CHAPTER III.

CROMWELL'S CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT.

E are desirous to set before our readers, not

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only the character of Cromwell himself, but of those contemporaries who also wrought out with him the work of national salvation; among these, and especially those who may be termed the great heralds and precursors of what may be called more strictly the Cromwell period, no name is more eminent than that of John Eliot. He is really the Elijah of the Revolution, and his was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way." His bold, courageous, and ardent spirit went before, and he anticipated the great impeachments of Pym and the great victories of Cromwell. It is only recently that he has been restored to the high place in popular regard and memory, from whence he had passed almost into obscurity, until Mr. John Forster first published his brief life, more than thirty years. since, in his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth," and afterwards expanded the sketch into the two handsome volumes which now so pleasantly embalm the name and memory, the words and works and sufferings, we may add, the martyrdom, of John Eliot. He

was born in 1590, a Cornishman, but on the banks of the Tamar, in the town of St. Germains, which, however, does not appear to have been more than a poor little straggling village of fisherman. Travelling on the Continent, he made the acquaintance of the Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of James I. Perhaps the acquaintance was not very intimate or very deep; it seems likely, however, that to it Eliot owed his position of Vice-Admiral of Devon. When, however, Eliot entered into public life, the opinions and careers of the two men were so divergent, that it is probable that, by his great impeachment of the Duke, Eliot would have taken away his head had not Felton's lance anticipated the headsman's stroke.

Eliot entered Parliament in his twenty-fourth year as member for the borough of St. Germains, and he found himself in company with some of the men whose names were to be allied with his own in working out the English redemption. John Hampden, three or four years younger than Eliot, had not yet finished his studies in the Inner Temple; but there were Pym, Philips, Sir Edward Joel, Sir Edward Sands, and Whitelock, and, amphibiously bowing about, but scarcely giving a hint of the vast space he was to fill by his power in the future, Sir Thomas Wentworth, soon afterwards created Earl of Strafford. Buckingham was the favourite,-the most unprincipled of favourites, but Lord High Admiral of England. And here we are most likely to discover

the cause of Eliot's elevation to the Vice-Admiralty of Devon. The Duke, probably, soon found that he had made a mistake in the appointment of Eliot to this post. The western coast was ravaged by pirates, and Eliot does not appear to have understood that it was quite possible for, perhaps almost expected that, the admiral and the pirate, especially if he were an English pirate, should understand each other. Not only Turkish rovers swept round our seas, but wild, lawless, dissolute Englishmen, bold bravadoes capable of every crime, who, when they were wearied and foiled in their adventures upon Spanish dollars and doubloons, varied the pleasantry of their occupation by more homely and less toilsome endeavours, seizing our own merchant ships, surprising and pouncing upon villages and small towns along the coast, and, in innumerable ways, creating a fear and a dread on the land and on the sea. What seems most marvellous to us now, is that such men should be frequently shielded and patronized by Govern ment, or Government favourites, for their own ends. and purposes !

This was the case, just then, with one who had obtained the most infamous distinction, Captain John Nutt, one of the most daring sea-devils of that lawless time. He was an untakable man, and he had several pirate ships. He commenced his career as gunner of a vessel in Dartmouth harbour bound for the Newfoundland seas. Coming to Newfoundland, he collected a crew of pleasant fellows like himself;

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they seized a French ship, also a large Plymouth ship, then a Flemish ship, and, with these gay rovers, he played off his depredations on the fishing craft of the Newfoundland seas, and came back, too strong for capture, to the western coasts of England. Arrived there, this worthy played off new devilries: he tempted men from the king's service by the promises of higher wages, and-what alas! might easily be promised in those dreary days, more certain payment; he hung about Torbay, laughed at threats, scoffed at promises of pardon, although more than one offer had been made conditionally. The whole western country was in a state of dread, and municipalities poured their entreaties upon the Council and upon Eliot in his office of Vice-Admiral. What did it all avail? Capture seemed a mere dream, a hopeless thing. Sometimes he touched the shore, and, as was the wont with those bold fellows, when he did so, he was fond of exhibiting himself in the dress of the men he had plundered. The mind of Eliot was moved at these things. Sir George Calvert, a great Court favourite, had interests in Newfoundland; to him Nutt was necessary, and he appears to have obtained pardons for the pirate. Copies of the pardons were issued to Eliot,-it was his design to make the pardons useless; he was bound on capturing. the pirate, but the pirate was too wary for the admiral. At last he had recourse to negotiation; but even while the negotiation for submission was in progress, Nutt made it still further unavailing by