Part 24 (2/2)
”When, veiling your dignity with disguises,” answered Neville; ”you borrow the occupation of your myrmidons, and steal on the privacies of those you oppress, can you wonder to hear their imprecations sound in unison with the clanking of their fetters?”
”I have a will,” replied Cromwell, ”as stubborn as yours. We will try for the mastery. What hinders me from laying that head of yours on the block?”
”--The insufferable goadings of your afflicted conscience, perpetually whispering that you have shed too much blood already.--Every wrinkle which care has imprinted on your brow, every tremulous infirmity which constant watchfulness has introduced into your frame, acting as mementos that the day of account cannot be far distant.--The iron you wear on your bosom, that by its stern pressure tells you what you deserve.--The public clamour, which will not now permit you to immolate the confined victims whom your own lips have p.r.o.nounced innocent of recent provocations, and against whom you dare not revive the charge of acknowledged resistance, which, by long impunity, you seem to have pardoned. All these reasons are pledges for our safety. You cannot further tempt the sufferance of Englishmen. Your declining health makes you fear to add to the long indictment which your crimes have prepared against you.
The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds, Upon Death's purple altar now, See where the victor-victim bleeds: All heads must come to the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.”[1]
As Neville uttered this bold appeal to the feelings of an alarmed and conscious villain, a cold s.h.i.+vering ran through the Protector's frame, and his eye expressed a vain supplication, that it were possible to exchange his garlands and his glories for those ever-fragrant actions which blossom on the grave of the just. He strove to rally his air of moody dignity, to recover the austere deliberate tone of his expressions; but his manner was embarra.s.sed, and his voice inarticulate.
A groan, such as only tortured guilt can utter, partially relieved his swollen bosom. ”Neville,” said he, ”I will not expect you to be my friend; but will you cease to be my enemy?”
”Miserable victim of ambition,” said Neville to himself; ”how much happier is my lot than thine!” Cromwell persisted in asking if there was any favour he would receive at his hand. Neville paused, and answered, ”Yes; liberty.”
”And what pledge,” said Cromwell, ”can you give me that you will not use freedom to my prejudice?”
”My own honour,” returned Neville, ”which will never allow me to use the instrument you put in my hand to destroy you.”
”No equivocation!” said Whitlock; ”in receiving freedom from His Highness you acknowledge his authority.”
”No,” returned Neville, ”I simply own he has a power to confine me. The question of right is undetermined. If a Usurper restores me to the free use of light and air, I need not examine his t.i.tle before I resume the enjoyment of those common blessings.”
Cromwell addressed Dr. Beaumont: ”You belong to a church whose doctrine is pa.s.sive obedience. You are not bewildered by this madman's chimeras, but can prudently estimate the value of our free grace and promised favour.”
”My religion,” replied the Doctor, ”teaches me to submit to the dispensations of Providence; but it will not allow me to divide the spoil with those who have grown mighty on the ruins of my friends.”
”Are there no points,” again inquired Cromwell, ”in which we may agree to join our common wishes? What if I beseech the Lord to give you the spirit of wisdom?”
”May he afford you that of consolation,” was the emphatical wish of Dr.
Beaumont. Neville waved his hand in silence. ”Oh! my friend,” said he, as soon as the Protector and Whitlock had retired, ”I have suffered more than the rack. I have seen the fiend-like face which looked, without compunction, on the sufferings of the Royal Martyr, and I felt too weak to revenge his wrongs. Have I not gone too far in saying I would accept of freedom from his hands?”
”Vengeance for such a crime,” replied Dr. Beaumont, ”is too vast and comprehensive to be entrusted to mortal agency. Let us leave it to Him who claims it as his own prerogative. Murder, perfidy, and treason, will be remembered when the avenging angel shall visit the sins of man.”
Cromwell returned from his insidious visit, disappointed and dejected.
He had failed of the end which he proposed to himself by his condescension. A reconciliation with two such distinguished Loyalists, founded on the mutual benefits of submission and rest.i.tution, would have strengthened his government; but he found abstinence from treacherous hostility was all that his blandishments could obtain, and this he would owe rather to their own principles of honour and religion than to his threats or his promises. Though stung to the heart by the bold taunts of Neville, he could not punish him. The very aspect and figure of the two venerable sufferers were so fitted to excite sympathy and indignation, that he durst not expose them on a scaffold, nor could he privately cut them off. The fate of Syndercome, a daring Anabaptist, who had several times attempted his life, and, on his trial, persevered in expressing his determination, if possible, to kill him, alike deterred Cromwell from bringing his private enemies to the bar of a court of justice, or resorting to private measures of revenge. He had with difficulty procured this man's condemnation; but the night previous to his intended execution he escaped, by suicide, the Protector's power; and so prejudiced were the populace against their Ruler, that they accused him of having poisoned the victim he feared to bring to a public death. If the prosecution of a notorious and avowed ruffian brought him into this dilemma, what odium would the death of two respectable and aged Loyalists excite, especially as their story was become public, and the wrongs of Neville, and the generous friends.h.i.+p of Beaumont, had awakened a powerful sympathy. Yet his narrow soul could not accede to the generous alternative of giving them freedom. Pretending that the state had a claim to the Bellingham-property, he prevented Monthault from taking any measures to establish the will of the guilty Countess, and contented himself with keeping the lawful claimant in prison, hoping that confinement would accelerate the decays of nature, and thus give a safe quietus to his own fears.
But ere that event happened the Usurper was called to the dreadful tribunal for which few among the descendants of Adam were apparently less prepared. His restless, intriguing ambition; the dissimulation and hypocrisy by which he rose to supreme power; the ability with which he wielded it; his splendid wretchedness; the terror he excited and felt; his cruelty and fanaticism, his determined spirit, and occasionally timid vacillation, read a most impressive lesson to aspiring minds infatuated by success, and regardless of moral or religious restraints.
O that, in this age of insubordination, selfishness, and enterprise, a poet would arise, animated with Shakespeare's ”Muse of fire,” embody the events of those seventeen years of wo, and invest the detestable Regicide with the same terrible immortality which marks the murderous Thane in his progress from obedience and honour to supreme power and consummate misery!
Nor does the death-bed of Cromwell afford a less useful warning to the pen of instruction, when she aims at distinguis.h.i.+ng true piety from hypocrisy or fanaticism. It is still doubtful under which of those counterfeits of religion we must rank this great but wicked man. Yet, whether he deceived his own soul, or attempted to deceive others; whether he really believed himself an elected instrument of Providence; or, having long worn devotion as the mask of ambition, retained it to the last,--his almost unexampled crimes (so plainly forbidden by that scripture he had ever on his lips), and the security and confidence of his last moments, furnish stronger arguments than a thousand volumes of controversy, to prove the fallacy and danger of those speculative notions which he patronized, propagated, and exemplified.
[1] The Usurper's terrors at hearing this fine song of s.h.i.+rley's is an historical fact. Some of the speeches attributed to him in this interview, he really used to persons he had confined, and wished to win over. In the close of his life he grew timid; and, conscious of being hated, bore insults calmly. Bishop Wren rejected his offered favours in as strong language as that attributed to Neville.
CHAP. XXVI.
A good man should not be very willing, when his Lord comes, to be found beating his fellow-servants; and all controversy, as it is usually managed, is little better. A good man would be loth to be taken out of the world reeking hot from a sharp contention with a perverse adversary; and not a little out of countenance to find himself, in this temper, translated into the calm and peaceable regions of the blessed, where nothing but perfect charity and good-will reign for ever.
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