a Cornet Thompson brother of the Captain, but without any leader of mark, broken out at Salisbury: the General and Lieutenant-General, with what force can be raised, are hastening thitherward in all speed. Now were the time for LieutenantColonel Lilburn; now or never might noisy John do some considerable injury to the Cause he has at heart: but he sits, in these critical hours, fast within stone walls! Monday 14th May. All Sunday the General and Lieutenant-General marched in full speed, by Alton, by Andover, towards Salisbury; the mutineers, hearing of them, start northward for Buckinghamshire, then for Berkshire; the General and Lieutenant-General turning also northward after them in hot chase. The mutineers arrive at Wantage; make for Oxfordshire by Newbridge; find the Bridge already seized; cross higher up by swimming; get to Burford, very weary, and ' turn out their horses to grass';-Fairfax and Cromwell still following in hot speed, a march of near fifty miles' that Monday. What boots it? there is no leader, noisy John is sitting fast within stone walls! The mutineers lie asleep in Burford, their horses out at grass; the Lieutenant-General, having rested at a safe distance since dark, bursts into Burford as the clocks are striking midnight. He has beset some hundreds of the mutineers, who could only fire some shots out of windows';-has dissipated the mutiny, trodden down the Levelling Principle out of English affairs once more. Here is the last scene of the business; the rigorous Court-Martial having now sat; the decimated doomed Mutineers being placed on the leads of the Church to see: Thursday 17th May. This day in Burford Churchyard, Cornet Thompson, brother to Thompson the chief leader, was brought to the place of execution; and expressed himself to this purpose: That it was just what did befall him; that God did not own the ways he went; that he had offended the General: he desired the prayers of the people; and told the soldiers who were appointed to shoot him, that when he held out his hands, they should do their duty. And accord ingly he was immediately, after the sign given, shot to death. Next after him was a Corporal, brought to the same place of execution; where, looking upon his fellow-mutineers, he set his back against the wall; and bade them who were appointed to shoot, "Shoot!" and died desperately. The third, being also a Corporal, was brought to the same place; and without the least acknowledgment of error, or show of fear, he pulled off his doublet, standing a pretty distance from the wall; and bade the soldiers do their duty; looking them in the face till they gave fire, not showing the least kind of terror or fearfulness of spirit.' So die the Leveller Corporals; strong they, after their sort, for the Liberties of England; resolute to the very death. Misguided Corporals! But History, which has wept for a misguided Charles Stuart, and blubbered, in the most copious helpless manner, near two centuries now, whole floods of brine, enough to salt the Herring-fishery,—will not refuse these poor Corporals also her tributary sigh. With Arnald of the Rendezvous at Ware, with Lockyer of the Bull in Bishopsgate, and other misguided martyrs to the Liberties of England then and since, may they sleep well! Cornet Dean, who now came forward as the next to be shot, 'expressed penitence'; got pardon from the General: and there was no more shooting. Lieutenant-General Cromwell went into the Church, called down the Decimated of the Mutineers; rebuked, admonished; said, The General in his mercy had forgiven them. Misguided men, would you ruin this Cause, which marvellous Providences have so confirmed to us to be the Cause of God? Go, repent; and rebel no more, lest a worse thing befall you! They wept,' says the old Newspaper; they retired to the Devizes for a time; were then restored to their regiments, and marched cheerfully for Ireland. -Captain Thompson, the Cornet's brother, the first of all the Mutineers, he too, a few days afterwards, was fallen-in with in Northamptonshire, still mutinous: his men took quarter; he himself fled to a wood'; fired and fenced there, and again desperately fired, declaring he would never yield alive ;—where upon a Corporal with seven bullets in his carbine' ended Captain Thompson too; and this formidable conflagration, to the last glimmer of it, was extinct. Sansculottism, as we said above, has to lie submerged for almost two centuries yet. Levelling, in the practical civil or military provinces of English things, is forbidden to be. In the spiritual provinces it cannot be forbidden; for there it everywhere already is. It ceases dibbling beans on St. George's Hill near Cobham; ceases galloping in mutiny across the Isis to Burford;-takes into Quakerisms, and kingdoms which are not of this world. My poor friend Dryasdust lamentably tears his hair over the 'intolerance' of that old Time to Quakerism and suchlike. If Dryasdust had seen the dibbling on St. George's Hill, the threatened fall of 'park pales,' and the gallop to Burford, he would reflect that Conviction in an earnest age means, not lengthy Spouting in Exeter-Hall, but rapid silent Practice on the face of the Earth; and would perhaps leave his poor hair alone. On Thursday night, 17th of the month, the General, Lieutenant-General, and chief Officers arrive at Oxford; lodge in All-Souls College; head-quarters are to be there for some days. Solemnly welcomed by the reformed University; bedinnered, bespeeched; made Doctors, Masters, Bachelors, or what was suitable to their ranks, and to the faculties of this reformed University. Of which high doings, degrees and convocationdinners, and eloquence by Proctor Zanchy, we say nothing,being in haste for Ireland. This small benefit we have from the business: Anthony Wood, in his crabbed but authentic way, has given us biographical sketches of all these Graduates; biographies very lean, very perverse, but better than are commonly going then, and in the fatal scarcity not quite without value.1 1 Wood's Athenæ, iv. (Fasti, ii. 127-155): the Graduates of Saturday 19th May 1649, are, Fairfax, p. 148; Cromwell, p. 152; Colonels Scrope, Grosvenor, Sir Hardress Waller, Ingoldsby, Harrison, Goff, Okey; Adjutant-General Sedascue, Scoutmaster Rowe: and of Monday 21st, Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbet, p. 140; John Rushworth, Cornet Joyce, p. 138:-of whom those marked here in Italics have biographies worth looking at for an instant. VOL. II. C Neither do we speak of the thanking in the House of Commons; or of the general Day of Thanksgiving for London, which is Thursday the 7th June (the day for England at large being Thursday 21st),'-and of the illustrious Dinner which the City gave the Parliament and Officers, and all the Dignitaries of England, when Sermon was done. It was at Grocers' Hall, this City dinner; really illustrious. Dull Bulstrode, Keeper, or one of the Keepers, of the Commonwealth Great Seal, was there,-Keeper of that lump of dignified metal, found since all rusty in the wall at Hursley and my Lord of Pembroke, an Earl and Member of the Council of State, 'speaking very loud,' as his manner was, insisted that illustrious Bulstrode should take place above him. I have given place to Bishop Williams when he was Keeper; and the Commonwealth Great Seal is as good as any King's ever was ;-illustrious Bulstrode, take place above me: so! 2 'On almost every dish was enamelled a bandrol with the word Welcome. No music but that of drum and trumpet'; no balderdash, or almost none, of speech without meaning; 'no drinking of healths or other incivility'; drinking of healths; a kind of invocation or prayer, addressed surely not to God, in that humour; probably therefore to the Devil, or to the Heathen gods; which is offensive to the well-constituted mind. Four-hundred pounds were given to the Poor of London, that they also might dine.3And now for Bristol and the Campaign in Ireland. LETTERS XCVII-CII Tuesday 10th July 1649. This evening, about five of the clock, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland began his journey; by the way of Windsor, and so to Bristol. He went forth in that state and equipage as the like hath hardly been seen; himself in a coach with six gallant Flanders mares, whitish Whitlocke, p. 391. 1 Commons Journals, 26th May 1649. gray; divers coaches accompanying him; and very many great Officers of the Army; his Lifeguard consisting of eighty gallant men, the meanest whereof a Commander or Esquire, in stately habit;—with trumpets sounding, almost to the shaking of Charing Cross, had it been now standing. Of his Lifeguard many are Colonels; and, believe me, it's such a guard as is hardly to be paralleled in the world. And now have at you, my Lord of Ormond! You will have men of gallantry to encounter; whom to overcome will be honour sufficient, and to be beaten by them will be no great blemish to your reputation. If you say, Cæsar or Nothing: they say, A Republic or Nothing. The Lord Lieutenant's colours are white.'1 Thus has Lord-Lieutenant Cromwell gone to the Wars in Ireland. But before going, and while just on the eve of going, he has had the following, among a multiplicity of other businesses, to attend to. LETTER XCVII BARNABAS O'BRYEN, Sixth Earl of Thomond, Twentiethand-odd King of Thomond, a very ancient Irish dignitary of the Limerick regions, whom it was still worth while to conciliate, has fallen into 'straits,' distresses; applies to the Lord Lieutenant to help him a little. The Lord Lieutenant thinks his case good; forwards it with recommendation to Harrington, of the Council of State, the proper official person in such matters. Note, this is by no means Harrington of the Oceana, this 'Sir James'; this is Member ('recruiter') for Rutlandshire, and only a distant cousin of the Oceana's. us. What the Earl of Thomond's case was, as we have not seen the 'enclosed' statement of it, shall remain somewhat vague to Thomond had not joined the Irish Massacre in 1641: but neither would he join against it; he apologised to the King's Lieutenant on that occasion, said he had no money, no force; retired with many apologetic bows into England to the King himself; leaving his unmoneyed Castle of Bunratty to 1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 62). |