Oliver Cromwell

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY by Thomas Carlyle:

I. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology. II. The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam. III. The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakspeare. IV. The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism. V. The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns. VI. The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism.

1. No correlation has ever been established between hat size and intelligence. However, Both Emerson, in the essay “Circles,” and Nietzsche, in “Schopenhauer as Educator,” instance Lord Protector Cromwell’s remark that: A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

WALDEN: Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which PEOPLE OF is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly WALDEN overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakspeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England’s best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.

FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE SIR FRANCIS BACON OLIVER CROMWELL JOHN MILTON ISAAC NEWTON WILLIAM PENN JOHN HOWARD ELIZABETH FRY HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

A WEEK: Already, as appears from the records, “At a General Court PEOPLE OF held at Boston in New England, the 7th of the first month, 1643- A WEEK 4.” — “Wassamequin, Nashoonon, Kutchamaquin, Massaconomet, and Squaw Sachem, did voluntarily submit themselves” to the English; and among other things did “promise to be willing from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge of God.” Being asked “Not to do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, especially within the gates of Christian towns,” they answered, “It is easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and they can well take their rest on that day.” — “So,” says Winthrop, in his Journal, “we causing them to understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of God, and they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received, and then presented the Court with twenty-six fathom more of wampom; and the Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their dinner; and to them and their men, every of them, a cup of sack at their departure; so they took leave and went away.” What journeyings on foot and on horseback through the wilderness, to preach the Gospel to these minks and muskrats! who first, no doubt, listened with their red ears out of a natural hospitality and courtesy, and afterward from curiosity or even interest, till at length there were “praying Indians,” and, as the General Court wrote to Cromwell, the “work is brought to this perfection, that some of the Indians themselves can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner.” It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground through which we had been floating, the ancient dwelling-place of a race of hunters and warriors. Their weirs of stone, their arrowheads and hatchets, their pestles, and the mortars in which they pounded Indian corn before the white man had tasted it, lay concealed in the mud of the river bottom. Tradition still points out the spots where they took fish in the greatest numbers, by such arts as they possessed. It is a rapid story the historian will have to put together. Miantonimo,— Winthrop, — Webster. Soon he comes from Montaup to Bunker Hill, from bear-skins, parched corn, bows and arrows, to tiled roofs, wheat-fields, guns and swords. Pawtucket and Wamesit, where the Indians resorted in the fishing season, are now Lowell, the city of spindles and Manchester of America, which sends its cotton cloth round the globe. Even we youthful voyagers had spent a part of our lives in the village of Chelmsford, when the present city, whose bells we heard, was its obscure north district only, and the giant weaver was not yet fairly born. So old are we; so young is it.

OLIVER CROMWELL HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1599

April 25, Wednesday (Old Style): Oliver Cromwell was born at Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire and would obtain his basic education at the Huntindon Grammar School. His father was the youngest son of a man who had inherited a minor portion of the vast estates that Thomas Cromwell (1485?-1540), Earl of Essex had seized from Catholic monasteries during 1538-1539. His Welsh great-grandfather, who had been named Williams, had adopted the name Cromwell in honor of his patron Thomas Cromwell, who was his cousin.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1607

Michael Drayton’s THE LEGEND OF GREAT CROMWEL.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1616

During this year and the following one, a lad with an enormous head and a mole over one eye, named Oliver Cromwell, was a commoner of a Cambridge college. (Eventually this lad’s enormous head, with its signature mole over the eye, would wind up honorably interred in a chapel near this college.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1617

When the father of Oliver Cromwell died, he was the youngest son but did inherit some property in East Anglia. He would be able to live by farming and rent collecting in Huntingdon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1625

The Stuart Period in British History • King Charles I, 1625-1649 • Civil War, 1640-1649; Commonwealth, 1649-1653; Protectorate, 1653-1660 • Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, 1653-1658 (beheaded 1661) • Richard Cromwell, 1658-1660 (died 1712) • King Charles II, 1660-1685 • King James II, 1685-1688 • Glorious Revolution and Interregnum, 1688-1689 • Queen Mary II, 1689-1694 • William III, Stadholder of the Netherlands, 1672-1702; King William III of England 1689-1702 • Queen Anne, 1702-1714 HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1628

Sponsored by the Montagu family, Oliver Cromwell was elected to the Parliament. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1629

While Richard Lovelace was 11 years of age, King Charles I nominated “Thomas Lovelace,” upon petition of the mother, Anne Barne Lovelace, to Sutton’s foundation at the Charterhouse school in London, and presumably “Thomas” was a mistake for “Richard.” We don’t know whether during the 5 years he was there he was attending the Charterhouse classes, or was being privately tutored. We do know that for 3 of these 5 years he was studying alongside Richard Crashaw, who would also become a poet.

The Parliament to which Oliver Cromwell had been elected was dissolved by King Charles I because it failed to vote him money. Oliver would take up farming in Huntingdon and become a convert to Puritanism. Charles would until 1640 rule personally (this would prove to be something of a mistake of judgment for, with the parliament dissolved, the cloth trade slumping, and bad harvests, of course there would be nobody to blame but Charley).

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1631

Oliver Cromwell was at St. Ives. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1634

In about this year, in England, John Clarke got married with Sarah Davis (1609-1691).

Edward Bulkeley, the eldest son of the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, had emigrated to the American colonies and in this year was admitted as a member of the First Church of Boston.

At the visitation of a Cardinal in this year, the rector at Odell, Peter Bulkeley, was suspended, because unable to accept the Laudian discipline and because he used neither a surplice nor the sign of the cross in baptism, “accounting them ceremonies superstitious” (see Bedfordshire Magazine, ii, 30-2). Peter had been born in the village and had succeeded his father as rector in 1624. The suspended rector would emigrate to New England and help to found the town of Concord, where he would become its first minister.

In this same year Oliver Cromwell discovered that the English government would not permit him to emigrate to Connecticut because he had, in 1629 or so, converted to Puritanism.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1635

George Fox would in this year turn eleven years of age, and at least by his own account he was a promising lad:

When I came to eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteousness; for while a child I was taught how to walk to be kept pure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in all things, and to act faithfully two ways, viz., inwardly, to God, and outwardly, to man; and to keep to Yea and Nay in all things. For the Lord showed me that, though the people of the world have mouths full of deceit, and changeable affords, yet I was to keep to Yea and Nay in all things; and that my words should lie few and savoury, seasoned with grace; and that I might not eat and drink to make myself wanton, but for health, using the creatures [created things] in their service, as servants in their places, to the glory of Him that created them. As I grew up, my relations thought to have made me a priest [clergyman in the established Church, or any minister who receives pay for preaching], but others persuaded to the contrary. Whereupon I was put to a man who was a shoemaker by trade, and dealt in wool. He also used grazing, and sold cattle; and a great deal went through my hands. While I was with him he was blessed, but after I left him he broke and came to nothing. I never wronged man or woman in all that time; for the Lord’s power was with me and over me, to preserve me. While I was in that service I used in my dealings the word Verily, and it was a common saying among those that knew me, “If George says verily, there is no altering him.” When boys and rude persons would laugh at me, I let them alone and went my way; but people had generally a love to me for my innocency and honesty.

Rufus Jones comments that although this brief connection with a Nottingham shoemaker and cattle grazer has been effectively used by Thomas Carlyle in his famous characterization of Fox (SARTOR RESARTUS, Book iii., Chapter 1: “An Incident in Modern History”), there is simply no historical foundation whatever for such a conceit, any more than there is any historical foundation whatever for Carlyle’s conceit that Fox lived in a hollow tree. The only known reference would be to a passage in Fox’s writings, in which he comments that “I fasted much, walked abroad in solitary places many days; and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came on,” and this of course would be evidence merely for a practice of frequent retirement for private devotional meditation and prayer not at all uncommon in Fox’s day and age, and as such entirely innocuous.

Also, it is merely conjectural, or imaginative, to suppose there to have been any connection between Fox’s leather outfit and his earlier apprenticeship — we might as well suppose that when Fox stopped off at an inn in Nottingham for a steak and kidney pie, the steak and the kidney would perhaps have been contributed by a HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

descendant of a cow that the apprentice Fox had once herded!

Good morrow to thee, You who live in a tree; Dressed all in leather, You teach decency.

THOMAS CARLYLE

As a type case of The-Toil-Worn-Craftsman-Hero, perhaps Carlyle offers us the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, as type cases of The-Priestly-Great-Man, perhaps he offers us the Reverends Martin Luther and John Knox, and as a type case of The-Great-One-Who-Does-It-All, who combines the work of this material world with the work of the other immaterial one, perhaps he offers us (over and above Jesus the carpenter savior) his image of George Fox the worker in soles and souls. It is interesting that Carlyle supposes that he knows of no-one of this category in his own generation, when he is in contact with Waldo Emerson — and Emerson has been feeding him this and that piece of info about his Concord neighbor and confidant Henry HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Thoreau, who might have been eminently perceived as fitting into such shoes as these!

Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man’s. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather- tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou were our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? —These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1636

Oliver Cromwell was at Ely. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1640

Oliver Cromwell was again time elected to the Parliament, this time for Cambridge.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1642

1642 Events of the English Civil War: • 5th January: King Charles I failed to arrest 6 of his leading opponents. • 5th March: The Militia Ordinance. • 23d April: Hotham barred Hull to the king. • 1st June: The Nineteen Propositions. • 11th June: The Commissions of Array. • 15th July: There was fighting in Manchester. • 4th August: The Battle of Marshall’s Elm. • 22d August: The royal standard was raised at Nottingham. • 22d September: The Episcopacy was suspended. The Royalists won the Battle of Powick Bridge. • 23d October: The initial battle of Edgehill. • 12th November: The Storm of Brentford. • 13th November: The Royalists turned back at Turnham Green.

Upon the outbreak of civil war, Oliver Cromwell joined the Parliamentary force serving under Edward Montagu, Duke of Manchester in opposition to Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers. ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

Transportation and sale of convicts and prisoners of war would, during the English Civil War from 1642 to 1649, become a major branch of the slave trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

October 23, Sunday (Old Style): The battle of Edgehill was fought in the English Civil War. What goes around keeps coming around and around and around...

Rupert’s cavalier cavalrymen had no discipline and after the initial charge on the roundheads, merely chased around after individual targets and neglected to return to the battlefield for well over an hour. By then, although they had forced the Parliamentary army to retreat to Warwick, their mounts were exhausted. Oliver Cromwell noted this well, and would discipline his cavalrymen to clump together so they could charge again and again. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1643

1643 Events of the English Civil War: • 1st February: Negotiations opened at Oxford. • 23rd February: Queen Henrietta returned from Europe with arms and ammunition. • 27th March: The 1st Ordinance for Sequestration. • 14th April: The Oxford talks broke down. • 24th May: The Treatise of Monarchy was published. • 24th June: The Battle of Chalgrove Field. • 30th June: The Battle of Adwalton Moor. • 1st July: The Westminster Assembly of Divines met. • 5th July: The Battle of Lansdown. • 13th July: The Battle of Roundway Down. • 27th July: The army of Oliver Cromwell won at Gainsborough. • 6th September: The Earl of Essex relieved Gloucester. • 20th September: The Parliamentarians won the 1st battle at Newbury. • 25th September: The Solemn League and Covenant. • 11th October: The Battle of Winceby. • 8th December: John Pym died. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

July 27, Thursday (Old Style): The army of Oliver Cromwell won at Gainsborough.

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1644

1644 Events of the English Civil War: • 19th January: A Scottish army invaded England. • 22nd January: The Oxford Parliament met. • 25th January: The Battle of Nantwich. The Committee of both Kingdoms was set up. • 18th February: The defense of Hopton Castle. • 29th March: The Battle of Cheriton. • 11th April: The Battle of Selby. • 29th June: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Cropredy Bridge. • 2nd July: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Marston Moor. • 14th July: Queen Henrietta Maria left England. • 16th July: The surrender of York. • 1st September: Essex’s army surrendered to Carles at Lostwithiel. • 27th October: The 2nd Battle of Newbury. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

In England, the Presbyterians assumed a majority of Parliament against the Congregationalists. At the Battle of Marston Moor, the Roundheads led by Oliver Cromwell defeated the Cavaliers under Prince Rupert.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Spring: The Squaw Sachem and four other native leaders put themselves and their property, and the remainder of their peoples, under the jurisdiction of the Bay Colony. One of the civilizing conditions to which they were required to assent was “3. Not to do any unnecessary worke on the Sabath day....”:

OLIVER CROMWELL HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

July 2, Tuesday (Old Style): The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Marston Moor in Yorkshire. ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

This was Oliver Cromwell’s initial major encounter and because of the manner in which his cavalry cut through the Cavaliers he would be know as “Ironsides.”

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1645

1645 Events of the English Civil War: • 4th January: Ordinance for Directory of Worship. • 10th January: Archbishop William Laud was executed. • 29th January: Uxbridge negotiations opened. • 2nd February: The Royalists won the Battle of Inverlochy. • 17th February: The New Model Army Ordinance. • 3rd April: The Self Denying Ordinance. • 9th May: The Royalists won the Battle of Auldearn. • 30th May: The Storm of Leicester. • 14th June: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Naseby. • 10th July: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Langport. • 1st August: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Colby Moor. • 15th August: The Royalists won the Battle of Kilsyth. • 25th August: Glamorgan’s Treaty with the Irish. • 10th September: The Fall of Bristol. • 13th September: The Battle of Philiphaugh. • 20th September: Glamorgan’s second Treaty. • 24th September: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Rowton Heath. • 1st November: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Mold. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

William Goffe became a captain in Colonel Harley’s regiment of the English Parliament’s New Model Army. On the basis of a comment he made, that he prayed for Oliver Cromwell “without ceasing,” he would be generally known in that army as “Praying William.” By getting married with a daughter of Edward Whalley, Frances, at some unknown date between 1645 and 1650, he would become connected with the Cromwell family. REGICIDE

In a house called “Whitehall,” in Cheam, Surrey, the Reverend George Aldrich began the Cheam School.

Ralph Cudworth was appointed as master of Clare Hall and elected as Regius Professor of Hebrew. From this point he would be recognized as a leader among the “Cambridge Platonists,” a group that was more or less in sympathy with the Parliament and more or less at odds with the faction of the royals. He would be consulted in regard to university and government appointments by John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell’s secretary to the council of state.

Parliamentary soldiers were reorganizing the English army. Each regiment of the “New Model Army” was to have 10 companies, and be commanded by a colonel. Line companies were authorized to contain about 100 enlisted men, at the rate of two musketeers (shoulder firearm with matchlock) for each pikeman. Each company had a captain, a lieutenant, and an ensign to carry the flag. Sergeants lead the troops on the march, and corporals drilled them in pike and musket coordination. Their drummers controlled the company movement by the use of eight basic calls. Headquarters companies, which included the lieutenant colonel and the sergeant major, were somewhat larger. The dragoons, the cavalry, and the artillery were in other units, and then of course there were the sutlers, following along behind. Cavalrymen, and soldiers assigned to artillery units, carried shoulder firearms that used the wheel-lock or flint-lock mechanisms, in order to avoid accidents with slow matches that could cause powder wagons to explode. The New Model Army would turn out to need only five chaplains, and their sole duty would be to pray for victory in battle and then –if God gave them the victory– offer thanksgiving.

February (1644, Old Style): A professional Parliamentary Army of 22,000 men was formed under Commander in Chief Thomas Fairfax, when possible recruiting from among the Puritans those with a conviction of the righteousness of cause in which they were killing. Oliver Cromwell was placed in charge of the cavalry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

June 14, Saturday (Old Style): In the English Civil War, with Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliamentarians shaped into a “New Model Army,” at the Battle of Naseby the Roundhead forces of the Parliament entered their initial major battle at a village in Northamptonshire called Naseby and defeated the Cavalier forces of King Charles I.

When Prince Rupert mounted a cavalry attack on the Parliamentary Cavalry’s left side, it scattered and the Cavalier horsemen of course gave chase. Meanwhile Cromwell had launched an attack on the Cavalier’s left side, which also scattered. The difference was that Cromwell’s cavalry remained under control and massed, and then swung off and attacked the exposed flanks of the infantry. Although Charles I was waiting nearby with 1,200 men in reserve, instead of coming to the aid of his infantry he retreated leaving his infantry with no option but death or surrender.

This was the turning point of the civil war, with 1,000 of Charles’s men killed and 4,500 taken prisoner. The monarch would never again raise a force strong enough to do battle with the new Parliamentary Army. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1646

1646 Events of the English Civil War: • January: The exposure of King Charles I’s secret treaty with the Kilkenny government. • 3rd February: Chester surrendered to the Parliamentarians. • 21st March: The Parliamentarians won the Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold. • 5th May: King Charles I surrendered to the Scots besieging Newark. • 5th June: Confederation forces won the Battle of Benburb. • July: Parliament presented King Charles I with the Newcastle propositions. • 4th August: The treaty between Kilkenny and Ormund. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1647

1647 Events of the English Civil War: • 30th January: The Scots surrendered King Charles I to the English. • 21st March: The 1st Saffron Walden meeting of Members of Parliament with army officers. • 15th April: The 2nd Saffron Walden meeting of Members of Parliament with army officers. • 28th April: Agitators addressed the House of Commons. • 7th May: The 3rd Saffron Walden meeting of Members of Parliament with army officers. • 4th June: King Charles I was removed to Newmarket. • 5th June: The Solemn Engagement. • 16th June: The New Model Army moved against Eleven Members. • 14th July: The Declaration of the New Model Army. • 23rd July: The Heads of Proposals was submitted to King Charles I. • 30th July: The Speaker and Independent MPs fled to the Army. • 6th August: The Army occupied London. • 8th August: The Battle of Dangan Hill. • 20th August: The Null and Void Ordinance. • 7th September: The Hampton Court Proposals. • 15th October: The Case of the Army Truly Stated. • 28th October: The Agreement of the People. The Putney Debates began. • 11th November: The Four Bills. • 24th December: The Four Bills were presented to King Charles I. • 25th December: There were riots due to the abolition of Christmas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

• 26th December: King Charles I and the Scots entered into The Engagement.

May 7, Friday (Old Style): The Members of Parliament met with army officers for a 3d time, at Saffron Walden. For awhile, Oliver Cromwell would make the Sun Inn of this town his headquarters.

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

October 28, Thursday (Old Style): At the remarkable Putney debates, lower ranking soldiers would be allowed to debate political principles with their generals Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR Colonel Rainsborough attempted to make a case that there was no basis for excluding poor men from voting, because without having a voice in the making of laws one is not obliged to comply with those laws:2

...for really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.

The Leveler constitution was drawn up to be presented and agreed to by the people, and was distributed in pamphlet form as AN AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. Two variations of this would be produced in subsequent years. The proposed constitution aimed to control government by dispersing power among separated executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The House of Lords was to be abolished. Certain individual rights were to be protected from government infringement by constitutional guarantee. The obvious parallel here is with the American revolutionaries, who would enshrine their concept of natural rights in a constitution which was aimed at causing government to struggle within itself:

2. Aylmer, G.E., ed. THE LEVELERS IN THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975, page 100 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AN AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE FOR A firme and present Peace, upon grounds of common-right and freedome; As it was proposed by the Agents of the five regiments of Horse; and since by the general approbation of the Army, offered to the joynt concurrence of all the free COMMONS of ENGLAND. The Names of the Regiments which have already appeared for the Case, of The Case of the Army truly stated, and for this present Agreement, VIZ. Of Horse. • 1. Gen. Regiment. • 2. Life-Guard • 3. Lieut. Gen. Regiment • 4. Com. Gen. Regiment. • 5. Col. Whaleyes Reg. • 6. Col. Riches Reg. • 7. Col. Fleetwoods Reg. • 8. Col. Harrisons Reg. • 9. Col. Twisldens Reg. Of Foot. • 1. Gen. Regiment. • 2. Col. Sir Hardresse Wallers Reg. • 3. Col. Lamberts Reg. • 4. Col. Rainsboroughs Regiment. • 5. Col. Overtons Reg. • 6. Col. Lilburns Reg. • 7. Col. Backsters Reg. • Printed Anno. Dom. 1647. Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned our cause, as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands: We do now hold our selves bound in mutual duty HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition, and chargable remedy of another war: for as it cannot be imagined that so many of our countrymen would have opposed us in this quarrel, if they had understood their own good; so may we safely promise to ourselves, that when our Common Rights and liberties shall be cleared, their endeavors will be disappointed, that seek to make themselves our Masters: since therefore our former oppressions, and scarce yet ended troubles have been occasioned, either by want of frequent National meetings in Council, or by rendering those meetings ineffectual; We are fully agreed and resolved, to provide that hereafter our Representatives be neither left to an uncertainly for the time, nor made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto we declare: • I. That the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs, for the election of their deputies in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned, according to the number of the inhabitants; the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present Parliament.3 • II. That to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the long continuance of the same persons in authority, this present Parliament be dissolved upon the last day of September, which shall be in the year of our Lord 1648. • III. That the people do of course choose themselves a Parliament once in two years, viz., upon the first Thursday in every second March, after the manner as shall be prescribed before the end of this Parliament, to begin to sit upon the first Thursday in April following, at Westminster, or such other place as shall be appointed from time to time by the preceding Representatives, and to continue till the last day of September then next ensuing, and no longer. • IV. That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this nation is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons,4 to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws; to the erecting and abolishing of Offices and Courts; to the appointing, removing, and calling to account Magistrates and officers of all degrees; to the making War and peace; to the treating with foreign States; and generally to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves.5

3. This document served as the focus for debates held in Putney Common between top officers of the New Model Army, known as “Grandees,” and representatives chosen by the regiments, known as “agitators.” There is no official record of the conclusion of these debates, but the following was reported in A Letter from Several Agitators to the Regiments:

We sent some of them to debate in love the matter and manner of the Agreement. And the first article thereof, being long debated, it was concluded by vote in the affirmative:- Viz., That all soldiers and others, if not servants or beggars, ought to have their voices in electing those which shall represent them in Parliament, although they have not forty shillings per annum in freehold land. And there were but three voices against this your native freedom.

4. “any other person or persons” This refers, of course, to the monarch, and anyone else he or she might appoint to take part in government. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Which are as followeth: • 1. That matters of Religion, and the ways of God’s Worship, are not at all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot remit or exceed a tittle of what our Consciences dictate to be the mind of God, without willful sin; nevertheless the public way of instructing the Nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to their discretion. • 2. That the matter of impressing and constraining any of us to serve in the wars is against our freedom, and therefore we do not allow it in our Representatives; the rather, because money (the sinews of war) being always at their disposal, they can never want numbers of men apt enough to engage in any just cause. • 3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person be at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to the late public differences, otherwise than in execution of the judgments of the present Representatives, or House of Commons.6 • 4. That in all Laws made, or to be made, every person may be bound alike,7 and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place, do confer any exemption from the ordinary course of legal proceedings, whereunto others are subjected. • 5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.8 These things we declare to be our native Rights, and therefore are agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities against all opposition whatsoever, being compelled thereunto not only by the examples of our Ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of their Freedoms, suffering themselves, through fraudulent accommodations, to be still deluded of the fruit of their victories, but also by our own woeful experience, who, having long expected, and dearly earned, the establishment of these certain rules of government, are yet made to depend for the settlement of our Peace and Freedom upon him that intended our bondage9 and brought a cruel war upon us. Dear Country-men, and fellow-Commoners, For your sakes, our 5. The ninth and tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution derive directly from this last clause:

IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. “the late public differences”

The first civil war was fought from 1642 to 1646. In 1629, King Charles I had dissolved Parliament, and for eleven years tried to rule on his own authority, to raise taxes, etc. On the occasion of a war on Scotland, he finally felt obliged to recall Parliament, but when they convened they took him to task for his abuses of power. By 1642, the two sides were mustering their own armies, and the war followed. 6. This is a demand for amnesty for what the soldiers may have done while fighting for Parliament in the civil war, and in the confrontation between the Army and Parliament in the spring and summer of 1647. 7. “every person may be bound alike” The essential break with remnants of feudalism, this places the levelling principle on the political agenda for evermore. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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friends, estates and lives have not been dear to us; for your safety and freedom we have cheerfully endured hard Labours and run most desperate hazards, and in comparison to your peace and freedom we neither do nor ever shall value our dearest blood and we profess, our bowels are and have been troubled, and our hearts pained within us, in seeing and considering that you have been so long bereaved of these fruits and ends of all our labours and hazards, we cannot but sympathize with you in your miseries and oppressions. Its grief and vexation of heart to us, to receive your meat or monies, while you have no advantage, nor yet the foundations of your peace and freedom surely laid: and therefore upon most serious considerations, that your principal right most essential to your well being is the clearness, certainty, sufficiency and freedom of your power in your representatives in Parliament, and considering that the original of most of your oppressions & miseries has been either from the obscurity and doubtfulness of the power you have committed to your representatives in your elections, or from the want of courage in those whom you have entrusted to claim and exercise their power, which might probably proceed from their uncertainty of your assistance and maintenance of their power, and minding that for this right of yours and ours we engaged our lives; for the King raised the war against you and your Parliament, upon this ground, that he would not suffer your representatives to provide for your peace, safety and freedom that were then in danger, by disposing of the Militia and otherwise, according to their trust; and for the maintenance and defense of that power and right of yours, we hazarded all that was dear to us, and God has borne witness to the justice of our Cause. And further minding that the only effectual means to settle a just and lasting peace, to obtain remedy for all your grievances, & to prevent future oppressions, is the making clear & secure the power that you betrust to your representatives in Parliament, that they may know their trust, in the faithful 8. Compare the sense of this clause with that of the preface to the Constitution:

We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

9. “him that intended our bondage” — refers to King Charles I, who the soldiers believed had forced the war upon Parliament and so upon everyone who had taken up the Parliamentary cause. Soon after the debates in Putney Common, even while the Agreement was being published, the king escaped from house arrest (or was secretly released), which created a crisis atmosphere in which the Levellers were unable to push the Agreement any further. Charles rallied royalist supporters and, this time in alliance with the Scots, fought a second round of civil war, but was again defeated. He was then tried by Parliament and executed, for treason against the people of England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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execution whereof you will assist them. Upon all these grounds, we propound your joining with us in the agreement herewith sent unto you; that by virtue thereof, we may have Parliaments certainly called and have the time of their sitting and ending certain & their power or trust clear and unquestionable, that hereafter they may remove your burdens, & secure your rights, without oppositions or obstructions, & that the foundations of your peace may be so free from uncertainty, that there may be no grounds for future quarrels, or contentions to occasion war and bloodshed; and we desire you would consider, that as these things wherein we offer to agree with you, are the fruits & ends of the Victories which God has given us: so the settlement of these are the most absolute means to preserve you and your Posterity, from slavery, oppression, distraction, & trouble; by this, those whom your selves shall choose, shall have power to restore you to, and secure you in, all your rights; & they shall be in a capacity to taste of subjection, as well as rule, & so shall be equally concerned with your selves, in all they do. For they must equally suffer with you under any common burdens, & partake with you in any freedoms; & by this they shall be disenabled to defraud or wrong you, when the laws shall bind all alike, without privilege or exemption; & by this your Consciences shall be free from tyranny & oppression, & those occasions of endless strife, & bloody wars, shall be perfectly removed: without controversy by your joining with us in this Agreement, all your particular & common grievances will be redressed forthwith without delay; the Parliament must them make your relief and common good their only study. Now because we are earnestly desirous of the peace and good of all our Country-men, even of those that have opposed us, and would to our utmost possibility provide for perfect peace and freedom, & prevent all suits, debates, & contentions that may happen amongst you, in relation to the late war: we have therefore inserted it into this Agreement, that no person shall be questioned for anything done, in relation to the late public differences, after the dissolution of this present Parliament, further than in execution of their judgement; that thereby all may be secure from all sufferings for what they have done, & not liable hereafter to be troubled or punished by the judgment of another Parliament, which may be to their ruin, unless this Agreement be joined in, whereby any acts of indemnity or oblivion shall be made unalterable, and you and your posterities be secure. But if any shall enquire why we should desire to join in an Agreement with the people, to declare these to be our native Rights, & not rather petition to the Parliament for them; the reason is evident: No Act of Parliament is or can be inalterable, and so cannot be sufficient security to save you or us harmless, from what another Parliament may determine, if it should be corrupted; and besides Parliaments are to receive the extent of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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their power, and trust from those that betrust them; and therefore the people are to declare what their power and trust is, which is the intent of this Agreement; and it’s to be observed, that though there have formerly been many acts of Parliaments every year, yet you have been deprived of them, and enslaved through want of them, and therefore both necessity for your security in these freedoms, that are essential to your well-being, and woeful experience of the manifold miseries and distractions that have been lengthened out since the war ended, through want of such a settlement, requires this Agreement and when you and we shall be joined together therein, we shall readily join with you, to petition the Parliament, as they are our fellow Commoners equally concerned, to join with us. And if any shall inquire, Why we undertake to offer this Agreement, we must profess, we are sensible that you have been so often deceived with Declarations and Remonstrances, and fed with vain hopes that you have sufficient reason to abandon all confidence in any persons whatsoever, from whom you have no other security of their intending your freedom, than bare Declaration: And therefore, as our consciences witness, that in simplicity and integrity of heart, we have proposed lately in the Case of the Army stated, your freedom and deliverance from slavery, oppression, and all burdens: so we desire to give you satisfying assurance thereof by this Agreement whereby the foundations of your freedoms provided in the Case, etc. shall be settled unalterably, & we shall as faithfully proceed to, and all other most vigorous actings for your good that God shall direct and enable us unto; And though the malice of our enemies, and such as they delude, would blast us by scandals, aspersing us with designs of Anarchy, and community; yet we hope the righteous God will not only by this our present desire of settling an equal just Government, but also by directing us unto all righteous undertakings, simply for public good, make our uprightness and faithfulness to the interest of all our Countrymen, shine forth so clearly, that malice itself shall be silenced and confounded. We question not, but the longing expectation of a firm peace, will incite you to the most speedy joining in this Agreement: in the prosecution whereof, or of anything that you shall desire for public good; you may be confident, you shall never want the assistance of Your most faithfull fellow-Commoners, now in Arms for your service. Edmond Bear Robert Everard Lieut. Gen. Regiment George Garret Thomas Beverley HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Com. Gen. Regiment William Pryor William Bryan Col. Fleetwood’s Regiment Matthew Weale William Russell Col. Whaley’s Regiment John Dover William Hudson Col. Rich’s Regiment Agents coming from other Regiments unto us, have subscribed the Agreement to be proposed to their respective Regiments, and you. For Our much honoured, and truly worthy Fellow-Commoners, and Soldiers, the Officers and Soldiers under Command of His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax. Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers; The deep sense of many dangers and mischiefs that may befall you in relation to the late War, whensoever this Parliament shall end, unless sufficient prevention be now provided, has constrained us to study the most absolute & certain means for your security; and upon most serious considerations, we judge that no Act of Indemnity can sufficiently provide for your quiet, ease, and safety; because, as it has formerly been, a corrupt Party (chosen into the next Parliament by your Enemy’s means) may possibly surprise the house, and make any Act of Indemnity null, seeing they cannot fail of the King’s Assistance and concurrence, in any such actings against you, that conquered him. And by the same means, your freedom from impressing also, may in a short time be taken from you, though for the present, it should be granted; we apprehend no other security, by which you shall be saved harmless, for what you have done in the late war, than a mutual Agreement between the people & you, that no person shall be questioned by any Authority whatsoever, for anything done in relation to the late public differences, after the dissolution of the present house of Commons, further than in execution of their judgement; and that your native freedom from constraint to serve in war, whether domestic or foreign, shall never be subject to the power of Parliaments, or any other; and for this end, we propound the Agreement that we herewith send to you, to be forthwith subscribed. And because we are confident, that in judgement and Conscience, you hazarded your lives for the settlement of such a just and equal Government, that you and your posterities, and all the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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freeborn people of this Nation might enjoy justice & freedom, and that you are really sensible that the distractions, oppressions, and miseries of the Nation, and your want of your Arrears, do proceed from the want of the establishment, both of such certain rules of just Government, and foundations of peace, as are the price of blood, and the expected fruits of all the peoples cost: Therefore in this Agreement we have inserted the certain Rules of equal Government, under which the Nation may enjoy all its Rights and Freedoms securely; And as we doubt not but your love to the freedom and lasting peace of the yet distracted Country will cause you to join together in this Agreement. So we question not: but every true English man that loves the peace and freedom of England will concur with us; and then your Arrears and constant pay (while you continue in Arms) will certainly be brought in out of the abundant love of the people to you. And then shall the mouths of those be stopped, that scandalize you and us, as endeavouring Anarchy, or to rule by the sword; & then will so firm a union be made between the people and you, that neither any homebred or foreign Enemies will dare to disturb our happy peace. We shall add no more but this, that the knowledge of your union in laying this foundation of peace, this Agreement, is much longed for, by Yours, and the People’s most faithful Servants. Postscript. GENTLEMEN. We desire you may understand the reason of our extracting some principles of common freedom out of those many things proposed to you in the Case truly stated, and drawing them up into the forme of an Agreement. It’s chiefly because for these things we first engaged against the King. He would not permit the people’s Representatives to provide for the Nation’s safety, by disposing of the Militian, and other ways, according to their Trust, but raised a War against them, and we engaged for the defence of that power, and right of the people, in their Representatives. Therefore these things in the Agreement, the people are to claim as their native right, and price of their blood, which you are obliged absolutely to procure for them. And these being the foundations of freedom, it’s necessary, that they should be settled unalterably, which can be by no means, but this Agreement with the people. And we cannot but mind you, that the ease of the people in all their Grievances, depends upon the settling those principles or rules of equal Government for a free people, & were but this Agreement established, doubtless all the Grievances of the Army and people would be redressed immediately, and all things propounded in your Case truly stated to be insisted on, would be forthwith granted. Then should the House of Commons have power to help the oppressed HDT WHAT? INDEX

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people, which they are now bereaved of by the chief Oppressors, and then they shall be equally concerned with you and all the people, in the settlement of the most perfect freedom: for they shall equally suffer with you under any Burdens, or partake in any Freedom. We shall only add, that the sum of all the Agreement which we herewith offer to you, is but in order to the fulfilling of our Declaration of June the 14. wherein we promised to the people, that we would with our lives vindicate and clear their right and power in their Parliaments. Edmond Bear Robert Everard Lieut. Gen. Reg. George Garret Thomas Beverley Com. Gen. Reg. William Pryor William Bryan Col. Fleetwood Reg. Matthew Wealey William Russell Col. Whaley Reg. John Dover William Hudson Col. Rich Reg. Agents coming from other Regiments unto us, have subscribed the Agreement, to be proposed to their respective Regiments and you.

November: The series of discussions about a written constitutional proposal for England, one that had been drafted by civilian Levellers and had been endorsed by “Agitators” representing various regiments of the New Model Army, concluded at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in the town of Putney in Surrey. Oliver Cromwell and William Goffe had been active in these “Putney Debates.” The proposed new constitution would be termed “The Agreement of the People.” (A consensus was arising that every adult male in England ought to be allowed to vote excepting only servants and those receiving alms — but then the flight of the king very radically altered the situation within which these extended discussions had been taking place.) REGICIDE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1648

1648 Events of the English Civil War: • 3rd January: The vote on No Addresses. • 23rd March: Laugharne’s revolt in Wales. • 8th May: The Battle of St Fagans. • 24th May: The House of Commons voted to negotiate with King Charles II. • 26th May: The failure of the Kentish revolt. • 27th May: The Navy revolted against the Parliament. • 1st June: The Battle of Maidstone. • 8th June: The rising in Essex. • 13th June: Colchester Castle was seized. • 10th July: The Battle of St Neots. • 17th August: The Battle of Preston. • 18th August: The Battle of Wigan. • 24th August: Repeal of the vote on No Addresses. • 25th August: The Duke of Hamilton surrendered. • 27th August: Colchestre Castle surrendered. • 11th September: The Leveller’s Humble Petition. • 18th September: The Newport Treaty talks began. • 29th October: The assassination of Rainsborough. • 16th November: The Remonstrance of the Army. • 2nd December: The Army occupied London. • 6th December: Pride’s Purge. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Scottish army invaded England but was defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Preston Pride’s Purge, whereupon the Presbyterians were expelled from the Rump Parliament.

In Shropshire, the Puritan Samuell More at one point armed 30 men and held nearby Hopton Castle in the name of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and the Republic for a month against a siege by 500 royalists. At their surrender the Puritan soldiers were put to the sword, only the Lord himself being spared to be packed off to prison for the duration — which would indicate that presumably this Lord had cut a lordly deal with the attackers to surrender the castle in return for his own neck (offering without their awareness to sacrifice the lives of his ordinary soldiers). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1649

1649 Events of the English Civil War: • 4th January: The assumption of full power by House of Commons. • 20th January: The commencement of the trial of King Charles I. • 30th January: The execution of Charles I. • 5th February: King Charles II was proclaimed in Scotland. • 8th February: The EIKON BASILIKE of King Charles I was printed. • 14th February: The Council of State. • 17th March: The abolition of the English monarchy.

• 19th March: The abolition of the English House of Lords. • 27th April: Execution of Robert Lockyer, a mutineer. • 15th May: A mutiny was suppressed at Burford. • 19th May: England proclaimed itself a Commonwealth. • 2d August: The Battle of Rathmines. • 11th September: The Drogheda slaughter. • 11th October: The Wexford slaughter. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After a Royalist uprising leading to a 2d civil war during Summer 1648, Oliver Cromwell supervised King Charles I’s trial and execution. The Commonwealth, in which England was to be governed as a republic, was established and would last until 1660; Cromwell harshly suppressed Catholic rebellion in Ireland.10 Amidst this turmoil Friend George Fox was preaching:

Abundance was opened concerning these things; how all lay out of the wisdom of God, and out of the righteousness and holiness that man at the first was made in. But as all believe in the Light, and walk in the Light, — that Light with which Christ hath enlightened every man that cometh into the world, — and become children of the Light, and of the day of Christ, all things, visible and invisible, are seen, by the divine Light of Christ, the spiritual heavenly man, by whom all things were created. Moreover, when I was brought up into His image in righteousness and holiness, and into the paradise of God He let me see how Adam was made a living soul; and also the stature of Christ, the mystery that had been hid from ages and generations: which things are hard to be uttered, and cannot be borne by many. For of all the sects in Christendom (so called) that I discoursed with, I found none who could bear to be told that any should come to Adam’s perfection, — into that image of God, that righteousness and holiness, that Adam was in before he fell; to be clean and pure, without sin, as he was. Therefore how shall they be able to bear being told that any shall grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when they cannot bear to hear that any shall come, whilst upon earth, into the same power and Spirit that the prophets and apostles were in? — though it be a certain truth that none can understand their writings aright without the same Spirit by which they were written. Now the Lord God opened to me by His invisible power that every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation to the Light of life, and became the children of it; but they that hated it, and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light without the help of any man; neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures; though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it. For I saw, in that Light and Spirit which was before the Scriptures were given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all, if they would know God or Christ, or the Scriptures aright, must come to that Spirit by which they that gave them forth were led and taught. On a certain time, as I was walking in the fields, the Lord said unto me, “Thy name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, which was before the foundation of the world”: and as the Lord spoke it, I believed, and saw in it the new birth. Some time after the Lord commanded me to go abroad into the world, which was like a briery, thorny wilderness. When I came in the Lord’s mighty power with the Word of life into the world, the world swelled and made a noise like the great raging waves of the sea. Priests and professors, magistrates and people, were all like a sea when I came to proclaim the day of the Lord amongst them, and to preach repentance to them.

10. The Puritan prisoner Samuell More was of course set free by Lord Protector Cromwell. Eventually he would become a Member of Parliament. In his will there would be no mention of the four inconvenient small children whom he had so coldly sent to transportation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I was sent to turn people from darkness to the Light, that they might receive Christ Jesus; for to as many as should receive Him in His Light, I saw He would give power to become the sons of God; which power I had obtained by receiving Christ. I was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which they might be led into all truth, and up to Christ and God, as those had been who gave them forth. Yet I had no slight esteem of the holy Scriptures. They were very precious to me; for I was in that Spirit by which they were given forth; and what the Lord opened in me I afterwards found was agreeable to them. I could speak much of these things, and many volumes might be written upon them; but all would prove too short to set forth the infinite love, wisdom, and power of God, in preparing, fitting, and furnishing me for the service to which He had appointed me; letting me see the depths of Satan on the one hand, and opening to me, on the other hand, the divine mysteries of His own everlasting kingdom. When the Lord God and His Son Jesus Christ sent me forth into the world to preach His everlasting gospel and kingdom, I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward Light, Spirit, and Grace, by which all might know their salvation and their way to God; even that Divine Spirit which would lead them into all truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any. But with and by this divine power and Spirit of God, and the Light of Jesus, I was to bring people off from all their own ways, to Christ, the new and living way; and from their churches, which men had made and gathered, to the Church in God, the general assembly written in heaven, of which Christ is the head. And I was to bring them off from the world’s teachers, made by men, to learn of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him”; and off from all the world’s worships, to know the Spirit of Truth in the inward parts, and to be led thereby; that in it they might worship the Father of spirits, who seeks such to worship Him. And I saw that they that worshipped not in the Spirit of Truth, knew not what they worshipped. And I was to bring people off from all the world’s religions, which are vain, that they might know the pure religion; might visit the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers, and keep themselves from the spots of the world. Then there would not be so many beggars, the sight of whom often grieved my heart, as it denoted so much hard-heartedness amongst them that professed the name of Christ. I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowships, and prayings, and singings, which stood in forms without power; that their fellowship might be in the Holy Ghost, and in the Eternal Spirit of God; that they might pray in the Holy Ghost, and sing in the Spirit and with the grace that comes by Jesus; making melody in their hearts to the Lord, who hath sent His beloved Son to be their Saviour, and hath caused His heavenly sun to shine upon all the world, and His heavenly rain to fall upon the just and the unjust, as His outward rain doth fall, and His outward sun doth shine on all. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I was to bring people off from Jewish ceremonies, and from heathenish fables, and from men’s inventions and worldly doctrines, by which they blew the people about this way and the other, from sect to sect; and from all their beggarly rudiments, with their schools and colleges for making ministers of Christ, — who are indeed ministers of their own making, but not of Christ’s; and from all their images, and crosses, and sprinkling of infants, with all their holy-days (so called), and all their vain traditions, which they had instituted since the Apostles’ days, against all of which the Lord’s power was set: in the dread and authority of which power I was moved to declare against them all, and against all that preached and not freely, as being such as had not received freely from Christ. Moreover, when the Lord sent me forth into the world, He forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low; and I was required to Thee and Thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I travelled up and down I was not to bid people Good morrow, or Good evening; neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one; and this made the sects and professions to rage. But the Lord’s power carried me over all to His glory, and many came to be turned to God in a little time; for the heavenly day of the Lord sprung from on high, and broke forth apace, by the light of which many came to see where they were. Oh, the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that we underwent for not putting off our hats to men! Some had their hats violently plucked off and thrown away, so that they quite lost them. The bad language and evil usage we received on this account are hard to be expressed, besides the danger we were sometimes in of losing our lives for this matter; and that by the great professors of Christianity, who thereby discovered they were not true believers. And though it was but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a wonderful confusion it brought among all professors and priests; but, blessed be the Lord, many came to see the vanity of that custom of putting off the hat to men, and felt the weight of Truth’s testimony against it. About this time I was sorely exercised in going to their courts to cry for justice, in speaking and writing to judges and justices to do justly; in warning such as kept public houses for entertainment that they should not let people have more drink than would do them good; in testifying against wakes, feasts, May-games, sports, plays, and shows, which trained up people to vanity and looseness, and led them from the fear of God; and the days set forth for holidays were usually the times wherein they most dishonoured God by these things. In fairs, also, and in markets, I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandise, cheating, and cozening; warning all to deal justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea, and their nay be nay, and to do unto others as they would have others do unto them; forewarning them of the great and terrible day of the Lord, which would come upon them all.

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I was moved, also, to cry against all sorts of music, and against the mountebanks playing tricks on their stages; for they burthened the pure life, and stirred up people’s minds to vanity. I was much exercised, too, with school-masters and school-mistresses, warning them to teach children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they might not be nursed and trained up in lightness, vanity, and wantonness. I was made to warn masters and mistresses, fathers and mothers in private families, to take care that their children and servants might be trained up in the fear of the Lord, and that themselves should be therein examples and patterns of sobriety and virtue to them. The earthly spirit of the priests wounded my life; and when I heard the bell toll to call people together to the steeple-house, it struck at my life; for it was just like a market-bell, to gather people together, that the priest might set forth his ware for sale. Oh, the vast sums of money that are gotten by the trade they make of selling the Scriptures, and by their preaching, from the highest bishop to the lowest priest! What one trade else in the world is comparable to it? notwithstanding the Scriptures were given forth freely, and Christ commanded His ministers to preach freely, and the prophets and apostles denounced judgment against all covetous hirelings and diviners for money. But in this free Spirit of the Lord Jesus was I sent forth to declare the Word of life and reconciliation freely, that all might come to Christ, who gives freely, and who renews up into the image of God, which man and woman were in before they fell, that they might sit down in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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January 29, Monday (1648, Old Style): Major-General William Goffe of Oliver Cromwell’s army, and his father-in- law Edward Whalley, as members of that government’s High Court of Commission, had been selected by the minority of the Long Parliament for the trial and condemnation of his Majesty, King Charles I of England. On HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the death-warrant of the monarch Goffe’s signature stands 3d and Whalley’s signature 4th.

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WALDEN: I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, –a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet.

MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM GOFFE LT.-GENERAL EDWARD WHALLEY Given the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and given that we are the sort of people that we are, the demise of this monarch would of course instantly inspire a cult of the martyr: REGICIDE

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Per a Guardian (London) article for January 29, 1999: The king was executed 350 years ago tomorrow. Now we are once again in the throes of constitutional change. David Walker wonders if the turbulence of the Civil War period offers Tony Blair a history lesson

When the restored monarch “came into his own again” his followers wreaked vengeance on the readiest symbol of that extraordinary man who had risen by sheer force of self-belief to rule England, ravage Ireland and repress Scotland. The royalists disinterred Oliver Cromwell’s body, dismembered it and set his head on a pole outside Westminster Hall, where it remained a curiosity to passers-by (Samuel Pepys tells us) for many years. The new king, Charles II, was wiser than his father, he died in his bed in his palace. Charles I had mounted the scaffold on that January day in 1649, condemned to death by a parliamentary commission cowed by Cromwell’s “vehement importunity.” His address outside the banqueting hall in Whitehall –now a fixture on the London tourist run– barely carried beyond the serried ranks Cromwell and his generals had made into a fighting force of a quality England had never seen before. (Some historians say the very point of Cromwell was to effect military modernisation, a central problem in the reign of Charles I having been England’s martial inadequacies.)11 The king’s words passed to posterity, explaining both the necessity and the incompleteness of the revolution which had overthrown him. As a contemporary record put it “he did not believe the happiness of the people lay in sharing government, subject and sovereign being clean different. And if he should have given way to an arbitrary government, and to have all laws changed according to the sword, he needed not to have suffered, and so said he was a martyr for the people.”12 Those two principles emerge clear from the welter of events from the 1630s through to the Glorious Revolution in 1688 when the martyr’s other son, James II’s, poisoned by exile and religious dogmatism, was chased to Portsmouth and exile. The happiness of the English people (and, later, the Scots and Welsh though not the Irish) did permanently lie in sharing government with executive authority. The amount of power retained by the monarchy within the system remained subject to dispute— revisionist historians tell us the Georges in the 18th century were more involved in running the country than we used to think and George VI’s biographer, Robert Rhodes James, has recently chronicled his attempts to butt in during the 1940s. But the principle of power sharing was established, first within a landowner

11. Mark Kishlansky, A MONARCHY TRANSFORMED, BRITAIN 1603-1714, Allen Lane, 1996 12. Godfrey Davies, THE EARLY STUARTS, Oxford 1959 quoting Moderate Intelligencer, February 8, 1648/9 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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dominated cabal then more broadly with a parliament claiming to represent the property-owning nation (The name of that nation is a problem. “Britain” was created during the 18th century, Linda Colley has argued, and may now be crumbling.) Power sharing through universal suffrage had to wait until 1948. The king’s second principle, of opposition to “arbitrary government,” has also permanently lodged in the myths and sentiments of the inhabitants of the British Isles and their descendants. We know (thank you Lord Hoffmann) that the decisions of judges in courts can be arbitrary, but since the Civil War there has grown up a great faith in due process and procedure. Carried across the Atlantic the principle is being demonstrated this week in those peculiar and hollow but also impressively grave proceedings in the Senate of the United States. Here in Britain it is displayed, perhaps to excess, in the way we conduct the public business: it’s OK for Jack Cunningham to ride on Concorde as long as he takes the trouble to run the trip past his permanent secretary (answerable according to procedure as accounting officer) as the unwritten rules say he should. The rules do remain unwritten. A problem Oliver Cromwell encountered when he assumed the mantle of Protector while still seeking to govern through a representative parliament was the lack of a settled constitution. His problem remains ours: at the heart of the Blair programme is a promise that things –relationships, rights, responsibilities– will have to be written down, so we all know just what the rules are. Yet it’s thanks to the Stuarts and Oliver Cromwell that the English, Scots and Welsh developed (the Irish were not allowed to) an aversion to the arbitrariness represented by armed troops riding through the streets. It’s the reason why the “massacre” of Peterloo in 1819 became a Victorian radical’s touchstone and why military deployment against strikers at Tonypandy before the first world war still rings somewhere in the popular consciousness. British martial spirit is highly valued as long as it is exercised abroad or confined to barracks. This season’s anniversaries (it’s also 400 years since the birth of Cromwell) have attracted extra attention for two reasons. One is devolution and the focus it brings to the peculiar make-up of the United Kingdom. Some right wing commentators have ingeniously tried to blame him for the fact the Scots voted in Tony Blair’s referendum for a measure of self-government, forgetting that it was the revolt of some Scots against Charles I which lit one of the powder trails to the Civil War. It’s a selective memory, too, which remembers Cromwell’s military campaign in Ireland, the massacre at Drogheda and all that, but fails to see the lines of continuity in English policy towards Ireland which, before Cromwell, had sent Charles I’s favourite Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford across the Irish Sea to “pacify” — one of his most successful officers was William Rainsborough, kinsman of Thomas, Tony Benn’s great exemplar, the Cromwellian colonel who sided with the 17th century’s proto-communist Levellers to declare that “the poorest he in England hath HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a life to live as the greatest he.” Why Cromwell remains such a fascinating figure is that it is very difficult to skewer him on any contemporary left-right spectrum. God’s Englishman he was but hard for would-be English nationalists to stomach because he was a regicide. He killed the king in the people’s name and that should endear him to the left (as it usually did in the Victorian era when Cromwell was a significant reference point in politics). But Cromwell had left his home in Huntingdon to raise a troop of horse-soldiers partly in defence of private property, threatened by King Charles’s despotic powers of taxation and confiscation — a good right wing cause. Of course Cromwell is now deeply strange for us. Britain may still vestigially be protestant. The rising against the Stuarts produced an act of succession to the crown which still excludes Roman Catholics; Prince Charles would not last night have been stepping out with Camilla if she acknowledged the Pope. But we are now light years away from the world of Christian faith in which Cromwell could say: “One beam in a dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it. Blessed he His name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine.”13 And yet there is still strong contemporary resonance in the continuous constitutional debate of those years in the middle of the 17th century. The other reason for attending to the anniversaries is that we, too, are in the throes of changing the way we are governed. New Labour’s programme of modernisation (a word unknown in the 17th century when the talk was much more of cleaving to ancient models) embraces the House of Lords, methods of election, the institutionalisation of human rights, devolution and, potentially, monetary integration with the rest of Europe. But is there really anything to learn from that far-off era? Analogies from the 17th century are seductive. It’s the attractiveness of the language of Milton, Jonson and Fox. But they are deeply foreign to us now. Their distance is marked by their sense, shown in Charles as much as Cromwell, that they walked daily in or near the company of a god whose latter-day conversation partners are few. Right-wingers and conservatives might say the lesson of history has to do with the difficulty of changing constitutional arrangements. They might cite those words of Charles on the scaffold and the paradox of a strong executive (which Tony Blair personifies) imposing new arrangements from above, running the risk of using power arbitrarily and stifling dissent. Left wingers and radicals have to be Cromwellian at least in agreeing that unless there is a large popular element in government it is destined to fall into despotism and unfreedom. A generation ago the history of the 17th century was taught almost with the constitutional bits left out. Social and economic historians were all the rage and great works such as J.R.Tanner’s ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICTS OF THE 17TH CENTURY gathered dust on the shelves: everyone read

13. R.H. Tawney, RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM, Penguin 1937 quoting from Carlyle’s edition of Cromwell’s letters HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Christopher Hill and Lawrence Stone and Hugh Trevor-Roper arguing about the rise of the gentry and the dissolution of the aristocracy. Recently, the political historians have made a come back and a new synthesis may be emerging. It’s based on a proposition Tony Blair and colleagues should note. One reason why constitutional debate 350 years ago was injected with such passion was because it took place within a context of social change, in an opening society where a rustic squire called Cromwell could become a power in parliament. The other day Tony Blair talked of re-modelling Britain as a middle-class society, where everyone could aspire to the bourgeois version of the good life. What is missing from his constitutional proposals is a link to that social vision. Perhaps that’s because the new middle classes are politically satiated. What’s absent in comparison with the past is anger, the drive for changing the way we are governed because of a sense of oppression and injustice. Lord Cranborne is a lot less dangerous than the nobles around Charles I. Advocates of constitutional change don’t have much sociology going for them, there’s little sign of forces hungry for Lords reform or proportional representation.14 Tory eccentric William Rees-Mogg wrote the other day about our need for a new Cromwell to keep a lid on the turbulence swirling around. In fact when it comes to institutional reform Tony Blair’s problem is the passivity and comfortableness of the majority — except in Scotland and Ireland.

14. Robert Hazell, CONSTITUTIONAL FUTURES, Oxford 1999 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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For the first and last time in British history, a Parliament put a monarch on trial, found him guilty of high treason — and on the following day would execute him.

Throughout the 18th century, the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER would be prescribing a form of service for the commemoration of this event (as it also did in regard to the giving of thanks for the frustration of the Gunpowder Plot, and for the celebration of the Restoration annually on May 29th).

The running header for the text reads “King Charles the Martyr,” not, as so many Royalists have faithfully averred, “Saint Charles the Martyr.” Sainthood requires miracles, and the only miracle Charles I ever performed was making his supper disappear. However, this sort of wretched excess would not finally be elided from the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER until it had long since ceased to be used except by particularly bloodthirsty Royalists.

The creation of a saint (and there are a total of 5 churches in England dedicated to King Charles I the Martyr, one of which is at Falmouth in Cornwall) in these rubrics may now seem strange. Without pushing the comparison too hard, the same process may be observed today in the American Episcopal Church, in the forms of commemorations now used to honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which show the same progress toward what appears almost to amount to a canonization.

The King’s execution (referring now to Charles, rather than Martin) is still commemorated each January 30th by a procession to Le Sueur’s equestrian statue at the top of Whitehall (from whence all distances in England are ever to be measured), at which venue a commemorative service is held. From the 1752 version of the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, here are some elements of that prescribed service, headed: A FORM of PRAYER and FASTING, to be used Yearly upon the Thirtieth of January, being the Day of the Martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles the First: To implore the mercy of God, that neither the Guilt of that sacred and innocent Blood, nor those other Sins, by which God was provoked to deliver up both us and our King into the hands of cruel and unreasonable men, may at any time hereafter be visited upon us, or our Posterity. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There then follow orders both for morning and evening prayer and for communion. Morning Prayer opens with three scriptural sentences (DANIEL 9:9-10, JEREMIAH 10:24, and PSALM 143, v2). The Venite is then replaced by thirty verses selected from the PSALMS, NEHEMIAH, LAMENTATIONS, GENESIS, the BOOK OF WISDOM, DEUTERONOMY, and REVELATION, ordained to be recited as a responsorial psalm between priest on the one hand and clerk and people on the other. Then follow PSALMS 9, 10 and 11; then follow 2 SAMUEL 1 and MATTHEW 27. The first collect at morning prayer was then replaced with the two following collects: O most mighty God, terrible in thy judgments, and wonderful in thy doings towards the children of men; who in thy heavy displeasure didst suffer the life of our gracious Sovereign King Charles the First to be (as) this Day taken away by the hands of cruel and bloody men: We thy sinful creatures here assembled before thee, do, in the behalf of all the people of this land, humbly confess, that they were the crying sins of this Nation, which brought down this heavy judgment upon us. But, O gracious God, when thou makest inquisition for blood, lay not the guilt of this innocent blood (the shedding whereof nothing but the blood of thy Son can expiate) - lay it not to the charge of the people of this land; nor let it ever be required of us, or our posterity. Be merciful, O Lord, be merciful unto thy people, whom thou hast redeemed; and be not angry with us for ever: But pardon us for thy mercies sake, through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Blessed Lord, in whose sight the death of thy Saints is precious; We magnify thy Name for thine abundant grace bestowed upon our martyred Sovereign; by which he was enabled so cheerfully to follow the steps of his blessed Master and Saviour, in a constant meek suffering of all barbarous indignities, and at last resisting unto blood; and even then, according to the same pattern, praying for his murderers. Let his memory, O Lord, be ever blessed among us; that we may follow the example of his courage and constancy, his meekness and patience, and great charity. And grant that this our land may be freed from the vengeance of his righteous blood, and thy mercy glorified in the forgiveness of our sins: and all for Jesus Christ his sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. To emphasize the penitential nature of the service, the Great Litany was then ordered always to be used, and three more collects followed, seeking forgiveness for sins. The order for the communion service prescribed the two collects given above. The choice of lessons is particularly interesting: the epistle is I PETER 2:13-23, starting “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lords sake, whether it be to the King, as supreme; or unto governors...,” and the gospel is MATTHEW 21:33-42, the parable of the husbandmen and the vineyard who slew even the owner’s son. On this day the sermon was to be replaced by a reading of the 1st and 2nd parts of the Homily against Disobedience and wilful Rebellion “set forth by Authority.” Two more special collects then follow, of which the first seems particularly interesting: O Lord, our heavenly Father, who didst not punish us as our sins have deserved, but hast in the midst of judgment remembered mercy; We acknowledge it thine especial favour, that though for HDT WHAT? INDEX

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our many and great provocations, thou didst suffer thine anointed, blessed King Charles the first (as on this day) to fall into the hands of violent and blood-thirsty men, and barbarously to be murdered by them; yet thou didst not leave us for ever, as sheep without a shepherd, but by thy gracious providence did miraculously preserve the undoubted Heir of his Crowns, our then gracious Sovereign King Charles the second, from his bloody enemies, hiding him under the shadow of thy wings, until their tyranny was overpast; and didst bring him back, in thy good appointed time, to sit upon the throne of his Father; and together with the Royal Family didst restore to us our ancient Government in Church and State. For these thy great and unspeakable mercies we render to thee our most humble and unfeigned thanks; beseeching thee still to continue thy gracious protection over the whole Royal Family, and to grant to our gracious Sovereign King GEORGE, a long and happy Reign over us: So we that are thy people, will give thee thanks for ever, and will alway be shewing forth thy praise from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen. For the Evening Prayer, the responsorial reading prescribed for Morning Prayer was to be repeated. The proper psalms were 79, 94 and 85, the proper lessons were JEREMIAH 12 (or DANIEL 9:1-22), HEBREWS 11:32 and HEBREWS 12:1-7. The first collect of Evensong was to be replaced by two special ones, and the final Evensong collect “Lighten our darkness...” was to be followed by the three additional collects prescribed for morning prayer and one other prayer to follow the Prayer of St. Chrysostom.

The collects for Evening Prayer was perhaps the most interesting of all, to those of us who find this sort of thing interesting, as it completed a sense of movement towards catharsis from the effects of the King’s execution: O Almighty Lord God, who by thy wisdom not only guidest, and orderest all things most suitably to thine own justice; but also performest thy pleasure in such a manner, that we cannot but acknowledge thee to be righteous in all thy ways, and holy in all thy works: We thy sinful people do here fall down before thee, confessing that thy judgments were right, in permitting cruel men, sons of Belial (as on this day) to imbrue their hands in the blood of thine Anointed; We having drawn down the same upon ourselves, by the great and long provocations of our sins against thee. For which we do therefore here humble ourselves before thee; beseeching thee to deliver this Nation from blood- guiltiness (that of this day especially) and to turn from us and our posterity all those judgments which we by our sins have worthily deserved: Grant this, for the all-sufficient merits of this Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. Blessed God, just and powerful, who didst permit thy dear Servant, our dread Sovereign King Charles the First, to be (as upon this day) given up to the violent outrages of wicked men, to be despitefully used, and at the last murdered by them: Though we cannot reflect upon so foul an act, but with horror and astonishment; yet we do most gratefully commemorate the glories HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of thy grace, which then shined forth in thine Anointed; whom thou wast pleased, even at the hour of death, to endue with an eminent measure of exemplary patience, meekness, and charity, before the face of his cruel enemies. And albeit thou didst suffer them to proceed to such a height of violence, as to kill him, and to take possession of his throne; yet didst thou in great mercy preserve his Son, whose right it was, and at length by a wonderful providence bring him back, and set him thereon, to restore thy true Religion, and to settle peace amongst us: For these thy great Mercies we glorify thy Name, through Jesus Christ our blessed Saviour. Amen. Such over-the-top commemoration would be elided from the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER in 1859 on the grounds that it had not been generally observed for some years. According to D.H. Farmer’s OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SAINTS (Oxford UP, 1978), 421, the commemoration on January 30th was squelched by request of Queen Victoria.

One of Swift’s extant sermons dealt with the royal martyr. In it the preacher was warning the congregation against “running into either extreme of two bad opinions, with relation to obedience ... some would allow them [kings] an equal power with God ... on the other side, some look upon kings as answerable for every mistake or omission in government, and bound to comply with the most unreasonable demands of an unquiet faction ... between these two extremes, it is easy ... to choose a middle; to be good and loyal subjects, yet according to your power, faithful assertors of your religion and liberties.” But Swift would be far from the only major writer to pen a 30th-of-January sermon. Refer, for instance, to the Samuel Johnson one to be found in Volume XIV of the Yale edition (Sermon 23). Johnson characterized the Parliamentarians and Puritans them as a “faction” that, having grown impatient of “obedience” to civil and ecclesiastical governours, establishing its power by a “murder of the most atrocious kind, deliberate, contumelious, and cruel.” Among his hymns written for the liturgy of the Church of England, Christopher Smart included an odd one for the commemoration of the royal martyr: The persecutor was redeemed And preach’d the name he had blasphem’d; But, ah! tho’ worded for the best, How subtle men his writings wrest. Hence heresies and sects arose According to the saint they chose, All against Christ alike — but all Of some distorted text of Paul. Had not such reas’ners been at strife, With Christ’s good doctrine and his life, The land of God’s selected sheep Had ’scap’d this day to fast and weep. Ah great unfortunate, the chief Of monarchs in the tale of grief, By marriage ill-advised, akin To Moab and the man of sin! When Christ was spitted on and slain, The temple rent her veil in twain; And in the hour that Charles was cast The church had well night groan’d its last. But now aloft her head she bears, Accepted in his dying pray’rs; — Great acts in human annals shine — Great sufferings claim applause divine. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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King Charles was tried for treason against the newly sovereign people of England not so much because he defied the law, or taxed them without their consent, but because in the end he was making war on them. The regicides who fled to Connecticut are now commemorated on New Haven green — the younger Sir Henry Vane, the regicide who came to Parliament from the post of Governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony — Hugh Peter, the pastor of Salem who offered cold comfort and a final prayer for Charles on the scaffold — John Milton (whom King Charles II had the wit to pardon). — And their attentive disciple John Adams.

January 31, Wednesday (1648, Old Style):King Charles I of England and Scotland having been executed, a Commonwealth was established under Oliver Cromwell — there was Glorious Revolution and a good time was being had by almost all those who had managed to survive the fights so far.15

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR This verse on the event is from Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”: He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try; Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed.

15. A couple of centuries later, the family of Sir Henry Halford would have on its table a peculiar salt-cellar. It was a human vertebra set in gold and it was flat on one side. When Queen Victoria learned of this, she instructed that the curiosity was to be interred in the tomb of Charles I. (Those of us who are interested in this sort of thing would be interested to learn whether, when this object was placed inside the tomb, it was placed there full of salt, or emptied of salt.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The crowd was being kept well back by solders wary of any rescue attempt. A young spectator quoted in THE DIARIES AND LETTERS OF PHILIP HENRY, 1631-96 (ed. Matthew Henry Lee), attempted to describe the reaction as the severed head of the former monarch was held aloft: “‘The blow I saw give,’ said a young spectator, ‘and can truly say with a sad heart, at the instant whereof I remember well, there was such a grone [sic] by the thousands then present as I have never hear [sic] before, and desire i [sic] may never hear again.’” The troops would waste no time in clearing Whitehall of these witnesses.

WALDEN: For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life –I wrote this some years ago– that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, –we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure, –news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions, –they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers,– and serve up a bull- fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers; and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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What follows is a couple of “takes” on the character of this beheaded monarch, by Clarendon and by Sir Philip Warwick: By CLARENDON. The severall unhearde of insolencyes which this excellent Prince was forced to submitt to, at the other tymes he was brought before that odious judicatory, his Majesticke behaviour under so much insolence, and resolute insistinge upon his owne dignity, and defendinge it by manifest authorityes in the lawe, as well as by the cleerest deductions from reason, the pronouncinge that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the worlde, the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murther that ever was committed, since that of our blessed Savyour, and the circumstances therof, the application and interposition that was used by some noble persons to prævent that wofull murther, and the hypocrisy with which that interposition was deluded, the Saintlike behaviour of that blessed Martir, and his Christian courage and patience at his death, are all particulars so well knowne, and have bene so much inlarged upon in treatises peculiarly applyed to that purpose, that the farther mentioninge it in this place, would but afflicte and grieve the reader, and make the relation itselfe odious; and therfore no more shall be sayd heare of that lamentable Tragedy, so much to the dishonour of the Nation, and the religion professed by it; but it will not be unnecessary to add the shorte character of his person, that posterity may know the inestimable losse which the nation then underwent in beinge deprived of a Prince whose example would have had a greater influence upon the manners and piety of the nation, then the most stricte lawes can have. To speake first of his private qualifications as a man, before the mention of his princely and royall virtues, He was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an honest man; so greate a lover of justice, that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongfull action, except it were so disguysed to him, that he believed it to be just; he had a tendernesse and compassion of nature, which restrayned him from ever doinge a hard hearted thinge, and therfore he was so apt to grant pardon to Malefactors, that his Judges represented to him the damage and insecurity to the publique that flowed from such his indulgence, and then he restrayned himselfe from pardoninge ether murthers or highway robberyes, and quickly decerned the fruits of his severity, by a wounderfull reformation of those enormityes. He was very punctuall and regular in his devotions, so that he was never knowne to enter upon his recreations or sportes, though never so early in the morninge, before he had bene at publique prayers, so that on huntinge dayes, his Chaplynes were bounde to a very early attendance, and he was likewise very stricte in observinge the howres of his private cabbinett devotions, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was so seveare an exactor of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could never indure any light or prophane worde in religion, with what sharpnesse of witt so ever it was cover’d; and though he was well pleased and delighted with readinge verses made upon any occasyon, no man durst bringe before him any thinge that was prophane or uncleane, that kinde of witt had never any countenance then. He was so greate an example of conjugall affection, that they who did not imitate him in that particular, did not bragge of ther liberty, and he did not only permitt but directe his Bishopps to prosequte those skandalous vices, in the Ecclesiasticall Courtes, against persons of eminence, and neere relation to his service. His kingly virtues had some mixture and allay that hindred them from shyninge in full lustre, and from producinge those fruites they should have bene attended with; he was not in his nature bountifull, though he gave very much, which appeared more after the Duke of Buckinghams death, after which those showers fell very rarely, and he paused to longe in givinge, which made those to whome he gave lesse sensible of the benefitt. He kept state to the full, which made his Courte very orderly, no man prsesuminge to be seene in a place wher he had no pretence to be; he saw and observed men longe, before he receaved any about his person, and did not love strangers, nor very confident men. He was a patient hearer of causes, which he frequently accustomed himselfe to, at the Councell Board, and judged very well, and was dextrous in the mediatinge parte, so that he often putt an end to causes by perswasion, which the stubbornesse of mens humours made delatory in courts of justice. He was very fearelesse in his person, but not enterpryzinge, and had an excellent understandinge, but was not confident enough of it: which made him often tymes chaunge his owne opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of a man, that did not judge so well as himselfe: and this made him more irresolute, then the conjuncture of his affayres would admitt: If he had bene of a rougher and more imperious nature, he would have founde more respecte and duty, and his not applyinge some seveare cures, to approchinge evills, proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tendernesse of his conscience, which in all cases of bloode, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to seveare councells how reasonably soever urged. This only restrayned him from pursuinge his advantage in the first Scotts expedition, when humanely speakinge, he might have reduced that Nation to the most slavish obedyence that could have bene wished, but no man can say, he had then many who advized him to it, but the contrary, by a wounderfull indisposition all his Councell had to fightinge, or any other fatigue. He was alwayes an immoderate lover of the Scottish nation, havinge not only bene borne ther, but educated by that people and besiedged by them alwayes, havinge few English aboute him till he was kinge, and the major number of his servants beinge still of those, who he thought HDT WHAT? INDEX

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could never fayle him, and then no man had such an ascendent over him, by the lowest and humblest insinuations, as Duke Hambleton had. As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so stricte that he abhorred all deboshry to that degree, that at a greate festivall solemnity wher he once was, when very many of the nobility of the English and Scotts were entertayned, he was told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they dranke, and that ther was one Earle who had dranke most of the rest downe and was not himselfe mooved or altred, the kinge sayd that he deserved to be hanged, and that Earle comminge shortly into the roome wher his Majesty was, in some gayty to shew how unhurte he was from that battle, the kinge sent one to bidd him withdraw from his Majestys presence, nor did he in some dayes after appeare before the kinge. Ther were so many miraculous circumstances contributed to his ruine, that men might well thinke that heaven and earth conspired it, and that the starres designed it, though he was from the first declension of his power, so much betrayed by his owne servants, that there were very few who remayned faythfull to him; yett that trechery proceeded not from any treasonable purpose to do him any harme, but from particular and personall animosityes against other men; and afterwards the terrour all men were under of the Parliament and the guilte they were conscious of themselves, made them watch all opportunityes to make themselves gratious to those who could do them good, and so they became spyes upon ther master, and from one piece of knavery, were hardned and confirmed to undertake another, till at last they had no hope of præservation but by the destruction of ther master; And after all this, when a man might reasonably believe, that lesse then a universall defection of three nations, could not have reduced a greate kinge to so ugly a fate, it is most certayne that in that very howre when he was thus wickedly murthered in the sight of the sunn, he had as greate a share in the heartes and affections of his subjects in generall, was as much beloved, esteemed and longed for by the people in generall of the three nations, as any of his predecessors had ever bene. To conclude, he was the worthyest gentleman, the best master, the best frende, the best husbande, the best father, and the best Christian, that the Age in which he lyved had produced, and if he was not the best kinge, if he was without some parts and qualityes which have made some kings greate and happy, no other Prince was ever unhappy, who was possessed of half his virtues and indowments, and so much without any kinde of vice. By SIR PHILIP WARWICK. He was a person, tho’ born sickly, yet who came thro’ temperance and exercise, to have as firm and strong a body, as most persons I ever knew, and throughout all the fatigues of the warr, or HDT WHAT? INDEX

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during his imprisonment, never sick. His appetite was to plain meats, and tho’ he took a good quantity thereof, yet it was suitable to an easy digestion. He seldom eat of above three dishes at most, nor drank above thrice: a glasse of small beer, another of claret wine, and the last of water; he eat suppers as well as dinners heartily; but betwixt meales, he never medled with any thing. Fruit he would eat plentifully, and with this regularity, he moved as steddily, as a star follows its course. His deportment was very majestick; for he would not let fall his dignity, no not to the greatest Forraigners, that came to visit him and his Court; for tho’ he was farr from pride, yet he was carefull of majestie, and would be approacht with respect and reverence. His conversation was free, and the subject matter of it (on his own side of the Court) was most commonly rational; or if facetious, not light. With any Artist or good Mechanick, Traveller, or Scholar he would discourse freely; and as he was commonly improved by them, so he often gave light to them in their own art or knowledge. For there were few Gentlemen in the world, that knew more of useful or necessary learning, than this Prince did: and yet his proportion of books was but small, having like Francis the first of France, learnt more by the ear, than by study. His way of arguing was very civil and patient; for he seldom contradicted another by his authority, but by his reason: nor did he by any petulant dislike quash another’s arguments; and he offered his exception by this civill introduction, By your favour, Sir, I think otherwise on this or that ground: yet he would discountenance any bold or forward addresse unto him. And in suits or discourse of busines he would give way to none abruptly to enter into them, but lookt, that the greatest Persons should in affairs of this nature addresse to him by his proper Ministers, or by some solemn desire of speaking to him in their own persons. His exercises were manly; for he rid the great horse very well; and on the little saddle he was not only adroit, but a laborious hunter or field-man: and they were wont to say of him, that he fail’d not to do any of his exercises artificially, but not very gracefully; like some well- proportion’d faces, which yet want a pleasant air of countenance. He had a great plainnes in his own nature, and yet he was thought even by his Friends to love too much a versatile man; but his experience had thorowly weaned him from this at last. He kept up the dignity of his Court, limiting persons to places suitable to their qualities, unless he particularly call’d for them. Besides the women, who attended on his beloved Queen and Consort, he scarce admitted any great Officer to have his wife in the family. Sir Henry Vane was the first, that I knew in that kind, who having a good dyet as Comptroller of the Houshold, and a tenuity of fortune, was winkt at; so as the Court was fill’d, not cramm’d. His exercises of Religion were most exemplary; for every morning early, and evening not very late, singly and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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alone, in his own bed-chamber or closet he spent some time in private meditation: (for he durst reflect and be alone) and thro’ the whole week, even when he went a hunting, he never failed, before he sat down to dinner, to have part of the Liturgy read unto him and his menial servants, came he never so hungry, or so late in: and on Sundays and Tuesdays he came (commonly at the beginning of Service) to the Chappell, well attended by his Court-Lords, and chief Attendants, and most usually waited on by many of the Nobility in town, who found those observances acceptably entertain’d by him. His greatest enemies can deny none of this; and a man of this moderation of mind could have no hungry appetite to prey upon his subjects, tho’ he had a greatnes of mind not to live precariously by them. But when he fell into the sharpnes of his afflictions, (than which few men underwent sharper) I dare say, I know it, (I am sure conscientiously I say it) tho’ God dealt with him, as he did with St. Paul, not remove the thorn, yet he made his grace sufficient to take away the pungency of it: for he made as sanctified an use of his afflictions, as most men ever did. No Gentleman in his three nations, tho’ there were many more learned, (for I have supposed him but competently learned, tho’ eminently rational) better understood the foundations of his own Church, and the grounds of the Reformation, than he did: which made the Pope’s Nuncio to the Queen, Signior Con, to say (both of him and Arch-Bishop Laud, when the King had forced the Archbishop to admit a visit from, and a conference with the Nuncio) That when he came first to Court, he hoped to have made great impressions there; but after he had conferr’d with Prince and Prelate, (who never denyed him any thing frowardly or ignorantly, but admitted all, which primitive and uncorrupted Rome for the first 500 years had exercised,) he declared he found, That they resolved to deal with his Master, the Pope, as wrestlers do with one another, take him up to fling him down. And therefore tho’ I cannot say, I know, that he wrote his Icon Basilike, or Image, which goes under his own name; yet I can say, I have heard him, even unto my unworthy selfe, say many of those things it contains: and I have bin assur’d by Mr. Levett, (one of the Pages of his Bedchamber, and who was with him thro’ all his imprisonments) that he hath not only seen the Manuscript of that book among his Majestie’s papers at the Isle of Wight, but read many of the chapters himselfe: and Mr. Herbert, who by the appointment of Parliament attended him, says, he saw the Manuscript in the King’s hand, as he believed; but it was in a running character, and not that which the King usually wrote. And whoever reads his private and cursory letters, which he wrote unto the Queen, and to some great men (especially in his Scotch affairs, set down by Mr. Burnet, when he stood single, as he did thro’ all his imprisonments) the gravity and significancy of that style may assure a misbeliever, that he had head and hand enough to express the ejaculations of a good, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pious, and afflicted heart; and Solomon says, that affliction gives understanding, or elevates thoughts: and we cannot wonder, that so royal a heart, sensible of such afflictions, should make such a description of them, as he hath done in that book. And tho’ he was of as slow a pen, as of speech; yet both were very significant: and he had that modest esteem of his own parts, that he would usually say, He would willingly make his own dispatches, but that he found it better to be a Cobler, than a Shoomaker. I have bin in company with very learned men, when I have brought them their own papers back from him, with his alterations, who ever contest his amendments to have bin very material. And I once by his commandment brought him a paper of my own to read, to see, whether it was suitable unto his directions, and he disallow’d it slightingly: I desir’d him, I might call Doctor Sanderson to aid me, and that the Doctor might understand his own meaning from himselfe; and with his Majestie’s leave, I brought him, whilst he was walking, and taking the aire; whereupon wee two went back; but pleas’d him as little, when wee return’d it: for smilingly he said, A man might have as good ware out of a Chandler’s shop: but afterwards he set it down with his own pen very plainly, and suitable unto his own intentions. The thing was of that nature, (being too great an owning of the Scots, when Duke Hamilton was in the heart of England so meanely defeated, and like the crafty fox lay out of countenance in the hands of his enemies,) that it chilled the Doctors ink; and when the matter came to be communicated, those honourable Persons, that then attended him, prevayl’d on him to decline the whole. And I remember, when his displeasure was a little off, telling him, how severely he had dealt in his charactering the best pen in England, Dr. Sanderson’s; he told me, he had had two Secretaries, one a dull man in comparison of the other, and yet the first best pleas’d him: For, said he, my Lord Carleton ever brought me my own sense in my own words; but my Lord Faulkland most commonly brought me my instructions in so fine a dress, that I did not alwaies own them. Which put me in mind to tell him a story of my Lord Burleigh and his son Cecil: for Burleigh being at Councill, and Lord Treasurer, reading an order penn’d by a new Clerk of the Councill, who was a Wit and Scholar, he flung it downward to the lower end of the Table to his son, the Secretary, saying, Mr. Secretary, you bring in Clerks of the Councill, who will corrupt the gravity and dignity of the style of the Board: to which the Secretary replied, I pray, my Lord, pardon this, for this Gentleman is not warm in his place, and hath had so little to do, that he is wanton with his pen: but I will put so much busines upon him, that he shall be willing to observe your Lordship’s directions. These are so little stories, that it may be justly thought, I am either vain, or at leasure to sett them down; but I derive my authority from an Author, the world hath ever reverenced, viz, Plutarch; who writing the lives of Alexander the great and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Julius Cesar, runs into the actions, flowing from their particular natures, and into their private conversation, saying, These smaller things would discover the men, whilst their great actions only discover the power of their States. One or two things more then I may warrantably observe: First, as an evidence of his natural probity, whenever any young Nobleman or Gentleman of quality, who was going to travell, came to kiss his hand, he cheerfully would give them some good counsel, leading to morall virtue, especially to good conversation; telling them, that If he heard they kept good company abroad, he should reasonably expect, they would return qualified to serve him and their Country well at home; and he was very carefull to keep the youth in his times uncorrupted. This I find in the Mémoires upon James Duke Hamilton, was his advice unto that noble and loyal Lord, William, afterwards, Duke Hamilton, who so well serv’d his Son, and never perfidiously disserv’d him, when in armes against him. Secondly, his forementioned intercepted letters to the Queen at Naisby had this passage in them, where mentioning religion, he said, This is the only thing, wherein we two differ; which even unto a miscreant Jew would have bin proofe enough of this King’s sincerity in his religion; and had it not bin providence or inadvertence, surely those, who had in this kind defam’d him, would never themselves have publish’d in print this passage, which thus justified him. This may be truly said, That he valued the Reformation of his own Church, before any in the world; and was as sensible and as knowing of, and severe against, the deviations of Rome from the primitive Church, as any Gentleman in Christendom; and beyond those errors, no way quarrelsom towards it: for he was willing to give it its due, that it might be brought to be willing to accept, at least to grant, such an union in the Church, as might have brought a free and friendly communion between Dissenters, without the one’s totall quitting his errors, or the other’s being necessitated to partake therein: and I truly believe this was the utmost both of his and his Archbishop’s inclinations; and if I may not, yet both these Martyrs confessions on the scaffold (God avert the prophecy of the last, Venient Romani) surely may convince the world, that they both dyed true Assertors of the Reformation. And the great and learned light of this last age, Grotius, soon discern’d this inclination in him: for in his dedication of his immortal and scarce ever to be parallel’d book, De Jure Belli & Pacis, he recommends it to Lewis XIII, King of France, as the most Royall and Christian design imaginable for his Majestic to become a means to make an union amongst Christians in profession of religion; and therein he tells him, how well-knowing and well-disposed the King of England was thereunto. In a word, had he had as daring and active a courage to obviate danger; as he had a steddy and undaunted in all hazardous rencounters; or had his active courage equall’d HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his passive, the rebellious and tumultuous humor of those, who were disloyall to him, probably had been quash’d in their first rise: for thro’-out the English story it may be observed, that the souldier-like spirit in the Prince hath bin ever much more fortunate and esteem’d, than the pious: a Prince’s awfull reputation being of much more defence to him, than his Regall (nay Legall) edicts.

May 15, Tuesday (Old Style): Probably the most radical political movement of the 1647-1649 period was the Levellers.

Led by John Lilburne, an officer, they challenged the generals of the New Model Army to establish “Practical Christianity.” Oliver Cromwell, himself a most practical practicing Christian, (in the sense in which Osama bin Laden was a most practical practicing Moslem :-) simply had the leaders of four mutinous regiments lined up and shot down in Burford Churchyard.

“God told me to kill you.” ENGLISH CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1650

Charles II was compelled by the Scots to sign the National Covenant, as a condition of being crowned at Scone in 1651 before fleeing abroad.

Shortly after the events of this year, Henry Thoreau’s great-great-great-grandfather Robert Dunbar would be emigrating to Hingham in the Plymouth Colony. This was of course the time of the Puritan Revolution and Oliver Cromwell’s army was devastating all Scottish resistance. Since Robert would have been in his early 20s

at that time, he may well have served in the Scottish military and may at this point have been fearing for life and fortune. When he fled he must have been able to take funds to make a start for himself in the New World, for Hingham records indicate that for a number of years only two other citizens of that town paid higher taxes. In the New World, he and Rose —— Dunbar, Thoreau’s great-great-great-grandmother, would rear three daughters and eight sons. Robert would die on September 19, 1693 and Rose would die in November 1700, there in Hingham in the American colony.16

Shortly after May: Although earlier Andrew Marvell had been opposed to Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth

16. The Robert Dunbar (1630-1693) who would be spending his life in Hingham had been born in Scotland but we don’t know who his parents were. Many have conflated Ninian Dunbar’s son Robert with this Robert Dunbar but they must have been two different persons because the Robert in Hingham was raising a family there while the Robert who was Ninian’s son was inheriting Ninian’s title — and serving in the House of Lords! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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government, at this point, with Cromwell returning in triumph after crushing rebellion in Ireland, he composed

“An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” from which Henry Thoreau would recycle the line “He liv’d reserved and austere” into the remark about Walden Pond reserved and austere like a hermit in Walden Woods, “If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long...”:

WALDEN: I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it PEOPLE OF is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint’s Pond, WALDEN which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint’s Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?

THOMAS GRAY

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR The forward youth that would appear Must now forsake his Muses dear, Nor in the shadows sing His numbers languishing. ’Tis time to leave the books in dust, And oil th’ unused armour’s rust, Removing from the wall The corslet of the hall. So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace, But thorough advent’rous war Urged his active star. And like the three-fork’d lightning, first Breaking the clouds where it was nurst, Did through his own side HDT WHAT? INDEX

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His fiery way divide. For ’tis all one to courage high, The emulous or enemy; And with such to enclose Is more than to oppose. Then burning through the air he went, And palaces and temples rent; And Cæsar’s head at last [King Charles I had been beheaded on January 31, 1649] Did through his laurels blast. [laurels were supposedly proof against lightning] ’Tis madness to resist or blame The force of angry Heaven’s flame; And, if we would speak true, Much to the man is due, Who from his private gardens where He liv’d reserved and austere, [This is the line Thoreau used.] As if his highest plot [plot = purpose] To plant the bergamot, [the bergamot was a variety of pear] Could by industrious valour climb To ruin the great work of time, And cast the kingdom old Into another mould. Though justice against fate complain, And plead the ancient rights in vain; But those do hold or break As men are strong or weak. Nature that hateth emptiness Allows of penetration less, [having two bodies simultaneously in the same space was considered more abhorrent to nature than a vacuum] And therefore must make room Where greater spirits come. What field of all the civil wars Where his were not the deepest scars? And Hampton shows what part He had of wiser art, Where, twining subtle fears with hope, He wove a net of such a scope That Charles himself might chase To Carisbrooke’s narrow case, [When Charles I fled from Hampton Court he was trapped at Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight, and would be put to death to avoid further danger of his gaining support for an uprising. Marvell accepted the common contemporary view (probably mistaken) that Cromwell had connived at the escape in order to entrap his victim.] That thence the royal actor borne The tragic scaffold might adorn, While round the armed bands Did clap their bloody hands. He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try; Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed. This was that memorable hour Which first assur’d the forced pow’r. So when they did design The Capitol’s first line, [According to Pliny the Elder a caput, a human head, had been dug up during excavation for the foundations of the temple of Jupiter in Rome, causing this temple to be henceforward known as the Capitol; that discovery had been proclaimed HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as an omen of Rome’s headship over the world.] A bleeding head, where they begun, Did fright the architects to run; And yet in that the state Foresaw its happy fate. And now the Irish are asham’d To see themselves in one year tam’d; So much one man can do That does both act and know. They can affirm his praises best, And have, though overcome, confest How good he is, how just, And fit for highest trust; Nor yet grown stiffer with command, But still in the republic’s hand; How fit he is to sway That can so well obey. He to the Commons’ feet presents A kingdom for his first year’s rents; [the kingdom of Ireland] And, what he may, forbears His fame, to make it theirs, And has his sword and spoils ungirt, To lay them at the public’s skirt. [at the public’s skirt = at the feet of the government] So when the falcon high Falls heavy from the sky, She, having kill’d, no more does search But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, The falc’ner has her sure. What may not then our isle presume While victory his crest does plume! What may not others fear If thus he crown each year! A Cæsar he ere long to Gaul, To Italy an Hannibal, And to all states not free, Shall climacteric be. [climacteric = critical, dangerous] The Pict no shelter now shall find [Pict (picti) = the painted people = Scots] Within his parti-colour’d mind; [“parti-coloured” because they had changed their politics after the execution of Charles] But from this valour sad [sad = steadfast, sober] Shrink underneath the plaid, Happy if in the tufted brake The English hunter him mistake, Nor lay his hounds in near The Caledonian deer. [which is to say, send hounds to flush out the deer] But thou, the war’s and fortune’s son, March indefatigably on; And for the last effect Still keep thy sword erect; Besides the force it has to fright The spirits of the shady night, [the hilt of a sword, in the shape of a cross, had power to avert evil spirits] The same arts that did gain A pow’r, must it maintain. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September: Tithes were a form of taxation outside the control of Parliament and attempts before 1640 to recover impropriated tithes threatened the property rights of those who had succeeded to the estates of the dissolved monasteries. Before the battle of Dunbar Oliver Cromwell evidently promised to abolish tithes “if the Lord gave him victory.”

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

According to Christopher Hill (GOD’S ENGLISHMAN: OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION, 1970), Friend George Fox would never forgive him for reneging on this promise.

September 4, Wednesday (Old Style): After Scotland opted to support the exiled Prince of Wales, Charles, it was invaded by the 16,000-man army of Oliver Cromwell, who had just designated himself Lord General of England. The small quay at Dunbar on the coast of Scotland having been damaged during a severe storm, Cromwell’s administrators had provided £300 towards building a new pier and a small harbor.

Cromwell had however been held up in Leith. For what would become known as the 2d battle of Dunbar, the forces of David Leslie had pushed Cromwell’s army back to Dunbar, and had almost starved the English to the point of surrender when on this day Covenanters among the Irish troops demanded that a spirited charge be made at the enemy from their stronghold on Doon Hill about three miles southeast of the town. The charge was a sad mistake, resulting in 3,000 slain Scots and 10,000 Scottish prisoners at the cost of but 20 English lives (at least some of these 10,000 prisoners would find themselves shipped off to the Massachusetts Bay Colony as white slaves ). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is the painting of Oliver Cromwell leading the troops at Dunbar, by Gow:

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

At the Battle of Dunbar, Edward Whalley again distinguished himself. Colonel William Goffe commanded a regiment. In the battle, 3,000 Scots would be killed outright and 10,000 taken prisoner. Only 9,000 would escape. Of those taken prisoner a number were badly enough wounded that Cromwell did not consider them to represent any real future threat, and they were released. The balance of the prisoners would be force-marched to Durham, and 3,000 would survive this march to find themselves imprisoned in a cathedral. Half of these survivors would perish in the cathedral and the other half would be sent to the New World as slaves. (Most of these Scot warriors transported as slaves to the New World would slide beneath the surface of history without so much as a bubble, but one would become an ancestor of Rhode Island’s famous jumper, Sam Patch.) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter (Old Style): During Oliver Cromwell’s protectorate at midcentury, the Stuarts were in exile in Holland. Samuel Pepys’s DIARY tells of the Duke of Monmouth, son of Charles II, teaching the ladies of the Dutch court the English country dance while they taught him how to glide on the outside edges of his runners on their frozen canals. Perhaps this happened during this particular winter, perhaps during some other winter of the exile. When the Princess of Orange audaciously shucked her outer skirt and tucked her petticoats halfway to her waist for freedom in her skating, the French ambassador to the Netherlands —who witnessed this or was informed of it— dispatched a message to Louis XIV delicately advising him of the extraordinary sight of a princess so attired with iron pattens on her shoes, “learning to slide sometimes poised on one leg sometimes on another.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1651

May 28, Wednesday (Old Style): In the New England Historic and Genealogical Society book dated October 1847, typewritten at the top of page 378 is the heading “Scotch Prisoners sent to Massachusetts in 1652 by order of the English Government.” The following pages contain among other things an extract from a letter written by the Reverend John Cotton in Boston to the Lord General Oliver Cromwell, having to do with the 10,000 Scottish fighters who had surrendered at the second battle of Dunbar in 1650, and had been shipped off to the Bay Colony as white slaves: The Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof so were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and shyrur. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 years as we do our owne; and he that bought the most of them (I heare) buildeth houses for them, for every four a house, layeth some acres of ground thereto, which he gave them as their owner, requiring 3 dayes in the weeke to worke for him (by turnes) 4 days for them themselves, and promiseth, as soone as they can repay him the money he layed out for them, he will set them at liberty. ENGLISH CIVIL WAR INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

September 3, Wednesday (Old Style): King Charles II had invaded England from Scotland but was defeated by troops from Ireland under Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Worcester. Colonel William Goffe commanded a regiment of Parliamentary forces at this battle. REGICIDE

The monarch would be reduced to hiding in a recently lopped pollard oak tree at Boscobel in Shropshire.17 ENGLISH CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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17. Some there are who regard this as having been the high point of English monarchy. Shame on them.

Polling or pollarding is the cutting of a tree’s branches regularly at the top of a 2-3 meter trunk. Most species of broadleaf trees will

form pollards. Trees were pollarded to produce repeated crops of small-sized wood. When fresh shoots grew out of the top of the trunk they would be safely out off reach of browsing animals such as cattle and deer. The poles produced were used in much the same way as the coppice, and the shoots and foliage were cut for supplementary animal fodder. Pollarding was typical in deer parks and on common land or wood pasture. Trees on stream-sides and riverbanks were often pollarded. Trees were re-cut every 5-35 years depending on the species and what the pieces collected were to be used for. Pollarded trees can survive for centuries. Nowadays pollarding is mainly done for landscape and conservation reasons and on street trees. The practice has fallen into disuse, leaving ancient overgrown and topheavy pollards scattered through the landscape. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: The inhabitants of these towns have a great regard for PEOPLE OF a tree, though their standard for one is necessarily neither large CAPE COD nor high; and when they tell you of the large trees that once grew here, you must think of them, not as absolutely large, but large compared with the present generation. Their “brave old oaks,” of which they speak with so much respect, and which they will point out to you as relics of the primitive forest, one hundred or one hundred and fifty, ay, for aught they know, two hundred years old, have a ridiculously dwarfish appearance, which excites a smile in the beholder. The largest and most venerable which they will show you in such a case are, perhaps, not more than twenty or twenty- five feet high. I was especially amused by the Lilliputian old oaks in the south part of Truro. To the inexperienced eye, which appreciated their proportions only, they might appear vast as the tree which saved his royal majesty, but measured, they were dwarfed at once almost into lichens which a deer might eat up in a morning. Yet they will tell you that large schooners were once built of timber which grew in Wellfleet. The old houses also are built of the timber of the Cape; but instead of the forests in the midst of which they originally stood, barren heaths, with poverty-grass for heather, now stretch away on every side. The modern houses are built of what is called “dimension timber,” imported from Maine, all ready to be set up, so that commonly they do not touch it again with an axe. Almost all the wood used for fuel is imported by vessels or currents, and of course all the coal. I was told that probably a quarter of the fuel and a considerable part of the lumber used in North Truro was drift- wood. Many get all their fuel from the beach.

CHARLES II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This painter, however, considered that it would make a prettier picture, to depict him just before that battle:

After his evasion of capture by hiding in this tree, Charles would escape to France. The Parliamentary army would pass on to subdue the Isle of Man and, returning to the mainland, quarter in Derbyshire at Chesterfield and the towns thereabout. It would be at this point that soldier William Edmundson would first encountered Quakers. One market day at Chesterfield, I was in a tavern with others of my companions and two women of the people called Quakers spoke of the things of God to the people in the market. I did not hear of them until they were gone, but the priest of the town, and several with him, abused them. When they had done, they came to the tavern and into the room where I and my companions were, it being a large dining-room. And the priest boasted of what he had done to the two women, thinking we would praise him. But I loved to hear of the women and hated his behavior towards them. A young man, a merchant, then present, who frequented my company and would often speak of the people called Quakers and say that their principles were the truth, hearing the priest boast of his abusive behavior to the said two women, answered and said that it was a poor victory he had gotten over two poor women. At this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the priest was very angry and began to storm. My spirit rose against him. I started up from my seat and asked the priest and them with him if they came to quarrel, saying that if they did, they should have enough. The priest answered, “No, not with you sir.” I bid them leave the room, which they immediately did. But these things came close to me, and the more I heard of this people, the better I loved them. And earnest desires sprung afresh in my heart that the Lord would show me the way of truth. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1652

The Parliamentary soldier William Edmundson rode into Derbyshire and married a young woman, to whom he had been contracted before. After some time he and his wife determined to relocate to Ireland, and got off the boat in the port of Dublin not long after the plague.

During this period, finally, through a negotiated agreement between Lord Protector Cromwell and King Charles I’s advocate, Lawrence Wilkinson was allowed to find refuge in Providence, Rhode Island. He and his wife Susanna Smith Wilkinson, daughter of Christopher Smith, would have sons Joseph Wilkinson, born on March 2, 1654, Samuel Wilkinson, and John Wilkinson, and daughters Susanna Wilkinson, born on March 9, 1652; Joanna Wilkinson, born on March 2, 1657, and Susanna Wilkinson (again), born during February 1662. (It would be, presumably, this youngest son John Wilkinson who would become a grandfather of Jemimah Wilkinson, the “Publik Universal Friend” of Rhode Island, and also an ancestor of Oziel Wilkinson the metal worker of Pawtucket.) WILKINSON FAMILY

At the culmination of the rebellion which had begun in 1641 in Ireland, after eleven years of intense hostilities, the island had been stripped and was “void as a wilderness.” The half of the people who had attempted to oppose Cromwell who were still alive were reduced to eating human flesh, when they were not consuming carrion. The victorious English colonists brought about the sale by drovers and other intermediaries of some 35,000 to 40,000 defeated Irish warriors, to the armies of foreign powers. This “transplantation” was in all particulars an Irish slave trade “to Hell or Connaught” begun after the remaining Irish had been forced to move west of the River Shannon. By and large these men would be able to continue in the status of soldier, albeit by serving a foreign master in a foreign clime, except for some unfortunate number of the more intransigent ones, probably somewhat less than a thousand, who could not be trusted with their weapons but would instead need to be reduced as common laborers on the sugar-cane plantations of the West Indies.18 As all these thousands upon thousands of defeated warriors were being transshipped out of Irish ports, some 6,000 Irish Catholic priests, Irish Catholic women, and Irish Catholic boys were in addition sent along with them for free, in order to be disposed of them locally, without any separate record being maintained of these civilian auxiliaries. This Irish slave trade would not be brought to a completion until 1657.19 ENGLISH CIVIL WAR INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared that “Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst 18. As a footnote, a pointy reminder by Theodore W. Allen: “It is only a ‘white’ habit of mind that reserves ‘slave’ for the African- American and boggles at the term ‘Irish slave trade’.” 19. When the proposal was recently made by a black reverend in Providence, Rhode Island that we should now remove the word “plantation” from the official state name “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” on grounds that such a word honored the state’s history of human slavery, some white clown-in-denial wrote to the ProJo local newspaper and insisted that while indeed there had been slavery in Rhode Island, the local historical “slaves” (this clown, or the clowning newspaper editor of the clownish ProJo newspaper, had put the term inside scarequotes) had been merely white people such as the Irish warriors who had been indentured as slaves for a period of ten years. Nothing for us to be ashamed of, he trumpeted informedly! INDENTURE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty pounds.”20 This law was for a time enforced,21 but by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of £3 on Negroes imported.22 This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.23 From the year 1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in America. Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she became the clearing- house for the trade of other colonies. Governor Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies.24 They took out lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a slave voyage in between. From this, the trade grew. Samuel Hopkins, about 1770, was shocked at the state of the trade: more than thirty distilleries were running in the colony, and one hundred and fifty vessels were in the slave-trade.25 “Rhode Island,” said he, “has been more deeply interested in the slave- trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in New England.” Later, in 1787, he wrote: “The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share in this traffic, of all these United States. This trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended. That town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches.”26 The Act of 1708 was poorly enforced. The “good intentions” of its framers “were wholly frustrated” by the clandestine “hiding 20. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240. 21. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240. 22. The text of this act is lost (COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 34; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 31). The Acts of Rhode Island were not well preserved, the first being published in Boston in 1719. Perhaps other whole acts are lost. 23. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225. 24. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60. 25. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80. 26. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and conveying said negroes out of the town [Newport] into the country, where they lie concealed.”27 The act was accordingly strengthened by the Acts of 1712 and 1715, and made to apply to importations by land as well as by sea.28 The Act of 1715, however, favored the trade by admitting African Negroes free of duty. The chaotic state of Rhode Island did not allow England often to review her legislation; but as soon as the Act of 1712 came to notice it was disallowed, and accordingly repealed in 1732.29 Whether the Act of 1715 remained, or whether any other duty act was passed, is not clear. While the foreign trade was flourishing, the influence of the Friends and of other causes eventually led to a movement against slavery as a local institution. Abolition societies multiplied, and in 1770 an abolition bill was ordered by the Assembly, but it was never passed.30 Four years later the city of Providence resolved that “as personal liberty is an essential part of the natural rights of mankind,” the importation of slaves and the system of slavery should cease in the colony.31 This movement finally resulted, in 1774, in an act “prohibiting the importation of Negroes into this Colony,” — a law which curiously illustrated the attitude of Rhode Island toward the slave-trade. The preamble of the act declared: “Whereas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which, that of personal freedom must be considered as the greatest; as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others; — Therefore,” etc. The statute then proceeded to enact “that for the future, no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into this colony; and in case any slave shall hereafter be brought in, he or she shall be, and are hereby, rendered immediately free....” The logical ending of such an act would have been a clause prohibiting the participation of Rhode Island citizens in the slave-trade. Not only was such a clause omitted, but the following was inserted instead: “Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to any negro or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa, into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and which negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West Indies, but shall be brought into this colony. Provided, that the owner of such negro or mulatto slave give bond ... that such negro or mulatto slave shall be exported out of the colony, within one year from the date of such bond; if such negro or mulatto be alive, and in a condition to be removed.”32 27. Preamble of the Act of 1712. 28. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3. 29. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 471. 30. Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 304, 321, 337. For a probable copy of the bill, see NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 299. 31. A man dying intestate left slaves, who became thus the property of the city; they were freed, and the town made the above resolve, May 17, 1774, in town meeting: Staples, ANNALS OF PROVIDENCE (1843), page 236. 32. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 251-2. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was passed,33 and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.34 Not until 1787 did an act pass to forbid participation in the slave-trade. This law laid a penalty of £100 for every slave transported and £1000 for every vessel so engaged.35

33. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 329; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 444; RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VIII. 618. 34. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 506. 35. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. The number of slaves in Rhode Island has been estimated as follows: — In 1708, 426. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 59. In 1730, 1,648. RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL TRACTS, No. 19, pt. 2, page 99. In 1749, 3,077. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1756, 4,697. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1774, 3,761. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 253. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1653

First week in April: Friend George Fox allegedly forecast that within a couple of weeks Oliver Cromwell would break up the Parliament, depriving the Speaker of his chair:

Being one day in Swarthmore Hall, when Judge Fell and Justice Benson were talking of the news, and of the Parliament then sitting (called the Long Parliament), I was moved to tell them that before that day two weeks the Parliament should be broken up, and the Speaker plucked out of his chair. That day two weeks Justice Benson told Judge Fell that now he saw George was a true prophet; for Oliver had broken up the Parliament. About this time I was in a fast for about ten days, my spirit being greatly exercised on Truth’s behalf: for James Milner and Richard Myer went out into imaginations, and a company followed them. This James Milner and some of his company had true openings at the first; but getting up into pride and exaltation of spirit, they ran out from Truth. I was sent for to them, and was moved of the Lord to go and show them their outgoings. They were brought to see their folly, and condemned it; and came into the way of Truth again. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 20, Wednesday (Old Style): Oliver Cromwell forcibly dissolved the “Rump” Parliament, creating himself as the Lord Protector of England. This placed Sir Henry Vane on the outside looking in, and so he would go to Raby Castle and there devote himself to the writing of theological books (certain of these publications would come to be regarded as seditious and for that reason he would find himself, briefly, a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle).

Although there is no contemporary authentication for the common-sense political forecast allegedly made by Friend George Fox a couple of weeks earlier, that by this day the Parliament would have been “broken up, and the Speaker plucked out of his chair,” there seems little reason to doubt that such an understanding HDT WHAT? INDEX

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might have been available to Fox.

July: Oliver Cromwell appointed 140 persons selected by his New Model Army to a new Parliament to replace the Rump Parliament. It would be termed the Barebones Parliament because one of its members was named Praise-God Barbon.

December: Oliver Cromwell broke up the Barebones Parliament, Edward Whalley carrying away the mace, and Colonel William Goffe leading the musketeers who drove the members from their seats. REGICIDE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1654

Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, striving to overthrow the Spanish power in the West Indies, fitted out large

naval and military forces under Admiral Penn and General Venables and sent them to Jamaica to operate against Hispaniola. He named a board of three commissioners, with controlling authority, of which Edward Winslow became the head.

With Ireland’s armies in defeat and exile, the only mounted persons on the island were English soldiers. To the English ruling class Ireland was a tabula rasa on which it could inscribe what it would.

At about this point one of these English soldiers, Friend William Edmundson, got on his horse and visited two Quaker families in Rosenallis in county Laois in Ireland, apparently the Cantrill family of Tineil and the Chander family of Ballyhide. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

In the diary of John Worthington we learn that the Reverend Professor Ralph Cudworth had nearly been compelled, through poverty, to leave Cambridge University. However, in this year, after it became clear that Henry More did not want to become the master of Christ’s College at Cambridge, Cudworth was elected to that mastership and became financially able to marry. (Although at the Restoration he would have trouble retaining this post as the 14th Master of the college, presumably because he had been advising John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell’s Secretary of State, about young men in Cambridge suitable for government service, he would be able to retain this post for the length of his life.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1655

During this year the Reverend Thomas Fuller was publishing his THE CHURCH-HISTORY OF BRITAIN; FROM THE BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST, UNTILL THE YEAR M. DC. XLVIII. ENDEAVOURED BY THOMAS FULLER, D.D. PREBENDARY OF SARUM (London, Printed for Iohn Williams at the sign of the Crown in St Paul’s Church- yard). When Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell issued his edict prohibiting adherents of the late king from preaching, the dignity of the Reverend, preaching at Waltham, was not disturbed. ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

October: Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell divided all of England and Wales into 12 military regional governments, each under the command of a Major-General who was to answer only to him personally.

In this “Rule of the Major-Generals,” Major-General William Goffe was to govern all of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Sussex, and Lieutenant-General Edward Whalley was to govern the midlands, which is to say, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincoln, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire. REGICIDE

This military dictatorship was to be funded by a 10% income tax imposed on all Englishmen suspected of Royalist loyalties, termed a “Decimation Tax” (the attitude was “they caused this, we’ll let them pay for it”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: When Oliver Cromwell had been proclaimed Lord Protector and Daniel’s cousin Vincent Gookin had become a member of the initial Protectorate Parliament, Daniel Gookin had again returned to London. Upon the capture of Jamaica Daniel was sent thither as commissioner for settling the new colony from New England (Granville Penn’s MEMORIALS OF SIR WILLIAM PENN contains his instructions, coped from the books of the council of state). Daniel’s letters to Secretary Thurloe indicate that this mission met with no success. After this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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failure Daniel returned to London. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

December 5, 1655 Dearest Mother, I write this letter to let you know of our family’s safe arrival, and to express my sincerest apologies for not having written you sooner. I am writing to you from our new plantation in Clarendon, which is on the southern coast of Jamaica. I hope this letter finds you and papa in good health. I wish Ronald and I could have persuaded you to travel with us to our new home. Both he and I wish fervently the plague doesn’t reach northern England. I am sure you are eager for news of our voyage. So I will begin with the week after my last letter, the day of our departure. The week before we left a letter arrived confirming the land grant we were to receive. In an effort to persuade English investors to settle in Jamaica, the governor of the island, Sir Thomas Modyford, had promised each investor thirty acres for each per son they bring with them. As Ronald intends to bring over one hundred slaves from Barbados, we were guaranteed three thousand and ninety acres of land. I was sincerely happy when this news reached us. As you know Ronald originally planned to wait to book passage until the confirmation came. However, when word of the plague was spread we both thought it best to leave immediately. It was a relief to know that we had a home to go to when we arrived in Jamaica. With this thought in mind, my journey seemed to me less foreboding. I shall now relate to you, dearest mother, the details of our journey, as I know you must be anxious to hear them. Ronald was determined to make a hasty voyage, so he allowed us only one servant each. I took with me Betty, who recently came into our employment in anticipation of our voyage. She is young and I hoped that she would be able to endure the humid climate of Jamaica. Our precious Virginia took her nursemaid, Molly, who being the same age as Betty, should be good company for her. Ronald was practically forced to take Jeremy with him, for he has been in his service since he was a young man. However, we both fear his body will not do well in the extreme heat of our new home, him being accustomed to our cool English weather. Our servants were in as much earnest as we to escape the destruction of the plague. The six of us, bundled in our carriage, passed through the gates of Winchester at five o’clock in the morning. There were many houses that were closed down, in the same fashion as our own, throughout the city. We were quite fortunate to have left so early, as we passed many families who were only just packing their carriages. There was sparse traffic until eight o’clock, after that carts and carriages lined the roads. We passed a number of peasants, who carried their few possessions with them. The only place that we could conjecture that they should go was to America as indentured servants or as stowaways. We had traveled north to Newton Toney and back south again to Salisbury. The traveling was so slow that we were forced to stay the night at an inn there. Our next day was much the same, only we left a half hour earlier. We managed to reach Dorchester by the end of the day. Our journey continued in this fashion until we neared Plymouth, which was where our ship was docked. We reached Plymouth by mid-afternoon. We were to sail the next morn. Ronald quickly registered us in one of the hotels. We were very lucky to have procured some rooms in a decent hotel. Plymouth was very busy with all the people escaping the plague, but I think most wished to save money by staying in a cheaper hotel. Thank the Lord that we don’t have to worry about money. As soon as we had settled Virginia and the servants into their rooms, Ronald and I set out to the nearest dress shop. I had earlier entreated him to let me buy one article of clothing before we set sail. I reasoned that this was the most likely the last time I would be in English dress shop and that this one indulgence would mean a lot to me. He was reluctant to separate the family, but he eventually gave in. I returned to the hotel with a divine white satin stomacher, which Ronald thought a very impractical item to buy. However, as you can imagine mother, I was delighted with this diversion. I gave no thought of the impending ship voyage until morning. I was very apprehensive when I woke in the morning, however Ronald got us and our luggage aboard the ship so quickly I forgot about all my fears. Virginia was full of excitement about going on a sea voyage that she had no tears for her homeland. Oh, to be four again and have no cares in the world. Soon we were under way and Plymouth and England were but a speck. At the start of our voyage I felt compelled to keep Virginia in her cabin. I did HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

not wish for her to associate too much with the crew. However, Ronald eventually persuaded me to let her roam about, as long as her nursemaid, Molly was attending her. Our voyage was pleasant not one of our family was affected by sea sickness. Ronald passed much of his time in discussion with another gentleman about sugar plantations and also of Henry Morgan. Morgan, a buccaneer, has been commissioned by Governor Modyford to raid Dutch and French ships. Although we are not at war with the Netherlands and France presently, there is an undeclared war being waged in the Caribbean. It is going on even now as I write this letter. Right now it is mostly with the Dutch, but I fear it will soon escalate and France will soon join in the fight. I had passed many hours on board the ship reading over the works of Sir Thomas Browne that you had given me some years before. I read again with pleasure The Garden of Cyprus and Religio Medici. As for Virginia I had brought my old cup and ball that was so much the rage when I was younger. She constantly plays with it, however, I have yet to see her get the ball inside the cup. I was fortunate to be able to have taken these treasures from home and England. Soon, we had sailed through the Windward Passage and were only a few days from Jamaica. Oh, how nervous I was, mother! My one consolation was that we would be disembarking at Old Harbor and not Port Royal. Did you know that Port Royal is often referred to as the Sodom of the Indies? There are reportedly quite a number of prostitutes and convicts there. I did not wish to start my new life in a place filled with vermin. Fortunately Old Harbor was the closest port to Clarendon. It was an extremely hot day when we arrived and it was in November! The humidity was so great that I think it made Virginia very temperamental. Thankfully, we were able to stay the night in a hotel before continuing our journey. Betty and Molly had been complaining the whole day about the heat, and I was glad that I was rid of them for the night. Ronald had had some business to take care of during the day, and I believe that things wee going well for us. He had made arrangements for the slaves to be transported to the plantation upon their arrival, and he had purchased a carriage to take us to our new home. When we got into the carriage the next morning, the heat was already climbing to high temperatures. Our trip was not very long, for it was just past Round Hill, which is near the ocean. Along the way we saw armies of slaves clearing the immense jungles that covered the island. Fortunately, the land Ronald was granted had been previously been cleared by a Spanish colonist before our English soldiers took Jamaica over in 1655. There is also a house on the land. However, when we reached our plantation we could see that it would be a temporary residence. I have spent the past week getting all of our new furniture arranged in our house. The few belongings we brought with us took Betty and I only a day to unpack. Virginia seems to be flourishing here, although the heat affects her some. I am very adamant that she stays close to the house and goes no where near the jungle. Everyday at noon the entire household takes a nap. I think that without one I would soon be overcome by the heat. Our fears for Jeremy are slowly being realized. I think that he will not survive long in this humid climate, he has been ill ever since we arrived. However, we do our best to care for him. I will write again with news of our plantation and of the apparent strife between the buccaneers and planters. I wish with all my heart that you and Papa are untouched by the plague. Write me soon with news of our family and of England. I miss our ho me a great deal, but I am glad our family arrived safely. Ronald and Virginia send their love, as do I. Take care and watch for my next letters.

Your loving daughter, Emma HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1656

A Dutch rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel, proposed that the reason why the Christians so hate the Jews must be that they were noting unsatisfactory traits in themselves, and getting rid of their self-doubts by projecting these very traits upon the other group.

Noting that one characteristic of Christian worship was a meal of human flesh and blood represented symbolically by bread and wine, the sacrament of communion, he cited as an example of this sort of projection and inversion how the Christians professed to believe that the Jews needed the innocent blood of Christian children in order to mix the dough for their unleavened Passover matzoh, and how consequently the Christians would go on a rampage out of their places of worship on a holy day, killing local Jews. ANTISEMITISM

In consideration of loans to the Commonwealth, Lord Protector Cromwell’s government belatedly granted to a group of Marranos36 who had begun to enter England from Rouen in the 1630s permission to openly practice their Jewish religion. JUDAISM

On the basis of contact first with these Jews in England, and then with native Americans in Penn’s Woods, Friend William Penn would hypothesize that the American Indians were perhaps the Lost Tribes of Israel: “A man would think himself in Dukes Place or Bury Street in London, where he seeth them.” Native American faces looked to him like the faces of Jews he had seen in England, and their languages sounded a lot to him like Hebrew. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

36. Marrano = a Spanish or Portuguese Jew of the late Middle Ages who converted to Christianity, especially one forcibly converted but adhering secretly to Judaism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1657

Named to Oliver Cromwell’s newly-constituted House of Lords, Major-General William Goffe would remain loyal until the Lord Protector’s natural death on September 3, 1658. REGICIDE

Friends John Perrot and John Luffe (Love) traveled on the Italian peninsula to convert Catholics and Jews to Quakerism. Eventually they would seek an audience with Pope Alexander VII at the Vatican in Rome and be imprisoned.

In this year Friend George Fox is said to have written in reproach to an aged and failing Oliver Cromwell: “O Oliver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the deceit, the Hollander had been thy subject and tributary, Germany had given up to have done thy will, and the Spaniard had quivered like a dry leaf wanting the virtue of God, the King of France should have bowed his neck under thee, the Pope should have withered as in winter, the Turk in all of his fatness should have smoked, thou shouldst not have stood trifling about small things, but minded the work of the Lord as He began with thee at first.”

Some Quakers have taken this to mean that Friend George was rebuking Cromwell for not having had English soldiers adorn their armor with the big red cross of the Crusader, and gone off on a 5th Crusade against Islam, and have offered this as a limitation on the early understanding of the Quaker Peace Testimony: that the testimony was at this early point entirely compatible with the use of war as an instrument of the monarch. My own contention would be, however, that when Friend George wrote “O Oliver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the deceit,” he was writing a phrase that is to us at the very least indefinite, or ambiguous. Precisely what would it be for a person to be faithful as Friend George proposed? Being faithful does not, of course, intrinsically, involve armies and shedding the blood of others, for one can on occasion be faithful even when one has no army at one’s disposal and even when one is refusing to shed the blood of others. Exactly what is it for a person to thunder down deceit as Friend George proposed? Thundering down deceit does not, of course, intrinsically, involve the use of cannon and gunpowder, for one can on occasion thunder down deceit, even if one is out of gunpowder and all one’s cannon have become Quaker cannon, fallen entirely silent. So if one is going to insist that when Friend George told the Lord Protector that “the Turk in all of his fatness should have smoked” what he meant was that that Cromwell should have sent the English army off on a 5th Crusade to kill so many of them that the ones still alive would fear the Lord Protector and do his will,37 one is going to have to admit also that by the same token, “the Hollander had been thy subject and tributary” would have meant that Cromwell should have killed so many Hollanders that the ones still alive would fear him and 37. Note that Friend Mary Fisher’s missionary voyage to the court of the Great Turk was at this point an entirely unknown and unimagined, because future, event. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

do his will, and one is going to have to admit also that by the same token, “Germany had given up to have done thy will” would have meant that Cromwell should have killed so many Germans that the ones still alive would fear him and do his will, and one is going to have to admit also that by the same token, “the Spaniard had quivered like a dry leaf wanting the virtue of God” would have meant that Cromwell should have killed so many Spaniards that the ones still alive would fear him and do his will, and one is going to have to admit also that by the same token, “the King of France should have bowed his neck under thee” would have meant that Cromwell should have killed so many Frenchmen that the ones still alive would fear him and do his will, and one is going to have to admit also that by the same token, “the Pope should have withered as in winter” would have meant that Cromwell should have killed so many Roman Catholics that the ones still alive would fear him and do his will. What a spasm of 17th-Century conquest and bloodshed and terror this Quaker of today seems to suppose Friend George to have been imagining! But this is preposterous. Friend George certainly was not suggesting to Lord Protector Cromwell that he should have played Alexander the Great and conquered the known world. Had he meant that he would have said that. Where might any Quaker scholar have acquired such a conceit? And why would a Quaker now be furthering such a conceit?

Please notice once and for all that the phrase “O Oliver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the deceit” is consistent also with an attitude that if Lord Protector Cromwell had studied to make himself a man of the spirit of God rather than a man of violence, he would have had a greater and more lasting influence upon his fellows, rather than experiencing, as he was, in his declining years, that for all the blood he had caused to be shed his life had produced no lasting benefit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1658

September 3, Friday (Old Style): Oliver Cromwell died of malaria because he had refused to use the only known treatment (quinine from cinchona). PLANTS

He had rejected this treatment simply because the cure had been introduced by Jesuits. Amsterdam “was lighted up as for a great deliverance and children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead.” By 1681 cinchona would be universally accepted as antimalarial. The great commoner’s shrouded corpse would be interred with great fanfare at the east end of Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey (only to be dug up at the Restoration and ritually hanged and decapitated at Tyburn, and then thrown into an anonymous pit that is now somewhere beneath the Marble Arch).

John Dryden would author “Heroic Stanzas” on the death of Cromwell.

His son Richard Cromwell would become Lord Protector and conflict would renew. John Evelyn’s diary entry for this day was in part as follows: John Evelyn’s Diary

Died that archrebell Oliver Cromwell, cal’d Protector. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Friend George Fox also commented in his JOURNAL, of the events surrounding the death:

Now was there a great pother made about the image or effigy of Oliver Cromwell lying in state; men standing and sounding with trumpets over his image, after he was dead. At this my spirit was greatly grieved, and the Lord, I found, was highly offended.

Major-General William Goffe, whom some had been considering as a possible successor to Oliver Cromwell, instead witnessed the Protector’s appointment of his son Richard as his successor. He would support the son during his brief tenure of power and would advise him to use military force to resist Fleetwood and Desborough. REGICIDE HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1659

Richard Cromwell was forced by the army to resign, and the “Rump” Parliament was restored. Sir Henry Vane returned to the House of Commons, when he became the leader of the Republican party. The fall of Richard Cromwell’s government brought about Major-General William Goffe’s loss of influence. REGICIDE

The ongoing collapse of the English Commonwealth led to opening of negotiations by George Monk for the restoration of the Monarchy under King Charles I’s firstborn son Charles.

Friend Samuel Shattuck and a number of other prominent New England members of the Religious Society of Friends were residing in London, in exile from their homes on this side of the pond.

Friend William Edmundson and a group of Quakers settled in the vicinity of Mountmellick in county Laois in Ireland. The other Friends were:

William Archer William Barcrof (circa 1612-1696) Thomas Beale Evan Bevan Rodger Boswel (died in 1666) Godfrey Cantrel (died in 1686) William Capton (died in 1672) John Chandler John Edmundson John Gee John Goodbody Nicholas Gribbell (circa 1641-1728) John Hug Richard Jackson (1643-1697) William Moon (died in 1659) William Neale William Parker John Pim (1641-1718) Tobias Pladwell John Savage Richard Scot (1625-1707) Thomas Stalker Thomas Stevenson John Thompson (died in 1695) William Walpole (died in 1691) Robert Wardel HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1660

October 17, Wednesday (Old Style): John Evelyn’s diary entry for this day was in part as follows: John Evelyn’s Diary

This day were executed those murderous Traytors at Charing-Crosse, in sight of the place where they put to death their natural Prince, & in the Presence of the King his sonn, whom they also sought to kill: take[n] in the trap they laied for others: The Traytors executed were Scot, Scroope, Cook, Jones. I saw not their execution, but met their quarters mangld & cutt & reaking as they were brought from the Gallows in baskets on the hurdle: ô miraculous providence of God; Three days before suffered Axtel, Carew, Clements, Hacker, Hewson & Peeters for reward of their Iniquity: I returnd:

The resurgent monarchy would not limit itself to plausible activities such as inventive techniques of killing of those still alive and interesting abuses of their body parts once deceased. It also would dig up, and publicly “behead,” the moldering corpse of the former Lord Protector Cromwell. To make the requisite point, this enormous skull would need to grace a spiked pole atop Westminster Hall for the following two decades. Then, eventually, the head would wind up being exhibited as a curiosity at British cocktail parties. DIGGING UP THE DEAD

Sir Henry Vane, who had been the leader of the Republican faction in the House of Commons, was in prison awaiting his own trial for treason and his own eventual disposition. THIS DAY IN PEPYS’S DIARY HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1661

January 30, Wednesday (1660, Old Style): On the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I, the corpse of Oliver Cromwell, along with what was credited as the corpses of two other of the regicides, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, was carried to Tyburn and hanged. At evening the three corpses were cut down, decapitated with eight blows, and thrown into an anonymous pit that is now somewhere beneath the Marble Arch. The three heads would be displayed at Westminster Hall, atop poles for decades (we don’t know exactly how long, sometime in the late 1680s when it fell during a great storm). THIS DAY IN PEPYS’S DIARY

John Evelyn’s diary entry for this day was in part as follows: John Evelyn’s Diary

Was the first Solemn Fast & day of humiliation to deplore the sinns which so long had provoked God against this Afflicted Church & people: orderd by Parliament to be annualy celebrated, to expiate the Gilt of the Execrable Murder of the late King Char: I … This day (ô the stupendious, & inscrutable Judgements of God) were the Carkasses of that arch-rebell Cromewell, Bradshaw the Judge who condemn’d his Majestie & Ireton, sonn in law to the Usurper, draged out of their superbe Tombs (in Westminster amongst the Kings), to Tyburne, & hanged on the Gallows there from 9 in the morning til 6 at night, & and then buried under that fatal & ignominious Monument, in a deepe pitt: Thousands of people (who had seene them in all their pride & pompous insults) being spectators: looke back at November 22: 1658, & be astonish’d - And [fear] God, & honor the King, but meddle not with them who are given to change. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1663

March 24, Tuesday (1662, Old Style): King Charles II, as repayment for their political support against the forces of Oliver Cromwell, granted eight of his ex-generals, the Lords Proprietors, title to “Carolina.” (This charter for the land area lying between Florida and Virginia would be later amended to include the Albemarle Sound settlements in North Carolina.) READ THE FULL TEXT

September 6/7, Sunday/Monday (Old Style): A group of veterans of the army of Cromwell, whom the triumphant forces of King Charles II had had transported to Virginia to serve as bond-laborers, met in Gloucester County, Virginia to conspire “for their freedom.” One thing they all knew how to do was march, and this required no weapons. They therefore determined upon a freedom march, to occur on the following Monday, September 14th. Their plan was that they would march upon the governor, and, if the governor would not grant them their freedom from their bond service, they would then “march out of the Country.” These Cromwellian veterans would be betrayed by a bond-servant named Berkenhead on the day before, Sunday, September 13th, in exchange for his personal freedom from bond-servitude, and 4 of the veterans, captured, would be hanged for having participated in such a plan. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1739

John Bancks’s A SHORT CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL seemed sympathetic to the Lord Protector, which led to accusations by the Tory party that he was an enemy of the Monarch and a subverter of Truth. Nevertheless this biography sold well and by 1769 would have reached a 5th edition.

Richard Grey, D.D.’s A NEW AND EASY METHOD OF LEARNING HEBREW WITHOUT POINTS. TO WHICH IS ANNEX’D, BY WAY OF PRAXIS, THE BOOK OF PROVERBS DIVIDED ACCORDING TO THE METRE, WITH THE MASORETICAL READINGS IN ROMAN LETTERS (in 3 parts). Also, his TABULA EXHIBENS PARADIGMATA VERBORUM HEBRAICORUM REGULARIUM AND IRREGULARIUM PER OMNES CONJUGATIONES, MODOS, TEMPORA, AND PERSONAS, QUAM IN GRATIAM JUVENT and his HISTORIA JOSEPHI PATRIARCHI; PRAEMITTITUR NOVA METHODUS HEBRAICE DISCENDI. LIBER JOBI IN VERSICULOS METRICE DIVISUS; ACCEDIT CANTICUM MOYSIS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1788

July: In North Reading, Massachusetts, Mayo Greenleaf Patch, age 22, got married with the pregnant Abigail McIntire, age 17 — a descendant of a transported Scot prisoner of war sold here as a white slave per the clemency of Oliver Cromwell.38

38. This is the sole case I have been able to learn of, of a Scottish prisoner of war transported to America at the middle of the 17th Century and sold here as a white slave per the clemency of Lord Protector Cromwell who had been unable promptly to mask this sad history and absorb himself and his family into the immigrant population under one or another new American identity. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1799

By this point, the spiked pole holding the head from the corpse of Oliver Cromwell had long since been removed from atop Westminster Hall. It had become the centerpiece of a small museum run by the Russell family. The object was recognizably authentic not only because of the enormous proportions of the skull but also because of Oliver’s signature mole, still preserved above the left eye socket. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1814

For £230, Josiah Henry Wilkinson purchased the head from the corpse of Oliver Cromwell, from the Russell museum which had had custody of it, in order to lug it from party to party for show-and-tell. Maria Edgeworth would write about viewing this grisly object upon one such festive occasion:

Mr. Wilkinson its present possessor doats [sic] on it. A frightful skull it is –covered with parched yellow skin like any other mummy and with its chestnut hair, eyebrows and beard in glorious preservation– the head is still fastened to a pole.

At this event, the guests were taking turns standing at a window holding it. (I am unable to discern whether they were merely using the window as a source of light for close inspection of the grisly object, or were holding it up to this window on its pole in order to non-plus casual strollers on the sidewalk outside.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1837

May 9, Tuesday: Thomas Carlyle’s THE FRENCH REVOLUTION began to come off the presses: The work’s message must not be over-simplified: but it does seem a clear statement of Carlyle’s belief in the effects of the destruction of God’s natural order. When the leaders of French society neglected their duties, they found the political order challenged, and feudalism, then monarchy, abandoned. As faithlessness broke out and society broke down, the duty of ruling was passed to those unfitted for it, and finally to a mob. Anarchy, which Carlyle regarded as the manifestation of divine punishment, continued more and more violently until (as personified by Danton and Robespierre) exhausted with its own excesses; in the absence of a natural order came, too, rampant injustice. Humanity and civilization were wrecked, and the effects spread far beyond France. Carlyle explained this with unrestrained passion. He saw history as a continuum, and what had driven him on was the belief that the lessons of half a century earlier with which he lectured his readers were, like all experience, still vital today. This, like so much else of Carlyle’s thought, had German roots. Talking to his friend William Allingham in 1871, Carlyle said: “I often think of Immanuel Kant’s notion —no real Time or Space, these are only appearances— and think it is true.” This is the “natural supernaturalism” of SARTOR RESARTUS. To make the proper didactic point, he communicates facts with, as in Oliver Cromwell eight years later, “elucidations” that reflect his own prejudices. Like most of Carlyle’s works, it is self-centered because it is more about Carlyle than about its notional subject.... A central passage outlines not just the effects of the betrayal of feudal principles, but also sets out Carlyle’s own agenda for the next fifteen years. It is strong meat, too, for those who believe that Carlyle was some sort of proto-fascist who made a rule of siding with the oppressor: Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures, with their haggard faces (figures hâves); in wollen jupes, with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots, — starting up to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper Classes, after long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question: How have ye treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the nightly summer-sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had of you; EMPTYNESS, — of pocket, of stomach, of head and of heart. Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her wild children in the desert: Ferocity and Appetite: Strength grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by him? It is among the Mights of Man. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

... But the ultimate message points ahead, from England in 1837 when Carlyle finished writing: “Out of a world of Unwise nothing but an Unwisdom can be made. Arrange it, constitution-build it, sift it through ballot-boxes as thou wilt, it is and remains an Unwisdom.” This belief was to dominate his thinking, producing within him a pessimism that alternated between comedy and ferocity. FRENCH REVOLUTION, I FRENCH REVOLUTION, II HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1838

Henry William Herbert’s CROMWELL. AN HISTORICAL NOVEL. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1839

John Galt died in Greenock.

Holiday House, Sinclair.

The port of Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland was engaged in shipbuilding, sailcloth and cordage manufacturing, herring-curing and soap making. There were an iron foundry, a steam engine works and several breweries and distilleries. In this year a 2d harbor was being built to supplement the one that had been constructed during the reign of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, and this new harbor was named in honor of Queen Victoria.

DUNBAR FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1840

May 22, Friday: Thomas Carlyle gave the lecture “The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism” which would achieve publication in 1892 as Lecture 6 in ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1844

Samuel Laing translated into English the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson’s 1225 chronicle THE HEIMSKRINGLA; OR, CHRONICLE OF THE KINGS OF NORWAY from the Old Norse and Icelandic and Swedish and Latin in which it had previously appeared (London: Longman [et al.], three volumes). This was the 1st edition in English of the sagas which detailed the discovery of America by Norsemen, and would become HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Thomas Carlyle’s principle source for his EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.

THE HEIMSKRINGLA THE HEIMSKRINGLA THE HEIMSKRINGLA (Carlyle during this year would change the plan for a book that he would be completing in the following year, on Oliver Cromwell.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1845

Summer: Thomas Carlyle was completing his manuscript which would become THE LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF OLIVER CROMWELL: OLIVER CROMWELL, I OLIVER CROMWELL, II

“A Scotch lass ushers you into the second story front chamber, which is the spacious workshop of the world maker.” Here he sits a long time together, with many books and papers about him; many new books, we have been told, on the upper shelves, uncut, with the “author’s respects” in them; in late months, with many manuscripts in an old English hand, and innumerable pamphlets, from the public libraries, relating to the Cromwellian period; now, perhaps, looking out into the street on brick and pavement, for a change, and now upon some rod of grass ground in the rear; or, perchance, he steps over to the British Museum, and makes that his studio for the time. This is the fore part of the day; that is the way with literary men commonly; and then in the afternoon, we presume, he takes a short run of a mile or so through the suburbs out into the country; we think he would run that way, though so short a trip might not take him to very sylvan or rustic places. In the meanwhile, people are calling to see him, from various quarters, very few worthy of being seen by him, “distinguished travellers from America,” not a few, to all and sundry of whom he gives freely of his yet unwritten rich and flashing soliloquy, in exchange for whatever they may have to offer; speaking his English, as they say, with a “broad Scotch accent,” talking, to their astonishment and to ours, very much as he writes, a sort of Carlylese, his discourse “coming to its climaxes, ever and anon, in long, deep, chest-shaking bursts of laughter.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

In this timeframe Carlyle sat to have his Daguerreotype made. This would be the unbearded image he would forward to Emerson on April 30, 1846.

Carlyle had had a piece entitled “Cruthers and Jonson; or, The Outskirts of Life” on pages 691-705 of the issue of Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country for January 1831. During this summer Henry Thoreau made reference to this piece in his journal: CRUTHERS AND JONSON

To live to a good old age such as the ancients reached, serene and contented, dignifying the life of man, leading a simple, epic country life in these days of confusion and turmoil, — that is what Wordsworth has done. Retaining the tastes and the innocence of his youth. There is more wonderful talent, but nothing so cheering and world-famous as this. The life of man would seem to be going all to wrack and pieces, and no instance of permanence and the ancient natural health, notwithstanding Burns, and Coleridge, and Carlyle. It will not do for men to die young; the greatest genius does not die young. Whom the gods love most do indeed die young, but not till their life is matured, and their years are like those of the oak, for they are the products half of nature and half of God. What should nature do without old men, not children but men? The life of men, not to become a mockery and a jest, should last a respectable term of years. We cannot spare the age of those old Greek Philosophers. They live long who do not live for a near end, who still forever look to the immeasurable future for their manhood.

All dramas have but one scene. There is but one stage for the peasant and for the actor, and both on the farm and in the theatre the curtain rises to reveal the same majestic scenery. The globe of earth is poised in space for his stage under the foundations of the theatre, and the cope of heaven, out of reach of the scene-shifter, overarches it. It is always to be remembered by the critic that all actions are to be regarded at last as performed from a distance upon some rood of earth and amid the operations of nature. Rabelais, too, inhabited the soil of France in sunshine and shade in those years; and his life was no “farce” after all. ... Carlyle told R.W.E. that he first discovered that he was not a jackass on reading “Tristram Shandy” and Rousseau’s “Confessions,” especially the last. His first essay is an article in Fraser’s Magazine on two boys quarrelling. Youth wants something to look up to, to look forward to; as the little boy who inquired of me the other day, “How long do those old-agers live?” and expressed the intention of compassing two hundred summers at least. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

The old man who cobbles shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cuts a handsome swath at a hundred and five, is indispensable to give dignity and respectability to our life. .From all points of the compass, from the earth beneath and the heavens above, have come these inspirations and been entered duly in the order of their arrival in the journal. Thereafter, when the time arrived, they were winnowed into lectures, and again, in due time, from lectures into essays. And at last they stand, like the cubes of Pythagoras, firmly on either basis; like statues on their pedestals, but the statues rarely take hold of hands. There is only such connection and series as is attainable in the galleries. And this affects their immediate practical and popular influence. Carlyle, we should say, more conspicuously than any other, though with little enough expressed or even conscious sympathy, represents the Reformer class. In him the universal plaint is most settled and serious. Until the thousand named and nameless grievances are righted, there will be no repose for him in the lap of Nature or the seclusion of science and literature. And all the more for not being the visible acknowledged leader of any class. All places, all positions — all things in short — are a medium happy or unhappy. Every realm has its centre, and the nearer to that the better while you are in it. Even health is only the happiest of all mediums. There may be excess, or there may be deficiency; in either case there is disease. A man must only be virtuous enough.

December: A delay in producing a portrait of the Lord Protector to use as an illustration had held up publication, until this point, of Thomas Carlyle’s OLIVER CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES: WITH ELUCIDATIONS.

Mid-December: OLIVER CROMWELL’S LETTERS AND SPEECHES: WITH ELUCIDATIONS arrived in New England bookstores and Henry Thoreau began a study of Thomas Carlyle’s style and his attitude toward the “Great Man” in history.39 OLIVER CROMWELL, I OLIVER CROMWELL, II

39. During the earlier period of his career, Carlyle had been popular in New England but not in the American South. It would only be this later Carlyle, of this CROMWELL and then of FREDERICK THE GREAT, the Carlyle who would be proclaiming “the natural propensity of men to grovel or to rule” (a phrase by Van Wyck Brooks), who would become immensely popular in our South. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1846

Before March 13: Henry Thoreau may well have lectured at the Concord Lyceum on his experiences at Walden Pond: “After I lectured here before this winter,40 I heard that some of my townsmen had expected of me some account of my life at the pond. This I will endeavor to give to-night.”

... From all points of the compass, from the earth beneath and the heavens above, have come these inspirations and been entered duly in the order of their arrival in the journal. Thereafter, when the time arrived, they were winnowed into lectures, and again, in due time, from lectures into essays.... TIMELINE OF WALDEN

40. February 4th, “Writings & style of Thomas Carlysle” (sic) in regard to CROMWELL and other Great Men of history, and in regard to the manner in which typical lists of Great Men exclude Jesus and exclude the working man: “Are we not all great men?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

Here is Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau’s famous drawing:

Here is Charles H, Overly’s version of Sister Sophia’s drawing:

March 13th The Songsparrow & Black bird heard today –the snow going off –the ice in the pond 1 foot thick. Men speak –or at least think much of cooperation nowadays –of working together to some worthy end– But what little there is, is as if it were not –being a simple result of which the means are hidden –a harmony inaudible to men– If a man has faith –he will cooperate with equal faith every where– If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest of the world. To cooperate in the lowest & in the highest sense –thoroughly –is simply to get your living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

world –the one making his way as he went, seeking his fortune, –before the mast –behind the plow –walking and sleeping on the ground –living from hand to mouth –and so come in immediate contact with all hands and nations –the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket as a resource in case of extremity– It was easy to see that they could not be companions to one another –or cooperate. They would part company at the first interesting crisis the most interesting point in their adventures I live about a mile from any neighbor no house is visible within a quarter of a mile or more–

April 30, Thursday: Thomas Carlyle forwarded to Waldo Emerson the unbearded Daguerreotype image he had had made of himself during the summer of 1845, as his work on his Oliver Cromwell ms had eased. HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK

1856

Henry William Herbert’s THE COMPLETE MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN: WITH DIRECTIONS FOR HANDLING THE GUN, THE RIFLE, AND THE ROD; THE ART OF SHOOTING ON THE WING; THE BREAKING, MANAGEMENT, AND HUNTING OF THE DOG; THE VARIETIES AND HABITS OF GAME, RIVER, LAKE, AND SEA FISHING, ETC., ETC., ETC. PREPARED FOR THE INSTRUCTION AND USE OF THE YOUTH OF AMERICA. BY FRANK FORESTER, ETC. (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 222 Broadway).

FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Also, his historical monograph OLIVER CROMWELL; OR, ENGLAND’S GREAT PROTECTOR. THE GREAT PROTECTOR HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1960

March 25, Friday: In a Sidney Sussex chapel near Cambridge, where it once upon a time had studied, the enormous head of Oliver Cromwell, still enormous but at this point more than a little dead, was ceremonially re-interred.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of A Week and Walden: HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: September 22, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the HDT WHAT? INDEX

PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:OLIVER CROMWELL PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.