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C R O M W E L L
AND
B U. N. Y. A N.
BY
ROBERT journey, ESQ., LL.D.
L O N D O N :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
tºmºsºsº
1846.
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C O N T E N T S.
LIFE OF CROMWELL.”
Welsh descent of Cromwell . g sº * > º º tº
Story of Sir Richard Cromwell and Henry VIII. & * te
Lands in Huntingdomshire granted to Sir Richard Cromwel e e
Henry Cromwell knighted by Queen Elizabeth g & & &
Robert Cromwell, the father of the Protector .
Sir Oliver Cromwell . º g tº d te { } g e
Marriage of Robert Cromwell tº * * * * © e { }
Birth of the Protector . & wº © & º & g ©
Traditions at Huntingdon . tº * º º tº *
Educated at the Free Grammar School of Huntingdom g ©
Plays the part of ‘Tactus’ in the comedy of ‘Lingua’ & &
Curious extract from ‘Lingua’ tº * e te tº ſe e
Story of the “gigantic figure’ g © tº * * * g
Story of Cromwell and Prince Charles in 1604 e
Value of traditionary anecdotes . se & & º º « »
Removed to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge * As * *
Blaced at Lincoln’s Inn º e cº e Qe ſº gº º
Returns to reside on his paternal property tº g © wº tº
Low course of life led by Cromwell at this period . tºº tº i.
Petitions for a commission of lunacy against his maternal uncle, Sir
Thomas Steward . º tº e e * e
Marries Elizabeth Bourchier . º tº
Returned to King Charles's first parliament for the
*tingdon tº & º tº & ©
Related to Hampden and St. John . & gº e tº <>
borough of Hun-
* tº &
Returned a second time for Huntingdon . e © * g º
Sells a part of his estate and stocks a grazing farm at St. Ives . tº
His sheep-irons and other memorials of him at St. Ives in 1784
Death of Sir Thomas Steward wº & wº e º
Removes to the glebe-house in the city of Ely . § g * &
Acquires the popular title of “Lord of the Fens” . tº wº gº
State of England at this time . º ſº & tº * {j *
Proposed colony called “Say-brooke' º tº g º º
Letter to Mrs. St. John º e tº te tº º &
A common “spokesman for sectaries” at this period . & ſº tº
* * **, 3’ > -s; .
* From thºutfi. Răview, No. L.
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P
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iv. CONTENTS.
Rebellion in Scotland . º & wº © tº
Dissolution of parliament © * * tº e
Returned for Cambridge e © . . .
Sir Philip Warwick’s description of him at this period
Speaks intemperately in opposition to Lord Kimbolton
Reprehended by Hyde the chairman
tº *
Remarkable speech to Lord Falkland on the subject of the Remonstrance
The Remonstrance carried . tº º *
Hampden’s character of Cromwell to Lord Digby
Character of Hampden . g * tº tº
Views of the Catholics and Puritans * & e
Their strength dated from the hour of Strafford’s arrest
Accusations against Charles . © o
Memorable speech of Pym's . sº {º ge º
The King ruined by his want of confidence in himself
Authenticity and value of the Eikov Baoixticſ, . g
The King miserably unprepared for a war wº wº & tº
The events of the Civil War determined by accident and blunder
Rise of Cromwell º g wº e º g º
Cromwell’s description of the Parliament troops at the outbreak of the war
Raises a troop of horse among his countrymen . g
His trial of their courage . © © e •
Baxter invited to be their pastor . wº * te
Takes possession of Cambridge ſº tº tº Q.
Secures the College plate for the Parliament . ſº
Remarkable visit to his uncle Sir Oliver
Relief of Gainsborough “the beginning of his great fortunes”
Narrow escape at Horncastle te tº e *
Takes Hilsdon House . & & * * ge
Opposed in public opinion to Prince Rupert . tº
Marston Moor . * e * g tº * ,
Folly of Hollis in accusing Cromwell of cowardice .
Earl of Manchester * gº sº & * *
Cromwell a Republican at this time gº & e
His quarrel with Lord Manchester . tº gº ge
Meeting at Essex House to disable the designs of Cromwell
Speech of the Scottish Chancellor . º º iº
Speech of Whitelock in reply º Jº &
The Self-Denying Ordinance brought forward .
Clarendon's account of the origin of this Ordinance
Fairfax's reflections . º e tº e tº
The King takes Leicester . & te se
Battle of Naseby . s tº tº g ſº tº
“The King's Cabinet opened” o g ge gº
Influence of a pure religion upon the Kin & ſº
Cromwell’s account of the Battle of Naseby . &
Cromwell takes Devizes, Winchester, and Basing-House
*
CONTENTS.
Anecdote of Lord Hopton . ge ſº
Anecdote of Lord Astley e gº dº ©
Surrender of Bristol . ſe & g e
The King joins the Scottish army before Newark
Cromwell created a Baron by the Parliament .
New writs issued for recruiting the Parliament
Anecdote of Ludlow . gº & & &
Rise of the Independents
Council of Officers gº * ce tº
The King carried from Holmby by Joyce ge
Croin well’s part in this transaction § º
Downfall of the Presbyterian party e &
Presumed views of Cromwell at this perio cº
State of the Army under Cromwell * gº
Views of Ireton, the son-in-law of Cromwell .
Cromwell sincere at times . & e g
The King at Carisbrooke . º tº ve
Anecdote of Cromwell and Ludlow * e
Huntington’s accusation against Cromwell º
Cromwell’s dislike of the Scotch . & g
Observations on the death of the King . º
Case of Lord Capel . tº
Cromwell marches against Drogheda . wo
Leaves Ireton in command and arrives in London
Cromwell marches into Scotland . *
Battle of Dunbar tº tº se
Charles II. marches into England . g e
Battle of Worcester sº tº e
Cromwell’s character of the Long Parliament at this time
Cromwell turns out the Parliament
Council of Officers g tº e © g
Praise-God Barebones Parliament º *
Cromwell installed Lord Protector º wº
Instrument of Government c tº g
Peace with Holland and Portugal g ©
Instructions to Monk * * > º &
Act of Grace in Ireland e * & º
State of affairs in England . te gº ©
Cromwell compelled to govern tyrannically .
Divides England for a time into twelve cantoms
New Parliament called g * tº gº
War with Spain.-Jamaica taken . tº { }
Offered the title of King gº g tº -
Refuses it upon the plea of conscienc g ſº
Cromwell inaugurated Lord Protector . ge
Fears and views of the Protector . e tº
Uneasy state of his mind at this period
º
{-
vi CONTENTS.
Page
Death and burial G º • • go º º e • 84
Concluding remarks . © º e e o º º • 84
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
Bunyan’s reputation at the close of the eighteenth century . © , 89
Born at Elstow, near Bedford © & º © º º . 90
Bred a tinker tº º º e e e º gº o • 90
His dreams and reflections when a boy . wº º º 69 • 91.
Narrow escapes from drowning when a boy . e º ge • 92
Drawn a soldier for the Parliament army e e - e. º • 92
Finds a substitute tº & º iº º ſº g © . 92
His substitute shot at the siege of Leicester . © g o . 92
Early profligacy and self-accusations g º © * , 93
Marries the daughter of “a godly man” & © & g • 93
Her portion consists of two printed books º © tº º . 94
His veneration for the religious Directory of the Puritans . o • 94
The peculiar people of God.—Inquiries of his father & e • 94
Game at cat upon Sunday . º º º º e tº . 95
Conversion of Bunyan e e º e º * º . 95.
Tebuked by an “ungodly” woman for his early habit of swearing . 96
Its good effect tº e © * > e º ſº e . 96
Studies his Bible º e - tº º © © • 97
Story of his love for bell-ringing . º tº © Q e • 97
Dancing the last sin he adheres to . sº e º © & • 98
Early impressions o & º te & © g º • 98
Fate of one of his converters º º º º º º • 99
Efficacy of prayer e * > º e e º e º • 99
Conversation of three poor women in the streets of Bedford º ... i00
His approbation of what they said . © º -> e e ... 100
Seeks their conversation º tº g © º e • 100
Joins a small Baptist congregation to which they belong . º • 100
Story of Gifford, the minister of their congregation . o te ... 100
Takes delight for the first time in St. Paul’s Epistles. tº e • 102
Gifts of wisdom and knowledge . º º e & & ... 102
First germ of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress' . e º © & . I 03
Doctrine of election—Self-inquiries tº e º e º • 104
Effects of certain passages in Scripture on his mind . º ë ... 104
Imparts his doubts and fears to the three poor women e tº • 106
They report his case to Mr. Gifford e º º º • 106
His false notions of the corruption of our nature 4. º s ... 107
Ruminations after a sermon . e e * • • º . 107
Confirmations and doubts . º • • º g & • 108
A voice from within . o e g º º º º • 108
Suggestions of unbelief & © e e º tº e . I 09
Recurrence of consolatory thoughts <> º º * g . 110
CONTENTS. vii
Page
Ministry of Gifford & ſº Q º te tº º • 110
Meets with Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • 111
Finds it a history of his own experience . iſe * tº • . 111
Fresh temptations of the evil spirit . e * º Qº e . 112
Morning thoughts in bed se tº tº gº e º © • 113
Hears a voice from without, as of a sudden rushing wind . & . 115
Reverie upon a settle in the street . te g º iº & • 117
Hopes of heavenly pardon * º g º tº © • 117
Effects of certain passages on his mind . © © © gº . 118
His own belief of the causes of his long temptations e ge • 119
Searches the Scriptures anew * e g g & (e . 120
Baptized by Gifford in the river Ouse . º Ç º . 122
T)eath of G1fford tº e & © ge º tº • 122
Value of Bunyan's self-accusations . & ſº º e © • 123
His copy of Fox’s “Book of Martyrs’ & tº e e * . 124
Tetrastics written therein ve te gº g & & • 125
Bunyan called upon to speak a word of exhortation in Gifford’s church 127
Consents to their request e g * g & tº tº • 127
The nature of his duties at this time te º * de * • 128
A.J. ohn Burton, minister at Bedford . ge ſº gº tº © . 128
Character of Bunyan’s first preaching Gº * tº * . 129
Writes “Some Gospel Truths’ against the Quakers . wº gº • 130
Character of the work Q tº iº iº ge ſº o • 131
Burroughs's reply to Bunyan . * > sº Ç e ſº g s 132
Bunyan's answer and defence gº * º ſº se e . 134
Indicted at the assizes for preaching at Eaton . e g ſe • 137
State of religious parties at this time ſº & º tº ſº . 137
Salutation of women . & sº e ſº º tº tº . 138
The Restoration . tº e e q} * ſº ſº gº • 139
7 Bunyan arrested . tº . e Qº & wº & sº • 140
^ History of his imprisonment ſº © & o tº e • 140
Nature of his indictment & tº ſº tº tº ſº tº • 141
Examination by Justice Wingate tº & e Ç * . 142
His interview with the Clerk of the Peace in prison . * tº s 143
Coronation of Charles II. . º & e º ge . 144
Bunyan's wife presents two petitions in his favour . ge Q . 144
Her interview with the Judges wº g g © e & • 144
Sir Matthew Hale and Judge Twisden © tº tº e • 144
Bunyan a prisoner at large . e • • e º tº • 146
His midnight preachings ſº tº sº 4: wº e de . 146
Visits the Christians at London . ſº tº $º ſº e . 146
Book of Martyrs;–Pomponius Algerius . e dº • • . 147
Bunyan's observations on the letter of Pomponius Algerius. . . 148
Apprehensions and inward conflict . © g g * e . 149
Bunyan not the victim of intolerant laws § & & wº • 150
His poor blind child . wº © º * ge tº g . 151
Supports his family when in prison by making tagged thread-laces - 151
viii CONTENTS.
Page
Chosen Pastor of the Baptist congregation at Bedford § gº . 152
Declaration of indulgence . tº e & & c § • 152
Bunyan set free in the twelfth year of his imprisonment . º . 152
Print of him pursued by a rabble . g * º * º . 152
Preaches at the meeting-house in Southwark . gº º sº . 153
Charles Doe, a Baptist minister, his first biographer tº g . 153
Owen’s character of his preaching to Charles II. gº ſº e . 154
Story of a sermon e § © tº & e & <> • 154
His collected works indiscriminately arranged . Q g e • 155
His first publications . tº ge e ge tº * gº • 155
Looks for a millennium ſº g § tº © * g • 155
Bunyan tolerant in controversy e º & ge • . 157
His great desire to be denominated a Christian tº tº º • 157
Extracts from his printed writings ſe tº º . & • 159
Yearly visit to London tº tº tº tº º gº. © . 160
Tradition of him at Reading & & tº g © • . . 161
Death and burial tº g $º * e tº º O • 161
His widow’s advertisement about her husband’s works tº *… • 162
The first volume of his works published º e § g • 163
His children g tº & g { } ſº g e & • 163
Description of his character and person . tº © g © . 163
His portrait by Sadler gº 4. w & * © & • 164
His pulpit Bible ſº º § e ge gº © ge . 164
Recent discovery of the first edition of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ • 164
Gay's humorous allusion to the eighth edition g tº G . 165
Dishonest imitators of his allegory and manner º Q g • 166
Character of Bunyan’s style e * ge & (9. º • I 67
Sir Roger L’Estrange's style e tº g • e tº • 168
Accused of being an imitator of himself . © * © • 169
His reply in verse tº tº ſº º & º gº Qº • 169
Germ of “The Pilgrim’s Progress' . g & tº ſº & • 169
Origin of the allegory g º º © g & • • 170
Bernard’s Isle of Man * tº g ę © & & • 171
Charge of plagiarism refuted & gº go º * > º • 172
Bolswert's Pilgrimage of Dovekin and Willekin * * gº • 173
Dr. Patrick’s Parable of the Pilgrim ſº s º & & . 175
Lucian’s Hermotimus . & tº * gº wº º * • 176
Character of Bunyan’s writings g * e & iſ • 176
Second part of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress' . © º sº «s • 176
Promise of a third part * º
Popularity of “The Pilgrim’s Progress' . o tº g g • 177
‘The Holy War' g { } * > e º & e *… • I 79
Concluding remarks . gº © ſº º & & & • 180
LIFE OF C R O M W E L L. *
THE pedigree of the Protector's family commences about the
middle of the eleventh century with Glothyan Lord of Powys,
who married Morveth the daughter and heiress of Edwyn ap
Tydwell, Lord of Cardigan;–a Welsh genealogist no doubt
would be able to trace the Lords of Cardigan and Powys up to
Cadwallader and so on to Brennus and Belinus. William ap
Yevan, the representative of the family in the fifteenth century,
* 1. ‘Histoire de Cromwell, d'après les Mémoires du Temps et les Recueils
Parlementaires.” Par M. Villemain. 2 tom, 8vo. Paris, 1819.-2. “Memoirs
of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and of his Sons Richard and Henry.
Illustrated by Original Letters, and other Family Papers.’ By Oliver Crom-
well, Esq., a Descendant of the family. With Portraits from Original Pic-
tures. London. 1820, 4to.—3. ‘ Oliver Cromwell and his Times.’ By
Thomas Cromwell. London. 1821.-4. ‘Cromwelliana. A Chronological
Detail of Events in which Oliver Cromwell was engaged from the year 1642
to his Death 1658: with a continuation of other Transactions to the Ite-
storation.’ Westminster. 1810. Folio.
The first of these works is in all respects a very good book; the second,
which contains much less original matter than we had hoped to find there,
is the commendable attempt of an old and respectable gentleman to vindicate
the character of his great ancestor. Mr. Thomas Cromwell, the author of
the third work, appears not to be a descendant of the family: his book, though
very inferior to M. Villemain’s, and composed in too ambitious a style, is on
the whole so fairly written and intended, that we advise the author to ask
himself whether some of his statements are not more conformable to the
prejudices with which he took up the subject, than to the facts with which
he became acquainted in pursuing it, to reconsider the grounds and the
consistency of some of his opinions—and if a second edition of his book should
be called for, to introduce it by a preface somewhat more modest and de-
corous. The fourth and last article consists of a series of extracts from the
Diurnalls, and other publications of those times. With these works before
us, and with the aid of such other materials as the rich memoirs of that
disastrous age afford, and the industry of later writers has supplied (among
whom Mr. Noble deserves especial mention as one of the most laborious and
accurate and useful of the pioneer class), we shall endeavour to present a com-
pendious and faithful account of Oliver Cromwell’s eventful life.
B
2 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
was in the service first of Jasper Duke of Bedford, Henry the
Seventh’s uncle, afterwards of that king himself. His son,
Morgan Williams, married the sister of that Cromwell whose
name is conspicuous in the history of the Reformation, and who,
though not irreproachable for his share in the transactions of a
portentous reign, is on the whole largely entitled to commisera-
tion and respect. The eldest son of this marriage called himself
Richard Cromwell, alias Williams, and as the former was the
more popular and distinctive name, the alias, though long re-
tained by the family in their deeds and wills, was dropt in ordi-
nary use. This Richard was one of the six challengers who held
a tournament in 1540 at Westminster against all comers.
The justs were proclaimed in France, Flanders, Spain, and Scot-
land. The challengers entered the field richly accoutred, and
their horses trapped in white velvet; the knights and gentlemen
who rode before them were apparelled in velvet and white sarsnet,
and their servants were all in white doublets, and “hosen cut after
the Burgonian fashion.” Sir Richard was knighted on the
second day, and performed his part in the justs so well that the
king cried out to him, “formerly thou wast my Dick, but here-
after thou shalt be my diamond;” and then dropping a diamond
ring from his finger bade him take it, and ever after bear such a one
in the fore gamb of the demy-lion in his crest. As a further
proof of the royal favour, he and each of the challengers had a
house and an hundred marks annually, to them and their heirs
for ever, granted out of the property of the Knights of Rhodes,
the last prior of that religion dying at this time broken-hearted
for the dissolution of his order.
Sir Richard Cromwell was one of those persons who were
enriched by the spoils of the Church. He was appointed one of
the visitors of the Religious Houses, and received for his reward
so large a portion of the plunder, that the church lands which he
had possessed in Huntingdonshire only, were let in Charles the
Second’s reign for more than £30,000 a year; and besides these
he had very great estates in the adjoining counties of Cambridge,
Bedford, Rutland, and Northampton. The donors of estates
to monasteries and churches usually inserted in their deeds of
gift a solemn imprecation against all persons who should usurp
[* Stow, by Howes, ed. 1631, p. 579.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 3
the property so bequeathed, or convert it to other purposes than
those for which it was consecrated. Though this proved no
defence for the estates which had been piously disposed, it was
long believed by the people that the property sacrilegiously ob-
tained at the dissolution carried a curse with it; and, in a great
majority of instances, the facts were such as to strengthen the
opinion. Without consigning the rapacious courtiers of that age
to the bottomless pit, “there to be tormented for ever with
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and with Judas Iscariot,” it may
safely be said that no conscientious man would have taken pro-
perty clogged with such an entail.
Henry, the eldest son and heir of Sir Richard, was knighted by
Queen Elizabeth, who esteemed him highly, and honoured him by
sleeping at his seat, once the nunnery, at Hinchinbrook, on her
return from visiting Cambridge. He was called the Golden
Knight for his wealth and for his liberality, which was of a
splendid kind; for, dividing his time between Hinchinbrook and
Ramsey, whenever he returned to the latter place he used to
throw large sums of money to the poor townsmen. The death
of his second wife was one of the alleged crimes for which the
witches of Warboys were accused and ever ited ; the property
of these poor wretches, amounting to 40l., was forfeited to Sir
Henry as lord of the manor, and he gave it to the Corporation of
Huntingdon on condition that they should procure from Queen's
College, Cambridge, every year on Lady-Day, a Doctor or
Bachelor of Divinity to preach in that town against the sin of
witchcraft. That condition was regularly fulfilled about fifty
years ago : in what manner it is performed at present we know
not. Robert, the second son of Sir Henry, was the father of
Oliver, so named after his uncle, the head of the family. That
uncle, Sir Oliver, was a magnificent personage, for whose ex-
penses even the enormous property which he inherited proved
inadequate.
Sir Henry left his younger sons estates of about 300l. a year
each : those to which Robert Cromwell succeeded lay in and near
the town of Huntingdon, having chiefly or wholly belonged to
the Augustinian Monastery of St. Mary. The house in which
he resided was either part of the Hospital of St. John, or built
upon the site and with materials from its ruins. He married
B 2
4. LIFE OF CROMWELL,
Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward, of the city of Ely, a
family which, it is not doubted, was allied to the royal house of
Scotland. She was the widow of a Mr. Lynne, and is supposed
to have brought him little other fortune than her jointure. They
had ten children; Oliver was the second, and the only one of the
three boys who lived to grow up. Mr. Cromwell was member
for his own borough of Huntingdon in the parliament held in the
35th of Elizabeth [1592-3], and he was in the commission of the
peace. This satisfied all his ambition: but, to provide for so large
a family, he entered into a large brewing business; it was carried
on by servants, and Mrs. Cromwell inspected their accounts,
which rendered her better able to conduct the business for her-
self” after her husband’s death in 1617. Oliver was born April
25, 1599. A nonjuror, who afterwards purchased and inhabited
the house, used, when he showed the room in which the Pro-
tector was born, to observe that the devil was behind the door,
alluding to a figure of Satan in the hangings. It is said, on the
authority of the same person, who was curious in collecting what
traditions remained concerning so eminent a man, that Oliver,
when an infant, was in as much danger from a great monkey as
Gulliver was at Brobdigmag. At his grandfather's house one of
these mischievous creatures took him out of the cradle, carried
him upon the leads of the house, to the dreadful alarm of the
family (who made beds and blankets ready, in the forlorn hope
* Mr. O. Cromwell says, “all this has been said by Cromwell's enemies,
for the purpose of degrading him ; but no evidence to be relied on is produced
in support of these assertions. The truth is, nothing certain is likely to be
known of his early life, or the pecuniary circumstances of his parents.”
“And,” he adds, “that, as Cromwell, in a speech to his Parliament, said he
was a gentleman, neither living in any considerable height, nor yet in
obscurity, such an account of himself is a sufficient confutation of his and his
family’s narrow circumstances, and their engagements in trade in conse-
quence.” This gentleman very justly observes that the statement, “if true,
could not be deemed discreditable to the family, the youngest brothers of the
best families in this country engaging in trade and thereby raising themselves
to fortune and independency.” With this feeling there is an inconsistency in
resenting the statement as a wrong. Of such facts no other proof is possible
than contemporary assertions, uncontradicted at the time; these are so nume-
rous that it is almost absurd to question them; and what renders the fact
highly probable is, that Mrs. Cromwell “lived in a very handsome, frugal
manner, and gave each of her daughters fortune sufficient to marry them to
persons of genteel families;” which she could never have done from her
dowry alone, being only 60l. a year.
[+ Noble, ed. 1787, vol. i. p. 92.
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 5
of catching him), and at last brought him safely down. He was
saved from drowning in his youth by Mr. Johnson, the curate of
Cunnington.
Oliver was educated at the free grammar-school of his native
town, by Dr. Beard,” whose severity towards him is said to have
been more than what was usual even in that age of barbarous
school-discipline. He was a resolute, active boy, fond of engag-
ing in hazardous exploits, and more capable of hard study than
inclined to it. His ambition was of a different kind, and that
peculiar kind discovered itself even in his youth. He is said to
have displayed a more than common emotion in playing the part
of Tactus who finds a royal robe and a crown, in the old comedy
of Lingua. The comedy was certainly performed at the free-
school of Huntingdon in his time, and if Oliver played the part,
the scene in question is one which he must have remembered
with singular feeling, whatever he may have felt in enacting it.
“Was ever man so fortunate as I,
To break his shins at such a stumbling-block!
Roses and bays pack hence I this Crown and Robe
My brows and body circles and invests.
How gallantly it fits me! Sure the slave
Measured my head that wrought this coronet.
They lie that say complexions cannot change;
My blood 's ennobled, and I am transform'd
Unto the sacred temper of a king.
Methinks I hear my noble parasites
Styling me Caesar or great Alexander,
Licking my feet, and wondering where I got
This precious ointment. How my pace is mended !
How princely do I speak, how sharp I threaten l—
Peasants, I’ll curb your headstrong impudence,
And make you tremble when the lion roars,
Ye earth-bred worms l—
Poets will write whole volumes of this change.” +
He himself is said often, in the height of his fortune, to have
* The frontispiece to the Theatre of God’s Judgments is said to be a por-
trait of this severe schoolmaster. It represents him with two scholars stand-
ing behind, a rod in his hand, and As in praisenti proceeding from his mouth.
[f Dodsley’s Old Plays, ed. 1825, vol. v. p. 114. The first edition of
‘Lingua,’ a play attributed to Anthony Brewer, is dated 1607. That Crom-
well had acted a part in this play, we are told by Simon Miller, a stationer,
in a list of publications appended to Heath’s New Book of Loyal Martyrs.
This Heath wrote the earliest printed Life of Oliver Cromwell, entitled
“Flagellum, or the Life and Death, Birth and Burial of Oliver Cromwell
the late Usurper.” (1663). Miller was the publisher of an edition of
‘Lingua' in 1657, and may have had his information from Heath.]
6 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
mentioned a gigantic figure which, when he was a boy, opened
the curtains of his bed, and told him he should be the greatest
person in the kingdom. Such a dream he may very probably
have had ; and nothing can be more likely than that he should
seek to persuade himself it was a prophetic vision, when events
seemed to place the fulfilment within his reach. But that his
uncle Steward told him it was traitorous to relate it, and that he
was flogged for the relation by Dr. Beard, at his father's particu-
lar desire, are additions to the story which are disproved by their
absurdity; however loyal his parents, and however addicted to
the use of the rod his master, they would no more have punished
him at that time for such a fancy, than for dreaming that he was
to become Grand Turk or Prester John. There is another tale
concerning his childhood, which, as well as all these anecdotes,
the living historian of the family treats as an absolute falsehood;
that being at his uncle's house at Hinchinbrook, when the royal
family rested there on their way from Scotland, in 1604, he was
brought to play with Prince Charles, then Duke of York,”
quarrelled with him, beat him, and made his nose bleed profusely,
—which was remembered as a bad omen for the king when
Cromwell began to distinguish himself in the civil wars. Mr.
Noble relates this only as the tradition of the place, adding that
Hinchinbrook was generally one of the resting-places of the royal
family on the northern road. Such anecdotes relating to such a
man, even though they may be of doubtful authenticity, are not
unworthy of preservation. The fabulous history of every country
is a part of its history, and ought not to be omitted by later and
more enlightened historians; because it has been believed at one
time, and while it was believed it influenced the imagination, and
thereby, in some degree, the opinions and the character of the
people. Biographical fables, on the other hand, are worthy of
notice, because they show in what manner the celebrity of the
personage, in whose honour or dishonour they have been in-
vented, has acted upon his countrymen. Moreover, there is in
the curiosity which we feel concerning the earliest actions of
remarkable men, an interest akin to that which is attached to the
source of a great river. There are many springs in this country
[* Among Prince Henry’s expenses is a “payment of xxxiiili for three
Hawkes bought of Sir Oliver Cromwell.”]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 7
more beautiful in themselves and in their accompaniments than
the fountains of the Thames, or the Danube, or the Nile, but
how inferior in kind and in degree is the feeling which they
excite -
~ Before Cromwell had quite completed his seventeenth year he
was removed from the school at Huntingdon to Sydney Sussex
College, Cambridge.*. Though his passion for athletic exercises
still continued, so much so that he is said to have acquired the
name of a royster in the university, it appears certain, that the
short time which he passed there was not mis-spent, but that he
made a respectable proficiency in his studies. “He had not, how-
ever, been there more than a year when his father died, and his
mother, to whose care he appears to have been left, removed him
from college. It has been affirmed that he was placed at Lincoln’s
Inn, but that instead of attending to the law he wasted his time
“in a dissolute course of life, and good-fellowship and gaming.”
His descendant denies this, because his name is not to be found
in the records of Lincoln’s Inn; to which sufficient disproof he
adds, that “it is not likely a youth of eighteen or nineteen should
in those days have been sent to an inn of court.” The unlikeli-
hood is not apparent; there is no imaginable reason why he
should have been represented as a student of law if he had never
been so, and the probability is that he was entered at some other
of the inns of court. Returning thence to reside upon his pater-
nal property, he is said to have led a low and boisterous life;
and for proof of this, a letter to his cousin, Mrs. St. John, is
quoted, in which he says, “You know what my manner of life
hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated the
light; I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true; I hated
godliness, yet God had mercy on me.” The present Mr. Oliver
Cromwell argues that no such meaning is to be inferred from the
words, but that such “it is conceived would be the language of
any person of the present day, who, after professing christianity
in the common loose way in which it is commonly professed, and
even preserving themselves free from the commission of all gross
sins and immoral acts, should become a convert to the stricter
doctrines and precepts of the Scriptures, as held by those who
[* 23rd April, 1616. Noble, i. 254. ed. 1787.]
8 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
are deemed to be the evangelical or orthodox believers of these
times.” Mr. Cromwell is right; the letter proves nothing,
except that there is a good deal of the same canting now that
there was then, cant indeed being a coin which always passes
current. The language of an evangelical professor concerning
his own sins and the sense of his own wickedness, is no more to be
taken literally" than that of an amorous sonnetteer who complains
of flames and torments.
The course of Cromwell’s conduct, however, at this time was
such as to offend his paternal uncle, Sir Oliver, and his maternal
one, Sir Thomas Steward. The offence given to the former is
said to have been by a beastly frolic, for which the master of
Misrule very properly condemned him to the discipline of a horse-
pond. The story, from its very filthiness, is incredible: Bates,
however, would not have related it unless he had believed it, and
Oliver's practical jests were sometimes dirty as well as coarse.
The means by which he displeased Sir Thomas are less doubtful
and of a blacker dye :—wishing to get possession of his estate, he
represented him as not able to govern it, and petitioned for a
commission of lunacy against him, which was refused. Because
Sir Thomas was reconciled to him afterwards, and ultimately
left him the estate, the present Mr. O. Cromwell denies the fact,
saying, “this supposed attempt to deprive his uncle of his estate
would have been so atrocious and unpardonable, that the reason-
able conclusion must be, that this disposition in favour of Crom-
well proves the falsehood of the story.” A better ground of de-
fence would have been to maintain that the uncle was not in his
sound senses, and to allege the bequest, after such provocation, in
proof of it. The story is most certainly true; it is established
by a speech of Archbishop Williams to the king concerning
Cromwell, wherein he says, “Your Majesty did him but justice
in refusing his petition against Sir Thomas Steward of the isle of
Ely ; but he takes them all for his enemies that would not let
him undo his best friend.” Mr. O. Cromwell has overlooked
this evidence. But he is not the only modern biographer who
has thought proper to contradict the facts which are recorded of
an ancestor, because it is not agreeable to believe them. The
probability is, that Cromwell, who was not naturally a wicked
man, thought his petition well grounded.
LIFE OF CROMWELL, 9
Whatever may have been the follies and vices of his youth,
it is certain that he had strength and resolution enough to shake
them off. As soon as he came of age he married” Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir James Bourchier, of Felsted, in Essex, a woman
whose irreproachable life might have protected her from obloquy
and insult, if in the heat of party-spirit any thing were held
sacred. She brought him some fortune, and, in the year 1625,
he was returned to King Charles's first parliament for the borough
of Huntingdon. There was no disaffection in his family either
to the church or state ; they had indeed enjoyed in a peculiar
manner the bounty as well as the favour of the crown. But
Cromwell was not likely to behold the measures of the govern-
ment with indifference or complacency; a man so capable of
governing well perceived the errors which were committed; and
the displeasure, thus reasonably excited, was heightened by acci-
dental and personal circumstances till it became a rooted dis-
affection. To this some of his family connexions must have
contributed in no slight degree. Hampden was his first cousin ;
and St. John, who was connected with the Cromwells by his
first marriage, married for his second wife one who stood in the
same degree of near relationship to him. They were unquestion-
ably two of the ablest men in that distinguished age; and Hamp-
den, who had sagacity enough to perceive the talents of his kins-
man when they were not suspected by others, possessed a great
influence over his mind; Cromwell “followed his advice whilst
living, and revered his memory when dead.” These eminent men
were both deadly enemies at heart to the established church, and
the puritanical bias which their conversation was likely to impart
was increased by his own disposition, for in the early part of his
life it is certain that he was of a fanatical constitution. He often
supposed himself to be dying, and called up his physician at un-
seasonable hours in causeless alarm ; and that physician’s account
of him is, that “he was quite a splenetic, and had fancies about
the Cross in the town.”f
Cromwell sate for the same borough in the parliament of
1628, and spoke severely and justly against the promotion of Dr.
[* 20th August, 1620. In the church of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the
church in which Milton is buried. Noble, i. 123.]
[f Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, ed. 1702, p. 249.]
10 LIFE OF CROMWEF,F,.
Manwaring; but by complaining at the same time of persons . .
who “preached flat popery,” which was a flat falsehood, he
lessened the effect of his opinion upon unprejudiced and judicious
minds. 24-hree years afterwards he sold some of his estates for
18OOl. ; stocked a grazing farm at St. Ives, and removed thither
from Huntingdon. The barn which he built here was still
standing- and bore his name, when Mr. Noble published his
Memoirs of the Protectoral House; * and the farmer who then
rented the estate marked his sheep with the identical marking
irons which Oliver used, and which had O. C. upon them. While
he resided here he returned some money which he had formerly
won by gaming, and which he considered it sinful to keep. The
sums were not inconsiderable for that time and for his means, One
of them being 30l. and another 120l. The death of Sir Thomas
Steward placed him in affluence, and, in 1635, he removed to
the Glebe House, in the city of Ely. He had now a large family,
and took his full share in local business as an active country
gentleman, not always as a useful one, for the scheme of draining
the fens of Lincolnshire and the Isle of Ely, which his father and
many others of his relations had promoted, was defeated chiefly
by his opposition. There was a popular cry against the measure,
because the inhabitants enjoyed a customary right of commoning
and fishing there; Cromwell therefore became so great a favourite
with them for espousing their immediate interest, that he was
called the Lord of the Fens. It is more likely that he was
actuated by a desire of ingratiating himself with the people of
the country on this occasion, than that so far-sighted and able a
man should not have perceived the great and obvious utility of
the measure which he resisted. Afterwards, when the act passed
under the Commonwealth, he was appointed one of the Com-
missioners; and the work proceeded with his favour when he was
Protector. - -
The state of England, though the country was rapidly im-
proving, and prosperous beyond all former example, was such as
might well trouble every upright and thoughtful observer. The
wisest man could not possibly foresee in what the conflict of opi-
[* The first edition of Noble's Memoirs was published in 1784.]
[+ Noble, i. 262.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. Ri
nions, which had begun, was likely to terminate: this only was
certain, that there must inevitably be great evil in the process,
and that whatever extreme prevailed, the end must needs be one
which no good man, or true friend of his country, could con-
template without sorrow. In any other age, Charles I. would have
been the best and the most popular of kings. His unambitious
and conscientious spirit would have preserved the kingdom in
peace; his private life would have set an example of dignified
virtue, such as had rarely been seen in courts; and his love of
arts and letters would have conferred permanent splendour upon
his age, and secured for himself the grateful applause of after
generations. But he succeeded to a crown whose prerogatives
had been largely asserted and never defined; to a scanty revenue,
and to a popular but expensive war, no ways honourable to the
nation either in its cause or conduct. The history of his reign
thus far had been a series of errors and faults on all sides, so that
an impartial observer would have found it difficult to satisfy
Himself whether the King and his ministers or the Parliaments
were the most reprehensible; or which party had given the
greatest provocation, and thereby afforded most excuse for the
conduct of the other. Unable to govern with a parliament, and
impatient of being governed by one, Charles had tried the peril-
ous experiment of governing without one. There can be no
doubt that the liberties of Great Britain must have been de-
stroyed if that experiment had been successful; and successful
in all human probability it would have been, if a spirit of re-
ligious discord had not possessed the nation. For though the
system of Charles's administration was arbitrary, and therefore
tyrannical, the revenue which he raised by extraordinary means
was not greater than what would cheerfully have been granted
him in the ordinary and just course of government; it was
frugally administered, and applied in a manner suitable to the
interest and honour of the kingdom, which, for twelve years, in
the words of Lord Clarendon, “enjoyed the greatest calm and
the fullest measure of felicity that any people in any age, for so
long time together, have been blessed with, to the wonder and
envy of all the other parts of Christendom.” Foreign and do-
mestic trade flourished and increased ; towns grew, not with a
forced and unhealthy growth, occasioned by the unnatural
12 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
activity of a manufacturing system, but in just proportion to the
growing industry and wealth of the country. England was re-
spected abroad and prosperous at home ; it even seemed as if the
physical condition of the island had undergone a beneficial change,
for the visitations of pestilence were abating, which had been so
frequent in the preceding reign. But a severer judgment was
impending over a headstrong generation, insensible of the bless-
ings with which they were favoured, and ungrateful for them.
While this long calm endured, the most sagacious politicians
were so far from perceiving any indications of the storm which
they were to direct, that, believing the country was doomed and
resigned to the loss of its liberties, they resolved upon leaving it,
and transporting themselves, in voluntary exile, to a land of free-
dom. Lord Brooke, Lord Say and Sele and his sons, Pym, and
other distinguished men of the same sentiments, were about to
remove to a settlement in New England, where the name of Say-
brooke, in honour of the two noble leaders, had already been given
to a township in which they were expected. Eight vessels with
emigrants on board were ready to sail from the Thames, when
the King by an order of council forbade their departure, and
compelled the intended passengers to come on shore, fatally for
himself; for among those passengers Haslerigge and Hampden,
and Cromwell, with all his family, had actually embarked. There
are few facts in history which have so much the appearance of
fatality as this. ()
Charles and his ministers feared that so many discontented and
stirring spirits would be perilous in a colony which, being de-
cidedly hostile to the Church of England, might easily be alienated
from the state. They saw clearly the remote danger, but they
were blind to the nearer and greater evil; and in that error they
stopt the issue which the peccant humours had opened for them-
selves. Cromwell returned to Ely, and there continued to lead a
respectable and pious life. A letter which he wrote at this time
to Mrs. St. John (already mentioned) has been preserved ; it is
better expressed than most of his compositions, and is remarkable
not merely for its characteristic language, but for a passage which
may perhaps be thought to imply the hope, if not the expectation, *
of making himself conspicuous in defence of his religious senti-
ments. “ Dear Cousin,” he says, “I thankfully acknowledge your
LIFE OF CROM, WELL. 13
love in your kind remembrance of me upon this opportunity.
Alas, you do too highly prize my lines, and my company I
may be ashamed to own your expressions, considering how un-
profitable I am and the mean improvement of my talent. Yet to
honour my God by declaring what he hath done for my soul, in
this I am confident, and I will be so. Truly then this I find,
that He giveth springs in a dry and barren wilderness, where no
water is. I live (you know where) in Mesheck, which they say
signifies prolonging; in Kedar, which signifieth blackness: yet
the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do prolong, yet He
will, I trust, bring me to his tabernacle, to his resting place.
My soul is with the congregation of the first born : my body
rests in hope; and if here I may honour my God, either by
doing or suffering, I shall be more glad. Truly no poor creature
hath more cause to put forth himself in the cause of his God
than I. I have had plentiful wages before hand, and I am sure
I shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me in his
Son, and give me to walk in the light, and give us to walk in
the light, as he is in the light: He it is that enlighteneth our
blackness, our darkness. I dare not say he hideth his face from
me; he giveth me to see light in his light. One beam in a
dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it; blessed be
his name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine !”
This readiness to do and to suffer in a righteous cause might
have been confined to the ignoble theatre of a Bishop's court, if
a wider field had not soon been opened for puritanical ambition.
Cromwell had usually attended the church-service, joining pro-
bably, like Baxter, “in the common prayer, with as hearty fer-
vency, as afterwards he did with other prayers :”—“As long as
I had no prejudice against it,” says that good man, “I had no
stop in my devotions from any of its imperfections.” But even
before he left Huntingdon his house had been a retreat for those
non-conforming preachers who had provoked the law; and a
building behind it is shown, which he is said to have erected for
their use, and in which, according to the same tradition, he some-
times edified them by a discourse himself. It is certain that he
put himself forward in their cause so as to be looked upon as the
head of their party in that country ; and Williams, who was then
Bishop of Lincoln, and whom he often troubled on such occa-
14 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
sions, says that he was a common spokesman for sectaries, and
maintained their part with stubbornness. Whatever part indeed
Cromwell took up would be well maintained, and the time was
now approaching when he was to take a conspicuous one.
A rebellion broke out in Scotland, where no disaffection had
been suspected. By prudent measures it might easily have been
averted, by vigorous ones it might easily have been crushed; and
both were wanting. The King raised an army which, by the
management of designing persons, and the mismanagement of
others, was rendered useless. A treaty was made by which
nothing was concluded; all the savings of the preceding years
were wasted in this disgraceful expedition ; and Charles, who had
so long governed without a parliament, was now compelled to
call one, for the purpose of obtaining supplies. The majority of
that parliament consisted of men who knew their duty to their
king and country, and, in asserting the constitutional liberties
of the people, would have sacredly preserved the rights of the
crown, wherein those liberties have their surest safeguard.
There were however some persons, of great ability, who were
determined upon effecting some change both in the ecclesiastic
and civil institutions of the land, not having acknowledged to
others, nor perhaps to themselves, how far they were willing that
that change should extend. The state of their mind was well
expressed by Cromwell, who, when Sir Thomas Chichley and
Sir Philip Warwick asked him with what concessions he would
be satisfied, honestly replied, “I can tell you, Sirs, what I would
not have, though I cannot tell what I would.” This parliament
was hastily dissolved by the counsel of Sir Henry Vane the
elder, and Herbert the solicitor-general: the latter acted with
no worse motives than peevishness and mortified pride; the
former appears to have intended the mischief which ensued. The
discontented party did not conceal their joy at an event which
made all good men mournful. Cromwell’s cousin St. John,
whose dark and treacherous spirit at all other times clouded his
countenance, met Mr. Hyde with a smiling and cheerful aspect,
and seeing him melancholy, “as in truth he was from his heart,”
asked what troubled him. The same, he replied, which troubled
most good men, that in such a time of confusion, so wise a par-
liament, which alone could have found remedy for it, was so
LIFE OF CROMWELL. J.5
unseasonably dismissed. But St. John warmly made answer, that
all was well: and that it must be worse before it was better: and
that this parliament could never have done what was necessary
to be done—“ as indeed,” says Hyde, “it would not what he
and his friends thought necessary.” Cromwell was one of those
friends; he had been returned to this parliament for the town of
Cambridge, and was returned for the same seat to the next—the
famous and infamous Long Parliament, which Charles found it
necessary to call in six months after the dissolution.
Cromwell's appearance in this assembly is happily described by
Sir Philip Warwick. “The first time,” he says, “that ever I
took notice of him, was in the very beginning of the parliament
held in November, 1640," when Ivainly thought myself a courtly
young gentleman, for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon
our good clothes. I came one morning into the house well clad,
and perceived a gentleman speaking, whom I knew not, very
ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed
to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was
plain, and not very clean ; and I remember a speck or two of
blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his
collar: his hat was without a hat-band; his stature was of a good
size ; his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swoln and
reddish, his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of
fervour.” f But it was more by heat and earnestness than by
eloquence that Cromwell made himself noticed at this time.
One of the first occasions upon which he spoke in this parliament
was in a committee, in opposition to Lord Kimbolton, upon the
Earl of Manchester's inclosure business. He behaved intem-
perately, “ ordering the witnesses and petitioners in the method
of proceeding, and seconding, and enlarging upon what they
said with great passion.”f When the chairman endeavoured to
preserve order, by speaking with authority, Cromwell accused
him of being partial and discountenancing the witnesses; and
when, says Lord Clarendon, who was himself the chairman, Lord
Rimbolton, “upon any mention of matter of fact, or the pro-
[* He sat in this Parliament—commonly known as the Long Parliament—
for the town of Cambridge. His fellow-member was John Lawry, Esq.]
[+ Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, ed. 1702, p. 247.]
[t Lord Clarendon's Life of himself, ed. 1827, vol. i. p. 89.]
16 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
ceeding before and at the inclosure, desired to be heard, and with
great modesty related what had been done, or explained what
had been said, Mr. Cromwell did answer and reply upon him with
so much indecency and rudeness, and in language so contrary
and offensive, that every man would have thought, that as their
natures and their manners were as opposite as it is possible, so
their interest could never have been the same. In the end his
whole carriage was so tempestuous, and his behaviour so insolent,
that the chairman found himself obliged to reprehend him, and
to tell him if he proceeded in the same manner, he would pre-
sently adjourn the committee, and the next morning complain to
the house of him.”
Cromwell's name does not appear in the proceedings against
Lord Strafford. That he bore his part, however, may be pre-
sumed not only from the whole tenour of his after-conduct, but
because his cousin St. John was one of the foremost agents in
that most iniquitous transaction, one of the deadly sins of the
Long Parliament. When the question of the Remonstrance,
much against the will of the violent party, was deferred till the
morrow, that there might be time for debating it, Cromwell
asked Lord Falkland why he would have it put off, for that day
would quickly have determined it? Lord Falkland answered
there would not have been time enough, for sure it would take
some debate; and Cromwell replied, a very sorry one; for he,
and those with whom he acted, supposed there would be little
opposition. It was so well opposed that the debate continued
from nine in the morning till midnight ; a thing at that time
wholly unprecedented. As they went out of the house, Lord
|Falkland asked him, whether there had been a debate? to which
Cromwell replied, he would take his word another time, and
whispered him in the ear, that if the Remonstrance had been
rejected, he would have sold all he had the next morning, and
never have seen England more; and he knew there were many
other honest men of the same resolution. So near, says Clarendon,
was the poor kingdom at that time to its deliverance.f
[* Which he never forgave; and took all occasions afterwards to pursue
him with the utmost malice and revenge to his death. Clar. Life, ed. 1827,
vol. i. p. 90.]
[+ Clar. Hist, ed. 1826, vol. ii. p. 44. Lord Say and Lord Brooke were
the promoters of this intended emigration, and, as is well known, Hampden
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 17
That memorable Remonstrance, which must have been intended
by those who framed it to prepare the way for the evils which
ensued, was carried [14 Nov. 1641] by a majority of nine, when
not half the members of the house were present: the promoters of
the measures were so active, that not a man of their party was
wanting, and at the last they carried it by the hour of the night,
which drove away more old and infirm opposers than would have
sufficed to turn the scale. Whitelock says, “the sitting up all
night caused many through weakness or weariness to leave the
house, and Sir B. R. (Sir Benjamin Rudyard) to compare it to
the verdict of a starved jury.” ” What Clarendon observes upon
this occasion, is worthy of especial notice. “I know not how
those men have already answered it to their own consciences; or
how they will answer it to Him who can discern their con-
sciences; who having assumed their country’s trust, and, it may
be, with great earnestness laboured to procure that trust, by their
supine laziness, negligence, and absence, were the first inlets to
those inundations; and so contributed to those licences which
have overwhelmed us. For by this means a handful of men,
much inferior in the beginning, in number and interest, came to
give laws to the major part: and, to show that three diligent
persons are really a greater and more significant number than
ten unconcerned, they, by plurality of voices in the end, con-
verted or reduced the whole body to their opinions. It is true,
men of activity and faction, in any design, have many advantages,
that a composed and settled council, though industrious enough,
usually have not ; and some that gallant men cannot give them-
selves leave to entertain : for besides their thorough considering
and forming their counsels before they execute them, they con-
tract a habit of ill-nature and disingenuity necessary to their
affairs, and the temper of those upon whom they are to work,
that liberal-minded men would not persuade themselves to enter-
tain, even for the prevention of all the mischief the others intend.
And whosoever observes the ill arts by which these men use to
and his cousin Cromwell, and Haselrigge, had actually embarked for the
new colony of Saybrooke, when an order of council, restraining all masters
and owners of ships from setting forth any vessel without special licence
was enforced against them. Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futura.-
SouTHEY, Quar. Rev., No. xciv., p. 478.]
[* Whitelock, p. 51, ed. 1732.]
i8 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
prevail upon the people in general ; their absurd, ridiculous
lying, to win the affections, and corrupt the understandings of
the weak; and the bold scandals to confirm the wilful; the
boundless promises they presented to the ambitious; and their
gross, abject flatteries and applications to the vulgar-spirited,
would hardly give himself leave to use those weapons for the
preservation of the three kingdoms.”
By such means a civil war was brought on ; by such weapons
the civil and religious establishments of the kingdom were for a
season overthrown. The wisest of men has said, “the thing which
hath been, it is that which shall be :” and the same means will
produce a recurrence of the same evils unless right-minded men
learn wisdom from the past. There is no historian, ancient or
modern, with whose writings it so much behoves an Englishman
to be thoroughly conversant, as Lord Clarendon.
One day when Cromwell had spoken warmly in the house, Lord
Digby asked Hampden who he was ; and Hampden is said to have
replied, “That sloven whom you see before you, hath no orna-
ment in his speech ; that sloven, I say, if we should ever come
to a breach with the king (which God forbid!) in such a case, I
say, that sloven will be the greatest man in England.” Baxter
has said of Hampden, that he was a man whom “friends and
enemies acknowledged to be the most eminent for prudence, piety,
and peaceable councils.” That he was a man of consummate
abilities is certain ; that he was eminently pious may be believed,
the darkest political intrigues being perfectly compatible with the
eminent piety of that age; but no man even in that age had less
pretension to be praised for his peaceable councils. Had Hamp-
den died soon after the meeting of the long Parliament, when he
possessed more power to do good or hurt than any person of his
rank had ever possessed before him, he would have left a charac-
ter unimpeached and unimpeachable, and have deservedly held
in the hearts of all good and wise men that place which he holds
now with those only who know him by name alone, or who avow
their attachment to the cause for which he bled in the field,
without being more explicit than is convenient concerning the
nature of that cause. His noble stand against an illegal exertion
of the prerogative would have entitled him to the everlasting
[* Clar. Hist, vol. ii. p. 57, ed. 1826.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 19
gratitude of his country; and if he could have been contented
with defining that prerogative, limiting it within just bounds,
redressing the existing grievances, and giving the constitution
that character which it obtained after the Revolution, he would
have left a memorable name. And this was in his power.
What his views were can only be inferred from the course of
his conduct; for he was cut off” before the time arrived for openly
declaring them. The probable inference is that, like Ireton,
Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow, he was a stern republican. Having
read of no constitution so happily balanced as that which this
country has enjoyed since the Revolution, and seeing nothing like
it in our previous history, he may have believed such a balance
of power to be unattainable, and therefore have resolved upon
endeavouring to introduce a simpler and severer form. On the
supposition that the alternative was an absolute monarchy (such
as, till his time, the sovereign of this kingdom had claimed, and
the parliaments had acknowledged) or a commonwealth, he may
have properly and uprightly preferred that polity under which
the most security had been enjoyed, the greatest talents had been
called forth, and the most splendid exploits had been achieved.
But if, upon this fair ground, they who reasoned thus may be
justified in wishing for the end at which they aimed, nothing can
justify the means by which it was pursued; and in those means
no man was more deeply implicated than Hampden. The Catho-
lics never more boldly avowed the principle, that any means are
lawful for compassing a necessary end, than the puritans acted
upon it : even good men of feeble understandings or weak cha-
racters, were too easily inveigled into that conclusion; whereas,
as their great contemporary historian has justly observed, “the
true logic is, that the thing desired is not necessary, if the ways
are unlawful which are proposed to bring it to pass.”
One set of men were bent upon pulling down Episcopacy,
though it should occasion as bloody a war as any with which
England had ever been afflicted. There were others who knew
these men to be knaves, but were willing to act in concert with
them, for the purpose of destroying the Monarchy, meaning,
when that object should have been effected, to deal with them as
[* He was mortally wounded in a skirmish on Chalgrove Field, 18th June,
1643.]
C 2
20 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
they had dealt with others. From the hour of Strafford's arrest
they felt their strength, and saw that, by the means which they*
were prepared to use, success was certain. His arrest had been
carried with an overwhelming power, because the great majority
of members dreaded the influence of a minister so resolute, so
able, and so arbitrary; and therefore with the best intentions
voted for it by acclamation. But when that illustrious victim was
to be destroyed by measures more flagrantly illegal, and more
tyrannical, than the worst actions of which he stood accused, they
who had taken upon themselves to raise and to direct the storm
well knew that the co-operation of no upright man could be
expected. But they knew also where to look for other allies, and
how to force most even of those who abhorred their purpose, to
act in subservience to it.
Craft, go thou forth !
Fear, make it safe for no man to be just 1
Wrong, be thou clothed in power’s comeliness!
Keep down the best, and let the worst have power
They proceeded upon a deliberate system of deceit and intimi-
dation. Free licence was given to a libellous press; the pulpits
were manned with seditious preachers : they got the management
of the city into their hands, by ousting from the common council
the grave and substantial citizens, of whom till then it had been
composed, and filling their places with men for whom factious
activity was deemed sufficient qualification ; and by choosing a
demagogue Lord Mayor, who was ready for any act of rebellion
and treason. How easily the populace were to be duped they
well understood, and how justly characterized by a dramatist of
their own age,_
Good silly people; souls that will
Be cheated without trouble. One eye is
Put out with zeal, the other with ignorance;
And yet they think they’re eagles |
They understood also how to act upon the moral weakness of
those who were not likely to be deceived. They called the physi-
cal force of the city to their aid; and under fear of the mob,
senators shrunk from their duty, when they ought rather to have
Iaid down their lives in discharging it. The bishops were wanting
to themselves and their Order and their King, when, under the
influence of fear, they abandoned their right of voting upon the
LIFE OF CROMWELL. *
2}.
attainder of Strafford: and the lords, when a mob was at the door,
and Mr. Hollis (who afterwards sat in judgment upon some of his
colleagues) desired, in compliance with the demand of that mob,
to know the names of those who were opposed to the wishes of
the Commons, passed, under that intimidation, a bill which they
had twice before rejected. The moderate part of the members
in that assembly might have out-voted the promoters of rebellion,
four to one; but, in fear of their lives, they either left the house
or acquiesced in motions which they abhorred. The condition of
the House of Commons was worse; because there the men of
worst intentions were also the men of greatest ability, “and the
number of the weak and wilful,” says Clarendon, “who naturally
were to be guided by them, always made up a major part: so
that from the beginning they were always able to cary whatso-
ever they set their hearts visibly upon ; at least to discredit or
disgrace any particular man, against whom they thought necessary
to proceed, albeit of the most unblemished reputation, and upon
the most frivolous suggestions.” They waged war in parliament,
as Cromwell did afterwards in Ireland, upon the principle of
destroying all who opposed them, and the success was the same.
At the most important debates there was seldom a fifth part of
the members present, and often not more than twelve or thirteen
in the House of Lords.
It is especially worthy of notice that the very faults for which
the King's government was most severely reproached, were com-
mitted by the Parliament in a far greater degree, and with every
possible aggravation. One of the accusations against Charles
was that he suffered himself to be guided by clerical counsellors;
and the argument upon which they chiefly insisted in support of
the bill for taking away the bishops’ votes in parliament was
“that their intermeddling with temporal affairs was inconsistent
with, and destructive to, the exercise of their spiritual function;”
“whilst their reformation,” it has been truly observed, “both in
Scotland and this kingdom, was driven on by no men so much as
those of their clergy, who were their instruments; as without
doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury had never so great an in-
fluence upon the councils at court as Dr. Burgess and Mr. Marshal
had upon the Houses: neither did all the bishops of Scotland
together meddle so much in temporal affairs as Mr. Henderson
22 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
had done.” The breaches of privilege which Charles had com-
mitted were represented by them as destructive to the freedom of
parliament; and yet their conduct, both to the King and to the
House of Peers, was an absolute rooting up of all privileges. One
of the most unpopular acts of the King had been the levying of
ship-money without the consent of the parliament ; an impost
then only of doubtful legality, yet equally levied, excellently
applied, and so light in itself that the payment which Hampden
honourably disputed was only twenty shillings upon an estate of
500l. a year. The parliament did not scruple, without con-
sent of the King, to demand the twentieth part of every man’s
property in London, or so much as their seditious mayor and
three other persons as seditious as himself might please to call a
twentieth, to be levied by distress if the parties refused payment;
and if the distress did not cover the assessment, then the defaulter
was to be imprisoned where and as long as a Committee of the
House of Commons should think proper, and his family was no
longer to remain in London, or the suburbs, or the adjoining
counties. With an impudence of slander which would be in-
credible, if anything were too bad to be believed of thoroughly
factious men which will serve their purposes, they accused the
King of exciting the massacre in Ireland, and fomenting the re-
bellion there; and they themselves employed the money and the
means which were prepared for quelling that rebellion, in carry-
ing on a war against the King at home.
The King more than once in his declarations reminded them
of a speech of Pym's, which they had heard deservedly applauded
when it was directed against his measures; but which now bore
against their own with greater force. “The law,” said that
powerful speaker, “is that which puts a difference betwixt good
and evil, just and unjust ; if you take away the law, all things
will be in a confusion; every man will become a law unto him-
self, which, in the depraved condition of human nature, must
needs produce many great enormities. Lust will become a law,
and envy will become a law, covetousness and ambition will be-
come laws, and what dictates, what decisions such laws will pro-
duce, may easily be discerned :—it may indeed by sad instances
over the whole kingdom.” And then the King set before them
a picture of their own conduct, so ably and so truly drawn, that,
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 23
gº
if men were governed by their reason, and not by their passions,
that excellent paper alone would have given him the victory over
all his enemies. In another declaration the King said “whoso-
ever harboured the least thought in his breast of ruining or vio-
lating the public liberty, or religion of the kingdom, let him be
accursed; and he should be no counsellor of his that would not
say Amen.” That which he charged the leaders of parliament
with, “was invading the public liberty; and his presumption
might be very strong and vehement, that though they had no
mind to be slaves, they were not unwilling to be tyrants. What
is tyranny,” said he, “but to admit no rules to govern by, but
their own wills? And they knew the misery of Athens was at
the highest, when it suffered under the Thirty Tyrants.” Hobbes,
whose resolute way of thinking was more in accord with the
temper of Cromwell’s government than of the King's, speaks with
contempt of these declarations; but if Charles had been served,
or known how to serve himself, as ably with the sword as with
the pen, the struggle would soon have been decided in his favour.
What has been said of the son,” that he never said a foolish thing
and never did a wise one, might more truly be said of the father :
in him, however, it proceeded from what, in other times and
other circumstances, would have been a virtue. In speaking, he
expressed his own judgment ; in acting, he yielded to that of
others, and was ruined by want of confidence in himself, and by
the fear of doing wrong.
Clarendon, who wites always with the feelings of a Christian,
as well as the wisdom of a statesman, has some remarks upon the
conduct of the parliament, drawn up with his characteristic can-
dour. “A man shall not unprofitably spend his contemplation,
that, upon this occasion, considers the method of God’s justice
(a method terribly remarkable in many passages, and upon many
persons, which we shall be compelled to remember in this dis-
course), that the same principles, and the same application of
those principles, should be used to the wresting all sovereign
power from the Crown, which the Crown had a little before made
use of for the extending its authority and power beyond its
bounds, to the prejudice of the just rights of the subject. A
supposed necessity was then thought ground enough to create a
[* By Wilmot Lord Rochester.]
24 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
power, and a bare averment of that necessity, to beget a practice
to impose what tax they thought convenient upon the subject, by
writs of ship-money never before known ; and a supposed
necessity now, and a bare averment of that necessity, is as con-
fidently, and more fatally, concluded a good ground, to exclude
the Crown from the use of any power, by an ordinance never
before heard of; and the same maxim of salus populi suprema
leac, which had been used to the infringing the liberty of the one,
made use of for the destroying the rights of the other.” Re-
flections of this kind must often have arisen in the mind of
Charles himself. When, in his father's life-time, taking part in
Buckingham’s animosities, he promoted the impeachment of the
Earls of Bristol and Middlesex, James said to him, with a fore-
sight which has almost a prophetic character, that he would live
to have his belly full of parliamentary impeachments. * But he
was always more sinned against than sinning : the most unjusti-
fiable of his measures proceeded from a mistaken judgment, not
an evil intention ; the most unpopular of them, and that which
gave the greatest advantage to his enemies (the accusation of
the six members), plainly arose from a perfect confidence in his
own rectitude, and the goodness of his cause.
The melancholy warning which James gave his son proved the
sagacity of that king, whose talents it has been too much the
custom to decry. There is an expression of Laud's which bears
with it even more of a prophetic appearance, from the accidental
turn of the sentence. “At this time, the parliament tendered
two, and but two bills to the King to sign: this to cut off Straf-
ford’s head was one ; and the other was that this parliament
should neither be dissolved nor adjourned, but by the consent of
both houses: in which, what he cut off from himself, time will
better shew than I can. God bless the King and his royal
issue !” Charles's feelings upon that fatal bill which perpetuated
the parliament, and thereby in fact transferred the sovereignty to
it, are well stated in the Etkov Baqi)\tkm.f “By this act of the
[* Clar. Hist., ed. 1826, vol. i., p. 41.]
f The authenticity of this Book has been attacked and defended with such
cogent arguments and strong assertions, that as far as relates to external
proofs, perhaps there is scarcely any other question in bibliography so doubt-
ful. The internal evidence is wholly in its favour. Had it been the work
of Gauden, or of any person writing to support the royal cause, a higher tone
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 25
highest confidence, I hoped for ever to shut out and lock the door
upon all present jealousies and future mistakes: I confess I did
not thereby intend to shut myself out of doors, as some men have
now requited me. A continual parliament, I thought, would
but keep the commonweal in tune, by preserving laws in their
due execution and vigour, wherein my interest lies more than
any man's, since by those laws my rights as a king would be pre-
served, no less than my subjects; which is all I desired. More
than the law gives me I would not have, and less the meanest
subject should not. I cannot say properly that I repent of that
act, since I have no reflections upon it as a sin of my will, though
an error of too charitable a judgment.”
Charles appealed to that act with great force as a proof that
he had no intention of recurring to arms. “Sure,” he says, “it
had argued a very short sight of things, and extreme fatuity of
mind in me, so far to bind my own hands at their request, if I
had shortly meant to use a sword against them.” When Hamp-
den spoke of the part which Cromwell might be expected to bear,
in case they should come to a breach with the King, he depre-
cated such an event. But Hampden’s studies were rather how
to direct a civil war, than to avert one. Davila’s history was so
often in his hands, that it was called Colonel Hampden’s prayer-
book. The truth is, that a few men of daring spirit, great
ability, and great popularity, some calling themselves saints be-
cause they were schismatics, others styling themselves philoso-
phers because they were unbelievers, had determined to over-
throw the existing government in church and state; which they
knew to be feasible, because circumstances favoured them, and
they scrupled at nothing to bring about their end. Their plan
was to force from the King all they could, and when they should
concerning episcopacy and prerogative would have been taken ; there would
have been more effort at justification; and there would not have been that
inefficient but conscientious defence of fatal concessions; that penitent con-
fession of sin where weakness had been sinful; that piety without alloy; that
character of mild and even magnanimity; and that heavenly-mindedness,
Which render the Eucov Baglaucº one of the most interesting books in our
language. -
[There is very little testimony on Gauden’s side, (strictly speaking,
perhaps, none at all) except his own . . . . . There is a mass of testimony
which shows that the king had the book continually in his hand, revised it
much, * had many transcripts of it.—SouTHEY, Quar. Rev., No. lxxiii.,
p. 249.
26 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
have disarmed him of all power and means for the struggle, then
to provoke him by insults and unreasonable demands, till he
should appeal to the sword. This Charles himself saw. “A
grand maxim with them was,” he says, “always to ask some-
thing which in reason and honour must be denied, that they
might have some colour to refuse all that was in other things
granted; setting peace at as high a rate as the worst effects of
war; endeavouring first to make me destroy myself by dishonour-
able concessions, that so they might have the less to do.” “The
Jºnglish,” says Hobbes, “would never have taken well that the
Parliament should make war upon the King upon any provoca-
tion, unless it were in their own defence, in case the King should
first make war upon them ; and therefore it behoved them to
provoke the King, that he might do something that might look like
hostility.” “Therefore (he elsewhere adds) they resolved to pro-
ceed with him like skilful hunters, first to single him out by men
disposed in all parts, to drive him into the open field, and then
in case he should but seem to turn head, to call that a making of
war against the Parliament.”
Never was poor prince more miserably unprepared for such a
contest than Charles, when he had no other alternative than to
descend into the pit which his enemies had dug for him, or to
raise his standard. When that determination was taken he had
not “one barrel of gunpowder, nor one musket, nor any other
provision necessary for an army; and, which was worse, was not
sure of any port, to which they might be securely assigned; nor
had he money for the support of his own table for the term of
one month.” The single ship which reached him with supplies
by running ashore, brought about 200 barrels of powder, 2000
or 3000 arms, and seven or eight field-pieces; and with this he
took the field, but in so helpless and apparently hopeless a con-
dition, that even after he had set up that standard, which was so
ominously blown down by a tempest, Clarendon says, it must
solely be imputed to his own resolution, that he did not even
then go to London and throw himself on the mercy of the par-
liament, which would have been surrendering at discretion to an
enemy that gave no quarter. But he relied upon the goodness
of his cause, and upon the loyalty and love of his subjects. That
reliance did not deceive him: the gentlemen of England came
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 27
forward with a spirit which enabled him to maintain the contest
no inconsiderable time upon equal terms, and which, under the
direction of more vigorous counsels, might many times have
given him complete success. But it was otherwise appointed.
Whoever has attentively perused the history of those unhappy
years must have perceived that this war, more perhaps than any
other of which the events have been recorded, was determined
rather by accidents, and blunders, than by foreseen and prepared
combinations. The man who most contributed to the King's
utter overthrow by his actions, and the only man who from the
beginning perceived wherein the strength of the King lay, and
by what principle it might be opposed with the surest prospect
of success, was Cromwell.
During the proceedings which provoked the war, Cromwell
took no conspicuous part, but he was one of that number upon
whose votes the leaders of the disaffected party could always rely.
He was sincerely a puritan in his religious notions, in that
respect more sincere than many of those with whom he then
acted: for political speculations he probably cared less; but
being a resolute man, and one whose purposes were straight for-
ward, though he frequently proceeded by crooked ways, he, like
his cousin Hampden, when he drew the sword, threw away the
scabbard. When the war began, he received a captain’s commis-
sion, and raised a troop of horse in his own country. Then it
was that he gave the first proof of that sagacity which made him
afterwards the absolute master of three kingdoms: in what man-
ner it was now exercised may best be told in his own curious
words. “I was a person,” said he, “that from my first employ-
ment was suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to
greater, from my first being a captain of a troop of horse; and
I did labour as well as I could, to discharge my trust; and God
blessed me as it pleased him; and I did truly and plainly; and
then in a way of foolish simplicity (as it was judged by very great
and wise men, and good men too) desired to make my instru-
ments to help me in this work; and I will deal plainly with you;
I had a very worthy friend then, and he was a very noble person,
and I know his memory is very grateful to all, Mr. John Hamp-
den. At my first going out into this engagement, I saw their
men were beaten at every hand; I did indeed, and desired him
28 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
that he would make some additions to my Lord Essex’s army of
some new regiments; and I told him I would be serviceable to
him in bringing such men in, as I thought had a spirit that would
do something in the work. This is very true that I tell you,
God knows I lie not. Your troops, said I, are most of them old
decayed serving men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and,
said I; their troops are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons, and per-
sons of quality: do you think that the spirits of such base and
mean fellows will ever be enabled to encounter gentlemen that
have honour, and courage, and resolution in them P Truly, I
presented him in this manner conscientiously ; and truly I did
tell him you must get men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I
say (I know you will not), of a spirit that is likely to go on as
far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten
still ; I told him so, I did truly. He was a wise and worthy
person, and he did think that I talked a good notion, but an im-
practicable one. Truly I told him I could do somewhat in it:
I did so ; and truly I must needs say that to you, I raised such
men as had the fear of God before them, and made some con-
science of what they did ; and from that day forward, I must say
to you, they were never beaten, and wherever they engaged
against the enemy, they beat continually.”
Acting upon this principle, Cromwell raised a troop of horse
among his countrymen, mostly freeholders and freeholders’ sons,
men thoroughly imbued with his own puritanical opinions, and
who engaged in the war “ upon matter of conscience:” and thus,
says Whitelocke, “being well armed within by the satisfaction of
their own consciences, and without by good iron arms, they would
as one man stand firmly, and charge desperately.” “ Crom-
well knew his men, and on this occasion acting without hypocrisy,
tried whether their consciences were proof; for upon raising them
he told them fairly that he would not cozen them by perplexed
expressions in his commission to fight for King and Parliament:
if the King chanced to be in the body of the enemy, he would as
soon discharge his pistol upon him, as upon any private man ;
and if their consciences would not let them do the like, he advised
them not to enlist themselves under him.
He tried their courage also, as well as their consciences, by
[* Whitelock, ed. 1732, p. 72.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 29
leading them into a false ambuscade; about twenty turned their
backs and fled; upon which Cromwell dismissed them, desiring
them however to leave their horses for those who would fight the
Lord’s battles in their stead. And as the Lord's battle was to
be fought with the arm of flesh, he took special care that horse
and man in his troop should always be ready for service; and by
making every man trust to himself alone, in all needful things,
he enabled them all to rely upon each other, and act with con-
fidence, without which courage is of little avail. For this pur-
pose he required them to keep their arms clean, bright, and fit
for immediate use; to feed and dress their own horses, and if
need were, to sleep upon the ground with them. The officers
wishing that this select troop should be formed into what they
called ‘a gathered church, looked about for a fitting pastor, and
it is to their credit that they pitched upon a man distinguished
for his blameless manner of life, his undoubted piety, and his ex-
traordinary talents. They invited Baxter to take charge of them.
That remarkable man was then at Coventry, whither he had gone
after the battle at Edgehill with a purpose to stay there, as a safe
place, till one side or other had gotten the victory and the war
was ended; “for,” says he, “so wise in matters of war was I,
and all the country besides, that we commonly supposed that a
very few days or weeks, by one other battle, would end the wars;
and I believe that no small number of the parliament men had
no more wit than to think so.” Baxter was at that time so Zeal-
ous in his political feelings, that he thought it a sin for any man
to remain neuter. But the invitation to take charge of “a
gathered church did not accord with his opinions concerning
ecclesiastical discipline. He therefore sent them a denial, re-
proving their attempt, and telling them wherein his judgment
was against the lawfulness and convenience of their way. “These
very men,” he says, “ that then invited me to be their pastor,
were the men that afterwards headed much of the army, and
some of them were the forwardest in all our changes; which
made me wish that I had gone among them, however it had been
interpreted; for then all the fire was in one spark.”
Cromwell exerted himself with so much zeal and success in
embodying and disciplining these troops, that he appears to have
been raised to the rank of colonel for that service alone. The
30 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
first act which he performed was to take possession of Cam-
bridge, which Lord Capel would else have occupied; and to
secure for the Parliament the college plate, which otherwise
would have been sent to the King. At this time he paid his
uncle and godfather, Sir Oliver, a visit for the purpose of taking
away his arms and all his plate: but behaving with the greatest
personal respect to the head of his family, he asked his blessing,
and would not keep on his hat in his presence. From Cam-
bridge he kept down the loyal party in the adjoining counties of
Suffolk and Norfolk, dispersing a confederacy which would soon
have become formidable, and taking the whole of the stores
which they had provided. This was a service which, in the lan-
guage of the saints, was said to set the whole country right, by
freeing it of the malignants. Stories of his cruelty were told at
this time in the Mercurius Aulicus which were abominably
false: men too easily believe evil of their enemies; and these
calumnies obtained the readier credit because he and his men
conceived themselves to be doing a work of reformation in injur-
ing Peterborough Cathedral, demolishing the painted windows,
breaking the organ, defacing tombs and statues, and destroying
the books. But in other places where the ferocious spirit of
Puritanism was not called forth, their conduct was more orderly
than that of any other troops who were engaged on the same
side. One of the journals of the day says of them, “no man
swears but he pays his twelvepence ; if he be drunk, he is set in
stocks, or worse; if one calls the other round-head, he is
cashiered; insomuch that the countries where they come leap for
joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy were
it if all the forces were thus disciplined l’”
The relief of Gainsborough [23 July, 1643] was the first con-
spicuous action in which Cromwell was engaged : “this,”
Whitelock says, “was the beginning of his great fortunes, and
now he began to appear to the world.”* It was in this action
that Charles Cavendish fell,
the young, the lovely, and the brave :
Strew bays and flowers on his honoured gravel
one of the many noble spirits who were cut off in that mournful
[* Whitelock, ed. 1732, p. 72. Whitelock calls him Colonel Cromwell;
he served at this time under Lord Willoughby of Parham.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 31
war.” Cromwell says they had the execution of the enemy two
or three miles, and that some of his soldiers killed two or three
men apiece. He had a narrow escape the same year under the
Earl of Manchester, when part of Newcastle’s army were de-
feated near Horncastle. His horse was killed under him, and as
he rose he was again knocked down, by the cavalier who charged
him, and who is supposed to have been Sir Ingram Hopton. He
was however remounted, and found himself, with that singular
good fortune which always attended him, without a wound. At
the close of the year he took Hilsdon House by assault, and
alarmed Oxford.j Though Essex and Waller, who was called by
his own party William the Conqueror, were still the favourite
leaders of the Parliamentary forces, Cromwell was now looked
upon as a considerable person, and was opposed in public opinion
to Prince Rupert, before they ever met as hostile generals in the
field. When the Prince was preparing to relieve York, the Lon-
... don journals represented him as afraid to try himself against this
rising commander. “He would rather suffer,” they said, “his
dear friends in York to perish than venture the loss of his honour
in so dangerous a passage. He loves not to meet a Fairfax, nor
a Cromwell, nor any of those men that have so much religion and
valour in them.” The battle of Marston Moor [2 July, 1644] soon
followed; most rashly and unjustifiably brought on by Rupert,
without consulting the Marquis of Newcastle, by whom, in all
prudence, he ought to have been directed, and at a time when
nothing but an immediate action could have prevented the Scotch
and Parliamentary armies from quarrelling and separating, so
that either, or both, would have been exposed to an utter over-
throw. The Scotch, who were in the right wing, were com-
pletely routed; they fled in all directions, and were taken or
knocked on the head by the peasantry : their general himself was
made prisoner ten miles from the field by a constable. But the
fortune of the day was decided by the English horse under Fair-
fax and Cromwell. They were equal in courage to the King’s
troops, and superior in discipline: and by their exertions a vic-
{* Cousin to the loyal Marquis of Newcastle, and brother to the third Earl
of Devonshire.]
[f Ludlow's Memoirs, ed. 1771, p. 30.]
[.. And so went on to Gloucester. Whitelock, p. 82.]
32 LIFE OF CROMW ELL.
tory was gained, of which they were left to make full advantage
at leisure, owing to the egregious misconduct of the Prince, and
the resentment of the Earl of Newcastle, which in that fatal
hour prevailed over a noble mind, and made him forsake the post
of duty in disgust.
Hollis in his Memoirs has the folly as well as the baseness to
accuse Cromwell of cowardice in this action.* Some intention of
detracting from his deserts seems to have been suspected at the
time. The ‘Mercurius Britannicus’ says, “there came out some-
thing in print which made a strange relation of the battle: 'tis
pity the gallant Cromwell and his godly soldiers are so little
heard on, and they with God were so much seen in the battle !
But in these great achievements by night, it is hard to say who
did most, or who did least. The best way to end our quarrel
of who did most, is to say God did all.” On the other hand,
Cromwell’s partizans, to magnify his reputation, gave out that
certain troops of horse, picked men, all Irish and all Papists, had
been appointed by Prince Rupert, to charge in that part where
he was stationed. And reports as slanderous as those which
charged him with want of courage, were spread abroad to give
him the whole credit of the day : it was said that he had stopt
the commander-in-chief, Manchester, in the act of flight, saying
to him, “You are mistaken, my lord: the enemy is not there !”
The Earl of Manchester was as brave as Cromwell himself; no
man who engaged in the rebellion demeaned himself throughout
its course so honourably and so humanely (Colonel Hutchinson,
In his station, perhaps alone excepted), and no man repented
more sincerely, nor more frankly avowed his repentance for the
part he had taken, when he saw the extent of the misery which
he had largely contributed to bring upon his country.
Cromwell was now becoming an object of dislike or jealousy
to those leaders of the rebellion whose reputation waned as his
increased, or who had insanely supposed, when they let the waters
loose, that it would at any time be in their power to restrain them
again within their proper bounds. The open declaration which
he made against the king at the commencement of hostilities,
they had perhaps regarded with complacency, taking credit to
[* Hollis accuses him of cowardice not only at Marston-Moor, but at Basing-
House and Keynton. See Hollis's Life of Himself, invol. i. of Maseres's Tracts.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 33
themselves for comparative moderation. Because they could
manage a party, they fancied themselves capable of managing a
rebellion, not remembering, or not knowing, that
When evil strives, the worst have greatest names:
and not perceiving that when Cromwell, in opposition to the
impudent hypocrisy of the Parliament's language respecting the
king, spoke boldly out like one who was resolved to go all lengths,
by that declaration he became the head of that party which, in
all such convulsions, is sure to obtain the ascendency. From the
known opinions of Ireton, and the probable ones of Hampden, the
two men whom he seems to have regarded with most deference,
it is most likely that he entered into the war as a republican;
and now he scrupled not to let his principles be known, saying
he hoped soon to see the time when there would not be a single
lord in England, and when Lord Manchester would be called
nothing more than Mr. Montague. But in his political as in his
puritanical professions, Cromwell, who began in sincerity, was
now acting a part. Experience was not lost upon so sagacious
a man. The more he saw of others, the higher he was led to rate
himself; and Hobbes seems to have taken the just view of his
motives when he says that his main policy was always to serve
the strongest party well, and to proceed as far as that and for-
tune would carry him.
But Cromwell, who seldom mistook the characters of men,
deceived himself when he supposed that he could make Manches-
ter his instrument, as he afterwards duped Fairfax. For this
must have been his secret object when discoursing with him
freely upon the state of the kingdom, and proposing something
to which the Earl replied that the Parliament would never ap-
prove it, he made answer, “My Lord, if you will stick firm to
honest men, you shall find yourself in the head of an army that
shall give the law to King and Parliament.” This startled
Manchester, who already knew him to be a man of deep designs:
and the manner in which the speech was received made Crom-
well perceive that the earl must be set aside, as a person who was
altogether unfit for his views. Their mutual dislike broke out after
the second battle of Newbury.* Cromwell would have attempted
to bring that doubtful conflict to a decided issue, by charging
[*27th October, 1644. The first battle was fought 20th Sept., 1643.]
ID
34. LIFE OF CROMWELL,
the King's army in their retreat ; and from the excellent disci-
pline of his brigade, and his skill and intrepidity in action, it is
probable he might have inflicted a severe blow upon troops who,
it is acknowledged on their own part, were well enough pleased to
be rid of an enemy that had handled them so ill. But Manchester
thought the hazard too great in that season, being the winter,
and that the ill consequences of a defeat would be far greater
than the advantage to be gained by a victory ; for, he said, if
they should be routed before Essex’s army were reinforced, there
would be an end of their pretences; and they should be all rebels
and traitors, and executed as such by law. Cromwell repeated
this to the House of Commons, and accused him of having be-
trayed the Parliament out of cowardice : Manchester justified
himself, and in return charged Cromwell with the advice which
he had offered him, to overawe both King and Parliament by
means of the army. This open rupture occasioned much debate
and animosity, and much alarm. “What,” it was said, “shall
we continue bandying one against another? See what a wide
gap and door of reproach we open unto the enemy A plot
from Oxford could have done no more than work a distance
between our best resolved spirits.” The Parliament, though in-
dignant at first at what the Earl had said concerning the course of
law in case of their overthrow, were on the other hand alarmed
at the discovery of a danger from their own army, which, if it
had been apprehended by far-sighted men, had never before been
declared. Inquiry was called for, more on account of Crom-
well’s designs than the Earl’s error of judgment; and the inde-
pendents, as Cromwell’s party now began to be called, chose
rather to abandon their charge against Manchester, than risk the
consequences of further investigation.
Manchester, on his part, made no further stir, contented
with as much repose as a mind not altogether satisfied with itself
would allow him to enjoy. But Essex, the Lord General, who
had acted less from mistaken principles than from weakness and
vanity and pride, which made him the easy instrument of design-
ing men, gave on this occasion the only instance of political
foresight which he ever displayed. He perceived that Cromwell
was a dangerous man; and taking council with Hollis and
Stapleton, leading men among the Presbyterians, and with the
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 35
Scotch Commissioners, resolved, if it were possible, to disable one
whose designs were so justly to be apprehended. In serving with
the Scotch, Cromwell had contracted some dislike and some
contempt for them; which they were not slow in perceiving, as
indeed he took little pains to disguise it; and Essex was in hopes
that the Scotch might be brought forward to overthrow a man
whom he now considered a formidable rival, as by their means
the plans for rebellion had first been ripened, and the superiority
afterwards obtained for the parliamentary forces. A meeting
was held at his house to deliberate upon the best mode of pro-
ceeding, and Whitelock and Maynard were sent for at a very
late hour, to give their opinions as lawyers. The Scotch Chan-
cellor explained the business to them in a characteristic speech.
He began by assuring “Master Maynard and Master Whitelock”
of the great opinion which he and his brethren had of their
worth and abilities, else that meeting would not have been de-
sired. “You ken vary weel,” said he, (as Whitelock reports
his words) “that Lieutenant General Cromwell is no friend of
ours; and since the advance of our army into England, he
hath used all underhand and cunning means to take off from our
honour and merit of this kingdom ; an evil requital of all our
hazards and services. But so it is; and we are nevertheless
fully satisfied of the affections and gratitude of the gude people of
this nation in the general. It is thought requisite for us, and for
the carrying on the cause of the twa kingdoms, that this obstacle
or remora may be removed out of the way, whom, we foresee, will
otherwise be no small impediment to us and the gude design we
have undertaken. He not only is no friend to us and to the govern-
ment of our church, but he is also no well-wisher to his excellency,
whom you and we all have cause to love and honour: and if he be
permitted to go on his ways, it may, I fear, endanger the whole
business; therefore we are to advise of some course to be taken
for the prevention of that mischief. You ken vary weel the
accord twixt the twa kingdoms, and the union by the Solemn
league and covenant; and if any be an incendiary between
the twa nations, how he is to be proceeded against. Now
the matter is, wherein we desire your opinions, what you tak
the meaning of this word incendiary to be, and whether Lieu-
tenant General Cromwell be not sic an incendiary as is meant
D 2
36 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
thereby, and whilk way wud be best to tak to proceed against him,
if he be proved to be sic an incendiary, and that will clip his
wings from soaring to the prejudice of our cause. Now you
may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an incendiary
Wha kindleth coals of contention, and raises differences in the
state to the public damage, and he is tanguam publicus hostis
patriae. Whether your law be the same or not, you ken best
wha are mickle learned therein : and, therefore, with the favour
of his excellency we desire your judgments in these points.” ”
Whitelock and Maynard were men of whom Lord Cla-
rendon, who was intimate with them before the rebellion, has
said, that “though they bowed their knees to Baal, and so
swerved from their allegiance, it was with less rancour and
malice than other men. They never led, but followed, and were
rather carried away with the torrent than swam with the stream,
and failed through those infirmities which less than a general de-
fection and a prosperous rebellion could never have discovered.”
Such men were not likely to advise bold measures, in which they
might be called upon to bear a part. They admitted the mean-
ing of the word incendiary as defined by the Scotch chancellor,
and as it stood in the Covenant; but they required proofs of
particular words or actions tending to kindle the fire of conten-
tion: they themselves had heard of none, and till the Scotch
commissioners could collect such, they were of opinion that the
business had better be deferred. And they spoke of the influ-
ence and favour which the person in question possessed. “I
take Lieutenant General Cromwell,” said Whitelock, “to be
a gentleman of quick and subtle parts, and one who hath, especi-
ally of late, gained no small interest in the House of Commons;
nor is he wanting of friends in the House of Peers, nor of abili-
ties in himself to manage his own part or defence to the best ad-
vantage.” f Hollis, Stapleton, and some others, related certain
acts and sayings of Cromwell which they considered such proofs
as the law required, and they were for proceeding boldly with the
design. But the Scotch, who, at that time, had less at stake
than the leaders of the English Presbyterians, chose the wary
part ; and Essex was always incapable of doing either good or
evil, except as a tool in the hands of others. *
ſ” Whitelock, p. 116, ed. 1732.] [f Whitelock, p. 117, ed. 1732.1
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 37
Cromwell was too able a politician not to have agents at all
times in the enemy’s quarters. Some who were present at this
meeting were “false brethren.” Whitelock and Maynard were
liked by him the better for the opinion they had given ; the
attack which they had averted might easily have put an end to
his career of advancement: a sense of the danger which he had
escaped quickened his own measures, and with the co-operation
of his friends, and others with whom he then acted, the Self-
denying Ordinance was brought forward, an act which may
justly be considered as the master-piece of his hypocritical
policy. To effect this the alarm was first sounded by the “drum
ecclesiastic ;” the pulpits were manned on one of the appointed
fast days, and the topic which the London preachers everywhere
insisted on, was the reproach to which parliament was liable for
the great emoluments which its members secured to themselves
by the civil or military offices which they held ; the necessity of
removing this reproach, and of praying that God would take his
own work into his own hand, and inspire other instruments to
perfect what was begun, if those he had already employed were
not worthy to bring so glorious a design to a conclusion. Par-
liament met the next day, and Sir Harry Vane (who, though a
thorough fanatic in his notions, could not have acted more hypo-
critically if he had been pure knave) told them that if ever God
had appeared to them, it was in the exercise of yesterday ; he was
credibly informed that the same lamentations and discourses as
the godly preachers had made before them, had been made in
all other churches; and this could only have proceeded from the
immediate Spirit of God. He then offered to resign an office
which he himself held. Cromwell took up the strain ; desired
that he might lay down his commission, enlarged upon the vices
which were got into the army, “the profaneness and impiety,
and absence of all religion, drinking, gaming, and all manner of
licence and laziness.” Till the whole army were new modelled,
he said, and governed under a stricter discipline, they must not
expect any notable success; and he desired the parliament not to
be terrified with an imagination that if the highest offices were
vacant, they should not be able to fill them with fit men, for,
besides that it was not good to put so much trust in any arm of
flesh as to think such a cause depended upon any one man, he
took upon himself to assure them they had officers in their army
38 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
who were fit to be generals in any enterprise in Christendom.
The Self-denying Ordinance” was brought in, and after long de-
bates, and some contests between the two Houses, it was carried.
Essex was laid aside to reflect at leisure upon the irreparable
evils which, through his agency, had been brought upon the
kingdom, and Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed general in his
stead.
Few men have ever possessed in such perfection as Cromwell
the art of rendering others subservient to purposes which they
abhorred, and of making individuals of the most opposite cha-
racters, views, and principles co-operate in a design which they
would all have opposed if they had perceived it. This rare dis-
sembler availed himself at the same time of the sensual and
profligate unbeliever, the austere sectarian, and the fierce enthu-
siast ; and played his master-game at once with Vane and Fair-
fax, though the former had the craft of the serpent, and the latter
* Mr. Oliver Cromwell endeavours to refute Lord Clarendon’s account of
the origin of this Ordinance. His arguments are, that in Cromwell’s speech as
given by Rushworth there is no allusion to the fast sermons of the preceding
day, and that in fact the fast was not appointed till after the Ordinance was
past. That this gentleman should on all occasions be desirous of excul-
pating and vindicating his celebrated ancestor, is to be expected;—there are
cases in which erroneous opinions have their root in such good and noble
feelings, that he who would eradicate them must profess a sterner philosophy
than a good man would willingly adopt. In the present instance it has been
overlooked by Mr. Cromwell, that the fast of which he speaks was ordered to
implore a blessing on the intended new model of the army, after the ordi-
nance was past; and that that of which Clarendon speaks was appointed to
“seek God and desire his assistance to lead them out of the perplexities they
were in.” A punster of that age said that Fast days were properly so called
because they came so fast,-there were frequently three or four in a month.
He has also failed to observe that the direct allusion to the preceding fast was
made not by Cromwell, but by Sir Harry Vane. And when he censures
Lord Clarendon for “taking upon himself to determine the motives of those
who brought about that Ordinance,” he forgets that the same motives are
hinted at, not obscurely, by Rushworth, and directly stated by Whitelock, upon
the avowal of some of the parties themselves. “Some of them,” he says,
“confess that this was their design; and it was apparentin itself, and the reason
of their doing this was to make way for others, and because they were jealous
that the Lord General was too much a favourer of peace, and that he would
be too strong a supporter of monarchy and of nobility and other old constitu-
tions, which they had a mind to alter.” The only apparent error which Mr.
Cromwell has pointed out in Lord Clarendon's statement is his saying that
Whitelock voted for the Ordinance, Whitelock having inserted in his Me-
morials his speech against that measure. But it is very probable that he who
opposed the Ordinance in December when it was brought forward, might
have assented to it three months afterwards for the reason assigned by Cla-
rendon, “that there would be a general dissatisfaction among the people of
London if it were rejected.”
LIFE OF CROMWELL, 39
the simplicity of the dove, however unlike that bird in other
respects. When Fairfax looked back upon his exploits, he rightly
accounted them as his greatest misfortunes, and desired no other
memorial of them than the Act of Oblivion: but he well knew
that errors like his are not to be forgotten—that they are to be
recorded as a warning for others; and the meagre memorial which
he left of his own actions is not so valuable for anything as for
the expression of that feeling, wishing that he had died before he
accepted the command after the Self-denying Ordinance was
passed. “By votes of the two houses of parliament,” he says,
“I was nominated, though most unfit, and so far from desiring
it, that had not so great an authority (which was then unseparated
from the royal interest) commanded my obedience, and had I not
been urged by the persuasion of my nearest friends, I should have
refused so great a charge. But whether it was from a natural
facility in me that betrayed my modesty, or the powerful hand of
God, which all things must obey, I was induced to receive the
command,-though not fully recovered from a dangerous wound
which I had received a little before, and which I believe, with-
out the miraculous hand of God, had proved mortal. But here,
alas ! when I bring to mind the sad consequences that crafty and
designing men have brought to pass since those first innocent un-
dertakings, I am ready to let go that confidence I once had with
God, when I could say with Job, “till I die I will not remove
my integrity from me, nor shall my heart reproach me so long
as I live.” But I am now more fit to take up his complaint, and
say, ‘why did I not die?’ Why did I not give up the ghost when
my life was on the confines of the grave?” Fairfax was a good
soldier, but he had no other talents. It is saying little for him
that he meant well, seeing he was so easily persuaded not only to
permit wicked actions to be done, but to commit them himself.
His understanding was so dull, that even in this passage he speaks
of the parliament as not being at that time separated from the
interests of the King ; and his feelings were so obtuse, that even
when he penned this memorial he felt no remorse for the exe-
cution of Lucas, and Lisle, and the excellent Lord Capel, whose
blood was upon his head, but justified what he had done as ac-
cording to his commission and the trust reposed in him |
Such a man was easily induced to request that the Ordinance
40 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
might be dispensed with in Cromwell's behalf, first for a limited
time and then indefinitely, to act under him as commander of the
horse. They crippled the royal forces in the west, where so much
zeal and heroic virtue had successfully been displayed on the
King's side, but where everything now went to ruin under the
profligate misconduct of Goring, a general who, notwithstanding
his unquestionable courage and military talents, ought to have
been considered as disqualified for any trust by his vices. Ere
long they were ordered to the North, where Charles had struck
a great blow by the taking of Leicester [May, 1645], and where
his fortunes might still have been retrieved had it not been for
the unsteadiness and irresolution of those about him, and that
unhappy diffidence of himself which made him so often act against
his own judgment in deference to others.
With shaking thoughts no hands can draw aright !
After some injudicious movements, the effect of bad information
and vacillating councils, the King met the enemy at Naseby [14th
June, 1645]. All those accidents upon which so much depends
in war were against him ; his erroneous information continued till
the very hour of the action, so that the good order in which his
army had been drawn up was broken, and the advantageous position
which they had occupied abandoned; in the action itself the same
kind of misconduct, which had proved so disastrous at Marston
Moor, was committed, with consequences still more fatal. Prince
Rupert in time of action always forgot the duty of a general,
suffering himself to be carried away by mere animal courage; no
experience, however dearly bought, was sufficient to cure him of
this fault. His charge, as usual, was irresistible ; but having
broken and routed that wing of the enemy which was opposed to
him, he pursued them as if the victory were secure. In this
charge Ireton was wounded, thrown from his horse, and taken.
The day was won by Cromwell, whose name is not mentioned by
Ludlow in his account of the battle | * An unaccountable in-
cident contributed to, and perhaps mainly occasioned its loss. Just
as the King, at the head of his reserve, was about to charge Crom-
well’s horse, the Earl of Carnewarth suddenly seized his bridle,
exclaiming, with “two or three full-mouthed Scottish oaths,
Will you go upon your death in an instant P* if A cry ran through
[* Ludlow's Memoirs, p. 65, ed. 1771.] [f Clar. Hist, vol. v. p. 185, ed., 1826.]
*
LIFE OF CROMWELL, 41
the troops that they should march to the right, in which direction
the King's horse had been turned, and which, in the situation of
the field, was bidding them shift for themselves. It was in vain
that Charles, with great personal exertion and risk, endeavoured
to rally them. Neither these troops nor Prince Rupert's, when
he returned from his rash pursuit, could be brought to rally and
form in order; a most important part of discipline, in which the
soldiers under Fairfax and Cromwell were perfect, the latter
having now modelled the army as he had from the beginning his
own troop. The day was irrecoverably lost, and with it the
King and the kingdom. The number of slain on the King's part
did not exceed 700, but more than 5000 prisoners were taken,
being the whole of the infantry, with all the artillery and bag-
gage. In the pursuit above a hundred women were killed, (such
was the temper of the conquerors () some of whom were the
wives of officers of quality. The King's cabinet fell into their
hands, with the letters between him and the queen, “ of which,”
says Clarendon, “they made that barbarous use as was agreeable
to their natures, and published them in print; that is, so much
of them as they thought would asperse either of their Majesties,
and improve the prejudice they had raised against them ; and
concealed other parts which would have vindicated them from
many particulars with them which they had aspersed them.” +
Upon this act of the parliament the King has expressed his feel-
ings in the Icon in that calm strain of dignity by which the book is
distinguished and authenticated. “The taking of my letters,”
he says, “ was an opportunity which, as the malice of mine
enemies could hardly have expected, so they knew not how with
honour and civility to use it. Nor do I think, with sober and
worthy minds, anything in them could tend so much to my re-
proach as the odious divulging of them did to the infamy of the
divulgers: the greatest experiments of virtue and nobleness being
discovered in the greatest advantages against an enemy; and the
greatest obligations being those which are put upon us by them
from whom we could least have expected them. And such I
should have esteemed the concealing of my papers, the freedom
and secrecy of which commands a civility from all men not
wholly barbarous. Yet since Providence will have it so, I am
[* Clar. Hist, vol. v. p. 186, ed. 1826.
42 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
content so much of my heart (which I study to approve to God’s
Omniscience) should be discovered to the world, without any of
those dresses or popular captations which some men use in their
speeches and expresses. I wish my subjects had yet a clearer
sight into my most retired thoughts; where they might discover
how they are divided between the love and care I have, not more
to preserve my own rights than to preserve their peace and hap-
piness; and that extreme grief to see them both deceived and
destroyed. Nor can any men's malice be gratified farther by my
letters than to see my constancy to my wife, the laws, and re-
ligion.” Then, speaking of his enemies, he says, “they think
no victories so effectual to their designs as those that most rout
and waste my credit with my people; in whose hearts they
seek by all means to smother and extinguish all sparks of love,
respect, and loyalty to me, that they may never kindle again,
so as to recover mine, the laws and the kingdom's liberties, which
some men seek to overthrow. The taking away of my credit is
but a necessary preparation to the taking away of my life and my
kingdom. First I must seem neither fit to live, nor worthy to
reign. By exquisite methods of cunning and cruelty, I must be
compelled first to follow the funerals of my honour, and then be
destroyed.”
In another of these beautiful meditations, looking back upon
the course of the war, he says, “I never had any victory which was
without my sorrow, because it was on mine own subjects, who,
like Absalom, died many of them in their sin. And yet I never
suffered any defeat which made me despair of God’s mercy and
defence. I never desired such victories as might serve to con-
quer, but only restore the laws and liberties of my people, which
I saw were extremely oppressed, together with my rights, by
those men who were impatient of any just restraint. When
IProvidence gave me or denied me victory, my desire was
neither to boast of my power nor to charge God foolishly, who I
believed at last would make all things to work together for my
good. I wished no greater advantages by the war than to bring
my enemies to moderation and my friends to peace. I was afraid of
the temptation of an absolute conquest, and never prayed more for
victory over others than over myself. When the first was denied,
the second was granted me, which God saw best for me.”
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 43
The influence of pure religion upon a sound understanding
and a gentle heart has never been more finely exemplified than
by Charles during the long course of his afflictions. Cromwell
also was religious, but his religion at the time when it was most
sincere was most alloyed, and it acted upon an intellect and dis-
position most unlike the King's. Clear as his head was in action,
his apprehension ready, and his mind comprehensive as well as
firm ; when out of the sphere of business and command, his no-
tions were confused and muddy, and his language stifled the
thoughts which it affected to bring forth, producing by its curious
infelicity a more than oracular obscurity. The letter which he
addressed to the Speaker after the battle of Naseby is one of the
most lucid specimens of his misty style. After saying that for
three hours the fight had been very doubtful, and stating what
were the results of the action, he proceeds thus : “Sir, this is
none other but the hand of God, and to him alone belongs the
glory, wherein none are to share with him. The general has
served you with all faithfulness and honour; and the best com-
mendation I can give him is, that I dare say he attributes all to
God, and would rather perish than assume to himself, which is an
honest and a thriving way ; and yet as much-for bravery may be
given to him in this action, as to a man. Honest men served you
faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty. I beseech you in
the name of God not to discourage them. I wish this action may
beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it.
He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish
he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the
liberty he fights for. In this he rests who is your most humble
servant, Oliver Cromwell.” ”
After the fatal defeat at Naseby [14th June, 1645] the royal
cause soon became hopeless. Bristol was not better defended by
Prince Rupert than it had been by Nathaniel Fiennes. During the
siege, Fairfax and Cromwell narrowly escaped from being killed
by the same ball. The latter declared none but an atheist could
deny that their success was the work of the Lord. In his official
letter he said, “it may be thought some praises are due to these
gallant men of whose valour so much mention is made ; their
humble suit to you and all that have an interest in this blessing,
[* Ellis's Letters, vol. iii., p. 305, first series.]
44 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
is, that in remembrance of God’s praises they may be forgotten.
It's their joy that they are instruments to God’s glory and their
country’s good. It's their honour that God vouchsafes to use
them. Sir, they that have been employed in this service know
that faith and prayer obtained this city for you.” The faith and
prayers of William Dell and Hugh Peters, chaplains to the be-
sieging forces, were assisted by the experience of Skippon in
military operations, by the fear of a disaffected party within the
city, and by the sample which the besiegers had given of their
intention to put their enemies to the sword if they took the place
by storm. Cromwell next took Devizes [September, 1645], and
disarmed and dispersed the club-men in Hampshire, who having
originally associated to protect themselves against the excesses
of both parties, contributed to the miseries of the country
by making a third party as oppressive as either. Winchester
surrendered to him [5th October, 1645], and on that occasion
he gave an honourable example of fidelity to his engagements;
six of his men being detected in plundering, in violation of
the terms of capitulation, he hung one of them,” and sent
the other five to the King's governor at Oxford to be punished at
his discretion. Basing House, which had been so long and bravely
defended, yielded [Tuesday, 14th October, 1645], to this fortunate
general, who never failed in any enterprise which he undertook.
He then rejoined Fairfax in the west to complete the destruction
of a gallant army which had been ruined by worthless and wicked
commanders. Tord Hopton, one of those men whose virtues re-
deem the age, had taken the command of it in a manner more
honourable to himself than the most glorious of those achievements
in which he had formerly been successful: there was no possi-
bility of averting or even delaying a total defeat. When Prince
Charles entreated him to take upon himself the forlorn charge
of commanding it, Lord Hopton replied, that it was the custom
now, when men were not willing to submit to what they were
enjoined, to say it was against their honour; for himself he could
not obey in this instance without resolving to lose his honour, -
but since his Highness thought it necessary so to command him,
even at that cost he was ready to obey. He made so gallant a
[* They first cast lots for their lives. Rushworth, fol. 1701, p. 92.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 45
resistance at Torrington,” though great part of his men be-
haved basely, that the parliamentary forces suffered greater loss
than at any other storm in which they were engaged; and when
his army was finally broken up, as much by the licence and
mutinous temper of the men and officers, as by the enemy's over-
powering force, he disdained to make terms for himself, and re-
tired with the ammunition and those who remained faithful into
Pendennis castle. The last possibility which remained to the
Ring of collecting an army in the field was destroyed when Lord
Astley was defeated by superior numbers and taken. At the
beginning of the war, this gallant soldier, before he charged in
the battle of Edgehill, made a prayer, of which Hume says, there
were certainly much longer ones said in the parliamentary army,
but it may be doubted whether there were so good a one. It
was simply this: “O Lord I thou knowest how busy I must be
this day ! If I forget thee, do not thou forget me.” He now con-
cluded his brave and irreproachable career, by a saying not less
to be remembered by the enemy's officers, “You have done your
work, and may now go to play, unless you chuse to fall out
among yourselves.”
Even before the loss of Bristol, Charles, whose judgment
seldom deceived him, had seen that the worst was to be expected,
and made up his mind to endure it as became him. In reply to
a letter from Prince Rupert, who had advised him again to pro-
pose a treaty after that at Uxbridge had failed, he pointed out the
certainty that no terms would be granted which it would not be
criminal in him to accept; and at the same time fairly acknow-
ledged the hopelessness of his affairs, save only for his trust in
God. “I confess,” he said, “ that speaking either as to mere
soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of
my ruin : but as to Christian, I must tell you that God will not
suffer rebels to prosper or his cause to be overthrown : and what-
soever personal punishment it shall please him to inflict upon me,
must not make me repine, much less to give over the quarrel. In-
deed I cannot flatter myself with expectation of good success more
[* Against Fairfax, February 1645-6.]
[f Near Stow in the Wold in Gloucestershire, 21st March, 1645-6.]
[t Prince Rupert surrendered Bristol to Sir Thomas Fairfax, 11th Sep-
tember, 1645.]
$6 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience;
which obliges me to continue my endeavours, as not despairing
that God may in due time avenge his own cause. Though I
must avow to all my friends that he that will stay with me at this
time must expect and resolve, either to die for a good cause, or,
which is worse, to live as miserable in the maintaining it, as the vio-
lence of insulting rebels can make him.” The prospect of dying
in the field, which it appears from these expressions the king con-
templated with a complacent resignation, and perhaps with hope,
was at an end when Lord Astley was defeated: in expectation
of this he had already consulted for the safety of the Prince
of Wales, and it was now to be determined whither he should
betake himself. He offered to put himself in the hands of two
commanders who at some distance were blockading Oxford, if
they would pass their words that they would immediately conduct
him to the parliament; for in battle or in debate Charles was
always ready to face his enemies, and in debate with the advan-
tage of a collected mind, a sound judgment, a ready utterance,
and a thorough knowledge of the points in dispute. He knew
also that, throughout this fatal contest, the hearts of the great
majority of the people were with him ; and though the strength
of the rebellious party lay in London, yet even there he thought
so much loyalty was left, and so much regard for his person, that
he would willingly have been in it at this time. But the parlia-
mentary generals, whose purpose it always was to prevent the
possibility of any accommodation which would have restored even
a nominal authority to the sovereign, refused to enter into any
such engagement; and the avenues of the city were strictly
watched, lest he should enter secretly. Another and better hope
was to join Montrose, who was then in his career of victory. The
representations of M. Montrevil, a French agent, who was at that
time with the Scotch army before Newark, and the promises of
the Scotch made to that agent, that they would receive him as
their sovereign, and effectually join with him for the recovery of
his just rights, induced him to take that step. “They have
often,” he says, “professed they have fought not against me but
for me. I must now resolve the riddle of their loyalty, and give
them opportunity to let the world see they mean not what they
do, but what they say.”
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 4?
When that memorable bargain was concluded, by which the
Scotch sold and the English bought their king, Cromwell was
one of the commissioners. Yet it is represented by his bitterest
enemy, Hollis, that nothing could have been so desirable for
Cromwell, and nothing so much wished for by that party who
were bent upon destroying monarchy, as that the Scotch should
have taken Charles with them into Scotland, instead of deliver-
ing him into the hands of the parliament; and he speaks of the
sale as singularly honourable to both the contracting parties
“Here then,” he says, “ the very mouth of iniquity was stopt:
malice itself had nothing to say to give the least blemish to the
faithfulness and reality of the kingdom of Scotland, the clearness
of their proceedings, their zeal for peace, without self-seeking and
self-ends, or any endeavours to make advantage of the miseries and
misfortunes of England.” “ Charles himself saw the transaction in
a very different light, as posterity has done. He declared that he
was bought and sold. “Yet (he says in the Icon) may I justify
those Scots to all the world in this, that they have not deceived
me, for I never trusted to them, further than to men. If I am
sold by them, I am only sorry they should do it; and that my
price should be so much above my Saviour's 1–Better others
betray me than myself, and that the price of my liberty should
be my conscience. The greatest injuries my enemies seek to
inflict upon me cannot be without my own consent.”
The Scotch nation in general were sensible of the infamy
which had been brought upon them by this act. The English
were at first deceived by it: for, rightly perceiving that peace
and tranquillity could not be restored by any other means than
by the restoration of the King to those just rights and privileges
which he holds for the good of all, they believed that he was now
to be brought in honour and safety to London. As he was
taken from Newcastle to Holmby, they flocked from all parts to
see him ; and scrofulous patients were brought to receive the
royal touch, in full belief of its virtue, and with entire affection
to his person. If the intentions of Hollis and the Presbyterian
party had been such as they were afterwards desirous to make
the world believe, they had it in their power now to have im-
posed upon the King any terms to which he could conscientiously
[* Hollis, in Maseres’ Tracts, vol. i. p. 230.]
£8 LIFE OF CROMWELL,
have submitted, and the army were not yet so completely lords
of the ascendant as to have prevented such an accommodation.
But that party had brought on the civil war; had slandered the
King in the foulest spirit of calumny ; and on every occasion
had acted towards him precisely in that manner which would
wound and insult him most :-it is impossible to know what
catastrophe they designed for the tragedy which they had planned
and carried on thus far; but it is not possible that they intended
a termination which should have been compatible with the
honour and well-being of the sovereign whom they had so
bitterly injured. With that brutality which characterized all
their proceedings towards him, they refused to let any of his
chaplains attend him at this time. There is no subject upon
which the King, in his lonely meditations, has expressed himself
with more feeling than upon this. He says, “When Providence
was pleased to deprive me of all other civil comforts and secular
attendants, I thought the absence of them all might best be sup-
plied by the attendance of some of my chaplains, whom for their
functions I reverence, and for their fidelity I have cause to love.
By their learning, piety, and prayers, I hoped to be either better
enabled to sustain the want of all other enjoyments, or better
fitted for the recovery and use of them in God’s good time.
The solitude they have confined me unto adds the wilderness to
my temptation; for the company they obtrude upon me is more sad
than any solitude can be. If I had asked my revenues, my
power of the militia, or any one of my kingdoms, it had been no
wonder to have been denied in those things, where the evil
policy of men forbids all just restitution, lest they should confess
an injurious usurpation: but to deny me the ghostly comfort of
my chaplains seems a greater rigour and barbarity than is ever
used by Christians to the meanest prisoners and greatest male-
factors. But my agony must not be relieved with the presence
of any one good angel; for such I account a learned, godly, and
discreet divine: and such I would have all mine to be.—To
Thee, therefore, O God, do I direct my now solitary prayers |
What I want of others’ help, supply with the more immediate
assistance of thy Spirit: in Thee is all fulness: from Thee is all
sufficiency : by Thee is all acceptance. Thou art company
enough and comfort enough. Thou art my King, be also my
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 49
prophet and my priest. Rule me, teach me, pray in me, for me,
and be Thou ever with me.”
The parliamentary leaders had no sooner won the victory
than they began to divide the spoils. The Parliament, by virtue
of that sovereign authority which it had usurped, created Essex
and Warwick Dukes; Hollis was made a Viscount; Hazlerigg,
Vane, Fairfax, and Cromwell, Barons, the latter with a revenue
of 2500l. charged upon the estates of the Marquis of Worcester.
They filled up the places of those members who followed the
Ring's party, or whom their violent measures had driven from
the House; and this was done with a contempt of the laws
which indicated that the people of England were now under the
dominion of the sword. “First,” says Hollis (who, being now
on the weaker side, could see the enormity of their proceedings),
—“first they did all they could to stop writs from going any
whither but where they were sure to have fit men chosen for
their turns; and many an unjust thing was done by them in that
kind; sometimes denying writs, sometimes delaying till they had
prepared all things and made it, as they thought, cock sure;
many times committee-men in the country, such as were their
creatures, appearing grossly, and bandying to carry elections for
them; sometimes they did it fairly by the power of the army,
causing soldiers to be sent and quartered in the towns where
elections were to be ; awing and terrifying, sometimes abusing
and offering violence to the electors.” The Self-denying Ordi-
nance was totally disregarded now : it had effected the object for
which it was designed; and perhaps as the war in England was
at an end, it may have been fairly supposed to have expired.
Many officers therefore were now returned, and among them,
Ludlow, Ireton, and Fairfax. The two former were republicans,
who emulated the old Romans in the severity of their character,
and looked upon it as a virtue to be inexorable. Ludlow has
related of himself that, meeting in a skirmish with an old
acquaintance and schoolfellow who was on the King's side, he
expressed his sorrow at seeing him in that party, and offered to
exchange a shot with him. He relates also that when he was
defending Warder Castle, one of the besiegers who was killed,
said just before he expired, that he saw his own brother fire the
musket by which he received his mortal wound; and instead of
•ºrs
Jº
50 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
expressing a human feeling at this frightful example of the
horrors of civil war, he adds that it might probably be, his
brother having been one of those who defended the breach where
he was shot; “but if it were so, he might justly do it by the
laws of God and man, it being done in the discharge of his duty
and in his own defence.” With such deliberate inhumanity did
Ludlow in old age and retirement comment upon a fact, which,
even in the fever of political enthusiasm and the heat of battle,
ought to have made him shudder.
That party, who would have been satisfied with the establish-
ment of a Presbyterian Church, and the enjoyment of offices,
honours, and emoluments under a king whom they wished to pre-
serve only as a puppet for their own purposes, would now gladly
have reduced an army of which they began to stand in fear: for
since it had been new-modelled, the Independents had obtained
the ascendency there; and those principles which Cromwell at
the first avowed to his own troop, were now becoming common
among the soldiers. They had been taught to believe that the
Ring was an enemy and a tyrant: and drawing from false pre-
mises a just conclusion, they reasoned that, because it was lawful
to fight against him, it was right also to destroy him. They saw
through the hypocrisy of the Presbyterians, whom they called
with sarcastic truth the dissembly men; and being led by their
own situation to speculate upon the Origin of dignities and
powers, they asked what were the lords of England but William
the Conqueror's colonels P or the barons but his majors P or the
knights but his captains? The Parliament had just reason to
fear an army in this temper; and the army had equal reason to
complain of the Parliament, because their pay was in arrears:
they were therefore to be disbanded, the commissioned officers to
receive debentures for what was due to them, and the non-com-
missioned officers and privates a promise, secured upon the
excise. But men who had arms in their hands were easily per-
suaded that they might use them with as much justice to intimi-
date the Parliament, as to subdue the King. That they might
have their deliberative assemblies also, under whose authority
they might proceed, they appointed a certain number of officers
which they called the General Council of Officers, who were to
act as their House of Peers; and the common soldiers chose
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 51
three or four from every regiment, mostly corporals or serjeants,
few or none above the rank of an ensign, who were called Agi-
tators, and were to be the army's House of Commons. The
president of these Agitators was a remarkable man, by name
James Berry; he had originally been a clerk in some iron-works.
In the course of the revolution he sate in the Upper House. He
was one of the principal actors in pulling down Richard Crom-
well; became afterward one of the Council of State ; was im-
prisoned after the Restoration as one of the four men whom
Monk considered the most dangerous; and finally, being liberated,
became a gardener, and finished his life in obscurity and peace.
Both the Council of Officers and the Agitators were composed
of Cromwell’s creatures, or of men who, being thorough fanatics,
did his work equally well in stupid sincerity. They presented a
bold address to Parliament declaring that they would neither be
divided nor disbanded till their full arrears were paid, and de-
manding that no member of the army should be tried by any
other judicatory than a council of war. “They did not,” they
said, “ look upon themselves as a band of janizaries, hired only
to fight the battles of the Parliament ; they had voluntarily
taken up arms for the liberty of the nation of which they were a
part, and before they laid those arms down they would see that
end well provided for.” The men who presented this address
behaved with such audacity at the bar of the House of Commons,
that there were some who moved for their committal: but they
had friends even there to protect them, one of whom replied
that he would have them committed indeed, but it should be to
the best inn in the town, where plenty of good sack and sugar
should be provided for them. As the dispute proceeded, the
army held louder language, and the Parliament took stronger
measures, causing some of the boldest among the soldiers to be
imprisoned. Cromwell supported the House in this, expressed
great indignation at the insolence of the troops, and complained
even with tears, that there had even been a design of killing him,
so odious had he been made to the army by men who were de-
sirous of again embruing the nation in blood | Yet he had said
to Ludlow “that it was a miserable thing to serve a parliament,
to whom let a man be never so faithful, if one pragmatical
fellow amongst them rise up and asperse him, he shall never
E 2
52 LIFE OF CROMWELL,
wipe it off; whereas,” said he, “when one serves under a gene-
ral, he may do as much service and yet be free from all blame
and envy. And during these very discussions he whispered in
the House to Ludlow, these men will never leave till the army
pull them out by the ears.” If Ludlow suspected any sinister
view in Cromwell, he was himself too much engaged with the
army to notice it at that time. But there were other members
whose opposite interest opened their eyes; and who, knowing
that Cromwell was the secret director of those very measures
against which he inveighed, resolved to send him to the Tower,
believing that if he were once removed the army might easily be
reduced to obedience. They estimated his authority more justly
than they did their own. It appears that he expected a more
violent contest than actually ensued; for he and many of the
Independents privately removed their effects from London,
“leaving,” says Hollis, “city and Parliament as marked out for
destruction.” He had timely notice of the design against him,
and on the very morning when they proposed to arrest him, he
set out for the army : but still preserving that dissimulation
which he never laid aside where it could possibly be useful, he
wrote to the House of Commons, saying, that his presence was
necessary to reclaim the soldiers, who had been abused by misin-
formation; and desiring that the general (Fairfax), and such
other officers who were in the House or in town, might be sent
to their quarters to assist him in that good work.
On the very day that Cromwell joined the army, the King was
carried from Holmby by Joyce [3 June, 1647]. That grey dis-
crowned head, as he himself beautifully calls it, the sight of which
drew tears from his friends, and moved many even of his enemies
to compunction as well as pity, excited no feeling or respect in
this hard and vulgar ruffian, who had formerly been a tailor and
afterwards a menial servant in Hollis's family. He produced
a pistol as the authority which the King was to obey, and
Charles believed that the intention in carrying him away was to
murder him. Whether Joyce was employed by the Agitators,
of whose body he was one, or whether, as Hollisº asserts and as
is generally believed, Cromwell sent him, is of no consequence
in Cromwell's character (though his descendant strenuously
[* Hollis, in Maseres’ Tracts, vol. i. p. 246.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 53
endeavours to show that he had no concern in the transaction),
for it is only a question whether he was mediately or imme-
diately the author. The insolence with which the act was per-
formed is imputable to the agent; and there is some reason to
believe that, whatever may have been the intention of Ireton, St.
John, Vane, and other men of that stamp, Cromwell himself
was at that time very far from having determined upon the death
of the King. It was plain that the Parliament had no intention
of making any terms with the King, except such as would have
left him less real power than the Oligarchs of Venice entrusted
to their Doge ; and it was not less obvious that, as Charles
might expect more equitable conditions from the army, who
would treat with him as a part of the nation, not as a body con-
tending for sovereignty, so on his side he would come to the
treaty with better hope and a kindlier disposition. Indeed at
this time he looked upon them with the feelings of a British
king: “ though they have fought against me,” said he, “yet I
cannot but so far esteem that valour and gallantry they have
sometimes showed, as to wish I may never want such men to
maintain myself, my laws, and my kingdom, in such a peace as
wherein they may enjoy their share and proportion as much as any
men.” He had changed his keepers and his prison, but not his
captive condition ; only there was this hope of bettering, that
they who were such professed patrons of the people's liberty,
could not be utterly against the liberty of the King : “what
they demanded for their own conscience,” said he, “they cannot
in reason deny to mine ;” and it consoled him to believe that the
world would now see a king could not be so low as not to be
considerable, adding right to that party where he appeared.
So far he was right; it is the lively expression of Hollis that
the army made that use of the King which the Philistines would
bave made of the ark, and that and their power together made
them prevail. The description which he gives of the Parliament
at this crisis holds forth an awful warning to those who fancy
that it is as easy to direct the commotions of a state as to excite
them ; it is a faithful picture drawn by a leading member of that
faction which had raised and hitherto guided the rebellion. “They
now thunder upon us,” he says, “with remonstrances, declarations,
letters, and messages every day, commanding one day one thing,
54. LIFE OF CROMWELL.
the next day another, making us vote and unvote, do and undo ;
and when they had made us do some ugly thing, jeer us, and say
our doing justifies their desiring it.” “We feel as low as dirt,”
he says: “take all our ordinances in pieces, change and alter
them according to their minds, and (which is worst of all) ex-
punge our declaration against their mutinous petition, cry pee-
cavimous to save a whipping: but all would not do ſ—All was
dasht” (it is still Hollis the parliamentarian who speaks) : “in-
stead of a generous resistance to the insolencies of perfidious
servants, vindicating the honour of the Parliament, discharging
the trust that lay upon them to preserve a poor people from being
ruined and enslaved to a rebellious army, they deliver up them-
selves and kingdom to the will of their enemies; prostitute all to
the lust of heady and violent men ; and suffer Mr. Cromwell to
saddle, ride, switch, and spur them at his pleasure.” Ride them
indeed he did with a martingale; and it was not all the wincing
of the galled jade that could shake the practised horseman in his
seat. Poor Hollis complains that “Presbyterians were trumps
no longer.” Clubs were trumps now, and the knave in that
suit, as in the former, was the best card in the pack. When the
Parliament had done whatever the army required, “prostituting
their honours, renouncing whatever would be of strength or
safety to them, casting themselves down naked, helpless, and
hopeless at the proud feet of their domineering masters, it is all
to no purpose, it does but encourage those merciless men to
trample the more upon them.”
So it was, and properly so. This was the reward of the Pres-
byterian party
“For letting rapine loose and murther
To rage just so far and no further,
And setting all the land on fire -
To burn to a scantling and no higher;
For venturing to assassinate,
And cut the throats of Church and State :”
This they had done; and instead of being, as they had calcu-
lated upon being,
“allowed the fittest men
To take the charge of both again,”
[* Hollis, in Maseres’ Tracts, vol. i. p. 254.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 55
they were now
“Out-gifted, out-impulsed, out-done.
And out-revealed at carryings-on;
Of all their dispensations worm’d,
Out-providenced, and out-reform’d,
Ejected out of Church and State
And all things—but the people’s hate.”
As the question stood between the Parliament and the army,
the army was in the right. Whatever arguments held good for
resisting the King, availed & fortiori for resisting the Parliament:
its little finger was heavier than his loins; and where the old
authorities had used a whip, the Parliament had scourged the
nation with scorpions. The change in ecclesiastical affairs was
of the same kind. New Presbyter was old Priest written large
—and in blacker characters. Cromwell had force of reason as
well as force of arms on his side; and if he had possessed a le-
gitimate weight in the country, like Essex, it is likely that he
would now have used it to the best purpose, and have done
honourably for himself and beneficially for the kingdom, what
was afterwards effected by Monk, with too little regard to any
interest except his own. It is said that he required for himself,
as the reward of this service to his sovereign, the garter, the title
of the Earl of Essex, vacant by the death of the late general [14
Sept. 1646], and a proper object of ambition to Cromwell, as
having formerly been in his family; to be made First-Captain of the
Guards, and Vicar-General of the Kingdom. All this he would
have deserved, if he had restored peace and security to the nation
by re-establishing the monarchy with those just limitations, the pro-
priety of which was seen and acknowledged by the King himself.
But if Cromwell desired to do this, which may reasonably be
presumed, the power which he then possessed was not sufficient
for it. It was a revolutionary power, not transferable to the better
cause without great diminution. In the movements of the revolu-
tionary sphere his star was rising, but it was not yet lord of the
ascendant; and in raising himself to his present station, he had,
like the unlucky magician in romance, conjured up stronger spirits
than he was yet master enough of the black art to control. Under
his management, the moral discipline of the army was as perfect as
that of the Swedes under the great Gustavus, whom it is not im-
56 IIFE OF CROMWELL.
probable that Cromwell in this point took for his model. He
had been most strict and severe in chastising all irregularities,
“insomuch,” says Clarendon, “that sure there was never any
such body of men, so without rapine, swearing, drinking, or any
other debauchery—but the wickedness of their hearts.” He had
brought them to this state by means of religious enthusiasm, the
most powerful and the most perilous of all principles which an
ambitious man can call into action. When the parliamentary
army first took the field, every regiment had its preacher, who
beat the drum ecclesiastic, and detorted Scripture to serve the pur-
poses of rebellion. The battle of Edgehill [23 Oct. 1642] sickened
them of service in the field; almost all of them went home after
that action : and when the tide of success set in against the King,
they had little inclination to return to their posts, because the
other sectaries with whom the army swarmed beat them at their
own weapons. Baxter says it was the ministers that lost all, by
forsaking the army and betaking themselves to an easier and
quieter way of life; and he especially repented that he had not
accepted the chaplainship of that famous troop with which Crom-
well began his army; persuading himself that if he had been
among them he might have prevented the spreading of that fire
which was then in one spark. Baxter is one of those men whose
lives exemplify the strength and the weakness of the human
mind. He fancied that the bellows which had been used for
kindling the fire, could blow it out when the house was in
flames | He might as well have supposed that he could put out
Etna with an extinguisher, or have stilled an earthquake by
setting his foot upon the ground.
In the anarchy which the war produced, some of the preachers
acted as officers; and, on the other hand, officers, with at least
as much propriety, acted as preachers. Cromwell himself edified
the army by his discourses, and every common soldier who car-
ried a voluble tongue, and either was or pretended to be a
fanatic, held forth from a pulpit or a tub. The land was over-
run with
“a various rout
Of petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts,”
but they bred in the army; and this licence in things spiritual
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 57
led by a sure process to the wildest notions of political liberty, to
which also the constitution of the army was favourable : a mer-
cenary army, Hollis calls it, “all of them, from the general
(except what he may have in expectation after his father's death)
to the meanest sentinel, not able to make a thousand pounds a
year lands, most of the colonels and officers mean tradesmen,
brewers, tailors, goldsmiths, shoemakers, and the like—a notable
dunghill if one would rake into it to find out their several pedi-
grees.” According to him these “bloodsuckers had conceived
a mortal hatred” against his party, “and, in truth, against all
gentlemen, as those who had too great an interest and too large
a stake of their own in the kingdom, to engage with them in their
design of perpetuating the war to an absolute confusion.” It
was by such instruments that Cromwell had made himself, Osten-
sibly the second person in the army, really the first : but he was
not yet their master, and was compelled to court them still by
professing a fellowship in opinions which he had ceased to hold.
Had he espoused the King's cause heartily and honestly, which
probably he desired to do, the very men upon whom his power
rested would have turned against him, and have pursued him
with as murderous a hatred as that which Pym had avowed
against Strafford, and had gratified in his blood. Both in and
out of the army he needed the co-operation of men some of
whom were his equals in cunning, others in audacity : Vane and
perhaps St. John were as crafty, Ludlow, Hazlerigg, and many
others were as bold. But these men were bent upon trying the
experiment of a republic, to which the King's destruction was a
necessary prelude. And he who afterwards controlled three
nations, is said himself to have stood in some awe of his son-in-
law Ireton, a man of great talents and inflexible character, and
sincere in those political opinions which Cromwell held only
while they were instrumental to his advancement.
Ludlow, who knew Ireton well, and was the more likely to
understand the motives of his conduct because he entirely coin-
cided with him in his political desires, believed that it was never
his intention to come to any agreement with the King, but only
to delude the Loyalists while the army were contesting with the
Presbyterian interest in Parliament : and he relates that Ireton
once said to the King, “Sir, you have an intention to be arbi-
- **
58 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
trator between the Parliament and us, and we mean to be so
between you and the Parliament.” Cromwell, on the other hand,
is said to have declared that the interview between Charles and
his children, when they were first allowed to visit him, was “the
tenderest sight that ever his eyes beheld ;” to have wept plenti-
fully when he spoke of it (which he might well have done with-
out hypocrisy, for in private life he was a man of kind feelings
and of a generous nature); to have confessed that “never man
was so abused as he in his sinister opinion of the King, who, he
thought, was the most upright and conscientious of his kingdom ;
and to have imprecated “that God would be pleased to look
upon him according to the sincerity of his heart towards the
Ring.” There are men so habitually insincere that they seem to
delight in acts of gratuitous duplicity, as if their vanity was
gratified by the easy triumph over those who are too upright to
suspect deceit. Cromwell was a hypocrite, then, only when
hypocrisy was useful; there are anecdotes enough which prove
that he was well pleased when he could lay aside the mask. In
his conduct towards Charles, while that poor persecuted king
was with the army, there is no reason to suspect him of any
sinister intention;–the most probable solution is that also which
is most creditable to him, and which is imputed to him by those
persons who aspersed him most. Hollis and Ludlow, who hated
him with as much inveteracy as if they had not equally hated
each other, agree in believing that he would willingly have
taken part with the King ; and that he was deterred from this
better course by the fear that the army would desert him. They
agree also that when he was certain of this, he, by taking mea-
sures for alarming the King, instigated him to make his escape
from Hampton Court [11 Nov., 1647]. Concerning his further”
purpose there are different opinions. Hollis, who would allow him
* One of the very few errors which M. Villemain has committed is that
of Saying that Ashburnham is charged by Clarendon with having betrayed
his master on this occasion; whereas Clarendon, though he perceived with
what fatal and unaccountable mismanagement they proceeded, entirely
acquits him of any intention to mislead the king. M. Villemain writes New
York for Newark—from a mistaken etymology we suppose. These trifling
mistakes are pointed out for correction, not from the desire of detecting faults,
but in respect for a work of great sagacity, perfect candour, and exemplary
diligence,—being by far the most able history of Cromwell that has yet been
Written.
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 59
no merit, supposes that he directed him to Carisbrook because he
knew that Hammond might be depended upon as a jailer; Ludlow
supposes that he thought Hammond a man on whom the King
might rely ; and Hobbes, with more probability than either,
affirms that he meant to let him escape from the kingdom, which,
with common prudence on the part of his companions, he might
have done, and which, when Cromwell had made his choice to
act with the Commonwealth’s-men, would have served their pur-
pose better than his death.
He did not, however, join them hastily, nor from his own feel-
ings, but as if yielding, rather than consenting, to circumstances.
Conferences were held between some of the heads of the many-
headed anarchy—members, officers, and preachers—to determine
what form of government was best for the nation, whether mo-
narchical, aristocratical, or democratical. The ablest leaders of
the Presbyterian party had been expelled the House, and some
of them driven into exile by the preponderating influence of the
army, who availed themselves of the King's presence to obtain
that object. These persons, more from their hatred of the Inde-
pendents than from any other principle, would have defended the
monarchy, which was now but weakly and insincerely defended
by Cromwell and those who were called the Grandees of the
House and army. Either form of government, they said, might
be good in itself, and for them, as Providence should direct;
this being interpreted meant that they were ready to support any
form which might be most advantageous to themselves. On the
other hand, the political and religious zealots insisted that
monarchy was in itself an evil, and that the Jews had committed
a great sin against the Tord in choosing it; and they, apparently
now for the first time, avowed their desire of putting the King
to death and establishing an equal commonwealth. Cromwell,
who was then acknowledged as the head of the Grandees, pro-
fessed himself to be unresolved ; he had learnt however the
temper of his tools, and with that coarse levity which is one of
the strongest features in his character, he concluded the confer-
ence by flinging a cushion at Ludlow's head, and then running
down stairs; but not fast enough to escape a similar missile
which was sent after him. The next day he told Ludlow he was
convinced of the desirableness of what that party had proposed,
60 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
but not of its feasibleness. The time was now fast approaching
when Cromwell would find everything feasible which he desired.
A bold accusation was preferred against him in the House of
Dords by Major Huntington : he affirmed that Cromwell and
Ireton had, from the beginning, instigated the army to disobey
and resist the Parliament; that they had pledged themselves to
make the King the most glorious prince in Christendom, while
they were making use of him, and had declared that they were
ready to join with French, Spaniards, Cavaliers, or any who
would force the Parliament to agree with him ; that their real
object was to perpetuate the power of the army; that Ireton said,
when the King and Parliament were treating, he hoped they
would make such a peace that the army might, with a good con-
science, fight against them both ; and that Cromwell had, both
in public and private, maintained as his principle that every in-
dividual was judge of just and right as to the good and ill of a
kingdom ; that it was lawful to pass through any forms of
government for attaining his end, and that it was lawful to play
the knave with a knave. Huntington swore to the truth of these
allegations; Milton impugns his credit, by saying that he after-
wards besought Cromwell’s pardon, and confessed that he had
been suborned by the Presbyterians. Encouraged by them he
probably was ; but Huntington's memorial bears with it the
stamp of truth, and it is confirmed by Cromwell’s whole course
of after-life.*
The Independent party being the strongest, no advantage was
made of these charges, which might otherwise have been deemed
ground sufficient for depriving him of his command; and the ill-
planned and ill-combined insurrection of the Cavaliers and inva-
sion of the Scotch made him, as M. Villemain observes, too
necessary to be deemed culpable. He marched first into Wales,
and brought that crabbed expedition, as it was called, to a suc-
cessful termination with his wonted celerity. That done, he pro-
ceeded against the Scotch, which, to the great furtherance of
Cromwell’s designs, Fairfax was not willing to do, for Fairfax
had a sort of pyebald Presbyterian conscience, and strained at a
gnat now, after having bolted so many camels. Cromwell had a
[* Huntington’s Complaint, dated 2nd Aug., 1648, is printed in Thurloe's
State Papers, vol. i. pp. 94–97, and in vol. ii. of Maseres’ Tracts.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL, 61
great dislike of the Scotch as well as a great contempt for them;
he perfectly understood what their armies were, having served
with them in one campaign, and therefore readily consented to
go against them with a very inferior force. That confidence
might have been fatal to him, if there had been common pru-
dence in the Duke of Hamilton and the other Scotch leaders;
but the miserable creatures by whom the counsels of that army
were directed chose to expose the English who were with them,
instead of supporting them, when, by timely aid, the day might
have been won. Cromwell declared he had never seen foot fight
so desperately as the North-countrymen under Sir Marmaduke
Langdale, at the battle of Preston, where they were so basely
left without support. They had their reward. Cromwell fol-
lowed their army, defeated and routed it, more being killed out
of contempt, says Clarendon, than that they deserved it by any
opposition. He then marched to Edinburgh, where he was
received as a deliverer ; and settling the affairs of that lawless
country under the management of Argyll, left it with reason to
believe that it would prove as peaceable as he could wish.
The part which Cromwell bore in the tragedy that ensued, and
the manner in which the hypocrisy, the coarseness, and the levity
of his character were displayed, when, not having felt power or
courage to prevent the wickedness, he took the lead in it him-
self, are known to all persons who have any knowledge of Eng-
lish history. The powers of Europe. had most of them secretly
formented the rebellion, and made no attempt to avert the cata-
strophe which it brought about. France more especially had
acted treacherously toward the King ; commenting upon which,
in the earlier part of his history, Lord Clarendon has some me-
morable observations upon the impolicy as well as the injustice
of such conduct, “as if,” he says, “ the religion of princes
were nothing but policy, and that they considered nothing more
than to make all other kingdoms but their own miserable ; and
because God hath reserved them to be tried only within his own
jurisdiction, that he means to try them too by other laws and
rules than he hath published to the world for his servants to walk
by. Whereas they ought to consider that God hath placed them
over his people as examples, and to give countenance to his laws
by their own strict observation of them ; and that as their sub-
62 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
jects are to be defended and protected by their princes, so they
themselves are to be assisted and supported by one another, the
function of kings being an order by itself; and as a contempt
and breach of every law is in the policy of state an offence
against the person of the king, because there is a kind of violation
offered to his person in the transgression of that rule, without
which he cannot govern; so the rebellion of subjects against
their prince ought to be looked upon by all other kings as an
assault of their own sovereignty, and in some degree a design
against monarchy itself, and consequently to be suppressed and
extirpated, in what other kingdom soever it is, with the like con-
cernment as if it were in their own bowels.” Lord Bacon has
noticed it as a defect in the historical part of learning that there
is not an impartial and well attested Historia Wemesios. In such
a history the miseries which France has undergone, and which
Spain is undergoing and is to undergo, would exemplify the
justice of Clarendon's remarks.
While other governments beheld the fate of Charles with an
indifference as disreputable to their feelings as to their policy,
and while the King of Spain adorned his palace by purchasing
the choicest specimens of art with which Charles had enriched
England, an honourable exception is to be made for Portugal
and the House of Braganza. That House, in a time of extreme
difficulty and danger, when it could ill afford to provoke another
enemy, chose rather to incur the resentment and vengeance of
the English Commonwealth, than to refuse protection to Prince
Rupert and the ships under his command; and when the parlia-
mentary fleet entered the Tagus, and denounced war unless they
were instantly delivered up, it was with difficulty that Prince
Theodosius (whose untimely death may, perhaps, be considered
as the greatest misfortune that ever befel the Portuguese) was
dissuaded from going on board the Portuguese fleet himself, to
join Prince Rupert, and give battle to his enemies. On that
occasion the Braganzan family considered what was right and
honourable, regardless of all meaner considerations; they sup-
plied Rupert fully, and would not suffer his pursuers to leave the
port till two tides after he had sailed out with a full gale. They
suffered severely for this, but they preserved their honour; and
as it behoves us not to forget this, so does it at this time especi-
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 63
ally behove the Portuguese to remember in what manner the
constant alliance and friendship of England, which for more than
a hundred and sixty years has never been interrupted, was then
deserved.
The levity which Cromwell displayed during that mockery of
justice with which the King was sacrificed, Mr. Noble supposes
to have been affected; and Mr. O. Cromwell endeavours to in-
validate the evidence upon which it has been recorded and
hitherto received. Its truth or falsehood would matter little in
the fair estimate of his whole conduct, or of that particular act;
and the thing itself is too consistent with other authentic anec-
dotes concerning him to be arbitrarily set aside. It is more
remarkable that he went to look at the murdered King, opened
the coffin himself, put his finger to the neck where it had been
severed, and even inspecting the inside of the body, observed in
how healthy a state it had been, and how well made for length
of life. He had screwed his feelings as well as his conscience at
this time to the sticking-place, and seems as if he had been
resolved to make it known that he would shrink from nothing
which might be necessary for his views. This was shown in the
case of Lord Capel, a man in all respects of exemplary virtue,
and worthy of the highest honours that history can bestow, as
one who performed his duty faithfully, and to the last, in the worst
of times. Cromwell knew him personally, , spoke of him as of
a friend, and made his very virtues a reason for taking away his
life! His affection to the public, he said, so much weighed down
his private friendship, that he could not but tell the House the
question was whether they would preserve their most bitter and
most implacable enemy; he knew the Lord Capel very well, and
knew that he would be the last man in England who would for-
sake the royal interest; that he had great courage, industry, and
generosity; that he had many friends who would always adhere
to him; and that as long as he lived, what condition soever he
was in, he would be a thorn in their sides; and therefore, for the
good of the Commonwealth, he should vote for his death. This
was delivered and heard as a proof of republican virtue.—God
deliver us from all such virtues as harden the heart I
Hobbes has affirmed that at the time of Lord Capel’s execution
it was put to the question by the army, whether all who had
64. LIFE OF CROMWELL.
borne arms for the King should be massacred or no, and the
Noes carried it by only two voices.” If this be true, Cromwell,
we may be sure, was one of those who declared against it ; when
he shed blood it was upon a calculating policy, never for the
appetite of blood: such acts were committed by him against a
good nature, not in the indulgence of a depraved one. Nor were
the royalists the party of whom he was at that time most ap-
prehensive; they were broken and dispersed, their cause was
abandoned by man, and the pulpit incendiaries preached and,
perhaps, persuaded both themselves and others that God had
declared against it. The present danger was from the Levellers,
whom Cromwell had at first encouraged, and with whom it is
very possible that in one stage of his progress he may sincerely
have sympathized. But being now better acquainted with men
and with things, his wish was to build up and repair the work of
ruin; all further demolition was to be prevented, and therefore
by prompt severity he suppressed these men, who were so nume-
rous and well organized as to have rendered themselves formidable
by their strength as well as by their opinions. That object
having been effected, he accepted the command in Ireland, to
the surprise of his enemies, who desired nothing so much as his
absence; not having considered that with his means and temper
he went to a sure conquest, and must needs return from it with a
great accession of popularity and power.
He arrived at Dublin [15 Aug. 1649] in a fortunate hour, just
after the garrison had obtained a signal victory, in consequence of
which the siege had been broken up. Without delay he marched
against Drogheda,t where the Marquis of Ormond had placed a
great number of his best troops, under Sir Arthur Aston, a brave
and distinguished officer. One assault was manfully repulsed.
Cromwell led his men a second time to the breach, who then
forced all the retrenchments, and gave no quarter, according to
his positive orders. There was a great contention among the
soldiers who should get the governor for his share of the spoil,
because his artificial leg was believed to be made of gold; the
[* Arthur, Lord Capel, was executed 9th March, 1648.]
[f 3rd Sept. 1649. He began his attack on the 9th. The battles of Dun-
bar and Worcester were fought on the 3rd of September. He summoned a
parliament on the 3rd of September, and he died on the 3rd of September.j
LIFE OF CROMWELL. i 65
disappointment at finding it only of wood was somewhat abated
by discovering two hundred pieces of gold sewn up in his girdle.
Cromwell’s own account of the slaughter is, that not thirty of
the whole number of the defendants escaped with their lives. “I
do not believe,” he says, “neither do I hear, that any officer
escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant, who, going to
the enemy, said he was the only man that escaped of all the
garrison. The enemy were filled upon this with much terror,
and truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of
blood, through the goodness of God. I wish that all honest,
hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom, indeed,
the praise of this mercy belongs, for instruments they were very
inconsiderable the work throughout.” Lord Clarendon says that
all manner of cruelty was executed; every Irish inhabitant, man,
woman, and child, put to the sword, and three or four officers
of name and of good families, whom some humaner soldiers
concealed for four or five days, were then butchered in cold
blood. Ludlow relates that the slaughter continued two days,
and that such extraordinary severity was used to discourage others.
Hugh Peters gave thanks for it in the cathedral at Dublin. The
object was attained. Trim and Dundalk were abandoned to him
without resistance; Wexford was ill defended and easily taken ;
and Cromwell, with a reliance upon fortune arising, in this in-
stance, equally from confidence in himself and contempt of his
enemies, marched into Munster so far from all succour and all
reasonable hope of supplies, that if the city of Cork had not been
treacherously or pusillanimously given up to him, he and his
army must have been reduced to the utmost danger.
In less than six months, though an infectious disease had
broken out in his own army, Cromwell destroyed the last hopes
of the Royalists in Ireland, and exacted for a national crime, to
which the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day is the only parallel
in history, a vengeance to which no parallel can be found. No
mercy was shown to any person who could be convicted of having
shed Protestant blood in that most merciless and atrocious re-
bellion. As many others as chose were allowed to enter into
foreign services, and French and Spanish officers enlisted and
transported not less than five and forty thousand men, though
not five thousand could ever be raised for the King's service by
F.
66 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
all the unwearied exertions of Ormond, and all the promises and
contracts which were made with him. Leaving Ireton with the
command,” to pursue the war upon that system of extermination
which the Commonwealth intended, he obeyed the summons of
Parliament to put himself at the head of an army which was to
march against Charles II., called at that time Charles Stuart,
who was then in Scotland, in a situation something between that
of a king and a prisoner. By Cromwell’s desire the command
was offered to Fairfax, who refused it, more because he was
offended and ashamed at having discovered how mere a cipher he
was become, than from any feeling of repentance for what he
had done, and for what he had omitted to do, which was the
heavier sin. In urging him to accept the command, Cromwell
appeared so much in earnest that Ludlow believed him, and took
him aside to entreat that he would not in compliment and humility
obstruct the service of the nation by his refusal. When it was
determined that Cromwell was to be general, Ludlow had a con-
ference with him, in which Cromwell professed to desire nothing
more than that the government might be settled in a free and
equal Commonwealth, which he thought the only probable means
of keeping out the old family. He looked upon it, he said, that
the design of the Lord was now to free his people from every
burthen, and to accomplish what was prophesied in the 110th
Psalm ; and then expounding that psalm for about an hour to
Ludlow, and tickling him with expositions, professions, and praises,
ended by letting him understand that if he pleased to accept the
command of the horse in Ireland, the post would be at his service.f
A declaration was sent before Cromwell’s army, addressed “to
all that are Saints, and partakers of the Faith of God’s Elect in
Scotland.” The Saints, however, in Scotland were praying and
preaching against Cromwell as heartily as they had ever per-
formed pulpit-service against Charles; and their Presbyterian
brethren in England, as well as the sober and untainted part of
the people, were heartily wishing for his overthrow, and the
return of the ancient order. His contempt for the Scotch had
very nearly brought about the fulfilment of their desires: he got
[* May, 1650. He arrived in London on the 31st. Whitelock, p. 457,
ed. 1732.]
[f Ludlow's Memoirs, ed. 1771, pp. 136-7.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 67
himself into a situation at Dunbar from which it was impossible
to retreat, and where, from the want of provisions, the enemy
must have had him at their mercy if they would only have
avoided an action. But it was revealed to the preachers, by
whom the General was controlled, that Agag was delivered into
their hands; and Cromwell, perceiving them through his glass
advancing to attack, exclaimed (in Hume's felicitous language)
without the help of revelations, that the Lord had delivered them
into his. Some of the preachers were knocked on the head while
promising the victory, and others who were not killed “had very
notable marks about the head and the face, that anybody might
know they were not hurt by chance, or in the crowd, but by
very good will.” A terrible execution was made; Cromwell’s
men gave no quarter till they were weary of killing. In his
letter to the Parliament he acknowledged the peril in which he
had been, and that the enemy had reminded him of the fate of
Essex's army in Cornwall; “but,” says he, “in what they were
thus lifted up, the Lord was above them. The enemy having
those advantages, we lay very near him, being sensible of our
disadvantages, having some weakness of flesh, but yet con-
solation and support from the Lord himself to our poor weak
faith (wherein I believe not a few amongst us stand), that be-
cause of their numbers, because of their advantages, because of
their confidence, because of our weakness, because of our strait,
we were on the mount, and on the mount the Lord would be
seen.” And he adds that the Lord of Hosts made them as stub-
ble to their swords. -
The battle of Dunbar [3 Sept. 1650] delivered Charles from the
tyranny of the Presbyterians, who, he verily believed, would have
imprisoned him the next day if they had won the victory. Cromwell
entered Edinburgh : the castle was surrendered to him, and he
was soon master of the better part of the kingdom ; but he had
a severe illness, with three relapses, and was in great danger.
His reply, after his recovery, to a letter of inquiry from the
Lord President of the Council of State in England, acknowledged,
with all humble thankfulness, their high favour in sending to
inquire after one so unworthy as himself. “Indeed, my lord,”
he continues, “ your service needs not me; I am a poor creature,
and have been a dry bone, and am still an unprofitable servant
- F 2
68 LIFE OF CROMWELL,
to my Master and you. I thought I should have died of this fit
of sickness, but the Lord seemeth to dispose otherwise. But
truly, my lord, I desire not to live unless I may obtain mercy
from the Lord, to approve my heart and life to him in more
faithfulness and thankfulness, and those I serve with more pro-
fitableness and diligence.” When he was well enough to take
the field, and advance against the King at Stirling, a skilful
movement, by which he got behind the royal army, thereby cut-
ting it off from the fruitful country from whence it drew its
supplies, induced Charles to form the brave resolution of march-
ing into England. -
Cromwell had not expected this; and when he announced it to
the Parliament, it was with something like an apology for him-
self, though he said the enemy had taken this course in despera-
tion and fear, and out of inevitable necessity. “I do apprehend,”
he says, “that it will trouble some men's thoughts, and may
occasion some inconveniences, of which I hope we are as deeply
sensible, and have, and I trust shall be as diligent to prevent as
any. And indeed this is our comfort, that in simplicity of heart
as to God, we have done to the best of our judgments, knowing
that if some issue were not put to this business, it would occasion
another winter's war, to the ruin of your soldiery, for whom the
Scots are too hard, in respect of enduring the winter difficulties
of this country. We have this comfortable experiment from the
Lord, that this enemy is heart-smitten by God; and whenever
the Lord shall bring us up to them, we believe the Lord will
make the desperateness of this counsel of theirs to appear, and
the folly of it also.” The alarm in London was very great.
“Both the city and the country,” says Mrs. Hutchinson, “were
all amazed, doubtful of their own and the Commonwealth’s safety.
Some could not hide very pale and unmanly fears, and were in
such distraction of spirit as much disturbed their counsels.”
Even Bradshaw, “stout-hearted as he was,” trembled for his
neck. But great exertions were made by the government, its
members having indeed everything at stake, and Whitelock says
that no “affair could have been managed with more diligence,
courage, and prudence; and that peradventure there was never
so great a body of men, so well armed and provided, got together
in so short a time, as were those sent to reinforce Cromwell.”
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 69
Cromwell meantime followed the royal army with his wonted
confidence. Whatever his military skill may have been, he pos-
sessed in perfection two of the first requisites for a general, ac-
tivity and decision ; while in the King's councils he knew that
there would be conflicting opinions, vacillations, delay, and
imbecility. When therefore he came to Worcester, advantageous
as that position was to the enemy if they had known how to profit
by it, he marched directly on as to a prey; and not troubling
himself with the formality of a siege, ordered his troops to fall
on in all places at once. According to his own account, the loss
on his side did not exceed two hundred men; yet it was, he said,
“a stiff business,”—“ as stiff a contest for four or five hours as
ever he had seen.” The royal army was completely routed and
dispersed; and the victory was the more gratifying to Cromwell
on account of its being achieved on the anniversary of the battle
of Dunbar. In his letter to the Parliament he says, “the di-
mensions of this mercy are above my thoughts; it is, for aught
I know, a crowning mercy. I am bold humbly to beg that all
thoughts may tend to the promoting of His honour who hath
Wrought so great salvation; and that the fatness of these continued
mercies may not occasion pride and wantonness, as formerly the
like hath done to a chosen nation.”
The defeat of Charles at Worcester [3 Sept. 1651] is one of those
events which most strikingly exemplify how much better events
are disposed of by Providence than they would be if the direction
were left to the choice even of the best and the wisest men. Had
the victory been on the King's side, other battles must have been
fought; his final success could not have been attained without a
severe struggle; a second contest would have arisen among his
own friends, between the members of the Church and the Pres-
byterians, which might probably have kindled another civil war;
and the Puritans, and their descendants to this day, would have
insisted that if the Commonwealth had not been overthrown, the
continuance of that free and liberal government would richly have
repaid the country for all its sufferings. But by the battle of
Worcester, the Commonwealth’s men were left absolute masters
of the three kingdoms; they had full leisure to complete and
perfect their own structure of government: the experiment was
fairly tried ; there was nothing from without to disturb the pro-
70 LIFE OF CROMWELL,
cess; it went duly on from change to change, from one evil to
another; anarchy in its certain consequences leading to military
despotism ; that again, when the sword was no longer wielded by
a strong hand, giving place to anarchy; till the people, at length
weary of their sufferings and their insecurity, while knaves and
fanatics were contending for the mastery over them, restored the
monarchy with one consent.
When Cromwell called the battle of Worcester a crowning
mercy, he may have used that word in a double sense between
pun and prophecy; for certain it is that from this, time he
did not conceal the kingly thoughts and views which he enter-
tained. He would have knighted Lambert and Fleetwood upon
the field, if his friends had not dissuaded him ; and soon after-
wards, when Ireton’s death delivered him from the only person
whom he regarded with deference, he assembled certain mem-
bers of parliament, with some of the chief officers, at the Speaker’s
house, told them it was necessary to come to a settlement of the
nation, and delivered his own opinion in favour of a settlement with
somewhat of a monarchical power in it. The lawyers who were
present were in general for a mixed monarchy; and many were
for choosing the Duke of Gloucester king, who was still in their
hands, and was, as they said, too young to have borne arms
against them, or to be infected with the principles of their enemies.
The officers were as generally against monarchy, though every
one of them, says Whitelock, was a monarch in his regiment or
company. For the present, Cromwell was satisfied with having
felt his ground, and waited while the Long Parliament made
themselves more and more odious by the desire which they mani-
fested of perpetuating their own power, the war which they pro-
voked with the Dutch, and the severities which they exercised
by their abominable high court of justice, where tools of the
ruling party, who had no character to lose, acted at once as
judge and jury. The prisoners taken at Worcester were driven
like cattle to London; many of them perished there in confine-
ment for want of food, and the rest were sold to the plantations
for slaves by the despotic government which had risen upon the
ruins of the throne ! This act of abominable tyranny is men-
tioned by Baxter without any comment, and apparently without
the slightest feeling. But when he relates that Mr. Love, one of
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 71
the London ministers, was condemned and beheaded by the same
authority—then, indeed, Heaven and Earth are moved at such
an enormity “At the time of his execution, or very near it
on that day, there was the dreadfulest thunder, and lightning,
and tempest that was heard or seen for a long time before.
This blow sunk deeper towards the root of the new Common-
wealth than will easily be believed, and made them grow odious
to almost all the religious party in the land except the sectaries.
And there is, as Sir Walter Raleigh noteth of learned men, such
as Demosthenes, Cicero, &c., so much more in divines of famous
learning and piety, enough to put an everlasting odium upon
those whom they suffer by, though the cause of the sufferers
were not justifiable. Men count him a vile and detestable
creature, who in his passion, or for his interest, or any such low
account, shall deprive the world of such lights and ornaments,
and cut off so much excellency at a blow.—After this the most
of the ministers and good people of the land did look upon the
new Commonwealth as tyranny.”
The Long Parliament having made itself as much hated by the
Presbyterians as it was by the Royalists, was odious at the same
time to the army and the fanatics of both kinds, political and
religious. Cromwell stated their misconduct to Whitelock
strongly, and with none of that muddiness with which he fre-
quently chose to conceal or obscure his meaning. On this
occasion he spoke plainly : “Their pride,” he said, “and am-
bition and self-seeking, ingrossing all places of honour and profit
to themselves and their friends ; and their daily breaking forth
into new and violent parties and factions: their delays of busi-
ness, and design to perpetuate themselves and to continue their
power in their own hands; their meddling in private matters
between party and party, contrary to the institution of parlia-
ments, and their injustice and partiality in those matters, and the
Scandalous lives of some of the chief of them,-these things do
give too much ground for people to open their mouths against
them and to dislike them. Nor can they be kept within the
bounds of justice and law or reason, they themselves being the
supreme power of the nation, liable to no account to any, nor to
be controlled or regulated by any other power; there being
none superior or co-ordinate with them.” Whitelock confessed
72 LIFE OF UROMWELL.
the evil, but said it would be hard to find a remedy. “What,”
said Cromwell, “if a man should take upon him to be king?”
To this Whitelock replied that this remedy would be worse than
the disease; that being general he had less envy and less danger
than if he were called king, but not less power and real oppor-
tunities of doing good. And he represented to him that he
was environed with Secret enemies : that his own officers were
elated with success; “many of them,” said he, “are busy and of
turbulent spirits, and are not without their designs how they may
dismount your excellency, and some of themselves get up into the
saddle,_how they may bring you down and set up themselves.”
Cromwell would willingly have engaged Whitelock in his views;
but Whitelock was a cautious, temporising man, who generally
chose the safest part, and never incurred danger by resisting
what he could not prevent, or putting himself in the van when
he could remain with the main body. In speaking honestly to
Cromwell, he risked nothing; the feeling which his dissent ex-
cited was rather disappointment than displeasure, and he would
be esteemed more for his sincerity.”
His concurrence was of little moment. Cromwell could count
upon his faithful services when the thing was done, and he had
plenty of other agents who were ready to go through with any
thing. That memorable scene soon followed [20 April, 1653],
when Cromwell turned out the Parliament, and locked the doors of
the House of Commons. Whitelock says, that “all honest and
[* See the whole of this remarkable conversation in Whitelock, pp.
548—551, ed. 1732.
“Whitelock was a man who, taking at first, in honest conviction, what is
called the patriotic side, adhered to it when men as honest as himself, of far
higher intellectual powers, and greater moral courage, went over to the
King's party. He conformed to all changes during the course of the Rebel-
lion, not from any greedy or ambitious views, but because he hoped that every
change might be the last, and dreaded the danger of any attempt at restoring
that order of things which had been by violence subverted. The weight of
his respectable character was thus thrown into whatever scale preponderated.
But in all other respects he was so estimable a man—never injuring others,
and seeking only to secure, not to aggrandize, himself—that the Royalists re-
garded him with no asperity; they looked upon his conduct as proceeding
entirely from moral timidity, unmixed with any worse motive; and when he
appeared at Charles II.'s court, to make his excuses, the king, with that good-
nature which—though it was far from covering the multitude of his sins—
gave a grace to much that he did and to everything he said, bade him go
home and take care of his fourteen children.”.-SouTHEY, Letter to John
Murray, Esq., “touching” Lord Wugent, p. 31.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 73
prudent indifferent men were highly distasted at this; that the
royalists rejoiced; that divers fierce men, pastors of churches and
their congregations, were pleased,” as were the army in general,
officers as well as soldiers; and he illustrates the principles upon
which some of the officers were pleased with the change, by what
one of them said to a member of the ejected Parliament, whose son
was a captain, “that this business was nothing but to pull down
the father and set up the son, and no more but for the father to
wear worsted, and the son silk stockings,”—so sottish, says
Whitelock, were they in the apprehensions of their own risings lº
—but he has not thought proper to observe, how much more
sottish and less excusable were those persons who had set them
the example of pulling down authority. Some of the severest
republicans in the army served Cromwell in this his first act of
explicit despotism. Ludlow, who was in Ireland, had some dis-
trust; yet, he says that he and they who were with them thought
themselves obliged, by the rules of charity, to hope the best,
and, therefore, continued to act in their places and stations as
before. They had never exercised that rule of charity towards
Charles I.
The Lord General, such was his title now, called a meeting
of officers to deliberate concerning what should next be done.
Lambert was for entrusting the supreme power to a few persons,
not more than ten or twelve. Harrison would have preferred
seventy, being the number of which the Jewish Sanhedrim con-
sisted. The deliberation ended in summoningf to a parliament
a hundred and twenty-eight persons chosen by the Council of
Officers, from the three kingdoms. The members thus curiously
chosen, and notorious by the name of Praise-God Barebones’
Parliament, met accordingly [4 July, 1653], and were harangued
by Cromwell, who acknowledged the goodness of the Lord, in that
he then saw the day wherein the Saints began their rule in the
earth ! They began their business in a saintly manner, by “a day
of humiliation in which God did so draw forth the hearts of the
members both in speaking and prayer, that they did not find any
necessity to call for the help of any minister.” They were, indeed,
for dispensing with ministers as well as kings, looking upon the
|* Whitelock, p. 555, ed. 1732.]
[f 8th June, 1653. See a summons in Whitelock, p. 557.]
74 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
function as Anti-Christian, and upon tithes as absolute Judaism;
and the better to insure the abolition of that odious order, they
proposed to sell all the college lands, and apply the money in
aid of taxes. It had been intended that they should sit fifteen
months, and that, three months before their dissolution, they
should make choice of others to succeed them for a year, the three
kingdoms being then to be governed by Annual Parliaments,
each electing its successor. Five months, however, convinced
Cromwell that the only use to be made of them was, to make
them surrender their power into his hand, acknowledge their own
insufficiency, (which they might do with perfect truth,) and be-
seech him to take care of the commonwealth. The Council of
Officers were now again in possession of the supreme power;
and they declared that the government of the Commonwealth
should reside in the single person of Oliver Cromwell, with the
title of Lord Protector, and a council of one-and-twenty to
assist him.*
Constitutions were made in that age as easily as in this, and
the articles were not more durable then than they are now, though
wiser heads were employed in making them. The name, how-
ever, which Oliver chose for his piece of parchment was the
Instrument of Government. It was there ordained, that the
Protector should call a parliament once in every three years, and
not dissolve it till it had sat five months; that the bills which
were presented to him, if he did not confirm them within twenty
days, should become laws without his confirmation; and his
select council should not be more in number than twenty-one,
nor less than thirteen; that with their consent, he might make
laws which should be binding during the intervals of parliament;
that he should have power to make peace and war; that imme-
diately after his death, the council should choose another Pro-
tector, and that no Protector after him should be general of the
army. The first use which he made of his power was to make
peace with the Dutch and with Portugal, in both cases upon
terms honourable and advantageous to England; nor could any
measures have been more popular than these, which delivered the
[* He was installed Lord Protector 16th December, 1653, and proclaimed
the 19th. The Barebones' Parliament ended 12th December, 1653.]
[f See it at length in Whitelock, pp. 571—577, ed. 1732.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 75
nation in the first instance from an expensive and bloody contest,
and in the other, restored to it its most productive foreign trade.
France and Spain were emulously courting the friendship of the
fortunate usurper : Ireland and Scotland thoroughly subdued,
their governments united with that of England, by the right of
conquest, and both countries undergoing that process of civiliza-
tion which Cromwell, like the Romans, carried on by the sword.
When Charles I. was treating with the Scotch, before he put
himself into their hands, he said in a letter to the French agent,
whom they authorized to promise him protection, “Let them
never flatter themselves so with their good successes; without
pretending to prophecy, I will foretell their ruin, except they
agree with me, however it shall please God to dispose of me.”
They had reason to remember this when they were under Crom-
well’s government. His orders to Monk, whom he left to com-
plete the subjugation of the country, were, that if he found a
stubborn resistance at any place, he should give no quarter, and
allow free plunder ; orders which Monk observed with the
utmost rigour, and “made himself as terrible as man could be.”
“He subdued them,” says Clarendon, “to all imaginable tame-
ness, though he had exercised no other power over them than was
necessary to reduce that people to an entire submission to that
tyrannical yoke. In all his other carriage towards them, but
what was in order to that end, he was friendly and companionable
enough; and as he was feared by the nobility and hated by
the clergy, so he was not unloved by the common people,
who received more justice and less oppression from him, than
they had been accustomed to under their own lords.” A
more thorough conquest was never effected: everything was
changed, the whole frame of government new-modelled, the
Kirk subjected to the sole order and direction of the Com-
mander-in-Chief; the nobles stripped of their power; the very
priests famed and muzzled,—and all this was submitted to obe-
diently l—in reality, it had brought with it so much real benefit
to a barbarous people, that at the Restoration, Lord Clarendon
admits “it might well be a question, whether the generality of
the nation was not better contented with it than to return intº
the old road of subjection.”
[* Clar. Hist., vi. 494, ed. 1826."
76 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
A more rigorous system had been pursued in Ireland, a system.
severer than even the mode of Roman civilization. The utter
extirpation of the Irish had been intended ! but this was found
“to be in itself very difficult, and to carry in it somewhat of
horror, that made some impression upon the stone-hardness of
their own hearts.” The Act of Grace (so it was called !) for
which this purpose was commuted, was the most desperate
remedy that ever was applied to a desperate disease. All the
Irish who had survived the ravages of fire, sword, famine, and
pestilence, and who had not transported themselves, were com-
pelled, by a certain day, to retire within a certain part of the
province of Connaught, the most barren of the island, and at
that time almost desolate ; after that time, if man, woman, or
child, of that unhappy generation, were found beyond the limits,
they were to be killed like wild beasts; the land within that cir-
cuit was to be divided among them, and the rest of the island was
portioned out among the conquerors, who used the right of con-
quest with greater severity than Romans, Saxons, or Normans
had exercised in Britain. It is worthy of remark, that not a
voice was heard against this tremendous act of oppression, such
horror had the Irish massacre excited, and so irreclaimable, in
the judgment of all men, was the nature of the inhabitants: even
when new settlers established themselves there, “through what
virtues of the soil,” says Harrington, “ or vice of the air soever
it be, they came still to degenerate:” and of the descendants of
English colonists there, it was said in Elizabeth's time, that they
were Hööernis ipsis Hiberniores. . So little were their rights, or
even their existence, taken into the account, that Harrington
thought the best thing the Commonwealth could do with Ireland
was to farm it to the Jews for ever, for the pay of an army to
protect them during the first seven years, and two millions a
year from that time forward —What was to be done with
the Irish, whether they were to be made hewers of wood and
drawers of water, or to become Jews by compulsion, he has not
explained. For the sufferings of the Irish, however, Cromwell
is not responsible; and under the order which he established, if
it had continued for another generation, the island would have
been in a better state than any which its authentic history has
yet recorded : for there, as in Scotland, a more equitable ad-
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 77
ministration was introduced than that which had been de-
stroyed.
While the Protector was feared and respected by foreign
powers, and obeyed submissively, if not willingly, in Ireland and
the sister kingdom, his state at home was full of uneasiness and
danger. Though orders were given, when he summoned his
first parliament, that no persons should be chosen who had borne
arms on the King’s part, nor the Sons of any such, and though
care was taken to return such members as were believed to be
the best affected to his government, yet in the first debate his
authority was questioned; and one member declared that, “for his
own part, as God had made him instrumental in cutting down
tyranny in one person, so now he could not endure to see the
nation’s liberties shackled by another, whose right to the govern-
ment could not be measured otherwise than by the length of his
sword, which alone had emboldened him to command his com-
manders.” He attempted to curb this spirit, by excluding all
who would not subscribe an engagement to be true and faithful
to the Lord Protector; yet they who took the engagement were
found so impracticable for his purposes, that, taking advantage
of the letter of his Instrument, he dissolved them at the end of
five lunar months.
Cromwell was now paying the bitter price of successful ambi-
tion. His good sense and his good nature would have led him
to govern equitably and mercifully, to promote literature, to
cherish the arts, and to pour wine and oil into the wounds of
the nation. But as, in the language of the schools, who absurdo
dato, sequwntur millia, so in politics and in morals, are error
and guilt fearfully prolific : the disease of the root taints the
remotest branches. Having attained to power by sinister means,
Cromwell, in spite of himself, was compelled to govern tyran-
nically ; he was equally in danger from the royalists, the greater
though inactive part of the nation, among whom indignant spirits
were continually at work, and from the levellers, by whose in-
strumentality he had raised himself to his insecure and miserable
elevation. He could not rely even upon the officers of that army
by which alone he was supported; and he had so little confidence
in the soldiers, that he once intended to bring over a Swiss regi-
ment as a guard for his own person, and had sent an agent
78 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
to take measures for raising it; but having perceived how un-
popular such a manifestation of his fears would be, and how
dangerous, he was deterred from his purpose. His best security
was in the irreconcileable difference between the royalists and the
famatics, the latter willingly aiding him to oppress the former,
of whom he stood most in fear. It was confidently affirmed, that
the proposal for massacring the whole royal party was more
than once brought forward in his Council of Officers, as the only
expedient to secure the Government; but Cromwell, who was
neither devil enough to commit the crime, nor fool enough to
destroy the balance by which he was preserved, never would
consent. The royalists, in other respects, had little reason to
praise his moderation. After all the plunder and exactions
which they had suffered, and the compositions which they had
paid for their own estates, Cromwell now, by his own authority
and that of his council, issued an order for decimating their
estates, that is, that they should pay a tenth, not of the income,
but of the value of the property; and a declaration accompanied
this order, that, because of their inherent malignity, they must
not wonder if they were looked upon as a common enemy ; and
that they “must not expect to be prosecuted like other men, by
the ordinary forms of justice, and to have the crimes proved by
witnesses, before they should be concluded to be guilty.” If the
loyal part of the people had at first lent the King the fifth part
of what, after infinite losses, they were compelled to sacrifice to
his enemies at last, Lord Clarendon says, that Charles would
have been enabled to preserve them and himself. “The Lord
deliver us,” says Laud, “from covetous and fearful men The
covetous will betray us for money, the fearful for security.” He
did not live to see how the persons, who acted under the influ-
ence of these base passions, brought upon themselves worse evils
than could have befallen them in the manly discharge of their
duties.
The better to exact this forced payment, and with a view, also,
towards embodying a sort of national army, which might be
employed in case of need to balance or repress the troops, whose
fidelity he distrusted, he divided England into twelve cantons,
each of which was placed under the absolute power of a major-
general. These Bashaws, as Ludlow calls them, were to levy.
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 79
all imposts, sequester those who did not pay the decimation, and
commit to prison any persons whom they suspected ; and there
was no appeal from any of their acts, but to the Protector. In
each canton he raised a body of horse and foot, who were only
to be called out in cases of necessity, and then to serve a certain
number of days at their own charge; if they served longer, they
were to receive the same pay as the army, but they were to be
under the major-general of their respective canton. A certain
salary was allowed them, that of a horseman being eight pounds
a year. But the advantage which he might have derived from
this kind of yeomanry force (that of all other which may most
reasonably be depended upon for the preservation of order),
brought with it a new danger from the power of the majors-
general; and Cromwell removed these Bashaws in time, without
difficulty, because they had made themselves odious to the
nation.
He called his next parliament” with more confidence, because
the war in which he had engaged against Spain had made him
master of Jamaica, and two treasure-ships, with a frightful de-
struction of the Spaniards, had been taken. The treasure was
brought in waggons from Portsmouth to London, and paraded
through the city to the Tower. Most of the members took the
test which he required; they passed an act binding all men to
renounce Charles Stuart and his family; they declared it high
treason to attempt the life of the Protector, and granted him
larger supplies than had ever before been raised, one of the im-
posts being a full year's rent upon all houses which had been
erected in and about London, from before the beginning of the
troubles. Finally, they offered him the title of king, which was
the great object of his ambition. The republicans, from whom
he expected most danger, had been carefully excluded by ma-
nagement in the elections, or by the test. Vane and Harrison
were in confinement, for Cromwell feared the craft of the former,
and the enthusiasm of the latter, which placed him above all
means of corruption or intimidation. Yet there was more oppo-
sition than he had anticipated; and one member applied to him
in the House, the words of the prophet to Ahab, “Hast thou
killed and also taken possession ?” Tambert, who had hitherto
[* 3rd September, 1654, dissolved 31st January, 1654-5.]
80 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
forwarded all the views of Oliver, because he expected to be the
next Protector himself, being the second man in the army, de-
clared against a proposal which would have been fatal to his
ambition : and there were members bold enough to say, that if
they must submit to the old government, they would much
rather choose to obey the true and lawful heir of a long line of
kings, than one who was but at best their equal, and had raised
himself by the trust which they had reposed in him. Upon such
opposition Cromwell would have trampled, if he had found
support in his own family and nearest connexions. But his sons
were without ambition. Richard, the eldest, indeed was believed
to be at heart a royalist; Desborough, who had married his
sister, and Fleetwood, who was his son-in-law (having married
Ireton's widow), with a stupid obstimacy objected to his assuming
the name of king, though they had no objection to his exercising
a more absolute authority than any King of England had ever
possessed. Colonel Pride, who had purged the parliament to
make him what he was, procured a petition from the majority of
the officers then about London, against his taking the title; and
information, to which he gave full credit, was conveyed to him,
that a number of men had bound themselves by oath to kill him,
within so many hours after he should accept it. Under these
disheartening circumstances, after a long and painful struggle
with himself, and some curious discussions with the deputation of
members, who were sent to urge his acceptance, he concluded by
refusing it upon the plea of conscience.*
In thus yielding to men of weaker minds than his own, Crom-
well committed the same error which had been fatal to Charles.
The boldest course would have been the safest; the wisest friends
of the royal family were of opinion, that if he had made himself
king de facto, and restored all things in other respects, to the
former Order, no other measure would have been so injurious to
the royal cause. Everything except the name was given him ;
the power of appointing his successor in the protectorship was
now conferred upon him by parliament, and the ceremony of
investiture was performed for the second time, and with a pomp
[* 8th May, 1657. On the 16th December, 1653, he was installed Lord
Protector, and on the 26th June, 1657, inaugurated Lord Protector.
(Whitelock, p. 571 and p. 662, ed. 1732.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL, 81
which no coronation had exceeded. The Speaker presented him
with a robe of purple velvet, a mixed colour, to show the mixture
of justice and mercy, which he was to observe in his administra-
tion; the Bible, ‘‘the book of books, in which the orator told
him he had the happiness to be well versed, and which contained
both precepts and examples for good government;” a sceptre,
not unlike a staff, for he was to be a staff to the weak and poor;
and lastly, a sword, not to defend himself alone, but his people
also: “If,” said the Speaker, “I might presume to fix a motto
upon this sword, as the valiant Lord Talbot had upon his, it should
be this: Ego sum Domini Protectoris, ad protegendum populum
meum, I am the Lord Protector's, to protect my people.”
So great was the reputation which Cromwell obtained abroad
by his prodigious elevation, the lofty tone of his government, and
the vigour of his arms, that an Asiatic Jew is said to have come
to England for the purpose of investigating his pedigree, think-
ing to discover in him the Lion of the tribe of Judah Some of
his own most faithful adherents regarded him with little less vene-
ration. Their warm attachment, and the more doubtful devotion
of a set of enthusiastic preachers, drugged the atmosphere in
which he breathed; and yet, while his bodily health continued,
the natural strength of his understanding prevailed over this
deleterious influence, and he saw things calmly, clearly, and
sorrowfully as they were. Shakspeare himself has not imagined
a more dramatic situation than that in which Cromwell stood.
He had attained to the possession of sovereign power, by means
little less guilty than Macbeth, but the process had neither
hardened his heart, nor made him desperate in guilt. His mind
had expanded with his fortune. As he advanced in his career,
he gradually discovered how mistaken he had been in the prin-
ciples upon which he had set out; and, after having effected the
overthrow of the church, the nobles, and the throne, he became
convinced, by what experience (the surest of all teachers) had
shown him, that episcopacy, nobility, and monarchy were insti-
tutions good in themselves, and necessary for this nation in
which they had so long been established. Fain would he have
repaired the evil which he had done; fain would he have restored
the monarchy, created a House of Peers, and re-established the
Episcopal church. But he was thwarted and overruled by the
G.
82 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
very instruments which he had hitherto used ; men whom he
had formerly possessed with his own passionate errors, and whom
he was not able to dispossess: persons incapable of deriving
wisdom from experience, and so short-sighted as not to see that
their own lives and fortunes depended upon the establishment of
his power by the only means which could render it stable and
secure. Standing in fear of them, he dared not take the crown
himself; and he could not confer it upon the rightful heir :-by
the murder of Charles, he had incapacitated himself from making
that reparation which would otherwise have been in his power.
His wife, who was not elated with prosperity, advised him to
make terms with the exiled king, and restore him to the throne;
his melancholy answer was, “ Charles Stuart can never forgive me
his father's death; and if he could, he is unworthy of the crown.”
He answered to the same effect, when the same thing was twice
proposed to him, with the condition that Charles should marry
one of his daughters. What would not Cromwell have given,
whether he looked to this world or the next, if his hands had
been clear of the king's blood
Such was the state of Cromwell’s mind during the latter
years of his life, when he was lord of these three kingdoms, and
indisputably the most powerful potentate in Europe, and as cer-
tainly the greatest man of an age in which the race of great
men was not extinct in any country. No man was so worthy
of the station which he filled, had it not been for the means
by which he reached it. He would have governed constitu-
tionally, mildly, mercifully, liberally, if he could have followed
the impulses of his own heart, and the wishes of his better
mind ; self-preservation compelled him to a severe and sus-
picious system : he was reduced at last to govern without a
Parliament, because, pack them and purge them as he might,
all that he summoned proved unmanageable; and because he
was an usurper, he became of necessity a despot. The very
Saints, in whose eyes he had been so precious, now called him an
“ ugly tyrant,” and engaged against him in more desperate plots
than were formed by the royalists. He lived in perpetual dan-
ger and in perpetual fear. When he went abroad he was sur-
rounded by his guards. It was never known which way he was
going till he was in the coach ; he seldom returned by the same
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 83
way he went ; he wore armour under his clothes, and hardly
ever slept two nights successively in one chamber. The latter
days of Charles, while he looked on to the scaffold, and endured
the insolence of Bradshaw and the inhuman aspersions of Cook.
were enviable when compared to the close of Cromwell’s life.
Charles had that peace within which passeth all understanding ;
the one great sin which he had committed in sacrificing Strafford
had been to him a perpetual cause of sorrow and shame and
repentance; he received his own death as a just punishment for
that sin under the dispensations of a righteous and unerring Pro-
vidence; and feeling that it had been expiated, when he bowed
his head upon the block, it was in full reliance upon the justice
of posterity, and with a sure and certain trust in the mercy of
his God. Cromwell had doubts of both. Ludlow tells us, that
at his death “he seemed, above all, concerned for the reproaches,
he said, men would cast upon his name, in trampling on his ashes
when dead l’ And the last same feeling of religion which he
expressed implied a like misgiving, concerning his condition in
the world on which he was about to enter—it was a question to
one of his fanatical preachers,” “if the doctrine were true, that
the elect could never finally fall?” Upon receiving a reply,
that nothing could be more certain, “Then am I safe,” he said,
“for I am sure that once I was in a state of grace.” The
spiritual drams which were then administered to him in strong.
doses, acted powerfully upon a mind debilitated by long disease,
and disposed by the nature of that disease to delirium. He
assured his physicians, as the presumptuous fanatics by whom he
was surrounded assured him, that he should not die, whatever
they might think from the symptoms of his disorder, for God
was far above nature, and God had promised his recovery.
Thanks were publicly given for the undoubted pledges of his
recovery, which God had vouchsafed and some of his last words
were those of a mediator rather than a sinner, praying for the
people, as if his own merits entitled him to be an intercessor.
Even his death did not dissipate the delusion. When that news
was brought to those who were met together to pray for him,
“Mr. Sterry stood up and desired them not to be troubled : for,”
said he, “this is good news because, if he was of great use to
[* John Goodwin.]
G 2
84 LIFE OF CROMWELL.
the people of God when he was amongst us, now he will be much
more so, being ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of
Jesus Christ, there to intercede for us, and to be mindful of us
on all occasions !”
The life of this most fortunate and least flagitious of usurpers
might hold out a salutary lesson for men possessed with a like
ambition, if such men were capable of learning good as well as
evil lessons from the experience of others. He gained three king-
doms; the price which he paid for them was innocence and
peace of mind. He left an imperishable name, so stained with
reproach, that notwithstanding the redeeming virtues which
adorned him, it were better for him to be forgotten than to be so
remembered. And in the world to come, but it is not for
us to anticipate the judgments, still less to limit the mercy, of
the All-merciful.
Let us repeat, that there is no portion of history in which it
so much behoves an Englishman to be thoroughly versed as in
that of Cromwell’s age. There it may be seen to what desperate
lengths men of good hearts and laudable intentions may be drawn
by faction. There may be seen the rise, and the progress, and
the consequences of rebellion. There are to be found the high-
est examples of true patriotism, sound principles, and heroic
virtue, with some alloy of haughtiness in Strafford, of human
.infirmities in Laud, pure and unsullied in Falkland, and Capel,
and Newcastle, and in Clarendon, the wisest and the best of
English statesmen, the most authentic, the most candid, the
most instructive of English historians. From the history of that
age, and more especially from that excellent writer, the young
and ingenuous may derive and confirm a just, and generous, and
ennobling love for the institutions of their country, founded
upon the best feelings and surest principles; and the good and
the thoughtful of all ages will feel in the perusal, with what
reason that petition is inserted in the Litany, wherein we pray
[* Cromwell died in a whirlwind on the 3rd September, 1658. On the 23rd
November he was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel with more than regal
solemnity. At the Restoration his body was taken up and hung at Tyburn.
Forty years afterwards Dryden alludes to the storm in which the Protector
died, in a letter to his cousin, Mrs. Steward. Many of the large trees in
St. James's Park were torn up by the roots.
He was taken ill at Hampton Court, and died at Whitehall.]
LIFE OF CROMWELL. 85
the Lord to deliver us “from all sedition, privy conspiracy and
rebellion : from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism: from
hardness of heart and contempt of his word and command-
ments,”—sins which draw after them, in certain and inevitable
consequence, the heaviest of all chastisements upon a guilty
nation.*
[* After the murder of the king change followed change, but no change
brought stability to the state, or repose to the nation, not even when the
supreme and absolute authority was usurped by a man who of all others was
the most worthy to have exercised it, had it lawfully devolved upon him.
Cromwell relieved the country from Presbyterian intolerance; and he curbed
those famatics who were for proclaiming King Jesus, that, as his saints, they
might divide the land amongst themselves. But it required all his strength
to do this, and to keep down the spirit of political and religious fanaticism,
when his own mind by its own strength had shaken off both diseases. He
then saw and understood the beauty, and the utility, and the necessity of those
establishments, civil and ecclesiastical, over the ruins of which he had made
his way to power; and gladly would he have restored the Monarchy and the
Episcopal Church. But he was deterred from the only practicable course
less by the danger of the attempt than by the guilty part which he had borne
in the king's fate; and at the time when Europe regarded him with
terror and admiration as the ablest and most powerful potentate of the age,
he was paying the bitter penalty of successful ambition, consumed by cares
and anxieties, and secret fears, and only preserved from all the horrors of
remorse by the spiritual drams which were administered to him as long as
he had life.—SouTHEY, Book of the Church, ed. 1841, p. 509.]
THE END OF THE LIFE OF CRO, MW EH. L.
( 87 )
LIFE OF JOHN BUNY AN.
(89 )
LIFE OF JOHN BUNY AN.
O thou, whom, borne on fancy’s eager wing
Back to the season of life’s happy spring,
I pleased remember, and while memory yet
Holds fast her office here, can ne'er forget;
Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail; -
Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style,
May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
Witty, and well-employed, and, like thy Lord,
Speaking in parables his slighted word;
I name thee not, lest so despised a name
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame;
Yet een in transitory life's late day,
That mingles all my brown with sober gray,
Revere the man, whose PILGRIM marks the road,
And guides the PROGRESS of the soul to God. CowPER.
WHEN Cowper composed his Satires, he hid the name of
Whitefield “beneath well-sounding Greek;” and abstained from
mentioning Bunyan while he panegyrized him, “lest so despised
a name should move a sneer.” In Bunyan’s case this could hardly
have been needful forty years ago; for though a just apprecia-
tion of our elder and better writers was at that time far less
general than it appears to be at present, the author of the Pil-
grim’s Progress was even then in high repute. His fame may
literally be said to have risen ; beginning among the people, it
had made its way up to those who are called the public. In most
instances, the many receive gradually and slowly the opinions of
the few, respecting literary merit; and sometimes, in assentation
to such authority, profess with their lips an admiration of they
know not what, they know not why. But here the opinion of
the multitude had been ratified by the judicious. The people
knew what they admired. It is a book which makes its way
through the fancy to the understanding and the heart: the child
peruses it with wonder and delight; in youth we discover the
{* Leuconomus (beneath well-sounding Greek
I slur a name a poet must not speak). CowPER, “Hope.’]
90 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
genius which it displays; its worth is apprehended as we advance
in years; and we perceive its merits feelingly in declining age.
John Bunyan has faithfully recorded his own spiritual history.*
Had he dreamed of being “for ever known,” and taking his
place among those who may be called the immortals of the earth,
he would probably have introduced more details of his temporal
circumstances and the events of his life. But glorious dreamer
as he was, this never entered into his imaginations: less con-
cerning him than might have been expected has been preserved
by those of his own sect, and it is now not likely that any thing
more should be recovered from oblivion. The village of Elstow,
[Elstow Church and Belfry.]
which is within a mile of Bedford, was his birth-place, 1628 the
year of his birth; and his descent, to use his own words, “ of a
low, inconsiderable generation; my father's house,” he says,
“being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the
families in the land.” It is stated, in a history of Bedfordshire,
that he was bred to the business of a brazier, and worked as a
journeyman in Bedford: but the Braziers’ Company would not
[* * Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners,” printed in his Works, 2 vols.
*
fol. 1736, and 2 vols. fol. 1767.]

LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 91
deem itself more honoured now if it could show the name of
John Bunyan upon its rolls, than it would have felt disparaged
then by any such fellowship; for he was, as his own statement
implies, of a generation of Tinkers, born and bred to that calling
as his father had been before him. Wherefore this should have
been so mean and despised a calling is not however apparent,
when it was not followed as a vagabond employment ;” but, as
in this case, exercised by one who had a settled habitation, and
who, mean as his condition was, was nevertheless able to put his
son to school in an age when very few of the poor were taught
to read and write. The boy learnt both, “according to the rate
of other poor men's children,” but soon lost what little he had
been taught, “even,” he says, “almost utterly.”
Some pains, also, it may be presumed, his parents took in im-
pressing him with a sense of his religious duties; otherwise,
when in his boyhood he became a proficient in cursing and
swearing above his fellows, he would not have been visited by
such dreams and such compunctious feelings as he has described.
“Often,” he says, “after I had spent this and the other day in
sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with
the apprehensions of Devils and wicked Spirits, who still, as I
then thought, laboured to draw me away with them.” His
waking reflections were not less terrible than these fearful visions
of the night: and these, he says, “when I was but a child, but
nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that then in the
midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain
companions, I was often much cast down, and afflicted in my
mind therewith : yet could I not let go my sins. Yea, I was
also then so overcome with despair of life and Heaven, that I
[* Workers in brass, or, in common parlance, tinkers, whose profession
bore to that of a brazier the same relation which the cobbler's does to the
shoemaker's. It was not followed, however, by Bunyan’s father as an itine-
rant calling, which leads Mr. Southey to wonder why it should have come to
be esteemed so mean. We believe the reason to be that the tinkers’ craft is,
in Great Britain, commonly practised by gypsies; and we surmise the pro-
bability that Bunyan's own family, though reclaimed and settled, might
have sprung from this caste of vagabonds: that they were not, at all events,
originally English, would seem the most natural explanation of young
John’s asking his father, whether he was not of Jewish extraction ? (expect-
ing thereby to found on the promises made in the Old Testament to the seed
of Abraham.)—SIR WALTER Scott, Quart. Rev., vol. xliii. p. 470. (Southey's
Life of Bunyan.) I
92 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
should often wish, either that there had been no Hell, or that I
had been a devil, supposing they were only tormentors; that if
it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a tor-
mentor than be tormented myself.”
These feelings, when he approached towards manhood, re-
curred, as might be expected, less frequently and with less force;
but though he represents himself as having been what he calls a
town-sinner, he was never so given over to a reprobate mind
as to be wholly free from them. For though he became so far
hardened in profligacy, that he could “take pleasure in the vile-
ness of his companions,” yet the sense of right and wrong was
not extinguished in him, and it shocked him if at any time he
saw those who pretended to be religious act in a manner unworthy
of their profession. Some providential escapes, during this part
of his life, he looked back upon afterwards as so many judgments
mixed with mercy. Once he fell into a creek of the sea, once
Out of a boat into the river Ouse near Bedford, and each time
was narrowly saved from drowning. One day an adder crossed
his path ; he stunned it with a stick, then forced open its mouth
with a stick, and plucked out the tongue, which he supposed to
be the sting, with his fingers; “by which act,” he says, “had
not God been merciful unto me, I might by my desperateness
have brought myself to my end.” If this indeed were an adder,
and not a harmless snake, his escape from the fangs was more
remarkable than he was himself aware of. A circumstance
which was likely to impress him more deeply occurred in the
eighteenth year of his age, when, being a soldier in the Parlia-
ment’s army, he was drawn out to go to the siege of Leicester:”
one of the same company wished to go in his stead ; Bunyan
consented to exchange with him ; and this volunteer substitute,
standing sentinel one day at the siege, was shot through the head
with a musket ball. -
Some serious thoughts this would have awakened in a harder
heart than Bunyan's ; but his heart never was hardened. The
self-accusations of such a man are to be received with some dis-
trust, not of his sincerity, but of his sober judgment. It should
seem that he ran headlong into the boisterous vices which prove
[* Leicester was surrendered to Fairfax on the 17th of June, 1645.
|Whitelock, ed. 1732, p. 152.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 93
fatal to so many of the ignorant and the brutal, for want of that
necessary and wholesome restrictive discipline which it is the
duty of a government to provide; but he was not led into those
habitual sins which infix a deeper stain. “Had not a miracle
of precious grace prevented, I had laid myself open,” he says,
“even to the stroke of those laws which bring some to disgrace
and open shame before the face of the world.” That grace he
had ;-he was no drunkard, for if he had been, he would loudly
have proclaimed it: and on another point we have his own
solemn declaration, in one of the most characteristic passages
in his whole works, where he replies to those who slandered
him as leading a licentious life with women. “I call on them,”
he says, “when they have used to the utmost of their endeavours,
and made the fullest inquiry that they can, to prove against me
truly, that there is any woman in Heaven or Earth or Hell, that
can say I have at any time, in any place, by day or night, so
much as attempted to be naught with them. And speak I thus
to beg mine enemies into a good esteem of me? No, not Iſ I
will in this beg belief of no man. Believe or disbelieve me in
this, *t is all a-case to me. My foes have missed their mark in
this their shooting at me. I am not the man. I wish that they
themselves be guiltless. If all the fornicators and adulterers
in England were hanged up by the neck till they be dead, John
Bunyan, the object of their envy, would be still alive and well.
I know not whether there be such a thing as a woman breathing
under the copes of Heaven, but by their apparel, their children,
or by common fame, except my wife.” And, “for a wind up
in this matter,” calling again not only upon men, but angels, to
prove him guilty if he be, and upon God for a record upon his
soul that in these things he was innocent, he says, “Not that I
have been thus kept because of any goodness in me more than
any other, but God has been merciful to me, and has kept me.”
Bunyan married presently after his substitute had been killed
at the siege of Leicester, probably therefore before he was nine-
teen.” This he might have counted among his mercies, as he
has counted it that he was led “to light upon a wife” whose
father, as she often told him, was a godly man, who had been
[* Her maiden name is unknown. She was dead before the period of
Bunyan’s long imprisonment.] -
94. LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
used to reprove vice both in his own house and among his neigh-
bours, and had lived a strict and holy life both in word and deed.
There was no imprudence in this early marriage, though they
“came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much
household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt them both ;” for Bun-
yan had a trade to which he could trust, and the young woman
had been trained up in the way she should go. She brought him
for her portion two books which her father had left her at his
death : “The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven” was one: the
other was Bayly, Bishop of Bangor's “Practice of Piety,” which
has been translated into Welsh (the author's native tongue),
into Hungarian, and into Polish, and of which more than fifty
editions were published in the course of a hundred years. These
books he sometimes read with her; and though they did not, he
says, reach his heart to awaken it, yet they did beget within him
some desires to reform his vicious life, and made him fall in
eagerly with the religion of the times, go to church twice a-day
with the foremost, and there very devoutly say and sing as others
did ;—yet, according to his own account, retaining his wicked life.
- At this time Bunyan describes himself as having a most super-
stitious veneration for “the high place, Priest, Clerk, vestment,
service, and what else belonging to the Church,” counting the
Priest and Clerk most happy and without doubt blessed, because
they were, as he then thought, the servants of God; yea, he
could “ have laid down at the feet of a Priest, and have been
trampled upon by them, their name, their garb and work, did so
intoxicate and bewitch” him. The service, it must be remem-
bered, of which he speaks, was not the Liturgy of the Church of
England (which might not then be used even in any private
family without subjecting them to the penalty of five pounds for
the first offence, ten for the second, and a year's imprisonment
for the third), but what the meagre Directory of the victorious
Puritans had substituted for it, in which only the order of the
service was prescribed, and all elše left to the discretion of the
minister. The first doubt which he felt in this stage of his pro-
gress, concerning his own prospect of salvation, was of a curious
kind : hearing the Israelites called the peculiar people of God,
it occurred to him that if he were one of that race, his soul must
needs be safe; having a great longing to be resolved about
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 95
this question, he asked his father at last, and the old tinker as-
suring him that he was not, put an end to his hopes on that score.
One day the minister preached against Sabbath-breaking; and
Bunyan, who used especially to follow his sports on Sundays, fell
in conscience under that sermon, verily believing it was intended
for him, and feeling what guilt was, which he could not remem-
ber that he had ever felt before. Home he went with a great
burden upon his spirit; but dinner removed that burden; his
animal spirits recovered from their depression; he shook the
sermon out of his mind, and away he went with great delight to
his old sports. The Puritans, notwithstanding the outcry which
they had raised against what is called the Book of Sports, found
it necessary to tolerate such recreations on the Sabbath ; but it
is more remarkable to find a married man engaged in games
which are now only practised by boys. Dinner had for a time
prevailed over that morning's sermon ; but it was only for a
time; the dinner sat easy upon him, the sermon did not ; and
in the midst of a game of cat, as he was about to strike the cat
from the hole, it seemed to him as if a voice from Heaven
suddenly darted into his soul and said, Wilt thou leave thy sins
and go to Heaven? or have thy sins, and go to Hell? “At
this,” he continues, “I was put to an exceeding maze; where-
fore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven,
and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding seen
the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly
displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me
with some grievous punishment for these and other ungodly
practices.”
The voice he believed was from Heaven; and it may be in-
ferred from his relation, that though he was sensible the vision
was only seen with the mind’s eye, he deemed it not the less real.
The effect was to fasten upon his spirit a sudden and dreadful
conclusion that it was too late for him to turn away from his
wickedness, for Christ would not forgive him : he felt his heart
sinkin despair, and this insane reasoning passed in his mind: “My
state is surely miserable; miserable if I leave my sins, and but
miserable if I follow them. I can but be damned ; and if I must
be so, I had as good be damned for many sins as be damned for
few.” Thus, he says, “I stood in the midst of my play, before
96 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
all that were present, but yet I told them nothing; but having
made this conclusion, I returned desperately to my sport again.
And I well remember, that presently this kind of despair did so
possess my soul, that I was persuaded I could never attain to
other comfort than what I should get in sin; for Heaven was
gone already, so that on that I must not think. Wherefore I
found within me great desire to take my fill of sin, still studying
what sin was yet to be committed, that I might taste the sweet-
Iness of it, lest I should die before I had my desires. In these
things I protest before God I lie not ; neither do I frame this
sort of speech : these were really, strongly, and with all my heart,
my desires. The good Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, for-
give me my transgressions !” r
When thus faithfully describing the state of his feelings at
that time, Bunyan was not conscious that he exaggerated the
character of his offences. Yet in another part of his writings he
qualifies those offences more truly, where he speaks of himself as
having been addicted to “all manner of youthful vanities:” and
this relation itself is accompanied with a remark, that it is a
usual temptation of the Devil “to overrun the spirits with a
scurvy and seared frame of heart and benumbing of conscience;”
So that though there be not much guilt attending the poor crea-
tures who are thus tempted, “yet they continually have a secret
conclusion within them, that there is no hope for them.” This
state lasted with him little more than a month ; it then happened
that as he stood at a neighbour's shop window, “cursing, and
swearing, and playing the madman,” after his wonted manner,
the woman of the house heard him ; and though she was (he
says) a very loose and ungodly wretch, she told him that he
made her tremble to hear him ; “that he was the ungodliest fellow
for swearing that ever she heard in all her life; and that by thus
doing he was able to spoil all the youth in the whole town, if
they came but in his company.” The reproof came with more
effect than if it had come from a better person; it silenced him,
and put him to secret shame, and that too, as he thought, “ before
the God of Heaven; wherefore,” he says, “while I stood there,
and hanging down my head, I wished with all my heart that I
might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to
speak without this wicked way of swearing ; for, thought I, I
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 97
am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain for me to think of a
reformation.” From that hour, however, the reformation of
this, the only actual sin to which he was addicted, began. Even
to his own wonder it took place; and he who till then had not
known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another
behind, to make his words have authority, discovered that he
could speak better and more pleasantly without such expletives
than he had ever done before.
Soon afterwards he fell in company with a poor man, who
talked to him concerning religion and the Scriptures in a manner
which took his attention, and sent him to his Bible. He began
to take great pleasure in reading it, especially the historical
parts; the Epistles he says he “could not away with, being as
yet ignorant both of the corruption of our nature, and of the
want and worth of Christ to save us.” And this produced such
a change in his whole deportment, that his neighbours took him
to be a new man, and were amazed at his conversion from pro-
digious profaneness to a moral and religious life. They began
to speak well of him, both to his face and behind his back, and
he was well pleased at having obtained and, as he thought, de-
served their good opinion. And yet, he says, “I was nothing
but a poor painted hypocrite,_I did all I did either to be seen
of, or to be well spoken of, by men.—I knew not Christ, nor
Grace, nor Faith, nor Hope; and, as I have well seen since, had
I then died, my state had been most fearful.”
Bunyan had formerly taken great delight in bell-ringing; but
now that his conscience “began to be tender,” he thought it
“a vain practice,” in other words, a sin; yet he so hankered
after this his old exercise, that though he durst not pull a rope
himself, he would go and look at the ringers, not without a secret
feeling that to do so was unbecoming the religious character
which he now professed. A fear came upon him that one of the
bells might fall: to secure himself against such an accident, he
stood under a beam that lay athwart the steeple, from side to
side; but his apprehensions being once awakened, he then con-
sidered that the bell might fall with a swing, hit the wall first,
rebound, and so strike him in its descent. Upon this he retired
to the steeple-door, thinking himself safe enough there; for if
the bell should fall, he could slip out. Farther than the door
H
98 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
he did not venture, nor did he long continue to think himself
secure there; for the next fancy which possessed him was that
the steeple itself might fall ; and this so possessed him and so
shook his mind that he dared not stand at the door longer, but
fled for fear the tower should come down upon him, to such a
state of nervous weakness had a diseased feeling brought his
strong body and strong mind.—The last amusement from which
he weaned himself was that of dancing; it was a full year before
he could quite leave that: but in so doing, and in anything in
which he thought he was performing his duty, he had such peace
of mind, such satisfaction, that—“to relate it,” he says, “ in
mine own way, I thought no man in England could please
God better than J.-Poor wretch as I was, I was all this while
ignorant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my own
righteousness, and had perished therein, had not God in mercy
showed me more of my state by nature.”
Mr. Scott, in the Life of Bunyan prefixed to his edition of the
Pilgrim’s Progress, says it is not advisable to recapitulate those
impressions which constitute a large part of his religious experi-
ence. But Bunyan's character would be imperfectly understood,
and could not be justly appreciated, if this part of his history
were kept out of sight. To respect him as he deserves, to ad-
mire him as he ought to be admired, it is necessary that we should
be informed not only of the coarseness and brutality of his youth,
but of the extreme ignorance out of which he worked his way,
and the stage of burning enthusiasm through which he passed,
a passage not less terrible than that of his own Pilgrim in the
Valley of the Shadow of Death.* His ignorance, like the brutal
manners from which he had now been reclaimed, was the conse-
quence of his low station in life; but the enthusiasm which then
succeeded, was brought on by the circumstances of an age in
[* We are much of the opinion thus forcibly expressed. The history of a
man so distinguished by natural talents as Bunyan is connected with that of
his age, nor can we so well conceive the dangers of fanaticism, as when we
behold the struggles of so pure and so powerful a spirit involved in its toils.
It may be easily supposed that of those around him there were many who
fell into the same temptations, and struggled with them in vain; and that in
not a few instances the doctrine which summoned all men to the exercise of
the private judgment, as it was called, led the way to the wildest, most blas-
phemous, and most fatal excesses. Don Quixote’s Balsam was not a more
perilous medicine.—SIR WALTER SCOTT, Quar. Rev. vol. xliii. p. 475.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 99
which hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant through-
out the land. “We intended not,” says Baxter, “to dig down
the banks, or pull up the hedge and lay all waste and common,
when we desired the prelate's tyranny might cease.” No ; for
the intention had been under the pretext of abating one tyranny,
to establish a far severer and more galling in its stead : in
doing this, the banks had been thrown down, and the hedge
destroyed; and while the bestial herd who broke in rejoiced in
the havock, Baxter and other such erring though good men
stood marvelling at the mischief which never could have been
effected if they had not mainly assisted in it. The wildest
opinions of every kind were abroad, “ divers and strange doc-
trines” with every wind of which, men having no longer an anchor
whereby to hold were carried about and tossed to and fro.
They passed with equal facility from strict puritanism to the
utmost licence of practical and theoretical impiety, as antino-
mians or as atheists; and from extreme profligacy to extreme
superstition in any of its forms. The poor man by whose conversa-
tion Bunyan was first led into “some love and liking of religion,”
and induced to read the Bible and delight in it, became a Ranter,
wallowed in his sins as one who was secure in his privilege of
election; and finally, having corrupted his heart, perverted his
reason, and seared his conscience, laughed at his former pro-
fessions, persuaded himself that there was neither a future state
for man, nor a God to punish or to save him, and told Bunyan
that he had gone through all religions, and in this persuasion
had fallen upon the right at last !
. Some of the Ranters' books were put into Bunyan’s hands.
Their effect was to perplex him : he read in them, and thought
upon them, and betook himself properly and earnestly thus to
prayer—“Lord, I am not able to know the truth from error:
leave me not to my own blindness, either to approve of or con-
demn this doctrine. If it be of God, let me not despise it ; if
it be of the devil, let me not embrace it. Lord, I lay my soul in
this matter only at thy feet; let me not be deceived, I humbly
beseech thee!” And he was not deceived; for though he fell
in with many persons who, from a strict profession of religion,
had persuaded themselves that, having now attained to the per-
fection of the Saints, they were discharged from all obligations
H 2
100 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
of morality, and nothing which it might please them to do would
be accounted to them as sin, neither their evil arguments nor
their worse example infected him. “Oh,” he says, “these temp-
tations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and
my nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed
me for better things, kept me in the fear of his name, and did
not suffer me to accept such cursed principles. And blessed be
God who put it in my heart to cry to him to be kept and directed,
still distrusting mine own wisdom.”
These people could neither corrupt his conscience nor impose.
upon his understanding ; he had no sympathies with them.
But one day when he was tinkering in the streets of Bedford, he
overheard three or four poor women, who as they sat at a door
in the sunshine were conversing about their own spiritual state.
He was himself “a brisk talker in the matter of religion,” but
these persons were in their discourse “far above his reach.”
Their talk was about a new birth, how they were convinced of
their miserable state by nature, how God had visited their souls
with his love in the Lord Jesus, -with what words and promises
they had been refreshed and supported against the temptations
of the devil,-how they had been afflicted under the assaults of
the enemy, and how they had been borne up ; and of their own
wretchedness of heart, and of their unbelief, and the insufficiency
of their own righteousness. “Methought,” says Bunyan, “they
spake as if you did make them speak. They spake with such
pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of
grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found
a new world, as if they were “people that dwelt alone, and were
not to be reckoned among their neighbours.’” He felt his own
heart shake as he heard them ; and when he turned away and
went about his employment again, their talk went with him, for
he had heard enough to convince him that he “wanted the true
tokens of a true godly man,” and to convince him also of the
blessed condition of him that was indeed one.
He made it his business therefore frequently to seek the con-
versation of these women. They were members, of a small
Baptist congregation, which a Kentish man, John Gifford by
name, had formed at Bedford. Gifford's history is remarkable;
he had been a major in the king's army, and continuing true to
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. - 101
the cause after the ruin of his party, engaged in the insurrection
of his loyal countrymen, for which he and eleven others were
condemned to the gallows. On the night before the intended
execution, his sister came to visit him : she found the sentinels
who kept the door asleep, and she urged him to take the oppor-
tunity of escaping, which he alone of the prisoners was able to
attempt, for his companions had stupified themselves with drink.
Gifford passed safely through the sleeping guard, got into the
field, lay there some three days in a ditch till the great search
for him was over, then by help of his friends was conveyed in
disguise to London, and afterwards into Bedfordshire, where as
long as the danger continued he was harboured by certain royal-
ists of rank in that county. When concealment was no longer
necessary, he came as a stranger to Bedford, and there practised
physic; for in those days they who took upon themselves the
cure of bodies seem to have entered upon their practice with
as little scruple concerning their own qualifications for it as
they who undertook the cure of souls: if there was but a suffi-
cient stock of boldness to begin with, it sufficed for the one that
they were needy, for the others that they were enthusiastic.
Gifford was at that time leading a profligate and reckless life,
like many of his fellow-sufferers whose fortunes had been wrecked
in the general calamity; he was a great drinker, a gambler,
and Oaths came from his lips with habitual profaneness. Some
of his actions are indeed said to have evinced as much extrava-
gance of mind as wickedness of heart; and he hated the Puri-
tans so heartily for the misery which they had brought upon the
nation, and upon himself in particular, that he often thought of
killing a certain Anthony Harrington, for no other provocation
than because he was a leading man among persons of that de-
scription in Bedford. For a heart and mind thus diseased there
is but one cure; and that cure was vouchsafed at a moment
when his bane seemed before him. He had lost one night
about fifteen pounds in gambling; a large sum for one so circum-
stanced : the loss made him furious: and “many desperate
thoughts against God” arose in him, when looking into one of
the books of Robert Bolton, what he read in it startled him into
a sense of his own condition. He continued some weeks under
the weight of that feeling; and when it passed away, it left him
102 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
in so exalted and yet so happy a state of mind, that from that
time till within a few days of his death, he declared that “he lost
not the light of God’s countenance,—no, not for an hour.” And
now he inquired after the meetings of the persons whom he had
formerly most despised; and “being naturally bold, would thrust
himself again and again into their company, both together and
apart.” They at first regarded him with jealousy; nor, when
they were persuaded that he was sincere, did they readily en-
courage him in his desire to preach ; nor after he had made him-
self acceptable as a preacher, both in private and public trials,
were they forward to form themselves into a distinct congregation
under his care; “the more ancient professors being used to live,
as some other good men of those times, without regard to such
separate and close communion.” At length, eleven persons, of
whom Anthony Harrington was one, came to that determination,
and chose him for their pastor; the principle upon which they
entered into this fellowship one with another, and afterwards
admitted those who should desire to join them, being faith in
Christ and holiness of life, without respect to any difference in
outward or circumstantial things.
The poor women whose company Bunyan sought after he had
listened to their talk, were members of Gifford’s little flock.
The first effect of his conversation with them was, that he began
to look into the Bible with new eyes, and “indeed was never
out of it,” either by reading or meditation. He now took delight
in St. Paul’s Epistles, which before he “could not away with ;”
and the first strong impression which they made upon him was,
that he wanted the gifts of wisdom and knowledge of which the
Apostle speaks, and was doubtful whether he had faith or not ;
yet this was a doubt which he could not bear, being certain that
if he were without faith, he must perish. Being “put to his
plunge” about this, and not as yet consulting with any one, he
conceived that the only means by which he could be certified
was by trying to work a miracle; a delusion which he says the
Tempter enforced and strengthened, by urging upon him those
texts of Scripture that seemed to look that way. One day as he
was between Elstow and Bedford, the temptation was hot upon
him that he should put this to the proof, by saying “to the
puddles that were in the horse-pads, Be dry ; and to the dry
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. I ()3
places, Be ye puddles. And truly one time I was going to say
So, indeed ; but just as I was about to speak, this thought came
in my mind, “But go under yonder hedge, and pray first that God
would make you able.” But when I had concluded to pray, this
came hot upon me, that if I prayed, and came again, and tried to
do it, and yet did nothing notwithstanding, then to be sure I had
no faith, but was a cast-away, and lost. Nay, thought I, if it be
so I will not try yet, but will stay a little longer.”
About this time the happiness of his poor acquaintance whom
he believed to be in a sanctified state, was presented to him, he
says, in a kind of vision,--that is, it became the subject of a
reverie, a waking dream, in which the germ of the Pilgrim’s
Progress may plainly be perceived : “I saw,” he says, “as if
they were on the sunny side of some high mountain, there re-
freshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I
was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow,
and dark clouds. Methought also, betwixt me and them, I saw
a wall that did compass about this mountain : now through this
wall my soul did greatly desire to pass; concluding, that if I
could, I would even go into the very midst of them, and there
also comfort myself with the heat of their sun. About this wall
I thought myself to go again and again, still prying as I went,
to see if I could find some way or passage by which I might
enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last
I saw as it were a narrow gap, like a little door-way, in the wall,
through which I attempted to pass. Now the passage being
very strait and narrow, I made many offers to get in, but all in
vain, even until I was well nigh quite beat out by striving to get
in. At last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in
my head; and after that, by a sideling striving, my shoulders,
and my whole body : then I was exceeding glad, went and sat
down in the midst of them, and so was comforted with the light
and heat of their sun. Now the Mountain and Wall, &c., was
thus made out to me. The Mountain signified the Church of
the Living God; the Sun that shone thereon, the comfortable
shining of his merciful Face on them that were within : the
Wall, I thought, was the Word, that did make separation be-
tween the Christians and the World; and the Gap which was in
the Wall, I thought, was Jesus Christ, who is the Way to God
104. LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
the Father. But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful
narrow, even so narrow that I could not but with great difficulty
enter in thereat, it showed me that none could enter into life but
those that were in downright earnest; and unless also they left
that wicked World behind them ; for here was only room for
Body and Soul, but not for Body and Soul and Sin.”
But though he now prayed wherever he was, at home or abroad,
in the house or in the field, two doubts still assaulted him—whether
he was elected, and whether the day of grace was not gone by.
By the force and power of the first he felt, even when he “was
in a flame to find the way to Heaven,” as if the strength of his
body were taken from him; and he found a stumbling-block in
this text,” “It is neither in him that willeth, nor in him that
runneth, but in God that sheweth mercy.” It seemed to him,
that though he should desire and long and labour till his heart
broke, no good could come of it, unless he were a chosen vessel
of mercy. “Therefore,” he says, “this would stick with me,
‘How can you tell that you are elected 2 and what if you should
not ?”—O Lord, thought I, what if I should not, indeed It
may be you are not, said the Tempter. It may be so indeed,
thought I. Why then, said Satan, you had as good leave off,
and strive no further.” And then the text that disturbed him
came again into his mind; and he knowing not what to say nor
how to answer, was “driven to his wits' end, little deeming,” he
says, “that Satan had thus assaulted him, but that it was his
own prudence which had started the question.” In an evil hour
were the doctrines of the Gospel sophisticated with questions
which should have been left in the schools for those who are
unwise enough to employ themselves in excogitations of useless
subtlety. Many are the poor creatures whom such questions
have driven to despair, and madness, and suicide; and no one
ever more narrowly escaped from such a catastrophe than
Bunyan.
After many weeks, when he was even “giving up the ghost
of all his hopes,” another text suddenly occurred to him : “Look
at the generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in the Lord,
and was confounded ?”h He went with a lightened heart to his
Bible, fully expecting to find it there; but he found it not, . . .
* Rom. ix. 16. # Ecclesiasticus ii. 10.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 105
and the “good people” whom he asked where it was, told him
they knew of no such place. But in the Bible he was well as-
sured it was ; and the text which had “seized upon his heart
with such comfort and strength,” abode upon him for more than
a year; when, looking into the Apocrypha, there” he met with
it, and was at first, he says, somewhat daunted at finding it there,
... not in the canonical books. “Yet,” he says, “forasmuch
as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the pro-
mises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it; and I blessed God
for that word, for it was of good to me.” But then the other
doubt which had lain dormant, awoke again in strength—“How
if the day of grace be past? What if the good people of Bedford
who were already converted, were all that were to be saved in
those parts P’’ he then was too late, for they had got the blessing
before he came. “Oh that I had turned sooner P’ was then
his cry; “Oh that I had turned seven years ago I To think
that I should trifle away my time, till my soul and Heaven were
lost l”
From these fears the recurrence of another passage in Scrip-
ture delivered him for a while, and he has remarked that it came
into his mind just in the same place where he “received his
other encouragement.” The text was that in which the servant
who had been sent into the streets and lanes to bring in the poor,
and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind, to the supper from
which the bidden guests absented themselves, returns and says
to the master of the house,” “Lord, it is done as thou hast com-
manded, and yet there is room.” “These,” says Bunyan, “were
sweet words to me: for truly I thought that by them I saw there
was place enough in Heaven for me: and moreover, that when
the Lord Jesus did speak these words, he then did think of me;
and that he, knowing the time would come when I should be
afflicted with fear that there was no place left for me in his
bosom, did speak this word, and leave it upon record, that I
might find help thereby against this vile temptation. This I then
verily believed.”
But then came another fear ; None but those who are called
can inherit the kingdom of heaven; . . and this he apprehended
was not his case. With longings and breathings in his soul
* Ecclesiasticus ii. 10. + Luke xiv. 22.
106 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
which, he says, are not to be expressed, he cried on Christ to call
him, being “all on a flame” to be in a converted state; . . “Gold !
could it have been gotten for gold, what could I have given for
it ! Had I had a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times
over for this.” Much as he had formerly respected and venerated
the ministers of the Church, with higher admiration he now
regarded those who, he thought, had attained to the condition
for which he was longing. They were “lovely in his eyes; they
shone, they walked, like a people that carried the broad seal of
Heaven about them.” When he read of those whom our Saviour
called when he was upon earth to be his disciples, the wishes
which his heart conceived were—“Would I had been Peter:..
would I had been John : ... or would I had been by and heard Him
when He called them How would I have cried, O Lord, call
me also l’” In this state of mind, but comforting himself with
hoping that, if he were not already converted, the time might
come when he should be so, he imparted his feelings to those
poor women whose conversation had first brought him into these
perplexities and struggles. They reported his case to Mr. Gifford,
and Gifford took occasion to talk with him, and invited him to
his house, where he might hear him confer with others “about
the dealings of God with their souls.”
This course was little likely to compose a mind so agitated.
What he heard in such conferences rather induced fresh disquiet
and misery of another kind. The inward wretchedness of his
wicked heart, he says, began now to be discovered to him, and
to work as it had never done before : he was now conscious of
sinful thoughts and desires which he had not till then regarded;
and in persuading him that his heart was innately and wholly
wicked, his spiritual physician had well nigh made him believe
that it was hopelessly and incurably so. In vain did those to
whom he applied for consolation tell him of the promises; they
might as well have told him to reach the sun as to rely upon the
promises, he says: original and inward pollution was the plague
and affliction which made him loathsome in his own eyes, and,
as in his dreadful state of mind he believed, in the eyes of his
Creator also. Sin and corruption, he thought, would as na-
turally bubble out of his heart as water from a fountain. None
but the devil, he was persuaded, could equal him for inward
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 107
wickedness “Sure,” thought he, “I am forsaken of God;
sure I am given up to the Devil and to a reprobate mind.—I was
sorry that God had made me man.-I counted myself alone, and
above the most of men, unblessed.” These were not the tor-
ments of a guilty conscience; for he observes that “the guilt of
the sins of his ignorance was never much charged upon him ;”
and as to the act of sinning, during the years that he continued in
this pitiable state, no man could more scrupulously avoid what
seemed to him sinful in thought, word, or deed. “Oh,” he
says, “how gingerly did I then go, in all I did or said I found
myself as in a miry bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as
there left, both of God and Christ, and the Spirit, and all good
things.” False notions of that corruption of our nature, which
it is almost as perilous to exaggerate as to dissemble, had laid
upon him a burden heavy as that with which his own Christian
begins his pilgrimage.
The first comfort which he received, and which, had there not
been a mist before his understanding, he might have found in
every page of the Gospel, came to him in a sermon, upon a strange
text, strangely handled:* “Behold, thou art fair, my love;
behold, thou art fair.” The preacher made the words “my
Ilove” his chief and subject matter; and one sentence fastened
upon Bunyan’s mind. “If,” said the preacher, “it be so, that
the saved soul is Christ's love, when under temptation and de-
struction, then, poor tempted soul, when thou art assaulted and
afflicted with temptations, and the hidings of God’s face, yet
think on these two words, “My Love,’ still.”—“What shall I get
by thinking on these two words?” said Bunyan to himself, as he
returned home ruminating upon this discourse. And then twenty
times together—“Thou art my love, thou art my love,” re-
curred in mental repetition, kindling his spirit; and still, he says,
“as they ran in my mind they waxed stronger and warmer, and
began to make me look up. But being as yet between hope and
fear, I still replied in my heart, “But is it true? but is it true?”
At which that sentence fell upon me, ‘He wist not that it was
true which was come unto him of the Angel.” Then I began to
give place to the Word; and now I could believe that my sins
should be forgiven me: yea, I was now taken with the love and
* Solomon's Song, iv. 1. † Acts xii. 9.
I08 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
mercy of God, that, I remember, I could not tell how to contain
until I got home: I thought I could have spoken of his love,
and have told of his mercy to me, even to the very crows that
sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to
have understood me.—Wherefore I said in my soul with much
gladness, Well, I would I had a pen and ink here, I would write
this down before I go any farther, for surely I will not forget
this forty years hence. But, alas! within less than forty days
I began to question all again.”
Shaken continually thus by the hot and cold fits of a spiritual
ague, his imagination was wrought to a state of excitement, in
which its own shapings became vivid as realities, and affected
him more forcibly than impressions from the external world. He
heard sounds as in a dream ; and as in a dream held conversations
which were inwardly audible, though no sounds were uttered,
and had all the connexion and coherency of an actual dialogue.
Real they were to him in the impression which they made, and
in their lasting effect; and even afterwards, when his soul was
at peace, he believed them, in cool and sober reflection, to have
been more than natural. Some few days after the sermon, he
was much “followed,” he says, by these words of the Gospel,”
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you.” He
knew that it was a voice from within ; and yet it was so articu-
lately distinct, so loud, and called, as he says, so strongly after
him, that once in particular when the words “Simon Simon l’
rung in his ears, he verily thought some man had called to him
from a distance behind ; and though it was not his name, supposed
nevertheless that it was addressed to him, and looked round sud-
denly to see by whom. As this had been the loudest, so it was
the last time that the call sounded in his ears; and he imputes it
to his ignorance and foolishness at that time that he knew not
the reason of it; for soon, he says, he was feelingly convinced
that it was sent from Heaven as an alarm for him to provide
against the coming storm, a storm which “handled him twenty
times worse than all he had met with before.”
Fears concerning his own state had been the trouble with
which he had hitherto contended : temptations of a different, and
even more distressful, kind assailed him now, blasphemies and
* Luke xxii. 31.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 109
suggestions of unbelief, which, when he recorded the history of
his own soul, he might not and dared not utter, either by word
or pen; and no other shadow of consolation could he find against
them than in the consciousness that there was something in him
that gave no consent to the sin. He thought himself surely
possessed by the Devil: he was “bound in the wings of the
temptation, and the wind would carry him away.” When he
heard others talk of the sin against the Holy Ghost, discoursing
what it might be, “then would the Tempter,” he says, “provoke
me to desire to sin that sin, that I was as if I could not, must
not, neither should be, quiet until I had committed it:—no sin
would serve but that. If it were to be committed by speaking
of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have
spoken that word, whether I would or no. And in so strong a
measure was this temptation upon me, that often I have been
ready to clap my hand under my chin, to hold my mouth from
opening; and to that end also I have had thoughts at other times
to leap with my head downward into some muckhill-hole or
other, to keep my mouth from speaking.” Gladly now would
he have been in the condition of the beasts that perish; for he
counted the estate of everything that God had made far better
than his own, such as it had now become. While this lasted,
which was about a year, he was most distracted when attending
the service of his meeting, or reading the Scriptures, or when in
prayer. He imagined that at such times he felt the Enemy be-
hind him pulling his clothes; that he was “continually at him,
to have done;—break off—make haste—you have prayed enough!”
The more he strove to compose his mind and fix it upon God,
the more did the Tempter labour to distract and confound it,
“by presenting,” says he, “to my heart and fancy the form of
a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like, as if I should pray to these.
To these he would also (at some times especially) so hold my
mind, that I was as if I could think of nothing else, or pray to
nothing else but to these, or such as they.” Wickeder thoughts
were sometimes cast in—such as” “if thou wilt fall down and
worship me.”
But while Bunyan suffered thus grievously under the belief
that these thoughts and fancies were the immediate suggestions
* Matt. iv. 9.
| 10 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
of the evil Spirit, that belief made him at times more passionate
in prayer; and then his heart “put forth itself with inexpressi-
ble groanings,” and his whole soul was in every word. And
although he had not been taught in childhood to lay up the
comfortable promises of the Gospel in his heart and in his soul,
that they might be as a sign upon his hand and as a frontlet
between his eyes, yet he had not read the Bible so diligently
without some profit. When he mused upon these words in the
Prophet Jeremiah,” “Thou hast played the harlot with many
lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord,” he felt that they
were some support to him, as applying to his case; and so also
was that saying of the same Prophet, that though we have
done and spoken as evil things as we could, yet shall we cry unto
God, “My Father, thou art the guide of my youth,” and return
unto him. More consolation he derived from the Apostle who
says, “ He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
And again,S “If God be for us, who can be against us?” And
again, “ For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.” This also was a help to him ;‘ſ “Be-
cause I live, ye shall live also l’” These, he says, were “but
hints, touches, and short visits; very sweet when present, only
they lasted not.” Yet after a while he felt himself not only
delivered from the guilt which these things laid upon his con-
science, “but also from the very filth thereof;” the temptation
was removed, and he thought himself “put into his right mind
again.”
At this time he “sat (in puritanical language) under the
ministry of holy Mr. Gifford,” and to his doctrine he ascribed
in some degree this mental convalescence. But that doctrine
was of a most perilous kind; for the preacher exhorted his
hearers not to be contented with taking any truth upon trust,
nor to rest till they had received it with evidence from Heaven;
—that is, till their belief should be confirmed by a particular
* Chap. iii. 1. # Ib. v. 4. f 2 Cor. v. 21.
§ 1 Rom. viii. 31. | Ib. 38, 39. * John xiv. 19.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 1 11
revelation: without this, he warned them, they would find them.
selves wanting in strength when temptation came. This was a
doctrine which accorded well with Bunyan's ardent tempera-
ment: unless he had it with evidence from Heaven, let men say
what they would, all was nothing to him ; so apt was he “to
drink in the doctrine, and to pray,” he says, “ to God that in
nothing which pertained to God’s glory and his own eternal
happiness, he would suffer him to be without the confirmation
thereof from Heaven.” That confirmation he believed was
granted him; “Oh,” he exclaims, “now, how was my soul led
from truth to truth by God!—there was not any thing that I
then cried unto God to make known and reveal unto me, but
He was pleased to do it for me.” He had now an evidence, as
he thought, of his salvation from Heaven, with golden seals
appendant, hanging in his sight. He who before had lain trem-
bling at the mouth of Hell, had now, as it were, the gate of
Heaven in full view : “Oh,” thought he, “ that I were now
fourscore years old, that I might die quickly,–that my soul
might be gone to rest 1” And his desire and longings were that
the Last Day were come, after which he should eternally enjoy
in beatific vision the presence of that Almighty and All-merciful
Saviour who had offered up himself, an all-sufficient sacrifice
for sinners.
While Bunyan was in this state, a translation of Luther's
* Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians’ fell into his
hands; an old book, so tattered and thumb-worn, “that it was
ready to fall piece from piece if he did but turn it over.” Here,
in the work of that passionate and mighty mind, he saw his own
soul reflected as in a glass. “I had but a little way perused it,”
he says, “when I found my condition in his experience so largely
and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of
my heart.” And in later life he thought it his duty to declare,
that he preferred this book of Martin Luther before all the books
he had ever seen (the Bible alone excepted), as fittest for a
wounded conscience.
Mr. Coleridge has delineated with his wonted and peculiar
ability the strong resemblance between Luther and Rousseau;
men who to ordinary observers would appear, in the constitution
of their minds, most unlike each other. In different stages of
II 2 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
his mental and spiritual growth, Bunyan had resembled both :
like Rousseau, he had been tempted to set the question of his
salvation upon a cast; like Luther, he had undergone the agonies
of unbelief and deadly fear, and, according to his own persuasion,
wrestled with the Enemy. I know not whether any parallel is
to be found for him in the next and strangest part of his history;
for now, when he was fully convinced that his faith had been
confirmed by special evidence from Heaven, . . when his desire
was to die and be with Christ, . . an almost unimaginable tempt-
ation, which he might well call more grievous and dreadful than
any with which he had before been afflicted, came upon him; it
was “to sell and part with Christ,--to exchange him for the
things of this life, . . for anything :” for the space of a year he
was haunted by this strange and hateful suggestion, and so con-
tinually that he was “not rid of it one day in a month, nor
sometimes one hour in many succeeding days,” unless in his
sleep. It intermixed itself with whatever he thought or did.
“I could neither eat my food,” he says, “ stoop for a pin, chop
a stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or that, but still the
temptation would come, ‘Sell Christ for this, or sell Christ for
that ; sell him, sell him, sell him l’ Sometimes it would run
in my thoughts not so little as a hundred times together, ‘Sell
him, sell him, sell him, sell him l’ Against which, I may
say, for whole hours together, I have been forced to stand as
continually leaning and forcing my spirit against it, lest haply,
before I were aware, some wicked thought might arise in my
heart, that might consent thereto : and sometimes the Tempter
would make me believe I had consented to it; but then should
I be tortured upon a rack for whole days together. This temp-
tation did put me to such scares,--that by the very force of my
mind, in labouring to gainsay and resist this wickedness, my
very body would be put into action,--by way of pushing or
thrusting with my hands or elbows, still answering as fast as the
Destroyer said ‘Sell him,” “I will not I will not I will not I
no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds !’ and thus
till I scarce knew where I was, or how to be composed again.”
This torment was accompanied with a prurient scrupulosity,
which Bunyan when he became his own biographer looked back
upon as part of the same temptation, proceeding immediately
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 17.3
from the Evil One: “He would not let me eat at quiet, but, for-
sooth, when I was set at the table, I must go thence to pray ; I
must leave my food Inow, and just now, . . so counterfeit holy
would this devil be When I was thus tempted, I should say
in myself, ‘Now I am at meat, let me make an end.’ ‘No,' said
he, “you must do it now, or you will displease God and despise
Christ.’” Thus was he distracted, imagining these things to be
impulses from God, and that to withstand them was to disobey
the Almighty; “and then,” says he, “should I be as guilty
because I did not obey a temptation of the devil, as if I had
broken the law of God indeed.”
In this strange state of mind he had continued about a year,
when one morning as he lay in bed, the wicked suggestion still
running in his mind, “Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,”
as fast as a man could speak, and he answering as fast, “No, no,
not for thousands, thousands, thousands,” till he was almost out
of breath, . . he felt this thought pass through his heart, “Let
him go if he will,” and it seemed to him that his heart freely
consented thereto. “Oh,” he exclaims, “the diligence of Satan
oh the desperateness of man’s heart | Now was the battle won,
and down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the top of a tree, into
great guilt and fearful despair. Thus, getting out of my bed,
I went moping into the field, but God knows with as heavy a
heart as mortal man, I think, could bear ; where for the space of
two hours I was like a man bereft of life, and as now past all re-
covery, and bound over to eternal punishment.” Then it occurred
to him what is said of Esau by the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews,” how having sold his birthright, when he would after-
wards have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for “he found
no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”
At the recollection of a better text,f the words of that disciple
(blessed above all men) whom Jesus loved, he had for a while
such relief that he began to conceive peace in his soul again;
“ and methought,” says he, “I saw as if the Tempter did leer
and steal away from me as being ashamed of what he had done.”
But this was only like a passing gleam of sunshine : the sound
of Esau’s fate was always in his ears; his case was worse than
Esau’s, worse than David’s ; Peter's came nigher to it; yet
* Chap. xii. 16, 17. f John i. 7.
I
#14 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
*-ºse
Peter's was only a denial of his Master, this a selling of his
Saviour:-he came therefore nearer to Judas than to Peter 1
And though he was yet same enough to consider that the sin of
Judas had been deliberately committed, whereas his, on the con-
trary, was “against his prayer and striving, in a fearful hurry,
on a sudden,” the relief which that consideration brought was
but little, and only for a while. The sentence concerning Esau,
literally taken and more unhappily applied, fell like a hot thun-
derbolt upon his conscience; “then should I, for whole days
together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and
totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God;—such a
clogging and heat also at my stomach, by reason of this my terror,
that I was sometimes as if my breast-bone would split asunder.”
And then he called to mind how Judas burst asunder; and feared
that a continual trembling like his was the very mark that had
been set on Cain ; and thus did he “twist, and twine, and
shrink” under a burden which so oppressed him, that he could
“neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.”
This fatal sentence possessed him so strongly, that when think-
ing on the words in Isaiah,” “I have blotted out, as a thick
cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; return unto
me, for I have redeemed thee;”—and when it seemed to his dis-
eased imagination that this text called audibly and loudly after
him, as if pursuing him, so loudly as to make him, he says, look,
as it were, over his shoulder, behind him, to see if the God of
Grace were following him with a pardon in His hand;—the
echo of the same sentence still sounded in his conscience : and
when he heard “Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee,
return, return,” articulated, as it seemed to him, with a loud
voice, . . . it was overpowered by the inward echo, “He found
no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with
tears.”
How little would some of the most frequent and contagious
disorders of the human mind be understood, if a sufferer were
not now and then found collected enough, even in the paroxysms
of the disease, to observe its symptoms, and detail them after-
wards, and reason upon them when in a state to discriminate be-
tween what had been real and what imaginary 1 Bunyan was
* Chap. xliv. 22.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 1 is
never wholly in that state. He noted faithfully all that occurred
in his reveries, and faithfully reported it; but there was one
thing happened at this time, which, after an interval of twenty
years, appeared to him, who was accustomed to what he deemed
preternatural impressions, so much more preternatural than all
his former visitings, that he withheld it from the first relation of
his own life, and in a later and more enlarged account narrated
it so cautiously as to imply more than he thought it prudent to
express. “Once,” he says, “as I was walking to and fro in a
good man's shop, bemoaning of myself in rhy sad and doleful
state; afflicting myself with self-abhorrence for this wicked and
ungodly thought; lamenting also this hard hap of mine, for that
I should commit so great a sin; greatly fearing I should not be
pardoned; praying also in my heart, that if this sin of mine did
differ from that against the Holy Ghost, the Lord would show it
to me; and being now ready to sink with fear; suddenly there
was as if there had rushed in at the window, the noise of wind
upon me, but very pleasant, and as if I heard a voice speaking,
‘Didst ever refuse to be justified by the Blood of Christ?’ And
withal my whole life of profession past was in a moment opened
to me, wherein I was made to see that designedly I had not. So
my heart answered groaningly, ‘No 1 Then fell with power
that word of God upon me,” “See that ye refuse not Him that
speaketh.’ This made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it
brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart of
all those tumultuous thoughts that before did use, like masterless
hell-hounds, to roar and bellow, and make a hideous noise
within me. It showed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word
of grace and mercy for me; that he had not, as I had feared,
quite forsaken and cast off my soul. Yea, this was a kind of
chide for my proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening of
me, if I did not, notwithstanding my sins and the heinousness
of them, venture my salvation upon the Son of God. But as to
my determining about this strange dispensation, what it was I
know not ; or from whence it came I know not : I have not yet
in twenty years' time been able to make a judgment of it; I
thought then here what I should be loath to speak. But verily
that sudden rushing wind was as if an angel had come upon
* Heb. xii. 25.
I 2
I 16 • * LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
me; but both it and the salvation I will leave until the Day of
Judgment. Only this I say, it commanded a great calm in my
soul ; it persuaded me there might be hope; it showed me, as I
thought, what the sin unpardonable was ; and that my soul had
yet the blessed privilege to flee to Jesus Christ for mercy.
But, I say, concerning this dispensation, I know not what yet
to say unto it; which was also in truth the cause that at first I
did not speak of it in the book. I do now also leave it to be
thought on by men of sound judgment. I lay not the stress of
my salvation thereupon, but upon the Lord Jesus, in the promise ;
yet seeing I am here unfolding of my secret things, I thought
it might not be altogether inexpedient to let this also show
itself, though I cannot now relate the matter as there I did ex-
perience it.”
The “savour” of this lasted about three or four days, and
then he began to mistrust and to despair again. Struggling
nevertheless against despair, he determined that, if he must die,
it should be at the feet of Christ in prayer: and pray he did,
though the saying about Esau was ever at his heart, “like a
flaming sword, to keep the way of the Tree of Life, lest he should
taste thereof and live.” “Oh,” he exclaims, “who knows how
hard a thing I found it to come to God in prayer ſ” He desired
the prayers of those whom he calls the people of God, meaning
Mr. Gifford’s little congregation, and the handful of persons
within his circuit who were in communion with them : yet he
dreaded lest they should receive this answer to their prayers in
his behalf, “Pray not for him, for I have rejected him.” He
met indeed with cold consolation from an “ancient Christian,”
to whom he opened his case, and said he was afraid he had com-
mitted the sin against the Holy Ghost: this man, like one of
Job’s comforters, replied, he thought so too; but Bunyan com-
forted himself, by finding, upon a little further conversation, that
this friend of his, “though a good man, was a stranger to much
combat with the devil.” So he betook himself again to prayer,
as well as he could, but in such a state of mind, that “the most
free, and full, the gracious words of the Gospel” only made him
the more miserable. “Thus was he always sinking whatever he
could do.”
“So one day I walked to a neighbouring town,” he says, “and
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 117
sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep
pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to :
and after long musing I lifted up my head, but methought I saw
as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me
light; and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the
houses, did band themselves against me. Methought that they
all combined together to banish me out of the world. I was ab-
horred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had
sinned against the Saviour. Oh how happy now was every
creature over I was for they stood fast and kept their station;
but I was gone and lost ſ” In this mood, breaking out in the
bitterness of his soul, he said to himself with a grievous sigh,
“How can God comfort such a wretch P’’ And he had no sooner
said this, than, quick as the return of an echo, he was answered
“This sin is not unto death.” He says, not that this seemed to
be spoken audibly, but that it came to him with power, and
sweetness, and light, and glory; that it was a release to him from
his former bonds, and a shelter from his former storms. On the
following eyening this supportation, as he calls it, began to fail;
and under many fears, he had recourse to prayer, his soul crying
with strong cries, “O Lord, I beseech Thee show me that Thou
hast loved me with an everlasting love 1° and like an echo the
words returned upon him,” “I have loved thee with an ever-
lasting love.” That night he went to bed in quiet; and when
he awoke in the morning, “it was fresh upon my soul,” he says,
“ and I believed it.”
Being thus, though not without many misgivings, brought
into “comfortable hopes of pardon,” the love which he bore
towards his Saviour worked in him at this time “a strong and
hot desire of revengement” upon himself, for the sin which he
had committed; and had it been the Romish superstition which
Bunyan had imbibed, he might have vied with St. T)ominic the
Cuirassier, or the Jesuit Joam d’Almeida, in inflicting torments
upon his own miserable body. A self-tormentor he continued
still to be, vacillating between hope and fear; sometimes think-
ing that he was set at liberty from his guilt, sometimes that he
had left himself “neither foot-hold nor hand-hold among all the
stays and props in the precious word of life.” One day, when
- * Jer. xxxi. 3.
1T 8 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
earnestly in prayer, this Scripture fastened on his heart : “O
man, great is thy faith !” “even,” he says, “as if one had
clapped me on the back as I was on my knees before God.” At
another time, when doubting whether the blood of Christ was
sufficient to save his soul, and dreading lest that doubt should not
be removed, the inward voice for which he listened sounded
suddenly within his heart,” “He is able.”—“But methought this
word able was spoke loud unto me; it showed a great word; it
seemed to be writ in great letters, and gave such a justle to my
fear and doubt for the time it tarried with me, as I never had all
my life, either before or after.” But it tarried only about a day.
Next, when he was trembling in prayer under a fear that no word
of God could help him, this part of a sentence darted in upon
him, “My grace is sufficient.” A little while before he had
looked at that very text, and thrown down the book, thinking it
could not come near his soul with comfort: “then I thought it
was not large enough for me—no, not large enough ; but now
it was as if it had arms of grace so wide that it could not only
enclose me, but many more besides.” In such conflicts, he says,
“peace would be in and out sometimes twenty times a-day; com-
fort now, and trouble presently ; peace now, and before I could
go a furlong, as full of fears and guilt as ever heart could hold.
For this about the sufficiency of grace, and that of Esau’s part-
ing with his birthright, would be like a pair of scales within my
mind; sometimes one end would be uppermost, and sometimes again
the other, according to which would be my peace or troubles.”
He prayed therefore to God for help to apply the whole sentence,
which of himself he was not as yet able to do. He says, “that
He gave, that I gathered, but further I could not go, for as yet
it only helped me to hope there might be mercy for me; “My
grace is sufficient; it answered his question that there was
hope : but he was not contented, because for thee was left out,
and he prayed for that also.
It was at a meeting with his fellow believers, when his fears
again were prevailing, that the words for which he longed, ac-
cording to his own expression, “broke in’ upon him, “My grace
is sufficient for thee, my grace is sufficient for thee, my grace
is sufficient for thee, three times together. He was then as
* Heb. vii. 25.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. I 19
though he had seen the Lord look down from Heaven upon him
“ through the tiles,” and direct these words to him. It sent him
mourning home ; it broke his heart, and filled him full of joy,
and laid him low as the dust. And now he began to venture
upon examining “those most fearful and terrible Scriptures,” on
which till now he scarcely dared cast his eyes (yea, and much ado
a hundred times to forbear wishing them out of the Bible): he
began “to come close to them, to read them and consider them,
and to weigh their scope and tendency.” The result was a clear
perception that he had not fallen quite away; that his sin, though
devilish, had not been consented to, and put in practice, and
that after deliberation—not public and open ; that the texts
which had hitherto so appalled him were yet consistent with
those which proffered forgiveness and salvation. “And now
remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder
was gone past; only some drops did still remain.” And when
one day in the field, the words “Thy righteousness is in Heaven”
occurred to him, “methought withal,” he says, “I saw with the
eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand,-there, I say,
as my righteousness, for my righteousness was Christ himself.”
‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’” Then his chains
fell off in very deed : he was loosed from his affliction, and his
temptation fled away.
This was after two years and a half of incessant agitation and
wretchedness. Bunyan thought he could trace the cause of this
long temptation to a sin which he had committed, and to a
culpable omission. He had, during the time when doubt and
unbelief assailed him, tempted the Lord, by asking of Him a
sign whereby it might appear that the secret thoughts of the
heart were known to Him; and he had omitted, when praying
earnestly for the removal of present troubles, and for assurances
of faith, to pray that he might be kept from temptation. “This,”
he says, “I had not done, and therefore was thus suffered to sin
and fall. And truly this very thing is to this day of such weight
and awe upon me, that I dare not, when I come before the Lord,
go off my knees until I entreat him for help and mercy against
the temptations that are to come: and I do beseech thee, reader,
that thou learn to beware of my negligence, by the affliction that
* Heb. xiii. 8.
120 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
for this thing I did, for days, and months, and years, with sore
row undergo.” Far more satisfactorily could he trace in himself
the benefits which he derived from this long and dreadful course
of suffering, under which a weaker body must have sunk, and
from which it is almost miraculous that any mind should have
escaped without passing into incurable insanity. Before that
trial, his soul had been “perplexed with unbelief, blasphemy,
hardness of heart, questions about the Being of God, Christ, the
truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come.” “Then,”
he says, “I was greatly assaulted and tormented with atheism ;
but now the case was otherwise ; now was God and Christ Con-
tinually before my face, though not in a way of comfort, but in
a way of exceeding dread and terror. The glory of the holiness
of God did at this time break me to pieces; and the bowels and
compassion of Christ did break me as on the wheel; for I could
not consider him but as a lost and rejected Christ, the remem-
brance of which was as the continual breaking of my bones. The
Scriptures also were wonderful things unto me; I saw that the
truth and verity of them were the keys of the kingdom of Heaven:
those that the Scriptures favour, they must inherit bliss: but
those that they oppose and condemn, must perish for evermore.
Oh I one sentence of the Scripture did more afflict and terrify
my mind, I mean those sentences that stood against me (as some-
times I thought they every one did), more, I say, than an
army of forty thousand men that might come against me. Woe
be to him against whom the Scriptures bend themselves 1’’
But this led him to search the Bible, and dwell upon it with
an earnestness and intensity which no determination of a calmer
mind could have commanded. “This made me,” he says, “with
careful heart and watchful eye, with great fearfulness, to turn
over every leaf, and with much diligence, mixed with trembling,
to consider every sentence, together with its natural force and
latitude. By this also I was greatly holden off my former foolish
practice of putting by the Word of promise when it came into
my mind; for now, though I could not suck that comfort and
sweetness from the promises as I had done at other times, yea,
like to a man a-sinking, I could catch at all I saw ; formerly I
thought I might not meddle with the promise, unless I felt its
comfort; but now ’t was no time thus to do, the Avenger of Blood
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 121
too hardly did pursue me.” If in the other writings of Bunyan,
and especially in that which has made his name immortal, we
discover none of that fervid language in which his confessions
and self-examination are recorded,—none of those “thoughts that
breathe, and words that burn,”—none of that passion in which
the reader so far participates as to be disturbed and distressed by
it, here we perceive how he acquired that thorough and familiar
acquaintance with the Scriptures which in those works is mani-
fested. “Now therefore was I glad,” he says, “to catch at that
Word, which yet I had no ground or right to own ; and even
to leap into the bosom of that promise, that yet I feared did shut
its heart against me. Now also I should labour to take the
Word as God hath laid it down, without restraining the natural
force of one syllable thereof. Oh what did I now see in that
blessed sixth of John,” “and him that comes to me I will in no
wise cast out !” Now I began to consider with myself, that God
hath a bigger mouth to speak with, than I had a heart to con-
ceive with. I thought also with myself that He spake not His
words in haste, or in an unadvised heat, but with infinite wisdom
and judgment, and in very truth and faithfulness. I should in
these days often, in my greatest agonies, even flounce toward the
promise (as the horses do towards sound ground, that yet stick
in the mire), concluding (though as one almost bereft of his wits
through fear), “On this I will rest and stay, and leave the ful-
filling of it to the God of Heaven that made it.’ Oh, many a
pull hath my heart had with Satan for that blessed sixth of John I
I did not now, as at other times, look principally for comfort
(though, oh how welcome would it have been unto me !), but
now a word, a word to lean a weary soul upon, that it might not
sink for ever ! ”t was that I hunted for Yea, often when I have
been making to the promise, I have seen as if the Lord would
refuse my soul for ever: I was often as if I had run upon the
pikes, and as if the Lord had thrust at me to keep me from Him,
as with a flaming sword l’’
When Bunyan passed from this horrible condition into a state
of happy feeling, his mind was nearly overthrown by the transi-
tion. “I had two or three times,” he says, “at or about my
deliverance from this temptation, such strange apprehensions of
* John vi. 37.
I 22 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
the grace of God, that I could hardly bear up under it; it was
so out of measure amazing when I thought it could reach me,
that I do think, if that sense of it had abode long upon me, it
would have made me uncapable of business.” He had not, how-
ever, yet attained that self-control which belongs to a sane mind;
for after he had been formally admitted into fellowship with
Gifford’s little congregation, and had by him been baptized
accordingly, by immersion, probably in the river Ouse (for the
Baptists at that time sought rather than shunned publicity on
such occasions), he was for nearly a year pestered with strange
and villanous thoughts whenever he communicated at the meet-
ing. These however left him. When threatened with consump-
tion at one time, he was delivered from the fear of dissolution,
by faith, and a strong desire of entering upon eternal life; and
in another illness, when the thought of approaching death for
a while overcame him, “behold,” he says, “as I was in the midst
of those fears, the words of the Angels carrying Lazarus into
Abraham's bosom darted in upon me, as who should say, ‘So
shall it be with thee when thou dost leave this world !” This
did sweetly revive my spirits, and help me to hope in God;
which when I had with comfort mused on a while, that Word fell
with great weight upon my mind, “O Death, where is thy sting 2
O Grave, where is thy victory?” At this I became both well in
body and mind at once; for my sickness did presently vanish,
and I walked comfortably in my work for God again.”
Gifford died in 1656,” having drawn up during his last illness
an Epistle to his congregation, in a wise, and tolerant, and truly
Christian spirit : he exhorted them to remember his advice, that
when any person was to be admitted a member of their com-
munity, that person should solemnly declare that “union with
Christ was the foundation of all Saints’ communion,” and not
merely an agreement concerning “any ordinances of Christ, or
any judgment or opinion about externals:” and that such new
members should promise that, “through grace, they would walk
in love with the church, though there should happen any differ-
ence in judgment about other things.” “Concerning separation
from the church (the dying pastor pursued) about baptism, lay-
[* September 21. Sutcliff’s Address, p. 46, ed. 1788; and Ivimey's ‘Life
of Bunyan, ed. 1825, p. 61. The ‘Epistle' is printed in Sutcliff’s Appendix.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 123
ing on of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any other exter-
mals, I charge every one of you respectively, as ye will give an
account of it to our Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge both
quick and dead at his coming, that none of you be found guilty
of this great evil, which some have committed, and that through
a zeal for God, yet not according to knowledge. They have
erred from the law of the love of Christ, and have made a rent in
the true Church, which is but one.” Mr. Ivimey, in his History
of the English Baptists, says of Gifford, “His labours were
apparently confined to a narrow circle; but their effects have
been very widely extended, and will not pass away when time
shall be no more. We allude to his having baptized and intro-
duced to the Church the wicked Tinker of Elstow. He was
doubtless the honoured Evangelist who pointed Bunyan to the
Wicket-Gate, by instructing him in the knowledge of the Gospel ;
by turning him from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan unto God. Little did he think such a chosen vessel was
sent to his house, when he opened his door to admit the poor,
the depraved, and the despairing Bunyan.”
But the wickedness of the Tinker has been greatly overcharged;
and it is taking the language of self-accusation too literally,
to pronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved.
The worst of what he was in his worst days is to be expressed in
a single word, for which we have no synonyme, the full mean-
ing of which no circumlocution can convey, and which, though
it may hardly be deemed presentable in serious composition, I
shall use, as Bunyan himself (no mealy-mouthed writer) would
have used it, had it in his days borne the same acceptation in
which it is now universally understood;—in that word, then, he
had been a blackguard :—
The very head and front of his offending
- Hath this extent, no more.
Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, breeding,
and vocation; scarcely indeed by possibility could he have been
otherwise; but he was never a vicious man. It has been seen,
that at the first reproof he shook off, at once and for ever, the
practice of profane swearing, the worst, if not the only, sin to
which he was ever addicted. He must have been still a very
young man when that outward reformation took place, which.
124 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
little as he afterwards valued it, and insufficient as it may have
been, gave evidence at least of right intentions under the direc-
tion of a strong will ; and throughout his subsequent struggles
of mind, the force of a diseased imagination is not more manifest
than the earnestness of his religious feelings and aspirations.
His connexion with the Baptists was eventually most beneficial
to him ; had it not been for the encouragement which he re-
ceived from them, he might have lived and died a tinker; for
even when he cast off, like a slough, the coarse habits of his
early life, his latent powers could never, without some such
encouragement and impulse, have broken through the thick
ignorance with which they were incrusted.
The coarseness of that incrustation could hardly be conceived,
if proofs of it were not preserved in his own hand-writing.
There is no book except the Bible which he is known to have
perused so intently as the Acts and Monuments of John Fox the
martyrologist, one of the best of men; a work more hastily than
judiciously compiled in its earlier parts, but invaluable for that
greater and far more important portion which has obtained for
it its popular name of the “Book of Martyrs.’ Bunyan's own copy
of this work is in existence,” and valued of course as such a
relic of such a man ought to be. In each volume he has written
his name beneath the title-page in a large and stout print-hand,
as on a following page. -
And under some of the wood-cuts he has inserted a few
rhymes, which are undoubtedly his own composition ; and
which, though much in the manner of the verses that were
printed under the illustrations of his own ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’
* It was purchased in the year 1780 by Mr. Wontner of the Minories;
from him it descended to his daughter, Mrs. Parnell of Botolph-lane; and
by her obliging permission, the verses have been transcribed and fac-similes
taken from it. For this and for other kind assistance, the present edition
is indebted to Mr. Richard Thomson, author of “An Historical Essay on
Magna Charta, with a general View and Explanation of the whole of the
English Charters of Liberties;’—a book as beautifully and appropriately
adorned as it is elaborately and learnedly compiled.
The edition of the “Acts and Monuments’ is that of 1641, 3 vols. folio, the
last of those in the black letter, and probably the latest when it came into
Bunyan's hands. One of his signatures bears the date of 1662; but the verses
must undoubtedly have been written some years earlier, before the publica-
tion of his first tract. [Since purchased by Subscription for the “Bedford-
Shire General Library,” where it may now be seen.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 1:25
when that work was first adorned with cuts . . (verses worthy of
such embellishments), are very much worse than even the worst
of those. Indeed it would not be possible to find specimens of
more miserable doggerel. But as it has been proper to lay
before the reader the vivid representation of Bunyan in his
feverish state of enthusiasm, that the sobriety of mind into which
he settled may be the better appreciated and the more admired ;
so for a like reason is it fitting that it should be seen from how
gross and deplorable a state of ignorance that intellect which
produced the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress' worked its way.—These then
are the verses.
Under the print of an Owl appearing to a council held by
Pope John at Rome. (‘ Acts and Monuments, 75l. i. 781.)
Doth the owle to them apper
which putt them all into a fear
Will not the man & trubel crown
cast the owle unto the ground.
Under the martyrdom of John Huss. (Ib., vol. i. 821.)
heare is John hus that you may see
uesed in deed with all crulity.
But now leet us follow & look one him
Whear he is full field in deed to the brim.
Under the martyrdom of John Rogers, the Protomartyr in the
Marian Persecution. (Ib., vol. iii. 123.)
It was the will of X. (Christ) that thou should die
Mr Rogers his body in the flames to fry.
O Blessed man thou did lead this bloody way,
O how wilt thou shien with X in the last day.
Under the martyrdom of Lawrence Sanders. (Ib. vol. iii.
139.)
Mr Sanders is the next blessed man in deed
And from all trubels he is made free.
Farewell world & all hear be lo
For to my dear Lord I must gooe.
The autograph of his name mentioned in the preceding page is
here presented, together with four other lines as they appear in
his own rude hand-writing under the martyrdom of Thomas
Haukes, who having promised to his friends that he would lift
his hands above his head toward heaven, before he gave up the
ghost, in token to them that a man under the pain of such burn-
ing might keep his mind quiet and patient, lifted his scorched
126 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
arms, in fulfilment of that pledge, after his speech was gone, and
raised them in gesture of thanksgiving triumph towards the
living God.
§
º
|
hear is one stout and strong in deed
he doth not waver like as doth a Reed.
a Sighn he give them yea last of all
that are obedant to the hevenly call.
There is yet one more of these Tinker's tetrasticks, penned in
the margin, beside the account of Gardiner's death: -





LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
1
2
7
the blood the blood that he did shed
is falling one his one head;
and dredfull it is for to see
he beginnes of his misere. Vol. iii. p. 527.
These curious inscriptions must have been Bunyan’s first
attempts in verse: he had no doubt found difficulty enough in
tinkering them to make him proud of his work when it was
done; for otherwise he would not have written them in a book
which was the most valuable of all his goods and chattels. In
latter days he seems to have taken this book for his art of
poetry, and acquired from it at length the tune and the phrase-
ology of such verses as are there inserted; with a few rare excep
tions, they are of Robert Wisdom's school, and something below
the pitch of Sternhold and Hopkins. But if he learnt there to
make bad verses, he entered fully into the spirit of its better
parts, and received that spirit into as resolute a heart as ever bea
in a martyr's bosom. From the examples which he found there,
and from the Scriptures which he perused with such intense de-
votion, he derived “a rapture *
—that raising him from ignorance
—Carried him up into the air of action
—And knowledge of himself.
And when the year after Gifford’s death a resolution was passed
by the meeting, that “some of the brethren (one at a time) to
whom the Lord may have given a gift, be called forth, and en-
couraged to speak a word in the church for mutual edification,”
Bunyan was one of the persons so called upon. “Some,” he
says, “ of the most able among the Saints with us, . . I say, the
most able for judgment and holiness of life, . . as they con-
ceived, did perceive that God had counted me worthy to under-
stand something of his will in his holy and blessed Word; and
had given me utterance in some measure to express what I saw to
others for edification. Therefore they desired me, and that with
much earnestness, that I would be willing, at some times, to take
in hand, in one of the meetings, to speak a word of exhortation
unto them. The which, though at the first it did much dash
and abash my spirit, yet being still by them desired and en-
treated, I consented to their request ; and did twice, at two
several assemblies (but in private), though with much weakness
and infirmity, discover my gift amongst them ; at which they
128 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
not only seemed to be, but did solemnly protest, as in the sight
of the great God, they were both affected and comforted, and
gave thanks to the Father of Mercies for the grace bestowed
on me.”
In those days the supply of public news came so slowly, and
was so scanty when it came, that even the proceedings of sc
humble an individual as Bunyan became matter of considerable
attention in the town of Bedford. His example drew many to
the Baptist meeting, from curiosity to discover what had affected
him there, and produced such a change in his conversation.
“When I went out to seek the Bread of Life, some of them,” he
says, “would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at home.
Yea, almost all the town, at first, at times would go out to hear
at the place where I found good. Yea, young and old for a
while had some reformation on them : also some of them, per-
ceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying to Him for
mercy too.” Bunyan was not one of those enthusiasts who
thrust themselves forward in confident reliance upon what they
suppose to be an inward call. He entered upon his probation
with diffidence and fear, not daring “ to make use of his gift in
a public way; and gradually acquired a trust in himself, and a
consciousness of his own qualifications, when some of those who
went into the country to disseminate their principles and make
converts, took him in their company. Exercising himself thus
as occasion offered, he was encouraged by the approbation with
which others heard him ; and in no long time, “ after some
solemn prayer, with fasting,” he was “ more particularly called
forth, and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching,
not only to and amongst them that believed, but also to offer the
Gospel to those who had not yet received the faith thereof.”
The Bedford meeting had at this time its regular minister,
whose name was John Burton; so that what Bunyan received
was a roving commission to itinerate in the villages round about;
and in this he was so much employed, that when in the ensuing
year he was nominated for a deacon of the congregation, they
declined electing him to that office, on the ground that he was
too much engaged to attend to it. Having in previous training
Overcome his first diffidence, he now “felt in his mind a secret
*ricking forward ” to this ministry; not “for desire of vain-
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 129
glory,” for he was even at that time “sorely afflicted” concern-
ing his own eternal state, but because the Scriptures encouraged
him, by texts which ran continually in his mind, whereby “I
was made,” he says, “to see that the Holy Ghost never intended
that men who have gifts and abilities should bury them in the
earth, but rather did command and stir up such to the exercise
of their gift, and also did command those that were apt and
ready, so to do.” Those gifts he had, and could not but be con-
scious of them : he had also the reputation of possessing them ;
so that people came by hundreds to hear him from all parts
round about, though “upon divers accounts;” some to marvel,
and some perhaps to mock; but some also to listen, and to be
“ touched with a conviction that they needed a Saviour.” “But
I first,” he says, “ could not believe that God should speak by
me to the heart of any man, still counting myself unworthy ; yet
those who were thus touched would love me, and have a par-
ticular respect for me: and though I did put it from me that
they should be awakened by me, still they would confess it, and
affirm it before the Saints of God. They would also bless God
for me (unworthy wretch that I am (), and count me God’s in-
strument that showed to them the way of salvation. Wherefore,
seeing them in both their words and deeds to be so constant, and
also in their hearts so earnestly pressing after the knowledge of
Jesus Christ, rejoicing that ever God did send me where they
were; then I began to conclude it might be so that God had
owned in his work such a foolish one as I, and then came that
word of God to my heart with much sweet refreshment,” “The
blessing of them that were ready to perish is come upon me:
yea, I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.”
When he first began to preach, Bunyan endeavoured to work
upon his hearers by alarming them ; he dealt chiefly in commi-
nations, and dwelt upon the dreadful doctrine, that the curse of
God “lays hold on all men as they come into the world, because
of sin.” “This part of my work,” says he, “I fulfilled with
great sense; for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my trans-
gressions, lay heavy upon my conscience. I preached what I
felt, what I smartingly did feel,-even that under which my
poor soul did groan and tremble to astonishment. Indeed I
* Job xxix. 13.
lº.
130 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
have been as one sent to them from the dead. I went myself in
chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my
own conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of. I can
truly say—that when I have been to preach, I have gone full of
guilt and terror even to the pulpit door ; and there it hath been
taken off, and I have been at liberty in my mind until I have
done my work; and then immediately, even before I could get
down the pulpit stairs, I have been as bad as I was before. Yet
God carried me on ; but surely with a strong hand, for neither
guilt nor Hell could take me off my work.” This is a case like
that of the fiery old soldier John Haime, who was one of Wesley’s
first lay-preachers.
When he was in a happier state of mind, he took a different
and better course, “still preaching what he saw and felt ;” he
then laboured “ to hold forth our Lord and Saviour” in all his
offices, relations, and benefits unto the world ;—and “to remove
those false supports and props on which the world doth lean, and
by them fall and perish.” “ Preaching however was not his only
employment; and though still working at his business for a
maintenance, he found time to compose a treatise against Some
of those heresies which the first Quakers poured forth so pro-
fusely in their overflowing enthusiasm. In that age of theologi-
cal warfare, no other sectaries acted so eagerly upon the offensive.
It seems that they came into some of the meetings which Bun-
yan attended, to bear testimony against the doctrines which were
taught there; and this induced him to write his first work, en-
titled, “Some Gospel Truths opened according to the Scriptures:
or the Divine and Human Nature in Christ Jesus; His coming
into the world ; His Righteousness, Death, Resurrection, Ascen-
sion, Intercession, and Second Coming to Judgment, plainly de-
monstrated and proved.” Burton” prefixed to this treatise a
commendatory epistle, bidding the reader not to be offended
because the treasure of the Gospel was held forth to him in a
poor earthen vessel, by one who had neither the greatness nor
the wisdom of this world to commend him. “Having had ex-
‘perience,” he says, “with many other Saints, of this man’s sound-
[* The Rev. Mr. Burton died in June or July, 1660. Sutcliff’s Address,
ed. 1788, p. 51.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 131
ness in the faith, of his godly conversation, and his ability to
preach the Gospel, not by human art, but by the Spirit of Christ,
and that with much success in the conversion of sinners, I say,
having had experience of this, and judging this book may be
profitable to many others, as well as to myself, I thought it my
duty, upon this account, to bear witness with my brother to the
plain, and simple, and yet glorious truths of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
It may be asked, How is it possible that the man who wrote
such illiterate and senseless verses in the margin of his Book of
Martyrs, could have composed a treatise like this, about the
same time, or shortly afterwards? To this it may be replied,
that if the treatise were seen in its original spelling it might
have, at first sight, as tinkerly an appearance as the verses; but
in those days persons of much higher station spelt quite as
loosely, . . perhaps all who were not professionally scholars, . .
for it was before the age of spelling-books; and it may be be-
lieved, that in most cases the care of Orthography was left to the
printers. And it is not to be concluded from Bunyan’s wretched
verses, that he would write as wretchedly in prose: in versifying
he was attempting an art which he had never learnt, and for
which he had no aptitude; but in prose he wrote as he conversed,
and as he preached, using the plain, straightforward language of
common life. Burton may have corrected some vulgarisms, but
other correction would not be needed ; for frequent perusal of
the Scriptures had made Bunyan fully competent to state what
those doctrines were which the Quakers impugned : he was ready
with the Scriptural proofs; and in a vigorous mind like his, right
reasoning naturally results from right premises.
An ill judgment might be formed of Bunyan's treatise from
that part of its title which promises “profitable directions to
stand fast in the doctrine of Jesus the Son of Mary, against those
blustering storms of the Devil’s temptations, which do at this
day, like so many Scorpions, break loose from the bottomless
Pit, to bite and torment those that have not tasted the virtue of
Jesus, by the Revelation of the Spirit of God.” Little wisdom
and less moderation might be expected in a polemical discourse
so introduced. It is however a calm, well-arranged, and well-
supported statement of the Scriptural doctrines, on some mo-
R 2
132 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
mentous points which the primitive Quakers were understood by
others to deny ; and which, in fact, though they did not so un-
derstand themselves, they frequently did deny, both virtually
and explicitly, when in the heat and acerbity of oral disputation
they said they knew not what ; and also when, under the same
belief of immediate inspiration, they committed to writing what-
ever words came uppermost, as fast as the pen could put them
down, and subjected to no after revision what had been produced
with no forethought. “I would not have thee think,” says
Bunyan, “that I speak at random in this thing; know for cer-
tain that I myself have heard them blaspheme, yea, with a
grinning countenance, at the doctrine of that Man's second
coming from Heaven, above the stars, who was born of the
Virgin Mary. Yea, they have told me to my face, that I have
used conjuration and witchcraft, because what I preached was
according to the Scriptures. I was also told to my face, that I
preached up an Idol, because I said that the Son of Mary was in
Heaven, with the same Body that was crucified on the cross;
and many other things have they blasphemously vented against
the Lord of Life and Glory, and his precious Gospel. The
Lord reward them according as their work shall be ſ”
A reply to this (published originally, like the treatise which
provoked it, as a pamphlet) is inserted among “The Memorable
Works of a Son of Thunder and Consolation, namely, that True
Prophet and Faithful Servant of God, and sufferer for the Testi-
mony of Jesus, Edward Burroughs . . Published and Printed
for the good and benefit of Generations to come, in the year
1672.” This answer is entitled, “The True Faith of the Gospel
of Peace contended for in the Spirit of Meekness; and the Mys-
tery of Salvation (Christ within the hope of Glory) vindicated
in the Spirit of Love, against the secret Opposition of John
Bunyan, a professed Minister in Bedfordshire.” Words soft as
dew, or as the droppings of a summer cloud; but they were the
forerunners of a storm, and the Son of Thunder breaks out at
once : . . “How long, ye crafty fowlers, will ye prey upon the
innocent, and shoot at him secretly P. How long shall the
Righteous be a prey to your teeth, ye subtle Foxes, who seek to
devour P The just one, against whom your bow is bent, cries
for vengeance against you in the ears of the Lord. Yet you
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. i 33
strengthen your hands in iniquity, and gird yourselves with the
zeal of madness and fury : you think to swallow up the harmless,
and to blot out the name of the righteous, that his generation
may not be found on earth. You shoot your arrows of cruelty,
even bitter words, and make the innocent your mark to prey
upon. You despise the way of uprightness and simplicity, and
the path of craft and subtlety you tread: your dens are in dark-
ness, and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of Secret
whoredom.—Yet—you are found out with the searching eye of
the Lord, and as with a whirlwind will he scatter you, and your
name shall rot, and your memorial shall not be found; and the
deeper you have digged the pit for another, the greater will be
your own fall.—And John Bunyan and his fellow, who have
joined themselves to the broken army of Magog, now in the heat
of the day of great striving, are not the least of all guilty among
their brethren, of secret smiting the innocent, with secret lies
and slanders, who have showed themselves in defence of the
Dragon against the Lamb, in this day of war betwixt them.” In
this strain the Son of Thunder roars and blazes away, like a
Zevc inpuſ peplermc in prose. “Your spirit is tried, and your gene-
ration is read at large; and your stature and countenance is
clearly described to me, to be of the stock of Ishmael, and of
the seed of Cain, whose line reacheth unto the murdering Priests,
Scribes and Pharisees.—O thou blind Priest, whom God hath
confounded in thy language, the design of the Devil in de-
ceiving souls is thy own, and I turn it back to thee.—Thou
directest altogether to a thing without, despising the Light
within, and worshipping the name Mary in thy imagination, and
knowest not Him who was before the world was, in whom alone
is Salvation, and in no other.—If we should diligently search,
we should find thee, through feigned words, through covetous-
ness, making merchandise of souls, loving the wages of un-
righteousness: and such were the scoffers whom Peter speaks of,
among whom thou art found in thy practice, among them who
are preaching for hire, and love the error of Balaam, who took
gifts and rewards.-The Lord rebuke thee, thou unclean spirit,
who hast falsely accused the innocent to clear thyself from guilt;
but at thy door guilt lodges, and I leave it with thee; clear
thyself if thou art able. And thy wicked reproaches we patiently
134. LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
bear, till the Lord appear for us: and we are not greater than
Our Lord, who was said to have a Devil by thy generation; and
their measure of wickedness thou fulfils, and art one of the
Dragon's army against the Lamb and his followers; and thy
weapons are slanders; and thy refuge is lies; and thy work is
confused, and hath hardly gained a name in Babylon's record;
and by us (so much of it at least as is against us) is cast by as
our spoiled prey, and trampled upon in all thy reproachful
speeches, who art unclean.”
Mixed with these railings were affirmations as homestly made,
that the Quakers owned all the Scriptures which Bunyan had
alleged against them concerning the life, and death, and resur-
rection of our Lord, yet withal bearing witness “that without
the revelation of Christ within, there is no salvation.” There
were many and wide differences between Bunyan and the Quakers,
but none upon these points when they understood each other, and
when the Quakers understood themselves. He replied in a
vindication of his treatise, complaining that his opponent had
uttered a very great number of heresies, and falsely reported
many things; and wishing him to be sober if he could, and to
keep under his unruly spirit, and not to appear so much, at least
not so grossly, a railing Rabshakeh. He maintained, which was
in fact the point at issue, that the opinions held at that day by
the Quakers were the same that the Ranters had held long ago,
“Only the Ranters had made them threadbare at an alehouse, and
the Quakers had set a new gloss upon them again by an outward
legal holiness or righteousness.” He dwelt upon the error of the
Quakers in confounding conscience with the Spirit of Christ,
thereby “idolizing and making a god” of what “is but a crea-
ture, and a faculty of the soul of man, which God hath made,”
which “is that in which is the law of Nature, which is able to
teach the Gentiles, that sin against the law is sin against God,
and which is called by the Apostle” but even Nature itself.”—
“O wonderful, that men should make a God and a Christ of
their consciences because they can convince of sin P’ To the
reproach of making merchandise of souls, and loving the wages
of unrighteousness, he answered thus: “Friend, dost thou speak
this as from thy own knowledge, or did any other tell thee so?
* I Cor. xi. 14.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 135
However, that spirit that led thee out of this way is a lying spirit.
For though I be poor and of no repute in the world, as to out-
ward things, yet this grace I have learned, by the example of
the Apostle, to preach the truth ; and also to work with my
hands, both for mine own living and for those that are with me,
when I have opportunity. And I trust that the Lord Jesus, who
hath helped me to reject the wages of unrighteousness hitherto,
will also help me still, so that I shall distribute that which God
hath given me freely, and not for filthy lucre's sake. Other
things I might speak in vindication of my practice in this thing.
But ask of others, and they will tell thee that the things I say
are truth : and hereafter have a care of receiving anything by
hearsay only, lest you be found a publisher of those lies which
are brought to you by others, and so render yourself the less
credible.”
This reproof was so far lost upon his antagonist, that he re-
turned thus to the charge:––“ Thou seemest to be grieved, and
calls this a false accusation. But let 's try; the cause admits
dispute. Art not thou in their steps, and among them that do
these things Ask John Burton, with whom thou art joined
close to vindicate him and call him brother. Hath he not so
much yearly, 150l. or more (except thou hast some of it), which
is unrighteous wages, and hire, and gifts, and rewards? What
sayest thou? Art thou not in his steps, and among and with
him and them that do these things? If he be thy brother, and
thou so own him, what is evil in him whom thou vindicates, I
lay upon thee. Though thou bid me have a care of receiving by
hearsay, what I have said and received in this is truth, though
thou evade it never so much.” Burroughs must have examined
very little into the truth or probability of what he heard, when
he could believe and repeat that a poor Baptist meeting at Bed-
ford raised 150l. a-year for its minister | “Your words,” says
he, “describe your nature; for by your voice I know you to be
none of Christ's sheep ; and accordingly I judge in just judgment,
and in true knowledge.—Envy is of Cain's nature and seed, and
in that you are ; and liars are of Ishmael’s stock, and you are
guilty of that ; and you are among the murdering Priests’ party,
and close joined to them, in doctrine and practice, especially in
Writing against us.-Thy portion shall be howling and gnashing
136 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
of teeth, for the liar's portion is the Lake.--I reprove thee by
the Spirit of the Lord, and so leave thee to receive thy reward
from the just God of righteous judgment, who upon thy head
will render vengeance in flames of fire, in his dreadful day.—A.
liar and slanderer thou art, a perverter and wrester of the right
way of God and of the Scriptures, a hypocrite and dissembler,
a holder forth of damnable doctrines, an envious man and false
accuser, and all thy lies, slanders, deceits, confusions, hypo-
crisies, contradictions, and damnable doctrines of devils, with
impudency held forth by thee, shall be consumed in the pit of
vengeance.—Alas, alas, for thee, John Bunyan thy several
months’ travail in grief and pain was a fruitless birth, and pe-
rishes as an untimely fig; and its praise is blotted out among
men, and it’s past away as smoke. Truth is a-top of thee, and
outreaches thee, and it shall stand for ever to confound thee and
all its enemies; and though thou wilt not subject thy mind to
serve it willingly, yet a slave to it must thou be; and what thou
dost in thy wickedness against it, the end thereof brings forth the
glory of it, and thy own confounding and shame. And now be
wise and learned, and put off thy armour: for thou mayest un-
derstand the more thou strivest the more thou art entangled; and
the higher thou arises in envy, the deeper is thy fall into con-
fusion ; and the more thy arguments are, the more increased is
thy folly. Let experience teach thee, and thy own wickedness
correct thee : and thus I leave thee. And if thou wilt not own
the Light of Christ in thy own conscience, nor to reform thee
and convince thee, yet in the Day of Judgment thou shalt own
it ; and it shall witness the justness of the judgment of the Lord,
when for thy iniquities he pleads with thee. And behold, as a
thief in the night, when thou art not aware, He will come; and
then woe unto thee that art polluted l’’
Bunyan made no further reply, either to the reasoning or
Rabshaking of his opponent ; for although, as he says, it pleased
him much “to contend with great earnestness for the word of
faith, and the remission of sins by the death and sufferings of our
Saviour,” he had no liking for controversy, and moreover saw
that “his work before him ran in another channel.” His great
desire was to get into what he calls “ the darkest places of the
country,” and awaken the religious feelings of that class of per-
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 137
sons who then, as now, in the midst of a Christian nation, were
like the beasts that perish. While he was thus usefully employed,
“the Doctors and Priests of the country,” he says, began to open
wide against him, “and in the year 1657 an indictment was
preferred against him at the assizes for preaching at Eaton ; for
though this was in the golden days of Oliver Cromwell, the same
writer who tells* us that “in those days there was no persecution,”
observes,f “that the Presbyterian ministers, who were then in
possession of the livings, could not bear with the preaching of an
illiterate tinker and an unordained minister.” But the Presbyterians
were not the only clergy who had intruded into the benefices of
their loyal brethren, or retained those which were lawfully their
own by conforming to the times, and deserting the Church in
whose service they were ordained. There was a full proportion
of Independents among these incumbents, and some Baptists also.
And that there was much more persecution during the Protec-
torate than Cromwell would have allowed if he could have pre-
vented it, may be seen by the history of the Quakers, to say
nothing of the Papists, against whom the penal laws remained in
full force,—nor of the Church of England. The simple truth is,
all parties were agreed in the one Catholic opinion, that certain
doctrines are not to be tolerated: they differed as to what those
doctrines were ; and they differed also as to the degree in which
they held the principle of intolerance, and the extent to which
they practised it. The Papists, true to their creed, proclaimed
it without reserve or limit, and burnt all heretics wherever they
had power to do so. The Protestants therefore tolerated no
Papists where they were strong enough to maintain the ascen-
dency which they had won. The Church of England would have
silenced all sectaries; it failed in the attempt, being betrayed by
many of its own members; and then the sectaries overthrew the
Church, put the Primate to death, ejected all the clergy who ad-
hered to their principles, imprisoned some, deported others, and
prohibited even the private and domestic use of the Liturgy. The
very Baptists of Bunyan's congregation, and at a time too when
Bunyan was their pastor, interdicted: a “dearly beloved sister”
from communicating with a church of which her son-in-law was
* Ivimey's History of the Baptists, vol. ii. p. 27. † Ib. p. 34.
j. Ib. p. 37.
138 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
minister, because he was not a Baptist ; and they excluded” a
brother, “because in a great assembly of the Church of England
he was profanely bishopt, after the antichristian order of that
generation, to the great profanation of God’s order, and heart-
breaking of his Christian brethren.” The Independents flogged
and hanged the Quakers; and the Quakers prophesied in the gall
of bitterness against all other communities, and condemned them
to the bottomless pit, in hearty belief and jubilant expectation
that the sentence would be carried into full effect by the devil
and his angels. &
It is not known in what manner the attempt at silencing Bun-
yan was defeated. He tells us that the ignorant and malicious
were then stirred up to load him with slanders; and that what-
ever the devil could devise, and his instruments invent, was
“whirled up and down the country” against him, thinking that
by that means they should make his ministry to be abandoned.
It was rumoured that he was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman :
and now it was that the aspersions cast upon his moral character
called forth that characteristic vindication of himself which has
already been noticed. Equally characteristic is the appeal which
he made to his own manners and deportment. “And in this,”
says he, “I admire the wisdom of God, that he made me shy of
women from my first conversion until now. These know, and
can also bear me witness, with whom I have been most intimately
concerned, that it is a rare thing to see me carry it pleasant
towards a woman. The common salutation of women I abhor;
*t is odious to me in whomsoever I see it. Their company alone
I cannot away with ! I seldom so much as touch a woman’s
hand; for I think these things are not so becoming me. When
I have seen good men salute those women that they have visited,
or that have visited them, I have at times made my objection
against it ; and when they have answered that it was but a piece
of civility, I have told them it is not a comely sight. Some
indeed have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked why
they made baulks” why they did salute the most handsome, and
let the ill-favoured go 2 Thus how laudable soever such things
have been in the eyes of others, they have been unseemly in my
sight.”—Dr. Doddridge could not have thus defended himself.
* Ivimey’s History of the Baptists, vol. ii. p. 40.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. T39
But though this passage might have been written by a Saint of
the monastic calendar, Bunyan was no woman-hater. He had
at this time married a second wife; and that he “carried it
pleasant” towards her, appears by her behaviour towards him in
his troubles.
These troubles came on a few months only after the Restora-
tion, Bunyan being one of the first persons after that event who
was punished for nonconformity. The nation was in a most un-
quiet state. There was a restless, rancorous, implacable party
who would have renewed the civil war, for the sake of again try-
ing the experiment of a Commonwealth, which had so completely
and miserably failed when the power was in their hands. They
looked to Ludlow as their General; and Algernon Sidney” took
the first opportunity of soliciting for them men from Holland
and money from France. The political enthusiasts who were
engaged in such schemes, counted upon the sectaries for support.
Even among the sober sects there were men who at the cost of
a rebellion would gladly have again thrown down the Church
Establishment, for the hope of setting up their own system
during the anarchy that must ensue. Among the wilder, some
were eager to proclaim King Jesus, and take possession of the
earth as being the Saints to whom it was promised; and some
(a few years later), less in hope of effecting their republican
projects than in despair and vengeance, conspired to burn Lon-
don: they were discovered, tried, convicted, and executed ; they
confessed their intention ; they named the day which had been
appointed for carrying it into effect, because an astrological
scheme had shown it to be a lucky one for this design ; and on
that very day the fire of London broke out. In such times the
Government was rendered suspicious by the constant sense of
danger, and was led, as much by fear as by resentment, to seve-
rities which are explained by the necessity of self-defence,—not
justified by it, when they fall upon the innocent, or even upon
the less guilty.t
A warrant was issued against Bunyan as if he had been a dan-
* CEuvres de Louis XIV., t. ii. p. 204. Ludlow's Memoirs (Edinburgh,
1751), vol. iii., 151, 156. Ludlow's passport from the Comte d’Estrades,
sent him that he might go from Switzerland to Paris, there to confer with
Sidney upon this project, is printed in the same volume, p. 157.
[f 12th November, 1660.]
£40 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
gerous person, because he went about preaching : this office was
deemed (and well it might be) incompatible with his calling;
he was known to be hostile to the restored Church, and probably
it might be remembered that he had served in the Parliament’s
army. Accordingly, he was arrested at a place called Samsell,
in Bedfordshire, at a meeting in a private house. . He was aware
of this intention, but neither chose to put off the meeting, nor
to escape, lest such conduct on his part should make “an ill
savour in the country;” and because he was resolved “to see
the utmost of what they could say or do to him :” so he was
taken before the Justice, Wingate by name, who had issued the
warrant. Wingate asked him why he did not content himself
with following his calling, instead of breaking the law ; and
Bunyan replied, that he could both follow his calling, and preach
the word too. He was then required to find sureties: they were
ready, and being called in, were told they were bound to keep
him from preaching, otherwise their bonds would be forfeited.
Upon this Bunyan declared that he would not desist from speak-
ing the word of God. While his mittimus was making in con-
sequence of this determination, one whom he calls an old enemy
to the truth,” entered into discourse with him, and said he had
read of one Alexander the coppersmith who troubled the Apostles,
—“ aiming 't is like at me,” says Bunyan, “because I was a
tinker ; to which I answered, that I also had read of Priests and
Pharisees that had their hands in the blood of our Lord.” Aye,
was the rejoinder, and you are one of those Pharisees, for you
make long prayers to devour widows’ houses. “I answered,”
says Bunyan, “that if he had got no more by preaching and
praying than I had done, he would not be so rich as now he
was.” This ended in his committal to Bedford jail, there to re-
main till the quarter sessions. He was offered his liberty if he
would promise not to call the people together, but no such pro-
mise would he make ; and when he was told that none but poor,
simple, ignorant people came to hear him, he replied, that such
had most need of teaching, and therefore it was his duty to go on
in that work. It appears, however, that after a few days he
[* Dr. Lindale. , See “A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John
Bunyan, Minister of the Gospel at Bedford. Written by himself, and never
before published. London, 1765, 12mo.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 141
listened to his friends, and would have given bond for his ap-
pearance at the sessions; but the magistrate to whom they ap-
plied was afraid to take it. “Whereat,” says Bunyan, “I was
not at all daunted, but rather glad, and saw evidently that the
Lord had heard me. For before I went down to the justice, I
begged of God, that if I might do more good by being at liberty
than in prison, that then I might be set at liberty; but if not—
His will be done; for I was not altogether without hopes but
that my imprisonment might be an awakening to the saints in
the country : therefore I could not tell which to choose; only I
in that manner did commit the thing to God. And verily at my
return I did meet my God sweetly in the prison again, comfort-
ing of me, and satisfying of me that it was His will and mind
that I should be there.” -
Some seven weeks after this the sessions were held, and John
Bunyan was indicted as a person who “devilishly and perni-
ciously abstained from coming to Church to hear divine service,
and who was a common upholder of several unlawful meetings
and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the
good subjects of this kingdom.” He answered, that as to the
first part of this, he was a common frequenter of the Church of
God: but being demanded whether he attended the parish church,
he replied that he did not, and for this reason, that he was not
commanded so to do in the word of God; we were commanded
there to pray, but with the Spirit, not with the Common Prayer
book, the prayers in that book being made by other men, and not
by the motion of the Holy Spirit within our own hearts. And
as to the Lord’s Prayer, said he, “there are very few that can,
in the Spirit, say the two first words of that prayer; that is, that
can call God their Father, as knowing what it is to be born
again, and as having experience that they are begotten of the
Spirit of God; which if they do not, all is but babbling.”
Having persuaded himself by weak arguments, Bunyan used
them as if they had been strong ones: “Show me,” he said, “the
place in the Epistles where the Common Prayer book is written,
or one text of Scripture that commands me to read it, and I will
use it. But yet, notwithstanding, they that have a mind to use
it, they have their liberty; that is, I would not keep them from
it. But for our parts, we can pray to God without it. Blessed
142 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
be his name !” But the sectaries had kept their countrymen from
it, while they had the power; and Bunyan himself in his sphere
laboured to dissuade them from it. *
Men who are called in question for their opinions, may be ex-
pected to under or over-state them at such times, according as
caution or temerity may predominate in their dispositions. In
none of Bunyan’s writings does he appear so little reasonable, or
so little tolerant, as upon these examinations. He was a brave
man,—a bold one,—and believed himself to be an injured one,
standing up against persecution ; for he knew that by his preach-
ing, evident and certain good was done; but that there was any
evil in his way of doing it, or likely to arise from it, was a
thought which, if it had arisen in his own mind, he would
immediately have ascribed to the suggestion of Satan. Some
further disputation ensued : “We are told,” he said, “to ex-
hort one another daily, while it is called to-day :” but the Justice
replied, he ought not to preach. In rejoinder, he offered to prove
that it was lawful for him, and such as him, to preach, and quoted
the Apostle's words, “As every man hath received the gift, even
so let him minister the same unto another.” “Let me a little
open that Scripture to you,” said the magistrate: “As every
man hath received his gift; that is, as every man hath received
a trade, so let him follow it. If any man have received a gift of
tinkering, as thou hast done, let him follow his tinkering. And
so other men their trades, and the divine his calling.” But John
insisted that spiritual gifts were intended in this passage. The
magistrate said, men might exhort if they pleased in their families,
but not otherwise. John answered, “If it were lawful to do
good to some, it was lawful to do good to more. If it were a
good thing to exhort our families, it was good to exhort others.
And if it were held a sin for them to meet together and seek the
face of God, and exhort one another to follow Christ, he would
sin still.” They were now at a point. “You confess the indict-
ment, then P’’ said the magistrate. He made answer—“This I
confess: We have had many meetings together, both to pray to
God, and to exhort one another ; and we had the sweet comfort-
ing presence of the Lord among us for our encouragement;
blessed be his name ! There I confess myself guilty, and no
otherwise.” Then said the magistrate, “Hear your judgment 1
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. - }43
You must be had back again to prison, and there lie for three
months following ; and at three months’ end, if you do not sub-
mit to go to church to hear divine service, and leave your
preaching, you must be banished the realm. And if, after such
a day as shall be appointed you to be gone, you shall be found
in this realm, or be found to come over again without special
licence from the king, you must stretch by the neck for it : I
tell you plainly.” Bunyan resolutely answered, that “if he were
out of prison to-day, he would preach the Gospel again to-morrow,
by the help of God P’
Back therefore he was taken ; “and I can truly say,” he says,
“I bless the Lord for it; that my heart was sweetly refreshed in
the time of my examination, and also afterwards at my returning
to the prison, so that I found Christ’s words more than bare
trifles, where he saith, * “I will give you a mouth and wisdom,
which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor
resist.’” Three months elapsed, and the cierk of the peace
then [3 April, 1661] went to him by desire of the magistrate, to
see if he could be persuaded to obedience. But Bunyan insisted
that the law, being intended against those who designed to do
evil in their meetings, did not apply to him. He was told that
he might exhort his neighbours in private discourse, if he did
not call together an assembly of people : this he might do, and
do much good thereby, without breaking the law. “But,” said
Bunyan, “if I may do good to one, why not to two P and if to two,
why not to four, and so to eight, and so on ?” “Aye,” said the
clerk, “ and to a hundred, I warrant you !” “Yes,” Bunyan an-
swered, “I think I should not be forbidden to do as much good as
I can.” They then began to discuss the question, whether, under
pretence of doing good, harm might not be done, by seducing the
people ; and Bunyan allowed that there might be many who de-
signed the destruction of the government: let them, he said, be
punished, and let him be punished also, should he do any thing
not becoming a man and a Christian ; if error or heresy could
be proved upon him, he would disown it, even in the market-
place; but to the truth he would stand to the last drop of his
blood. Bound in conscience he held himself to obey all righteous
laws, whether ºffere were a king or not ; and if he offended
* Luke xxi. 15.
144 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
against them, patiently to bear the penalty. And to cut off all
occasion of suspicion, as touching the harmlessness of his doe-
trines, he would willingly give any one the notes of all his ser-
mons, for he sincerely desired to live in peace, and to submit to
the present authority. “But there are two ways of obeying,”
he observed ; “the one to do that which I in my conscience do
believe that I am bound to do, actively; and where I cannot
obey actively, there I am willing to lie down, and to suffer what
they shall do unto me.” And here the interview ended, Bunyan
thanking him for his “civil and meek discoursing,” and breathing
a wish that they might meet in Heaven.
Shortly afterwards the coronation [23 April, 1661] took
place, and the proclamation which allowed persons to sue out a
pardon during twelve months from that day, had the effect of
suspending the proceedings against him, if any further were in-
tended. When the assizes came, his wife presented a petition
to the Judges, that they would impartially take his case into
consideration.* Sir Matthew Hale was one of these Judges,
and expressed a wish to serve if he could, but a fear that he
could do her no good; and being assured by one of the Justices
that Bunyan had been convicted, and was a hot-spirited fellow,
he waived the matter. But the High Sheriff encouraged the poor
woman to make another effort for her husband before they left
the town; and accordingly, “with a bashed face and a trembling
heart,” she entered the Swan Chamber, where the two Judges
and many magistrates and gentry of the country were in com-
pany together. Trembling however as she was, Elizabeth Bunyan
had imbibed something of her husband’s spirit. She had been
to London to petition the House of Lords in his behalf, and had
been told by one whom she calls Lord Barkwood,i that they
could do nothing, but that his releasement was committed to the
Judges at these next assizes, “ and now I am come to you,” she
said, “ and you give neither releasement nor relief!” And she
[* And that “he might be heard.” She threw a second into the coach to
Judge Twisden, “who, when he had seen it, snapt her up, and angrily told
her that I was a convicted person, and could not be released unless I would
promise to preach no more.”—“A Relation,’ &c., p. 41, ed. 1765. Contrast
; º bearing of Sir Matthew Hale with the hard measure of his fellow-
judge.
[f “A Relation of the Imprisonment,’ &c., ed. 1765, p. 44.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 145
complained to Hale, that he was kept unlawfully in prison, for
the indictment was false, and he was clapped up before there
were any proclamations against the meetings. One of the
Judges then said he had been lawfully convicted. “It is false,”
replied the woman, “for when they said to him, Do you confess
the indictment? he said only this, that he had been at several
meetings both when there was preaching the word and prayer,
and that they had God’s presence among them.” “Will your
husband leave preaching?” said Judge Twisden; “if he will do
so, then send for him.” “My lord,” said she, “he dares not leave
preaching, as long as he can speak.”
Sir Matthew himself was not likely to be favourably impressed
by this sort of pleading. But he listened sadly when she told
him that there were four small children by the former wife, one
of them blind; that they had nothing to live upon while their
father was in prison but the charity of good people; and that
she herself, “smayed” at the news when her husband was appre-
hended, being but young and unaccustomed to such things,
fell in labour, and continuing in it for eight days, was delivered
of a dead child. “Alas, poor woman l’” said Hale. But Twisden
said poverty was her cloak, for he understood her husband was
better maintained by running up and down a-preaching, than by
following his calling. Sir Matthew asked what was his calling,
and was told that he was a tinker. “Yes,” observed the wife, “and
because he is a tinker and a poor man, therefore he is despised
and cannot have justice.” The scene ended in Sir Matthew’s
mildly telling her he was sorry he could do her no good; that
what her husband had said was taken for a conviction, and that
there was no other course for her, than either to apply to the
king, or sue out his pardon, or get a writ of error, which would
be the cheapest. She urged them to send for Bunyan, that he
might speak for himself: his appearance however would rather
have confirmed those in their opinions who said that there was
not such another pestilent fellow in the country, than have
moved the judges in his favour. Elizabeth Bunyan concludes
her account by saying,” “This I remember, that though I was
[* “A Relation, &c.’ p. 47. “Here followeth a discourse between my wife
and the Judges, touching my deliverance; the which I took from her own
mouth.”]
L
14.6 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
somewhat timorous at my first entrance into the chamber, yet
before I went out I could not but break forth into tears; not so
much because they were so hard-hearted against me and my
husband, but to think what a sad account such poor creatures
will have to give at the coming of the Lord.”
No further steps for procuring his release were taken at this
time ; either because the means for defraying the legal expenses
could not be raised, or, which is quite as probable, because it
was certain that Bunyan, thinking himself in conscience bound
to preach in defiance of the law, would soon have made his case
worse than it then was. For he had fortunately a friend in the
jailer, and was somewhat like a prisoner at large, being allowed
to go whither he would, and return when he thought proper.
He attended the meetings of the congregation to which he
belonged, he was employed by them to visit disorderly mem-
bers, he was often out in the night, and it is said that many of
the Baptist congregations in Bedfordshire owe their origin to his
midnight preaching. “I followed my wonted course,” he says,
“taking all occasions to visit the people of God, exhorting them
to be steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to take heed that
they touched not the Common Prayer, &c., an &c. more full
of meaning than that which occasioned the dishonest outcry
against the &c. oath. So far did this liberty extend, that he
went “to see the Christians at London,” an indiscretion which
cost the jailer a severe reproof, and had nearly cost him his
place, and which compelled him to withhold any further indul-
gence of this kind, “so,” says Bunyan, “that I must not now
look out of the door.” “They charged me,” he adds, “that I
went thither to plot and raise divisions, and make insurrections,
which God knows was a slander.” It was slanderous to charge
him with plotting, or with traitorous intentions; but in raising
divisions he was, beyond all doubt, actively and heartily engaged.
The man who distinguished a handful of Baptists in London as
the Christians of that great metropolis, and who, when let out
by favour from his prison, exhorted the people of God, as he calls
them, to take heed that they touched not the Common Prayer,
was not employed in promoting unity, nor in making good sub-
jects, however good his intentions, however orthodox his creed,
however sincere and fervent his piety. Peace might be on his
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 1 4 ×
lips, and zeal for the salvation of others in his heart ; but he was
certainly at that time no preacher of good will, nor of Christian
charity. And without reference to human laws, it may be affirmed,
that the circumstances which removed this high-minded and hot-
minded man from a course of dangerous activity, in which he
was as little likely to acquire a tolerant spirit as to impart it,
and placed him in confinement, where his understanding had lei-
sure to ripen and to cool, was no less favourable for his moral
and religious nature, than it has ultimately proved to his useful-
ness and his fame.
Nothing is more certain than that the gratification which a reso-
lute spirit feels in satisfying its conscience, exceeds all others; this
feeling is altogether distinct from that peace of mind which under
all afflictions abides in the regenerate heart; nor is it so safe a
feeling, for it depends too much upon excitement, and the exalta-
tion and triumph which it produces are akin to pride. Bunyan’s
heart had been kindled by the Book of Martyrs, cold and in-
sensible indeed must any heart be which could dwell without
emotion upon those precious records of religious heroism He
had read in those records, with perfect sympathy, the passionate
epistle which the Italian martyr, Pomponius Algerius, addressed
from prison to his friends. That martyr was a student of Padua,
and, in what in one sense may be called the golden age of litera-
ture, had been devoted to study from his childhood with ambitious
diligence and the most hopeful success. “To mitigate your
sorrow which you take for me,” said this noble soldier of the
noble Army, “I cannot but impart unto you some portion of my
delectation and joys which I feel and find, to the intent that you
may rejoice with me and sing before the Lord.—I have found a nest
of honey and honey-comb in the entrails of a lion.—Behold, He that
was once far from me, now is present with me : Whom once scarce
I could feel, now I see more apparently : Whom once I saw afar
off, now I behold near at hand: Whom once I hungered for, the
same now approacheth, and reacheth His hand unto me. He doth
comfort me, and heapeth me up with gladness; He driveth away
all bitterness; Heministereth strength and courage; He healeth
me, refresheth, advanceth, and comforteth me.—The sultry heat
of the prison to me is coldness; the cold winter to me is a fresh
spring-time in the Lord. He that feareth not to be burnt in the
L 2
148 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
fire, how will he fear the heat of the weather? Or what careth
he for the pinching frost, who burneth with the love of the Lord?
This place is sharp and tedious to them that be guilty; but to
the innocent, here droppeth delectable dew, here floweth plea-
sant nectar, here runneth sweet milk, here is plenty of all good
things.-Let the miserable worldling say, if there be any plot,
pasture, or meadow, so delightful to the mind of man as here.
Here is Mount Sion; here I am already in Heaven itself. Here
standeth first Christ Jesus in the front; about him stand the old
Patriarchs, Prophets, and Evangelists, Apostles, and all the ser-
vants of God; of whom some do embrace and cherish me; some
exhort, some open the Sacraments unto me, some comfort me,
other some are singing about me. How then shall I be thought
to be alone, among so many and such as these, the beholding of
whom to me is both solace and example !”
“This man,” says Bunyan, “was, when he wrote this letter, in
the house of the forest of Lebanon, in the Church in the Wil-
derness, in the Place and way of contending for the Truth of
God: and he drank of both cups, of that which was exceeding
bitter, and of that which was exceeding sweet ; and the reason
why he complained not of the bitter, was because the sweet had
overcome it. As his affliction abounded for Christ, so did his
consolations by him ;—so did I say ? they abounded much more.
But was not this man, think you, a Giant? A pillar in this
House? Had he not also now hold of the shield of faith? Yea,
was he not now in the combat f And did he not behave him-
self valiantly P Was not his mind elevated a thousand degrees
beyond sense, carnal reasons, fleshly love, self-concerns, and the
desire of embracing worldly things? This man had got that by
the end that pleased him : neither could all the flatteries, pro-
mises, threats, or reproaches, make him once listen to, or in-
quire after, what the world, or the glory of it, could afford. His
mind was captivated with delights invisible: he coveted to show
his love to his Lord by laying down his life for His sake. He
longed to be there, where there shall be no more pain nor sorrow,
nor sighing, nor tears, nor troubles.”
Bunyan had thoroughly conformed his own frame of mind to
that which he thus admired ; but there were times when his
[* Foxe's ‘Actes and Monumentes, ed. 1576, p. 912.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 149
spirit failed; and there is not a more characteristic passage in
his works than that in which he describes his apprehensions, and
inward conflict, and final determination. “I will tell you a
pretty business,” he says: “I was in a very sad and low con-
dition for many weeks; at which times also, being but a young
prisoner and not acquainted with the laws, I had this lying
much upon my spirits, that my imprisonment might end at the
gallows, for aught that I could tell. Now therefore Satan laid
hard at me to beat me out of heart, by suggesting this unto me :
“But how if, when you come indeed to die, you should be in this
condition ; that is, as not to savour the things of God, nor to
have any evidence upon your soul for a better state hereafter P’
(for indeed at that time all the things of God were hid from my
soul.) Wherefore, when I at first began to think of this, it was
a great trouble to me; for I thought with myself, that in the
condition I now was, I was not fit to die; neither indeed did I
think I could, if I should be called to it. Besides, I thought
with myself, if I should make a scrambling shift to clamber up
the ladder, yet I should either with quaking, or other symptoms
of fainting, give occasion to the enemy to reproach the way of
God, and his people for their timorousness. This therefore lay
with great trouble upon me; for methought I was ashamed to
die with a pale face and tottering knees, in such a case as this.
Wherefore I prayed to God that He would comfort me, and give
me strength to do and suffer what he should call me to ; yet no
comfort appeared, but all continued hid. I was also at this time
so really possessed with the thoughts of death, that oft I was as
if I was on the ladder with a rope about my neck. Only this
was some encouragement to me: I thought I might now have an
opportunity to speak my last words unto a multitude, which I
thought would come to see me die; and, thought I, if it must be
so, if God will but convert one soul by my last words, I shall
not count my life thrown away, nor lost.
“But yet all the things of God were kept out of my sight ;
and still the Tempter followed me with, “But whither must
you go when you die? what will become of you? where will you
be found in another world? what evidence have you for Heaven
and glory, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified?"
Thus was I tossed for many weeks, and knew not what to do.
150 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
At last this consideration fell with weight upon me, that it was
for the word and way of God that I was in this condition, where-
fore I was engaged not to flinch a hair's breadth from it. I
thought also that God might choose whether He would give me
comfort now, or at the hour of death; but I might not therefore
choose whether I would hold my profession or not. I was
bound, but He was free. Yea, it was my duty to stand to His
Word, whether he would ever look upon me or save me at the
last; wherefore, thought I, the point being thus, I am for going
on, and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have
comfort here or no. If God doth not come in, thought I, I will
leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity; sink or swim,-
come Heaven, come Hell;—Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me,
do; if not, I will venture for Thy name !” John Bunyan did
not ask himself how far the case of those Martyrs whose example
he was prepared to follow resembled the situation in which he
was placed. Such a question, had he been cool enough to enter-
tain it, might have shown him that they had no other alternative
than idolatry or the stake : but that he was neither called upon
to renounce anything that he did believe, nor to profess any thing
that he did not; that the congregation to which he belonged held
at that time their meetings unmolested; that he might have
worshipped when he pleased, where he pleased, and how he pleased;
that he was only required not to go about the country holding
conventicles; and that the cause for that interdiction was—not
that persons were admonished in such conventicles to labour
for salvation, but that they were exhorted there to regard with
abhorrence that Protestant church which is essentially part of
the constitution of this kingdom; from the doctrines of which
Church, except in the point of infant baptism, he did not differ
a hair's breadth. This I am bound to observe, because Bunyan
has been, and no doubt will continue to be, most wrongfully re-
presented as having been the victim of intolerant laws, and pre-
Iatical oppression.
But greater strength of will and strength of heart could not
have been manifested, if a plain duty, wherewith there may be
no compromise, had called for that sacrifice which he was ready
to have made. It would be wronging him here, were the touch-
ing expression of his feelings under these circumstances to be
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 151
withheld. “I found myself,” he says, “a man encompassed
with infirmities. The parting with my wife and poor children
hath often been to me, in this place, as the pulling the flesh from
the bones; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of
these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought
to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my
poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them :
especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all
besides. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my poor
blind one might go under, would break my heart to pieces !—
Poor child ! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for
thy portion in this world ! Thou must be beaten ; must beg;
suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though
I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. But yet
recalling myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God,
though it goeth to the quick to leave you. Oh, I saw in this
condition I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon
the heads of his wife and children: yet, thought I, I must do it !
And now I thought on those two milch-kine that were to carry
the Ark of God into another country, and to leave their" calves
behind them.” |
These fears passed away when he found that no further proceed-
ings were intended against him. But his worldly occupation
was gone, for there was an end of tinkering as well as of his
ministerialitimerancy: “He was as effectually called away from
his pots and kettles,” says Mr. Ivimey, “as the Apostles were
from mending their nets;” he learnt therefore to make tagged
thread-laces, and by this means supported his family. They lost
the comfort of his presence; but in other respects their con-
dition was not worsened by his imprisonment, which indeed was
likely to render them objects of kindness, as well as of compassion,
to their neighbours. In an age when the state of our prisons
was disgraceful to a Christian people, and the treatment of
prisoners not unfrequently most inhuman, Bunyan was fortunate
in the place of his confinement and in the disposition of his
jailer, who is said to have committed the management of the
prison to his care, knowing how entirely he might be trusted.
He had the society there of some who were suffering for the
* 1 Sam. vi. 10.
} 52 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
same cause; he had his Bible and his Book of Martyrs; and he
had leisure to brood over his own thoughts. The fever of his
enthusiasm had spent itself; the asperity of his opinions was
softened as his mind enlarged ; and the Pilgrim's Progress was
one of the fruits of his imprisonment. But before that work is
spoken of more particularly, it will be convenient to pursue the
story of his life to its close.
He remained a prisoner twelve years.” But it appears, that
during the last four of those years he regularly attended the
Baptist meeting, his name being always in the records; and in
the eleventh year the congregation chose him for their pastor;
“ he at the same time accepted the invitation, and gave himself
up to serve Christ and his Church in that charge, and received
of the Elders the right hand of fellowship.” The more recent
historian of the Baptists says, “How he could exercise his pas-
toral office in preaching among them, while he continued a
prisoner in the jail, we are at a loss to conceive:” unquestionably
only by being a prisoner at large, and having the liberty of the
town while he lodged in prison. There is a print in which he
is represented as pursued by a rabble to his own door;f but
there is no allusion to any such outrage in any part of his works:
in his own neighbourhood, where he had always lived, it is most
unlikely to have happened ; and if Bunyan had any enemies
latterly, they were among the bigots of his own persuasion. His
character had by this time obtained respect, his books had
attracted notice, and Dr. Barlow, then Bishop of Lincoln, and
other churchmen, are said to have pitied “his hard and un-
reasonable sufferings so far as to stand very much his friends
in procuring his enlargement.”f How this was effected is not
known.
[* From 12 Nov. 1660 to June 1672, when a pardon was granted under
the Great Seal for the release of John Fenn, John Bunyan, and others, pri-
sonariis in Communi Gaolá pro Comitatu nostrae Bedfordiae. (Life of Bun-
yan, by George Godwin, p. ix.)
The King’s Declaration of Indulgence was published on the 25th of the
oreceding March,-‘‘Papists and swarms of sectaries now boldly showing
themselves in their public meetings.”—Evelyn's Memoirs, i. 450, 4to. ed.]
[f Re-engraved for Ivimey's Life of Bunyan “From a scarce print in the
possession of Mr. George, Greek Street, Soho.” The whole print has the
appearance of a forgery. In one corner is inscribed “Drawn on the spot by
Samuel Ireland.” A name very little in favour of its authenticity.]
| This is the statement given in the continuation of his Life, appended to
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 153
From this time his life appears to have passed smoothly. His
congregation and his other friends bought ground and built a
meeting house for him, and there he continued to preach
before large audiences. Every year he used to visit London,
where his reputation was so great, that if a day’s notice were
given, “the meeting house in Southwark,” at which he gene-
rally preached, would not hold half the people that attended.
Three thousand persons have been gathered together there; and
not less than twelve hundred on week days, and dark winter's
mornings at seven o’clock.” He used also to preach in the
surrounding counties. The Baptist congregation at Hitchin is
upposed to have been founded by him. Their meetings were
held at first about three miles from that town, in a wood near
the village of Preston, Bunyan standing in a pit, or hollow, and
the people round about on the sloping sides. “A chimney
corner at a house in the same wood is still looked upon with
veneration, as having been the place of his refreshment.”
About five miles from Hitchin was a famous Puritan preaching
place, called Bendish. It had been a malt-house, was very low,
and thatched, and ran in two directions, a large square pulpit
standing in the angles; and adjoining the pulpit was a high
pew, in which ministers sat out of sight of informers, and from
which, in case of alarm, they could escape into an adjacent lane.
The building being much decayed, this meeting was removed in
his own account of himself, and supposed to have been written by Charles
Doe, a Baptist minister, who was intimately acquainted with him. Mr.
Ivimey, however, to invalidate this, produces a passage from the preface to
one of Owen's sermons: this passage says, “that Bunyan was confined upon
an excommunication for nonconformity; that there was a law, that if any
two persons would go to the Bishop of the Diocese, and offer a cautionary
bond that the prisoner should conform in half a year, the Bishop might re-
lease him upon that bond; that Barlow was applied to to do this, by Owen,
whose tutor he had been ; that Barlow refused, unless the Lord Chancellor
would issue out an order to him to take the cautionary bond, and release the
prisoner; that this, though very clargeable, was done, and that Bunyan was
then set at liberty, but little thanks to the bishop.” “From this account,”
says Mr. Ivimey, “it should seem the honour given to Dr. Barlow has been
ill-bestowed.” Upon this statement it will be sufficient to observe that Bull-
yan was not imprisoned upon a sentence of excommunication; and that he
would not have been imprisoned at all, if he would have allowed his friends
to enter into a bond for him, far less objectionable on his part than the fraudu-
lent one upon which, it is here pretended, he was released at last.
[* In Zoar Street, leading from Gravel Lane to Essex Street. See Wil-
kinson’s ‘Londima Illustrata.’
I 54. LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
1787 to a place called Coleman Green; and the pulpit, which was
there held to be the only remaining one in which Bunyan had
preached, was, with a commendable feeling, carefully removed
thither. But another “true pulpit” is shown in London, in the
Jewin Street meeting. It is said that Owen greatly admired
his preaching, and that being asked by Charles II. “how a
learned man such as he was could sit and listen to an illiterate
tinker P’’ he replied, “May it please your Majesty, could I pos-
sess that tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly
relinquish all my learning.”
This opinion would be discreditable to Owen’s judgment, if he
really entertained it, and the anecdote were entitled to belief.
For great part of Bunyan's tracts are supposed to contain the
substance of his sermons, which it is said he commonly com-
mitted to writing, after he had preached them ; and certainly, if
he had left no other proofs of his genius, these would not have
perpetuated his name. But the best sermons are not always
those which produce most effect in delivery. A reader may be
lulled to sleep by the dead letter of a printed discourse, who
Would have been roused and thrilled if the same discourse had
come to him in a stream of living oratory, enforced by the tones,
and eye, and countenance, and gestures of the preacher. One
who is as much in earnest as he was, even if his matter should be
Worse, and his manner feebler, will seldom fail to move hearers,
When they see that he is moved himself. But Bunyan may be
Supposed to have been always vehement and vigorous in delivery,
as he frequently is in his language. One day when he had
preached “with peculiar warmth and enlargement,” some of his
friends came to shake hands with him after the service, and ob-
served to him what “a sweet sermon” he had delivered. “Aye!”
he replied, “you need not remind me of that ; for the Devil told
me of it before I was out of the pulpit.” This anecdote authen-
ticates itself.”
He became a voluminous writer, and published about three-
score tracts or books. They have been collected into two folio
[* Toplady's Works, vol. iv. p. 11, as quoted in Ivimey's Life of Bunyan,
ed. 1825, p. 188.]
ºf On his portrait by Sturt prefixed to the first and only volume of his
works printed in 1692, it is said that he “died at London, August 31st, 1688,
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. I55
volumes, but indiscriminately arranged, and without any notice
of their respective dates;” and this is a great fault ; for by a
proper arrangement, or such notices, the progress of his mind
might more satisfactorily be traced. Some passages occur in
them which may make us shudder; these are very few, and in
what may probably be deemed his earlier works, because such
passages are found in them. A very few also there are in which
the smut of his old occupation has been left upon the paper.
The strongest prejudice which he retained, and precisely for this
reason, that it was the most unreasonable, was his dislike of the
Liturgy, the book of ‘Common Prayer’ being, like “the com-
mon salutation of women,” “what he could not away with.”
But the general tenor of his writings is mild, and tolerant, and
charitable; and if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appear-
ance than in Bunyan’s works, it could never have become a term
of reproach ; nor have driven so many pious minds, in horror of
it, to an opposite extreme.
Bunyan looked for a Millennium, though he did not partake
the madness of the Fifth-monarchy men, nor dream of living to
see it. He agreed with the particular or stricter Baptists, that
Church communion was to be held with those only who are
“visible Saints by calling;” that is, with those who make a pro-
fession of faith, and repentance, and holiness, and who are now
called Professors in their own circle, but in those days took to
themselves complacently the appellation of Saints. He dared
not hold communion with others, he said, because the Scriptures
so often command that all the congregation should be holy ; and
aged 60, having written sixty books.” “Books,” as Granger observes,
“equal to the number of his years.”]
[* 2 vols. fol. 1736, and 2 vols. fol. 1767.
“No one has as yet told us when John Bunyan first became an author, and
his ‘Grace Abounding is silent on the subject. There is, however, every
reason to believe that no book or tract of Bunyan’s appeared before 1658,
when in the September of that year he published ‘A Few Sighs from Hell;
or the Groans of a damned Soul. By that poor and contemptible servant of
Jesus Christ, John Bunyan; of which a copy is preserved in that curiously
complete collection of books, tracts, half-sheets, and single sheets relating to
the "Great Rebellion,” collected at the time, and presented by King
George III. to the British Museum.
The same collection contains a second publication of Bunyan's, entitled
* The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded. Published by that poor and
contemptible creature, John Bunyan of Bedford.’ Printed in 1659, and
endorsed by the collector as published in the May of that year.]
I 56 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
because so to do would be ploughing with an ox and an ass
together; and because God has threatened to plague the “min-
gled people” with dreadful punishments. “It is all one,” he
says, “to communicate with the profane, and to sacrifice to the
devil.” But he held that difference of opinion concerning bap-
tism should be no bar to communion; and for this he was at-
tacked by Kiffin and Jessey, two of the most eminent among the
Baptists. The more particular Particulars had long been dis-
pleased with his tolerance upon this point, and had drawn away
some of his congregation; and Bunyan complained of this
“Church-rending” spirit. “Yourself,” he says to Kiffin, “ could
you but get the opportunity, under pretence of this innocent
ordinance, as you term it, of water-baptism, would not stick to
make inroads, and outroads too, in all the churches that suit not
your fancy in the land. For you have already been bold to
affirm, that all those that have baptized infants ought to be
ashamed and repent, before they be showed the pattern of the
house : for what is this but to threaten that, could you have
your will of them, you would quickly take from them their
present church privileges P’’ He complains of “brethren of the
baptized way, who would not pray with men as good as them-
selves, because they were not baptized (that is, rebaptized)—
but would either, like Quakers, stand with their hats on their
heads, or else withdraw till they had done.”
One of his opponents had said upon this subject, that “if it be
preposterous and wicked for a man and woman to cohabit toge-
ther, and to enjoy the privileges of a married estate” without
the solemnity of public marriage, “so it is no less disorderly,
upon a spiritual account, for any one to claim the privileges of a
church, or to be admitted to the same, till they had been under
the solemnity of rebaptism.” “These words,” said Bunyan,
“are very black;-I wot that through ignorance and a prepos-
terous zeal he said it. God give him repentance ſ” They
neither judged nor spoke so charitably of him; they called him
a Machiavelian, a man devilish, proud, insolent, and presump-
tuous;–some compared him to the devil, others to a Bedlamite,
others to a sot; and they sneered at his low origin, and the base
occupation from which he had risen: “Such insults,” said he,
“I freely bind unto me, as an ornament among the rest of my
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. I 57
reproaches, till the Lord shall wipe them off at his coming.”
They reproached him for declining a public conference with
them in London upon the matter in dispute. To this he an-
swered thus: “The reason why I came not amongst you was
partly because I consulted mine own weakness, and counted not
myself, being a dull-headed man, able to engage so many of the
chief of you as I was then informed intended to meet me. I also
feared in personal disputes, heats and bitter contentions might
arise, a thing my spirit hath not pleasure in. I feared also that
both myself and words would be misrepresented ;-for if they
that answer a book will alter and screw arguments out of their
places, and make my sentences stand in their own words, not
mine, when, I say, my words are in a book to be seen ; what
would you have done had I in the least, either in matter or man-
ner, though but seemingly, miscarried among you?”
Throughout this controversy Bunyan appears to great ad-
vantage as a meek, good man, beyond the general spirit of his
age in toleration, and far beyond that of his fellow sectarians.
His was indeed so catholic a spirit, that though circumstances
had made him a sectarian, he liked not to be called by the de-
nomination of his sect. “I know none,” says he, “to whom
that title is so proper as to the disciples of John. And since
you would know by what name I would be distinguished from
others, I tell you, I would be, and hope I am, a Christian ; and
choose, if God should count me worthy, to be called a Christian,
a Believer, or other such name which is approved by the Holy
Ghost. And as for those factious titles of Anabaptists, Inde-
pendents, Presbyterians, or the like, I conclude that they come
neither from Jerusalem nor from Antioch, but rather from Hell
and Babylon; for they naturally tend to divisions. You may
know them by their fruits.”
In another of his treatises he says, “jars and divisions, wrang-
lings and prejudices, eat out the growth, if not the life of re-
ligion. These are those waters of Marah that imbitter our
spirits, and quench the Spirit of God. Unity and peace is said
to be like the dew of Hermon,” and as a dew that descended
upon Sion, when the Lord promised his blessing. Divisions run
religion into briers and thorns, contentions and parties. Divi-
* Psalm crxxiii. 3.
I 58 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
sions are to churches like wars in countries; where war is, the
ground lieth waste and untilled; none takes care of it. It is
love that edifieth, but division pulleth down. Divisions are as
the north-east wind to the fruits, which causeth, them to dwindle
away to nothing; but when the storms are over, everything
begins to grow. When men are divided, they seldom speak the
truth in love; and then no marvel they grow not up to Him
in all things which is the Head.—It is a sad presage of an
approaching famine (as one well observes)—not of bread, nor
water, but of hearing the word of God, when the thin ears of
eorn devour the plump full ones; when our controversies about
doubtful things, and things of less moment, eat up our zeal for
the more indisputable and practical things in religion; which
may give us cause to fear, that this will be the character by
which our age will be known to posterity, that it was the age
which talked of religion most, and loved it least.” It is of the
divisions among those who could as little conform with one an-
other as with the Church of England, that he is here speaking.
And when his Mr. Badman says, “that no sin reigneth more in
the world than pride among professors,” and asks “who is
prouder than your professors P scarcely the devil himself;”
Bunyan assents to this condemnation in the character of Mr.
Wiseman, saying, “Who can contradict him? the thing is too
apparent for any man to deny.” In his last sermon he com-
plains of the many prayerless professors in London: “Coffee-
houses,” he says, “will not let you pray ; trades will not let you
pray ; looking-glasses will not let you pray : but if you was born
of God, you would.” In another place his censure is directed
against the prayerful ones. “The Pharisee, saith the text, stood
and prayed with himself. It is at this day,” says Bunyan,
“wonderful common for men to pray eacternpore also: to pray by
a book, by a premeditated set form, is now out of fashion : he is
counted nobody now, that cannot at any time, at a minute's
warning, make a prayer of half an hour long. I am not against
eactempore prayer, for I believe it to be the best kind of praying ;
but yet I am jealous that there are a great many such prayers
made, especially in pulpits and public meetings, without the
breathing of the Holy Ghost in them : for if a Pharisee of old
could do so, why may not a Pharisee now do the same 2 Great
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 159
is the formality of religion this day, and little the power thereof."
—How proud, how covetous, how like the world in garb and
guise, in words and actions, are most of the great professors of
this our day ! But when they come to divine worship, especially
to pray, by their words and carriage there, one would almost
judge them to be angels in Heaven.” Thus it appears Bunyan,
like Wesley, lived to perceive “that often where there is most
profession there is least piety.”
This is manifest also in another passage, which is moreover
worthy of notice, because it is in Bishop Latimer's vein. It is
in his “Heavenly Footman, or Description of the Man that gets
to Heaven, together with the Way he runs in, the Marks he goes
by ; also some Directions how to run so as to obtain.” No doubt
it contains the substance of some of his sermons; and to sermons
in such a strain, however hearers might differ in taste and in
opinions, there are none who would not listen.—“They that will
have Heaven, they must run for it, because the Devil, the Law,
Sin, Death, and Hell follow them. There is never a poor Soul
that is going to Heaven, but the Devil, the Law, Sin, Death, and
Hell make after that soul. “The Devil, your adversary, as a
roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour.” And
I will assure you, the devil is nimble ; he can run apace;
he is light of foot; he hath overtaken many; he hath turned
up their heels, and hath given them an everlasting fall. Also
the Law that can shoot a great way: have a care thou keep
out of the reach of those great guns the Ten Commandments
Hell also hath a wide mouth ; and can stretch itself farther than
you are aware of And as the angel said to Lot, ‘Take heed,
look not behind thee, neither tarry thou in all the plain (that
is, any where between this and Heaven), lest thou be consumed,’
so say I to thee, Take heed, tarry not, lest either the Devil, Hell,
Peath, or the fearful curses of the Law of God do overtake thee,
and throw thee down in the midst of thy sins, so as never to rise
and recover again. If this were well considered, then thou, as
well as I, wouldst say, they that will have Heaven must run
for it.”
“But, if thou wouldst so run as to obtain the kingdom of
Heaven, then be sure that thou get into the way that leadeth
thither; for it is a vain thing to think that ever thou shalt have
160 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
the prize, though thou runnest never so fast, unless thou art in
the way that leads to it. Set the case, that there should be a
man in London that was to run to York for a wager ; now
though he run never so swiftly, yet if he run full south, he might
run himself quickly out of breath, and be never the nearer the
prize, but rather the farther off: just so is it here; it is not
simply the runner, nor yet the hasty runner, that winneth the
crown, unless he be in the way that leadeth thereto. I have
observed, that little time that I have been a professor, that there
is a great running to and fro, some this way, and some that way,
yet it is to be feared most of them are out of the way: and then,
though they run as swift as the eagle can fly, they are bene-
fited nothing at all !—Here is one run a Quaking, another a
JRanting ; one again runs after the Baptism, and another after
the Independency. Here 's one for Free-will, and another for
Presbytery; and yet possibly most of these sects run quite the
wrong way ; and yet every one is for his life, his soul—either
for Heaven or Hell!—Mistrust thy own strength, and throw it
away ! Down on thy knees in prayer to the Lord, for the
Spirit of Truth ! Keep company with the soundest Christians
that have most experience of Christ: and be sure thou have a
care of Quakers, Ranters, Free-willers: also do not have too
much company with some Anabaptists, though I go under that
name myself.”
Little has been recorded of Bunyan during the sixteen years
between his enlargement and his death [1672–1688]. It appears,
that besides his yearly visit to London, he made stated circuits
into other parts of England; that he exerted himself to relieve
the temporal wants of those who were suffering as nonconformists
under oppressive laws; that he administered diligently to the
sick and afflicted, and successfully employed his influence in
reconciling differences among “professors of the Gospel,” and
thus prevented “many disgraceful and burdensome litigations.”
One of his biographers thinks it highly probable that he did not
escape trouble in the latter part of Charles the Second’s reign,
“as the Justices of Bedford were so zealous in the cause of per-
secution;” but it is much more probable, that in a place where
so much indulgence had been shown him during the latter years
of his imprisonment, he was let alone; and there can be little
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 161
doubt but that if he had undergone any further vexation for the
same causes, a full account of it would have been preserved. At
Bedford, where he was liked as well as known, he was evidently
favoured : in other places he would be exposed to the same risk
as other nonconforming preachers; and there is a tradition
among the Baptists at Reading, that he sometimes went through
that town dressed like a carter, and with a long whip in his hand,
to avoid detection. Reading was a place where he was well
known: the house in which the Baptists met for worship was in
a lane there, and from the back door they had a bridge over a
branch of the river Kennett, whereby, in case of alarm, they might
escape. In a visit to that place, he contracted the disease which
brought him to the grave. A friend of his who resided there
had resolved to disinherit his son; the young man requested
Bunyan to interfere in his behalf; he did so with good success,
and it was his last labour of love; for returning to London on
horseback, through heavy rain, a fever ensued, which, after ten
days, proved fatal.
He died at the house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer, at
the sign of the Star, on Snow Hill, and was buried in that
friend’s vault in Bunhill Fields, burial-ground, which the Dis-
senters regarded as their Campo Santo,-and especially for his
sake. It is said that many have made it their desire to be in-
terred as near as possible to the spot where his remains are de-
posited. His age and the date of his decease are thus recorded
in his epitaph : “Mr. John Bunyan, Author of the ‘Pilgrim's
Progress, ob. 31 Aug. 1688, aet. 60.
The ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ now is finished,
And Death has laid him in his earthly bed.”
It appears that, at the time of his death, the Lord Mayor,” Sir
John Shorter, was one of his London flock. But though he had
obtained favour among the magistracy, he was not one of those
Nonconformists who were duped by the insidious liberality of
the government at that time, and lent their aid to measures
which were intended for the destruction of the Protestant faith.
“It is said that he clearly saw through the designs of the court
* September 6, 1688. “Few days before died Bumian, his Lordship's
teacher, or chaplain; a man said to be gifted in that Way, though. Once a
cobler.” Ellis Correspondence, vol. ii. 161.
Nî. 4;
162 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
in favour of Popery’ (blind indeed must they have been who
did not ) when James granted his indulgence to the Dissenters;
and that “ he advised his brethren to avail themselves of the
sunshine by diligent endeavours to spread the Gospel, and to
prepare for an approaching storm by fasting and prayer.” “He
foresaw,” says the Baptist minister who added a supplement to
his account of his own life, “all the advantages that could
redound to the Dissenters would have been no more than what
Polyphemus, the monstrous giant of Sicily, would have allowed
TJ lysses, to wit, “ that he would eat his men first, and do him
the favour of being eaten last.’”—“When Regulators went into
all cities and towns corporate to new-model the magistracy, by
turning out some and putting in others,” Bunyan laboured zeal-
ously with his congregation “to prevent their being imposed on
in that kind. And when a great man in those days, coming to
Bedford upon some such errand, sent for him (as was supposed)
to give him a place of public trust, he would by no means come
at him, but sent his excuse.”
His earliest biographer” says also, that “though by reason of
the many losses he sustained by imprisonment and spoil, his
chargeable sickness, &c., his earthly treasure swelled not to
excess, yet he always had sufficient to live decently and credit-
ably.” But all that Bunyan had to lose by “spoil,” was his
occupation as a tinker, which, fortunately for him and the world,
was put an end to earlier than in the course of his preacher's
progress he could otherwise have cast it off. That progress
raised him to a station of respectability and comfort; and he
was too wise and too religious a man to desire riches, either for
himself or his children. When a wealthy London citizen offered
to take one of his sons as an apprentice without a premium, he
declined the friendly and advantageous offer, saying, “God did
not send me to advance my family, but to preach the Gospel.”
No doubt he saw something in the business itself, or in the way
of life to which it led, unfavourable to the moral character.
His widow put forth an advertisement, stating her inability to
print the writings which he left unpublished. They are proba-
bly included in the folio edition of his works which was pub-
[* Charles Doe, ante, p. 153.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 163
lished in 1692,” the year of her decease, by Bunyan's successor
at Bedford, Ebenezer Chandler, and John Wilson, a brother
minister of the same set, who went in Bunyan's lifetime from
the Bedford congregation to be the first pastor of a Baptist flock
at Hitchin.
Three children survived him ; there were none by the second
marriage; and the blind daughter, the only one whom it might
have troubled him to leave with a scanty provision, happily died
before him. He is said to have kept up “a very strict discipline
in his family, in prayer and exhortations.” Such a discipline
did not in this case produce its usual ill effect; for, according to
what little is known of his children, they went on in the way
they had been trained. His eldest son was forty-five years a
member of the Bedford meeting ; he preached there occasionally,
and was employed in visiting the disorderly members; he was
therefore in good repute for discretion, as well as for his religi-
ous character. The names of other descendants are in the books
of the same meeting ; in the burial-ground belonging to it, his
great-granddaughter, Hannah Bunyan, was interred in 1770, at
the age of 76; and with her all that is related of his posterity
ends.
A description of his character and person was drawn by his
first biographer. “He appeared in countenance,” says that
friend, “ to be of a stern and rough temper; but in his conver-
sation, mild and affable, not given to loguacity, or much dis-
course in company, unless some urgent occasion required it;
observing never to boast of himself, or his parts, but rather seem
low in his own eyes, and submit himself to the judgment of
others; abhorring lying and swearing ; being just in all that lay
in his power to his word; not seeming to revenge injuries; loving
to reconcile differences, and make friendship with all. He had a
sharp, quick eye, accomplished with an excellent discerning of
persons, being of good judgment and quick wit. As for his per-
[* “The Works of that eminent servant of Christ, Mr. John Bunyan, late
minister of the Gospel and pastor of the congregation at Bedford. The first
volume, containing Ten of his Excellent Manuscripts, prepared for the press
before his death, never before printed, and Ten of his Choyce Books formerly
printed, London, 1692,” fol.
No second volume appeared. The ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is not included in
this volume.]
M 2
164: LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
son, he was tall of stature; strong boned, though not corpulent;
somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes; wearing his hair
on his upper lip, after the old British fashion; his hair reddish,
but in his latter days time had sprinkled it with grey; his nose
well set, but not declining or bending, and his mouth moderate
large; his forehead something high, and his habit always plain
and modest. And thus have we impartially described the in-
termal and external parts of a person, who had tried the Smiles
and frowns of time, not puffed up in prosperity, nor shaken in
adversity, always holding the golden mean.”
Mr. Whitbread, father to the distinguished member of that
name, was so great an admirer of Bunyan, that he left by will
500l. to the meeting at Bedford, expressly as a token of respect
for his memory; the interest to be distributed annually in bread
to the poor of that meeting, between Michaelmas and Christmas.
When Bunyan's pulpit Bible was to be sold among the library of
the Rev. Samuel Palmer of Hackney, Mr. Whitbread, the mem-
ber, gave a commission to bid as much for it as the bidder
thought his father, had he been living, would have given for a
relic which he would have valued so highly. It was bought
accordingly for twenty guineas.
It remains now to speak of that work which has made the
name of Bunyan famous.
It is not known in what year the ‘Pilgrim's Progress’ was
first published, no copy of the first edition having as yet been dis-
covered: the second is in the British Museum ; it is “ with ad-
ditions,” and its date is 1678;f but as the book is known to have
been written during Bunyan's imprisonment, which terminated
in 1672, it was probably published before his release, or at latest
immediately after it. The earliest with which Mr. Major has
[* Bunyan's Works, vol. ii. p. 47, ed. 1736. The best portrait of
Bunyan, painted in 1685, by Thomas Sadler, was engraved by W. H. Watt,
for Southey’s edition of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ 8vo. 1830.]
[f Since Mr. Southey wrote, a copy of the first edition of ‘The Pilgrim's
Progress’ was found in the library of R. S. Holford, Esq. of Weston-Birt
House, Tetbury, Gloucestershire. The date is 1678, the same as the second
edition, so that Bunyan's best book grew into favour as soon as it was out,
See Mr. Pocock’s ‘Bibliographical Notice’ prefixed to Mr. Selous' illustrated
edition of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,” oblong folio, 1844.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 165
been able to supply me, either by means of his own diligent in-
quiries, or the kindness of his friends, is that “eighth e-di-ti-on,”
so humorously introduced by Gay,” and printed, not for Ni-cho-
last Bod-ding-ton, but for Nathanael Ponder, at the Peacock in
the Poultry, near the church, 1682; for whom also the ninth
was published in 1684, and the tenth in 1685. All these no
doubt were large impressions. &
This noted eighth edition is “with additions;” but there is no
reason to suppose that they were “new ones, never made before,”
for the ninth and tenth bear the same promise, and contain no
alteration whatever. One passage of considerable length was
added after the second edition,-the whole scene between Mr.
By-ends and his three friends, and their subsequent discourse
with Christian and Faithful. It appears to have been written
with reference to some particular case; and in Bunyan's circle,
the name of the person intended was probably well known.
Perhaps it was first inserted in the fourth impression, “which
had many additions more than any preceding:” this is stated in
an advertisement on the back of the frontispiece to the eighth ;
where it is also said, “The publisher observing that many per-
sons desired to have it illustrated with pictures, hath endeavoured
to gratify them therein; and besides those that are ordinarily
printed to the fifth impression, hath provided thirteen copper
cuts curiously engraven for such as desire them.”f This notice
is repeated in the next edition, with this alteration, that the
seventh instead of the fourth is named as having the additions,
[* Second Countryman Repent thine ill
And pray in this good book [Gives him a Book].
Peascod.——I will, I will.
Lend me thy handkercher [Reads and weeps] ‘The Pilgrim’s Pro’—
I cannot see for tears! “Pro-Progress,’—Oh!
• The Pilgrim’s Progress”—eighth e-di-ti-on,
* Lon-don-prim-ted-for-Ni-cho-las Bod-ding-ton:
* With new ad-di-tions never made before.”
Oh! ”t is so moving, I can read no more. [Drops the Book.]
The What-dºye-call-it, 8vo., 1715.
The eighth edition appeared in 1682; the eighteenth, in 1714; the twenty-
fifth, in 1738; and the thirtieth, in 1750.]
+ This immortal name appears to the sixth edition of the Second Part,
“printed for Robert Ponder, and sold by Nicholas Boddington in Duck
Lane, 1693.”
[t Eighth edition in 1682; but the fifth of 1680 contained the same adver-
tisement.—Pocock's Bib. ZVot., p. 24.]
166 IIFE OF JOHN BUNY AN.
and the eighth as that with the ordinary prints. I can only
say with certainty, that no additions have been made subsequently
to the eighth, and no other alterations than such verbal ones as
an editor has sometimes thought proper to make, or as Creep
into all books which are reprinted without a careful collation of
the text.*
The rapidity with which these editions succeeded one another,
and the demand for pictures to illustrate them, are not the only
proofs of the popularity which the Pilgrim’s Progress obtained,
before the Second Part was published. In the verses prefixed to
that Part, Bunyan complains of dishonest imitators.
Some have of late, to counterfeit
My Pilgrim, to their own my title set;
Yea, others half my name, and title too,
Have stitched to their books, to make them do.
Only one of these has fallen in my way, for it is by accident
only that books of this perishable kind, which have no merit of
their own to preserve them, are to be met with ; and this, though
entitled the ‘Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress,’t has no
[* The announcement of ‘additions’ on the title-page is continued even to
the ninth and tenth impressions, though there is not any reason for supposing
that such insertions were made after the eighth, printed in 1682–19F even
alterations of the text beyond unimportant verbal revisions.—Pocock's Bib.
Not., p. 21.] e
+ “From this present world of Wickedness and Misery, to an eternity of
Holiness and Felicity, exactly described under the similitude of a dream,
relating the manner and occasion of his setting out from, and difficult and
dangerous journey through, the world, and safe arrival at last to Eternal
Happiness. w
* They were Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, but they desired a better
Country, that is an Heavenly. Hebrews xi. 13, 16.
“JCetus lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and
run with patience the race that is set before us. Hebrews xii. 1.
“London, printed for Thomas Malthus, at the Sun, in the Poultry. 1683.”
The author, who signs himself T. S., dedicates this book “to Him that is
higher than the highest; the Almighty and everlasting Jehovah, who is the
terror and confusion of the hardened and impenitent world, and the hope and
happiness of all converted and returning sinners.” At the conclusion is an
Apology for his Book, wherein he says that the hope of delivering plain truth
in a familiar manner, which should at the same time satisfy the judicious, and
yet be understood by the meanest capacities, and the most illiterate persons,
was the motive “which put the author of the First Part of the Pilgrim’s Pro-
gress upon composing and publishing that necessary and useful tract, which
fath déservedly obtained such a universal esteem and commendation. And
this consideration likewise, together with the importunity of others, was the
omotive that prevailed with me to compose and publish the following medi-
tations in such a method as might serve as a Supplement, or a Second Part
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 167
other relation to the First than in its title, which was probably
a trick of the publishers. These interlopers may very likely
have given Bunyan an additional inducement to prepare a Second
Part himself. It appeared in 1684, with this notice on the back
of the title-page: “I appoint Mr. Nathaniel Ponder, but no
other, to print this book. John Bunyan, January 1, 1684.” No
additions or alterations were made in this Part, though the author
lived more than four years after its publication.
A collation of the First Part with the earliest attainable copies
has enabled me in many places to restore good old vernacular
English, which had been injudiciously altered, or carelessly cor-
rupted. This has also been done in the Second Part; but there
I had the first edition before me, and this it is evident had not
been inspected, either in manuscript or while passing through
the press, by any person capable of correcting it. It is plain
that Bunyan had willingly availed himself of such corrections in
the First Part; and therefore it would have been improper to
have restored a certain vulgarism” of diction in the Second,
to it; wherein I have endeavoured to supply a fourfold defect, which, I
observe, the brevity of that discourse necessitated the author into : First, there
is nothing said of the State of Man in his first creation; nor, secondly, of the
Misery of Man in his lapsed estate, before conversion; thirdly, a too brief
passing over the methods of divine goodness in the convincing, converting,
and reconciling of sinners to himself; and fourthly, I have endeavoured to
deliver the whole in such serious and spiritual phrases that may prevent that
lightness and laughter, which the reading some passages therein occasions in
Some vain and frothy minds. And now that it may answer my design, and
be universally useful, I commend both it and thee to the blessing of Him
whose wisdom and power, grace and goodness, it is that is only able to
Imake it so. And withal I heartily wish, that what hath been formerly pro-
posed by some well-minded persons might be more generally and universally
practised, viz. the giving of books of this nature at funerals, instead of rings,
gloves, wine, or biscuit; assuring myself that reading, meditation, and several
holy and heavenly discourses, which may probably be raised upon the occasion
of such presents as these, would mightily tend to the making people serious;
and furnish not only the person who discourses, but the rest who are present,
and who would otherwise be employing their thoughts, and tongues too, in
such foolish, vain, and frothy discourse, as is too commonly used at such times,
with such frames of spirits as may be suitable to the greatness and solemnity
of that occasion which then calls them together.—Amongst those few who
have practised this, abundance of good hath been observed to have been done
by that means; and who knows, were it more generally used, and become
a custom amongst us at our burials, what good might be effected thereby ?”
* The vulgarism alluded to consists in the almost uniform use of a for
have, never marked as a contraction, e. g. might a made me take heed,—
like to a been smothered.
[Under favour, this is a sin against orthography rather than grammar: the
168 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
which the editor of the folio edition had amended. Had it not
been for this consideration, I should perhaps have restored his
own text. For Bunyan was confident in his own powers of ex-
pression ; he says,
thine only way
Before them all, is to say out thy say
In thime own native language, which no man
Now useth, nor with ease dissemble can.
And he might well be confident in it. His is a homespun
style, not a manufactured one : and what a difference is there
between its homeliness and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger
L’Estrange” and Tom Brown school | If it is not a well of
English undefiled, to which the poet as well as the philologist
must repair, if they would drink of the living waters, it is a clear
stream of current English,_the vernacular speech of his age,
Sometimes indeed in its rusticity and coarseness, but always in its
plainness and its strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in
some degree beholden for his general popularity ;-his language
is everywhere level to the most ignorant reader, and to the
meanest capacity: there is homely reality about it ; a nursery
tale is not more intelligible, in its manner of narration, to a child.
Another cause of his popularity is, that he taxes the imagination
as little as the understanding. The vividness of his own, which,
as his history shows, sometimes could not distinguish ideal im-
pressions from actual ones, occasioned this. He saw the things
of which he was writing as distinctly with his mind's eye as if
they were indeed passing before him in a dream. And the reader
perhaps sees them more satisfactorily to himself, because the
outline only of the picture is presented to him ; and the author
having made no attempt to fill up the details, every reader sup-
plies them according to the measure and scope of his own intel-
lectual and imaginative powers. *
tinker of Elstow only spelt according to the pronunciation of the verb to have,
then common in his class; and the same form occurs a hundred times in
Shakspeare.—SIR WALTER SCOTT, Quart. Rev., vol.43, p. 489.]
* Let me not be understood as passing an indiscriminate censure upon
Sir Roger L’Estrange's style. No better specimens of idiomatic English are
to be found than in some of his writings; but no baser corruptions and vili-
fications than in some of his translations. I suspect that he was led into this
fault by the desire of avoiding the opposite one into which his father had
been betrayed.
j.IFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. H 69
When Bunyan's success had raised a brood of imitators, he
was accused of being an imitator himself. He replied to this
charge in some of his most characteristic rhymes, which were
prefixed to his Holy War, as an Advertisement to the Reader.
Some say the Pilgrim’s Progress is not mine,
Insinuating as if I would shine
In name and fame by the worth of another,
Like some made rich by robbing of their brother.
Or that so fond I am of being sire,
I’ll father bastards; or if need require,
I’ll tell a lie in print to get applause.
I scorn it; John such dirt-heap never was
Since God converted him. Let this suffice
To show why I my Pilgrim patronize.
It came from mine own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers trickled:
Then to my pen, from whence immediately
On paper I did dribble it daintily.
Manner and matter too was all mine own;
Nor was it unto any mortal known,
Till I had done it. Nor did any then
By books, by wits, by tongues, or hand, or pen,
Add five words to it, or wrote half a line
Thereof: the whole and every whit is mine.
Also for This thine eye is now upon,
The matter in this manner came from none
But the same heart and head, fingers and pen,
As did the other. Witness all good men,
For none in all the world, without a lie,
Can say that “this is mine,” excepting I.
I wrote not this of any ostentation;
Nor 'cause I seek of men their commendation.
I do it to keep them from such surmise,
As tempt them will my name to scandalize.
Witness my name; if anagram'd to thee
The letters make Nu hony in a B.
John Bunyan.
A passage * has already been quoted from his account of a
dream, which evidently contains the germ of the ‘Pilgrim’s Pro-
gress.’ The same obvious allegory had been rendered familiar to
* There is another in his “Heavenly Footman,’ but I know not whether
this treatise was written before or after the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.” “Though
the Way to Heaven be but one, yet there are many crooked lames and by-
paths shoot down upon it, as I may say. And notwithstanding the Kingdom
of Heaven be the biggest city, yet usually those by-paths are the most beaten:
most travellers go those ways, and therefore the way to Heaven is hard to be
found, and as hard to be kept in, because of these.”
| 70 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
his mind, by the letter of the Italian martyr Pomponius Al-
gerius. “In this world,” says that high-minded and triumphant
witness for the truth, “there is no mansion firm to me; and
therefore I will travel up to the New Jerusalem, which is in
Heaven, and which offereth itself to me, without paying any fine
or income. Behold, I have entered already on my journey,
where my house standeth for me prepared, and where I shall
have riches, kinsfolks, delights, honours never failing.”
But original as Bunyan believed his own work to be, and as
in the main undoubtedly it is, the same allegory had often been
treated before him, so often indeed that to notice all preceding
works of this kind would far exceed all reasonable limits here.
Some of these may have fallen in Bunyan’s way, and modified
his own conception when he was not aware of any such influence.
Mr. Montgomery, in his very able Introductory Essay to the
* Pilgrim’s Progress,” observes, “that a poem entitled “the Pil-
grimage,’ in Whitney's Emblems,” and the emblem which ac-
companies it, may have suggested to him the first idea of his
story; indeed, he says, if he had had Whitney's picture before
him, he could not more accurately have copied it in words,”
than in the passage where Evangelist directs Christian to the
Wicket-Gate.
Another book in which a general resemblance to the ‘Pil-
grim's Progress’ has been observed, is the ‘Voyage of the Wan-
dering Knight,’ of which a translation from the French of the
Carmelite, Jean de Carthenay, was printed in the reign of
Elizabeth, the Carmelite himself having (as Mr. Douce has
kindly informed me) imitated a French poem (once very
popular), composed A.D. 1310, by Guill. de Guilleville, a monk
of Chanliz, and entitled the Pelerin de la Vie Humaine. There
is a vague general resemblance in the subject of this work, and
Some occasional resemblance in the details; but the coincidences
are such as the subject would naturally lead to, and the ‘Pil-
grim’s Progress’ might have been exactly what it is, whether
Bunyan had ever seen this book or not. But he had f certainly
[* Printed at Leyden in 1586.j
f Bunyan had evidently the following lively passage in his mind when he
wrote the verses introductory to his Second Part:—
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 171
seen Bernard’s ‘Isle of Man, or the Legal Proceedings in Man-
shire against Sin; wherein by way of a continued Allegory, the
chief Malefactors disturbing both Church and Commonwealth
are detected and attached; with their arraignment and Judicial
trial, according to the Laws of England.’ This was a popular
book in Bunyan's time,” printed in a cheap form for popular
sale, and “to be sold by most booksellers.” There is as much
wit in it as in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and it is that vein of
wit f which Bunyan has worked with such good success. It
“Well, I have clothed this Book as it is. It may be some humour took
me, as once it did old Jacob, who apparelled Joseph differently from all the
rest of his brethren in a party-coloured coat. It may also be that I look (as
Jacob did on Joseph) with more delight on this lad than on twenty other of
his brethren born before him, or on a younger Benjamin brought forth
soon after him.—When I thus apparelled him, I intended to send him
forth to his brethren, hoping thereby to procure him the more accept-
ance, where he happily should come; and my expectation hath not
failed: deceived altogether I am not, as was Jacob in sending his Joseph
among his envious brethren ; for not only hundreds, but some thousands,
have welcomed him to their houses. They say they like his countenance,
his habit, and manner of speaking well enough; though others, too nice, be
not so well pleased there with.
“But who can please all? or how can any one so write or speak, as to
content every man P. If any mistake me, and abuse him in their too carnal
apprehension, without the truly intended spiritual use, let them blame them-
selves, and neither me nor him; for their fault is their own, which I wish
them to amend. You that like him, I pray you still accept of him, for whose
sake, to further your spiritual meditation, I have sent him out with these
Contents, and more marginal notes. His habit is no whit altered, which he
is constrained by me to wear, not only on working days, but even upon holydays
and Sundays too, if he go abroad. A fitter garment I have not now for him;
and if I should send out the poor lad naked, I know it would not please you.
This his coat, though not altered in the fashion, yet it is made somewhat longer.
For though from his first birth into the world it be near a year, yet hé is
grown a little bigger. But I think him to be come to his full stature; so he
will be but as a little pigmy, to be carried abroad in any man’s pocket. I
pray you now this (second) time accept him and use him as I have intended
for you, and you shall reap the fruit, though I forbid you not to be Christianly
merry with him. So fare you well, in all friendly well wishes. R. B. May
28, 1627.”
* The sixteenth edition was published in 1683. It was reprinted at
Bristol about thirty years ago. [1808.]
# In that vein Bernard has also been followed by Bishop Womack,-unless
indeed that excellent divine intended in his Propria quae maribus to satirize
the absurd names given by the Puritans to their children: this however he
might intend, and yet have imitated Bernard. The names of the Triers, in
his ‘Examination of Tilenus, are Dr. Absolute, Mr. Fatality, Mr. Preterition,
Mr. Efficax, Mr. Indefectible, Dr. Confidence, Mr. Meanwell, Mr. Simulant,
Mr. Take-o'-Trust, Mr. Impertinent, Mr. Narrow-Grace, in whom Philip
172 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
wants the charm of story, and has nothing of that romantic
interest which “holds children from sleep;” and therefore its
popularity has passed away. But it is written with great spirit
and ability, and for its own merit, as well as for the traits of the
times with which it abounds, well deserves to be reprinted.
No one who reads this little book can doubt that it had a con-
siderable effect upon the style of Bunyan's invention. The Bee
had been shown by this elder one where honey of a peculiar
flavour might be extracted, but the new honey was of our Bee's
own gathering.
Lately, however, a charge has been brought against John the
Bee of direct and knavish plagiarism. The following paragraph
appeared in some London journal, and was generally copied into
the provincial newspapers:–“The friends of John Bunyan will
be much surprised to hear that he is not the author of the ‘Pil-
grim’s Progress,’ but the mere translator. It is, however, an act
of plagiarism to publish it in such a way as to mislead his readers;
but it is never too late to call things by their right names.
The truth is, that the work was even published in French,
Spanish, and Dutch, besides other languages, before John Bunyan
saw it; and we have ourselves seen a copy in the Dutch language,
with numerous plates, printed long previous to Bunyan's time.”
“It is very difficult,” says Mr. Montgomery, “to imagine for
what purpose such a falsehood (if it be one) should be framed;
or how such a fact (if it be a fact) could have been so long con-
cealed; or when declared thus publicly, why it should never
have been established by the production of this Dutch copy,
with its numerous plates. Be this as it may, till the story is
anthenticated it must be regarded as utterly unworthy of credit.”
I also, upon reading this notable paragraph in a newspaper,
felt as Montgomery had done, and as “it is never too soon to
call things by their right names,” bestowed upon it at once its
proper qualification. It would indeed be as impossible for me
Nye was personated; Mr. Know-Little, who stood for Hugh Peters: Dr.
Dubious, whom nobody doubts to be the representation of Baxter; and Dr.
Dam-Man, a name which was that of one of the secretaries of the Dort Synod.
and which to an English ear perfectly designated his rigid principles.
This curious tract has been reprinted in Mr. Nichols's ‘Calvinism and
Arminianism Compared,’ a work of more research concerning the age of James
and Charles the First than any other in our language.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. #73
to believe that Bunyan did not write the ‘Pilgrim's Progress,’ as
that Porson did write a certain copy of verses entitled the Devil's
Thoughts.” There must have been a grievous want of common
sense in the person who wrote the paragraph, to suppose that
such a plagiarism could have escaped detection till he discovered
it; Bunyan's book having been translated into those languages
(and current in them), in one of which, according to him, the
original, and in the others, earlier versions of that original than
the English “Pilgrim’s Progress’ were existing ! But there
must have been a more grievous want of fidelity in his asser-
tions. If he had been able to read the book which he saw, this
gross accusation could never have been brought against John
Bunyan.
The book in question (to which, without reference to this sup-
posed plagiarism, Mr. Douce, with his wonted knowledge, had
previously directed my attention) I have had an opportunity of
perusing; through the kindness of its possessor, Mr. Offor. A
person looking (like Bunyan's accuser) at the prints, and not
understanding the language in which the book is written, might
have supposed that hints had been taken from them for the ad-
ventures at the Slough of Despond, and at Vanity Fair; but that
the ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress’ was not a translation from the work he
must have known, for the Pilgrims in the prints are women; and
it required no knowledge of Dutch to perceive that the book is
written not as a narrative, but in a series of Dialogues.
Bolswert the engraver is the author of this book, which is en-
titled the fl’ilgrimage of Dovekin and Willekin to their Be-
loved in Jerusalem. The author was a true lover of his mother
tongue, and more than once laments over the fashion of corrupting
it with words borrowed from other languages: all the examples
which he adduces of such adulterations are French. The book,
though totally neglected now, was once very popular; my vene-
rable friend Bilderdijk i tells me “that it was one of the de-
Iights of his childhood.” I am obliged to Mr. Major for a .
[* See Southey's Poetical Works (ed. 1844), p. 165.]
† Duyfkens ende Willemynkens Pelgrimagie tot haren beminden bin-
men Jerusalem; haerlieder teghenspoet, belet ende eynde. Beschreven
ende met sin-spelende beelden wtghegheven door Boetius a Bolswert. T’
Antwerpen, by Hieronimus Verdussen, Ao. 1627.
# [See Southey’s Poetical Works (ed. 1844), p. 210.]
174 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
French * translation of it, in which some intermediate possessor
has drawn his pen through the name of Rousseau, that name
appearing, upon comparing it with a fac-simile in Rees’s Cyclo-
paedia, and with an autograph also, to be in the hand-writing of
Jean Jacques. The French translator, as might be expected,
has carefully got rid of everything which relates to Flemish
manners and feelings, and the raciness of the original is com-
pletely lost in his version.
The two sisters Dovekin and Willekin are invited in a dream
by the Beloved, in the language of the Canticles, to arise and
come away. Willekin, who is for a little more sleep, a little
more slumber, is not inclined to accept the invitation, and dis-
parages her lover, saying that he is no better than Joseph the
Carpenter, and Peter the Fisherman, with whom he used to keep
company. Dovekin, however, persuades her to rise, and set off
upon their pilgrimage to him; it is but a day's journey: they
wash at their outset in a river of clear water, which has its source
in Rome, and (taking the Netherlands in its way) flows to Jeru-
salem ; and by this river they are to keep, or they will lose
themselves. They gather flowers also at the beginning of their
journey, for the purpose of presenting them to the Bridegroom
and his mother, whose favour Dovekin says it is of the utmost
importance to obtain, and who, she assures her sister, dearly
loves the Netherlanders. The wilful sister collects her flowers
without any choice or care, loses them, over-heats herself, and is
obliged to go to the river to wash herself after eating ; she then
finds her flowers again, and they proceed till they come to a
village, where it happens to be fair time, and Willekin will not
be dissuaded by her prudent sister from stopping to look at Some
Mountebanks. The print annexed is what was supposed to
represent Vanity Fair, whereas the story relates merely to a
Flemish Kermes; and the only adventure which befalls the idle
sister there is that she brings away from it certain living and
loathsome parasites of humanity, who pass under a generic ap-
pellation in the French version, but in the honest Dutch original
are called by their own name. - -
* Voyage de Deua Soeurs, Colombelle et Volontairette, vers leur Bien-Aime
en la Cité de Jerusalem: contenant plusieurs incidens arrivez pendant leur
voyage. Par Boece de Bolswert. Nouvelle Edition corrigée et chatiée selon le
stile du tems, et enrichie de figures en taille-douce. A Liège, 1734.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 175
Going out of her way to admire a peacock, Willekin steps in
the dirt. Presently she must go see some calves at play; a cow
bemires her with a whisk of its tail, and she must repair to the
river and cleanse herself there again; Thank God for this river !
says Dovekin. Poor thoughtless, incorrigible Willekin thus
goes on from one mishap to another, and taking a by-path falls
into a ditch, which the detector of Bunyan’s plagiarism imme-
diately supposed to be his Slough of Despond. She goes on
committing follies at every occasion, and some crimes; and the
end (for it must be needless to pursue the story) is that, when
they come within sight of Jerusalem, she climbs a steep and
dangerous place, notwithstanding her sister’s entreaties, in order
to obtain a better prospect; the wind blows her down, she falls
into a deep pit full of noxious creatures, where no help can be
given her, and there she is left with broken bones, to her fate.
Dovekin proceeds, reaches the suburbs of Jerusalem, undergoes
a purification in a tub, then makes a triumphant entrance into
the City of Jerusalem in a lofty chariot, and is there with all
honour and solemnity espoused to the Bridegroom. And this is
the book from which Bunyan was said to have stolen the Pilgrim’s
Progress | If ever there was a work which carried with it
the stamp of originality in all its parts, it is that of John
Bunyan ſº
[* Mr. Southey has not mentioned a work in English, of Bunyan’s own
time, and from which, certainly, the general notion of his allegory might
have been taken. The work we allude to is now before us, entitled ‘The
Parable of the Pilgrim, written to a friend by Symon Patrick, D.D., Dean of
Peterborough;’—the same learned person, well known by his theological
writings, and successively bishop of Chichester and Ely. >{< >}: :};
::: $3 >k >}< ::: :}; If Dr. Patrick had seen the
Pilgrim’s Progress, he would probably, in the pride of academic learning,
have scorned to adopt it as a model; but, at all events, as a man of worth, he
would never have denied the obligation if he had incurred one. John
Bunyan, on his part, would in all likelihood have scorned, “with his very
heels,” to borrow anything from a dean; and we are satisfied that he would
have cut his hand off rather than written the introductory verses we have
quoted (before ‘The Holy War'), had not his Pilgrim been entirely his
OWI).
Indeed whosoever will take the trouble of comparing the two works which,
turning upon nearly the same allegory, and bearing very similar titles, came
into existence at or about the very same time, will plainly see their total dis-
similarity. Bunyan’s is a close and continued allegory, in which the meta-
phorical fiction is sustained with all the minuteness of a real story. In Dr.
Patrick's, the same plan is announced as arising from the earnest longing of
176 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
Mr. D'Israeli, from whose works the best-informed reader
may learn much, and who, in the temper of his writings as well
as in the research which they display, may be a useful model for
succeeding authors, calls Bunyan “the Spenser of the people.”
He is indeed the Prince of all allegorists in prose. The allegory
is never lost sight of in the First Part: in the Second it is not
so uniformly preserved ; parties who begin their pilgrimage in
childhood, grow up upon the way, pass through the stage of
courtship, marry and are given in marriage, have children and
dispose of their children. Yet to most readers this second part
is as delightful as the first ; and Bunyan had perhaps more plea-
sure in composing it, not only because he was chewing the cud
of his old inventions, but because there can be no doubt that he
complimented the friends whom he delighted to honour, by giving
them a place among the persons of his tale. We may be sure
that Mr. Valiant-for-the-Truth, Old Honest of the Town of
Stupidity, Mr. Despondency and his daughter Much-afraid, and
their companions, were well known in “Bishop Bunyan’s” dio-
cese ; and if no real characters were designed by him in those
who are less favourably introduced as turning back on their
journey, striking into by-paths, or slumbering by the way, like-
nesses would be discovered where none were intended.
None but those who have acquired the ill habit of always
reading critically, can wish the Second Part had not been written,
or feel it as a clog upon the first. There is a pleasure in travel-
ling with another company over the same ground, a pleasure of
reminiscence, neither inferior in kind nor in degree to that which
is derived from a first impression. The author evidently felt
this, and we are indebted to it for some beautiful passages of
repose, such as that in the Valley of Humiliation. The manner
a traveller, whom he calls Philotheus or Theophilus, whose desires are fixed
on journeying to Jerusalem as a pilgrim. >k $: ::: Yet
Dr. Patrick had the applause of his own time. The first edition of his
Parable appeared in 1678; and the sixth, which now lies before us, is dated
1678. –SIR WALTER SCOTT, Quart. Rev., vol. xliii.
The paper upon Bunyan, in the last Quarterly Review, is by Sir Walter.
He has not observed, and I, when I wrote the Life, had forgotten, that the
“Compleat design of a Pilgrim’s Progress” is to be found in Lucian’s ‘Her-
motimus.” Not that Bunyan saw it there, but that the obvious allegory
had presented itself to Lucian’s mind as well as to many others.-Letter
from Southey to Sir Egerton Brydges, ‘Autobiography of Brydges, vol. ii.
p. 285.]
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. 177
in which Christian's battle is referred to, and the traces of it
pointed out, reminds me of what is perhaps the best imagined
scene in Palmerin of England, where Palmerín enters a chapel,
and is shown the tombs of some of the knights of King Lisuarte's
COurt. ¥
Bunyan concludes with something like a promise of a Third
Part.” There appeared one after his death, by some unknown
hand, and it has had the fortune to be included in many editions
of the original work. It is impossible to state through how
many editions that work has passed; probably no other book in
the English language has obtained so constant and so wide a
sale. The prints which have been engraved to illustrate it
would form a collection, not so extensive indeed, but almost as
curious, as that which Mr. Duppa saw at Vallombrosa, where a
monk had got together about eight thousand different engravings
of the Virgin Mary. The worst specimens, both in wood and
copper, would be found among them; as now some of the best
are to be added. When the reader has seen Giant Slaygood
with Mr. Feeble-mind in his hand, he will I think agree with me,
that if a nation of Anakim existed at this day, the artist by
whom that print was designed and executed would deserve to be
appointed historical painter to his Highness the Prince of the
Giants.
The Pilgrim’s Progress has more than once been “done into
verse,” but I have seen only one version, and that of only the
First Part. It was printed by R. Tookey, and to be sold by the
booksellers of London and Westminster; but if there be a date
to this version, it has been torn off with the corner of the title-
page, from this well-thumbed and well-worn copy, for the use of
which (as of other rare books that have been most useful on the
present occasion) I am obliged to Mr. Alexander Chalmers.
The versification is in the lowest Witherish strain, one degree
[* “Should it be my lot to go that way again, I may give to those that de-
sire it an account of what I am here silent about. Meantime I bid my readers
adieu.”
The author hints, at the end of the second part, as if “it might be his lot
to go this way again;” nor was his mind that light species of soil which could
be exhausted by two crops. But he left to another and very inferior hand
the task of composing a third part, containing the adventures of one Tender
Conscience, far unworthy to be bound up, as it sometimesis, with John Bunyan's
matchless parable.—SIR WALTER Scott, Quart, Rev. vol. xliii., p. 490.
TN
178 LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
only above Bunyan's own; yet here and there with indications
of more power than the writer has thought proper to put forth.
In general the version keeps close to the original. In one place
a stroke of satire is put into Apollyon's mouth, against the oc-
casional conformists—
“Come go with me occasionally back,
Rather than a preferment lose or lack.”
And aſter the Pilgrims have crossed the river, this singular
illustration occurs—
“Then on all sides the heavenly host enclose,
As through the upper regions all arose;
With mighty shouts and louder harmonies,
Heaven’s Opera seemed as glorious to the eyes
As if they had drawn up the curtain of the skies.”
Though the story certainly is not improved by versifying it,
it is less injured than might have been supposed in the process ;
and perhaps most readers would read it with as much interest in
the one dress as in the other.
A stranger experiment was tried upon the Pilgrim’s Progress,
in translating it into other words, altering the names, and pub-
lishing it under the title of the Progress of the Pilgrim,” with-
out any intimation that this version is not an original work.
Evangelist is here called Good-news; Worldly Wiseman, Mr.
Politic Worldly; Legality, Mr. Law-do; the Interpreter, Di-
rector; the Palace Beautiful, Graces' Hall; Vanity Town is
Mundus ; the Giant is Giant Desperation of Diffident Castle;
and the prisoners released from it, instead of Mr. Despondency
and his daughter Much-afraid, are “one Much-cast-down, and
his kinsman Almost-Overcome.” This would appear to have
been merely the device of some knavish bookseller for evading
the laws which protect literary property; but the person em-
ployed in disguising the stolen goods must have been a Roman
Catholic, for he has omitted all mention of Giant Pope, and
Fidelius suffers martyrdom by being hanged, drawn, and quartered.
* “In two Parts compleat. Part I. His Pilgrimage from the present World
to the World to come ; discovering the difficulties of his setting forth, the
hazards of his journey, and his safe arrival at the Heavenly Canaan. Part II.
The Pilgrimage of Christiana, the wife of Christianus, with her four children;
describing their dangerous journey, and safe arrival at the Land of the Blessed,
Written by way of dream. Adorned with several new Pictures. Hos. xii. 10.
I have used similitudes.” London: printed by W. O. for J. Blare, at the
Looking-Glass, on London-Bridge, 1705.
LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN. - 179
The dialogues are much curtailed, and the book, as might be
expected, very much worsened throughout ; except that better
verses are inserted.
Bunyan could little have supposed that his book would ever
be adapted for sale among the Romanists. Whether this was
done in the earliest French translation I do not know ; but in
the second there is no Giant Pope; and lest the circumstances
of the author should operate unfavourably for the reception of
his work, he is designated as un Ministre Anglois, nommé Jean
Bunian, Pasteur d’une Eglise dans la Ville de Bedfort en
Angleterre. This contains only the First Part, but promises the
Second, should it be well received. The First Part, under the
title of ‘le Pelerinage d’un nomme Chrétien,” forms one of the
volumes of the Petite Bibliothèque du Catholique, and bears in
the title-page a glorified head of the Virgin. A Portuguese
translation (of the First Part also), and in like manner cut down
to the opinions of the public for which it was designed, was pub-
lished in 1782. Indeed I believe there is no European language
into which the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress' has not been translated.
The ‘Holy War' has been little less popular;” and if the ‘Life
and Death of Mr. Badman' has not been as generally read, it is
because the subject is less agreeable, not that it has been treated
with inferior ability.
[* Bunyan added another work to those by which he was already distin-
guished:—this was ‘The Holy War made by King Shaddai upon Diabolus
for the regaining of the metropolis of the World; or, the losing and retaking
of Mansoul.”. In this allegory the fall of man is figured under the type of a
flourishing city, reduced under the tyranny of the giant Diabolus, or the
Prince of Evil; and recovered, after a tedious siege, by Immanuel, the Son
of Shaddai, its founder and true lord. A late reverend editor of this work
has said that “Mr. Bunyan was better qualified than most ministers to treat
this subject with propriety, having been himself a soldier, and knowing by
experience the evils and hardships of war. He displays throughout his
accurate knowledge of the Bible and its distinguished doctrines; his deep
acquaintance with the human heart, and its desperate wickedness ; his
knowledge of the devices of Satan, and of the prejudices of the carnal mind
against the Gospel.” To this panegyric we entirely subscribe, except that
we do not see that Bunyan has made much use of any military knowledge
which he might possess. Mansoul is attacked by mounts, slings, and batter-
ing-rams—weapons out of date at the time of our civil wars; and we can
only trace the author's soldierly experience in his referring to the points of
war then performed, as “Boot and saddle,” “Horse and away,” and so forth.
Indeed, the greatest risk which he seems to have incurred, in his military
capacity, was one somewhat resembling the escape of Sir Roger de Coverley's
18(? LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN.
I have only now to express my thanks to Mr. Rodd, the book-
seller, for the information with which he kindly assisted me ;
and to Mr. Major, who in publishing the most beautiful edition
that has ever appeared of this famous book, has, by sparing no
zeal in the collection of materials for it, enabled me to say that
it is also the most correct.
In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which
were sent me for this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone,
and notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending
his ‘Every-Day Book,” and ‘Table Book,’ to those who are in-
terested in the preservation of our national and local customs.
By these very curious publications their compiler has rendered
good service in an important department of literature; and he
may render yet more if he obtain the encouragement which he
well deserves.
ICeswick, March 13, 1830.
ancestor at Worcester, who was saved from the slaughter of that action by
having been absent from the field. In like manner, Bunyan, having been
appointed to attend at the siege of Leicester, a fellow-soldier volunteered
to perform the service in his stead, and was there slain. Upon the whole,
though the “Holy War' be a work of great ingenuity, it wants the simplicity
and intense interest which are the charms of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.”—
SIR WALTER SCOTT, Quart. Rev., vol. xliii., p. 491.]
THE END.
London: Printed by WILLIAM CLow Es and Sons, Stamford Street.
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