Which Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon,and which he said was the beginning of a perfect heaven upon earth.In this Parliament there sat a well-known leather-seller,who had taken the singular name of Praise God Barebones,and from whom it was called,for a joke,Barebones's Parliament,though its general name was the Little Parliament.As it soon appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first place,it turned out to be not at all like the beginning of heaven upon earth,and Oliver said it really was not to be borne with.So he cleared off that Parliament in much the same way as he had disposed of the other;and then the council of officers decided that he must be made the supreme authority of the kingdom,under the title of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
So,on the sixteenth of December,one thousand six hundred and fifty-three,a great procession was formed at Oliver's door,and he came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of boots,and got into his coach and went down to Westminster,attended by the judges,and the lord mayor,and the aldermen,and all the other great and wonderful personages of the country.There,in the Court of Chancery,he publicly accepted the office of Lord Protector.
Then he was sworn,and the City sword was handed to him,and the seal was handed to him,and all the other things were handed to him which are usually handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions.
When Oliver had handed them all back,he was quite made and completely finished off as Lord Protector;and several of the Ironsides preached about it at great length,all the evening.
SECOND PART
OLIVER CROMWELL-whom the people long called OLD NOLL-in accepting the office of Protector,had bound himself by a certain paper which was handed to him,called 'the Instrument,'to summon a Parliament,consisting of between four and five hundred members,in the election of which neither the Royalists nor the Catholics were to have any share.He had also pledged himself that this Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent until it had sat five months.
When this Parliament met,Oliver made a speech to them of three hours long,very wisely advising them what to do for the credit and happiness of the country.To keep down the more violent members,he required them to sign a recognition of what they were forbidden by 'the Instrument'to do;which was,chiefly,to take the power from one single person at the head of the state or to command the army.Then he dismissed them to go to work.With his usual vigour and resolution he went to work himself with some frantic preachers-who were rather overdoing their sermons in calling him a villain and a tyrant-by shutting up their chapels,and sending a few of them off to prison.
There was not at that time,in England or anywhere else,a man so able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell.Although he ruled with a strong hand,and levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists (but not until they had plotted against his life),he ruled wisely,and as the times required.He caused England to be so respected abroad,that I wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell's book.He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea,to make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects,and spoliation he had committed on English merchants.He further despatched him and his fleet to Algiers,Tunis,and Tripoli,to have every English ship and every English man delivered up to him that had been taken by pirates in those parts.All this was gloriously done;and it began to be thoroughly well known,all over the world,that England was governed by a man in earnest,who would not allow the English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.
These were not all his foreign triumphs.He sent a fleet to sea against the Dutch;and the two powers,each with one hundred ships upon its side,met in the English Channel off the North Foreland,where the fight lasted all day long.Dean was killed in this fight;but Monk,who commanded in the same ship with him,threw his cloak over his body,that the sailors might not know of his death,and be disheartened.Nor were they.The English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch that they sheered off at last,though the redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for deserting their flag.Soon afterwards,the two fleets engaged again,off the coast of Holland.There,the valiant Van Tromp was shot through the heart,and the Dutch gave in,and peace was made.
Further than this,Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and bigoted conduct of Spain,which country not only claimed a right to all the gold and silver that could be found in South America,and treated the ships of all other countries who visited those regions,as pirates,but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons of the Inquisition.So,Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English ships must be free to go wherever they would,and that English merchants must not be thrown into those same dungeons,no,not for the pleasure of all the priests in Spain.To this,the Spanish ambassador replied that the gold and silver country,and the Holy Inquisition,were his King's two eyes,neither of which he could submit to have put out.Very well,said Oliver,then he was afraid he (Oliver)must damage those two eyes directly.