The addresses of congratulation which came in from all parts of the country quite bore out this statement. It was not from the pagan republicanism of the commonwealth-clique that Cromwell had difficulty to apprehend, but from the smothered fire of the fifth-monarchy men, with whom the necessities of settlement compelled him, to break. This soon became apparent in the assembly of notables. They elected an executive council, of which Cromwell was an ordinary member, and for five months all went smoothly along. Then the fifth-monarchy enthusiasm, represented by general Harrison, and stimulated by anabaptist ministers who met with him ‘at one { 361} Mr. Squib’s house,’ became unmanageable. It fell foul of ‘ministry and magistracy,’ demanding the simple abolition of tithes and of the court of chancery, and the establishment of the judicial law of Moses, to be administered ‘according to the wisdom of any man that would interpret the text this way or that.’ [1] This led to the resignation of the assembly, whether under pressure from Cromwell it is difficult to say, but certainly with his good-will. Henceforth he let it be known explicitly that the world must have its due and settled interests be maintained. A few days after the council of state presented him with an ‘instrument of government,’ establishing a protectorate with a free parliament, to be elected according to the original scheme of Ireton, Vane, and Cromwell himself. Under this instrument he ruled for about four years, when ‘the petition and advice,’ passed by his second parliament, took its place, which did not materially alter the system, but put it on a parliamentary basis.
The protectorate must have the credit of having been at least perfectly true to the great end of settlement, and of having been, however arbitrary, yet perfectly honest in its arbitrariness. It was quite free from the jugglery with recognised names and institutions which is the chosen device of modern despotism. The three points of the Cromwellian programme--restoration, so far as might be, of the old constitution, reform of the law, and the protection of the godly interest--were really inconsistent with each other, for to restore the constitution was impossible without a restoration of royalism, and the restoration of royalism meant the subjection of the godly, while a reformation of the law, not resting on a constitutional basis, hung only on the thread of a single life. His effort, however, to govern constitutionally was genuine and persistent. Two conditions he always announced as fundamental, the sovereignty of the protector, and the maintenance of liberty of conscience. The protectorate was ‘what he would be rolled in the grave and covered with infamy sooner than give up.’ It was for a liberty of conscience, he always said, better than episcopacy or presbyterianism had allowed, that the army, the true national representative, had shed its blood. To surrender it would be to violate his most sacred trust. Subject to these two conditions he would give parliament its way, but { 362} in the first the republican minority, in the second the presbyterian majority, would not acquiesce. One of his parliaments imprisoned Biddle the socinian, the other was very near burning poor James Nayler, the quaker, but finally let him off with putting him on the pillory and boring through his tongue. In both cases Cromwell interfered. The final breach, however, with each of his parliaments was due to its insisting on a discussion of the basis of government by a single person. To tolerate this, in the presence of royalist plots, sanctioned by a proclamation in Charles Stuart’s name for the assassination of ‘the base mechanic fellow, Oliver Cromwell,’ and of fifth-monarchy men who were gathering arms to fight for ‘king Jesus’ under the standard of the tribe of Judah, would have been ‘to let all run back to blood again.’