had arisen between Cromwell and the army on the one hand, and the Long Parliament on the other. Each wished to rule supreme, but eventually Cromwell forcibly dissolved the parliament, (April 1653,) and soon after summoned another, composed wholly of members of his own selection. The latter, however, commonly called Barebone's parliament, from the name of one of its leading members, at once commenced such a thorough reformation in every department of the state, as to alarm Cromwell and his associates; and it was resolved that these troublesome legislators should be sent back to their respective parishes. A majority of the members voluntarily surrendered their power into the hands of Cromwell, who put an end to the opposition of the rest by turning them out of doors. (Dec. 12th, 1653.) Four days later a new scheme of government, called "The Protectorate," was adopted, by which the supreme powers of state were vested in a lord protector, a council, and a parliament; and Cromwell was solemnly installed for life in the office of "Lord Protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland."

XII. THE PROTECTO

RATE.

20. The parliament summoned by Cromwell to meet in September of the following year, suspecting that the Protector aimed at kingly authority, commenced its session (1654) by an inquiry into the right by which he held his power; upon which Cromwell plainly informed the members that he would send them to their homes if they did not acknowledge the authority by which they had been assembled. About three hundred members signed a paper recognizing Cromwell's scheme of government; while the remainder, amounting to a hundred and sixty, resolutely refused compliance, and were excluded from their seats; but although parliament was in some degree purged by the operation, it did not exhibit the subserviency which Cromwell had hoped to find in it. On the introduction of a bill declaring the Protectorate hereditary in the family of Cromwell, a very large majority voted against it. The spirit which characterized the remainder of the session showed Cromwell that he had not gained the confidence of the nation; and an angry dissolution, early in the following year, (Feb. 1655,) increased the general discontent. Soon after, a conspiracy of the royalists broke out, but was easily suppressed; and even in the army, among the republicans themselves, several officers allowed their fidelity to be corrupted, and took a share in counsels that were intended to restore the commonwealth to its original vigor and purity. During the same year (1655), a war with Spain broke out; the

island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, was conquered; the treasureships of the Spaniards were captured on their passage to Europe; and some naval victories were obtained.

21. In his civil and domestic administration, which was conducted with ability, but without any regular plan, Cromwell displayed a general regard for justice and clemency; and irregularities were never sanctioned, unless the necessity of thus sustaining his usurped authority seemed to require it. Such indeed were the order and tranquillity which he preserved-such his skilful management of persons and parties, and such, moreover, the change in the feelings of many of the Independents themselves, since the death of the late monarch, that in the parliament of 1656 a motion was made, and carried by a considerable majority, for investing the Protector with the dignity of king. Although exceedingly desirous to accept the proffered honor, he saw that the army, composed mostly of stern and inflexible republicans, could never be reconciled to a measure that implied an open contradiction of all their past professions, and an abandonment of their principles; and he was at last obliged to refuse that crown which had been solemnly proffered to him by the representatives of the nation.

22. After this event, the domestic affairs of the country kept Cromwell in perpetual uneasiness. The royalists renewed their conspiracies against him; and a majority in parliament now opposed all his favorite measures; a mutiny of the army was apprehended; and even the daughters of the Protector became estranged from him. Overwhelmed with difficulties, possessing the confidence of no party, having lost all composure of mind, and in constant dread of assassination, his health gradually declined, and he expired on the 13th of September, 1658, the anniversary of his great victories, and a day which he had always considered the most fortunate for him.

23. On the death of Cromwell, his eldest son, Richard, succeeded him in the protectorate, in accordance, as was supposed, with the dying wish of his father, and with the approbation of the council. But Richard, being of a quiet, unambitious temper, and alarmed at the dangers by which he was surrounded, soon signed his own abdication, and retired to private life. A state of anarchy followed, and contending factions, in the army and the parliament, for RATION OF a time filled the country with bloody dissensions, when General Monk, who commanded the army in Scotland, marched into England and declared in favor of the restoration of

XIII. RESTO

MONARCHY.

royalty. This declaration, freeing the nation from the state of suspense in which it had long been held, was received with almost universal joy the House of Lords hastened to reinstate itself in its ancient authority; and on the 18th of May, 1660, Charles the Second, son of the late king, was proclaimed sovereign of England, by the united acclamations of the army, the people, and the two houses of parliament.

24. The accession of Charles II. to the throne of his ancestors was at first hailed as the harbinger of real liberty, and the promise of a firm and tranquil government, although no terms were required of him for the security of the people against his abuse of their confidence. As he possessed a handsome person, and was open and affable in his manners, and engaging in conversation, the first impressions produced by him were favorable; but he was soon found to be excessively indolent, profligate, and worthless, and to entertain notions as arbitrary as those which had distinguished the reign of his father. The parliament, called in 1661, composed mostly of men who had fought for royalty and the church, gave back to the crown its ancient prerogatives, of which the Long Parliament had despoiled it-endeavored to enforce the doctrine of passive obedience, by compelling all officers of trust to swear that they held resistance to the king's authority to be in all cases unlawful,-and passed an act of religious uniformity, by which two thousand Presbyterian ministers were deprived of their livings, and the gaols filled with a crowd of dissenters. Episcopacy was established by law; and the church, grateful for the protection which she received from the government, made the doctrine of non-resistance her favorite theme, which she taught without any qualification, and followed out to all its extreme consequences.

25. While these changes were in progress, the manners and morals of the nation were sinking into an excess of profligacy, encouraged by the dissolute conduct of the king in private life. Under the austere rule of the puritans, vice and immorality were sternly repressed; but when the check was withdrawn, they broke forth with ungovernable violence. The cavaliers, as the partisans of the late king were called, in general affected a profligacy of manners, as their distinction from the fanatical and canting party, as they denominated the puritans; the prevailing immorality pervaded all ranks and professions; the philosophy and poetry of the times pandered to the general licentiousness; and the public revenues were wasted on the

vilest associates of the king's debauchery. The court of Charles was a school of vice, in which the restraints of decency were laughed to scorn; and at no other period of English history were the immoralities of licentiousness practiced with more ostenation, or with less disgrace.

26. While Charles was losing the favor of all parties and classes by his neglect of public business, and his wasteful profligacy, the general discontent was heightened by his marriage with Catherine, a Portuguese princess, and by the sale of Dunkirk' to France; but still greater clamors arose, when, in 1664, the king provoked a war with Holland, by sending out a squadron which seized the Dutch settlements on the coast of Africa, and the Cape Verde Islands. The House of Commons readily voted supplies to carry on the war with vigor; but such was the extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of those to whom Charles had intrusted its management, that, after a few indecisive naval battles, it was found necessary to abandon all thoughts of offensive war; and even then the sailors mutinied in the ports from actual hunger, and a Dutch fleet, sailing up the Thames, burned the ships at Chatham," on the very day when the king was feasting with the ladies of his seraglio. The capital was threatened with the miseries of a blockade, and for the first time the roar of foreign guns was heard by the citizens of London.

27. In the summer of 1665, while the ignominious war with Holland was raging, the plague visited England, but was confined principally to London, where its frightful ravages surpassed in horror anything that had ever been known in the island. But few recovered from the disease, and death followed within two or three days, and sometimes within a few hours, from the first symptoms. During one week in September more than ten thousand died; and the whole number of victims was more than a hundred thousand. In the following year a fire, such as had not been known in Europe since the

1. Dunkirk, the most northern seaport of France, is situated on the straits of Dover, in the former province of French Flanders, opposite, and forty-seven miles east from, the English town of Dover. Dunkirk is said to have been founded by Baldwin, count of Flanders, in 960: in 1388 it was burned by the English; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it alternately belonged to them and to the Spaniards and French. Charles II. sold it to Louis XIV. for two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Louis, aware of its importance, fortified it at great expense, but was compelled, by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, tc consent to the demoli tion of its fortifications, and even to the shutting up of its port. (Map No, XIII.)

2. Chatham is a celebrated naval and military depôt, on the river Medway, twenty-eight miles south-east from London. It was anciently called Cetcham, or the village of cottages. Many Roman remains have been found in its vicinity. It is this town which gives the title of earl to the Pitt family. (Map No. XVI.

conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins two-thirds of the metropolis, consuming more than thirteen thousand dwellings, and leaving destitute two hundred thousand people.

28. After the war with Holland had continued two years, Charles was forced, by the voice of parliament and the bad success of his arms, to conclude the treaty of Breda,' (July 1667,) by which the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands,' in America, were confirmed to England, while the latter surrendered to France Acadia and Nova Scotia. In 1672, however, Charles was induced by the French monarch, Louis XIV., to join him in another war against the Dutch. The combined armies of the two kingdoms soon reduced the republic to the brink of destruction; but the prince of Orange, being promoted to the chief command of the Dutch forces, soon roused the courage of his dismayed countrymen: the dykes were opened, laying the whole country, except the cities, under water; and the invaders were forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate retreat. At length, in 1674, Charles was compelled, by the discontents of his people and parliament, who were opposed to the war, to conclude a separate treaty of peace with Holland. France continued the war, but Holland was now aided by Spain and Sweden, while in 1676 the marriage of the prince of Orange with the Lady Mary, daughter of the duke of York, the brother of Charles, induced England to espouse the cause of the republic, and led to the treaty of Nimeguen

1. Breda is a strongly-fortified town of Holland-province of North Brabant, on the river Merk, thirty miles north-east from Antwerp. Breda is a well-built town, entirely surrounded by a marsh that may be laid under water. It was taken from the Spaniards by prince Maurice in 1590, by means of a stratagem suggested by the master of a boat who sometimes supplied the garrison with fuel. With singular address he contrived to introduce into the town, under a cargo of turf, seventy chosen soldiers, who, having attacked the garrison in the night, opened the gates to their comrades. It was retaken by the Spaniards under the marquis Spinola in 1625, but was finally ceded to Holland by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. (Map No. XV.) 2. New Netherlands, the present New York, had been conquered by the English in 1664, while England and Holland were at peace; and the treaty of Breda confirmed England in the possession of the country.

3. The French possessions in America, embracing New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the adjacent islands, were at first called Acadia. A fleet sent out by Cromwell in 1654 soon reduced Acadia, but it was restored by the treaty of Breda in 1667.

4. The family of Orange derive their title from the little principality of Orange, twelve miles In length and nine in breadth, of which the city of Orange, a town of south-eastern France, was the capital. Orange, known to the Romans by the name of Arausio, is situated on the small river Meyne, five miles east of the Rhone, and twelve miles north of Avignon. From the eleventh to the sixteenth century Orange had its own princes. In 1531 it passed, by marriage, to the count of Nassau. It continued in this family till the death, in 1702, of William Henry of Nassau-Orange (William III. of England), when the succession became the subject of a long contest; and it was not till the peace of Utrecht in 1715 that this little territory was finally ceded to France. (Map No. XIII.)

5. Nimeguen, or Nymegen, is a town of Holland, province of Guelderland, on the south side