judges who were going to hold the assizes there next day, and would

  have hanged them but for the merciful objections of the more

  temperate of their number. Oliver was so vigorous and shrewd that

  he soon put this revolt down, as he did most other conspiracies;

  and it was well for one of its chief managers - that same Lord

  Wilmot who had assisted in Charles's flight, and was now EARL OF

  ROCHESTER - that he made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes

  and ears everywhere, and secured such sources of information as his

  enemies little dreamed of. There was a chosen body of six persons,

  called the Sealed Knot, who were in the closest and most secret

  confidence of Charles. One of the foremost of these very men, a

  SIR RICHARD WILLIS, reported to Oliver everything that passed among

  them, and had two hundred a year for it.

  MILES SYNDARCOMB, also of the old army, was another conspirator

  against the Protector. He and a man named CECIL, bribed one of his

  Life Guards to let them have good notice when he was going out -

  intending to shoot him from a window. But, owing either to his

  caution or his good fortune, they could never get an aim at him.

  Disappointed in this design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall,

  with a basketful of combustibles, which were to explode by means of

  a slow match in six hours; then, in the noise and confusion of the

  fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But, the Life Guardsman himself

  disclosed this plot; and they were seized, and Miles died (or

  killed himself in prison) a little while before he was ordered for

  execution. A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few

  more to be hanged, and many more, including those who rose in arms

  against him, to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he were

  rigid, he was impartial too, in asserting the laws of England.

  When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the Portuguese

  ambassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for another man with

  whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a

  jury of Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in spite of