THE PURITAN REVOLUTION.*

THERE are few periods of English history that combine for us equal interest and instruction with the era of the Puritan Revolution. The great current of political and religious enthusiasm, gathering mass and force through long years, at length burst over the country, overbearing all opposition, and presently, to superficial observers, was lost in the earth ; yet after an interval of bleak desolation, the fertilising influences manifested their power, and they have continued to operate vitally upon English life down to the present moment. In studying this strange eventful history, we are peculiarly apt to carry back with us some strong modern bias. It is difficult to hold the balance fair in judging of the struggles that led up to and that constituted the first clear divergence of modern political parties. It is still more difficult not to colour with the religious preferences or prejudices of the present time the religious and moral develop- ments of two or three centuries ago. With all the attractions of the period for historian, biographer, and dramatist, Mr. Bayne's ingenuity must have been considerably exercised to discover even a partially new method of treatment. "My object," he says, "has been to bring into distinct representation the chief moving forces in the Puritan Revolution. Selecting a certain number of actors in the drama of the period, I have endeavoured to put myself into their position, seeing with their eyes, and in the exercise of at least dramatic sympathy, feeling as they felt," but of course reserving the right of independent judgment. By working on these lines, Mr. Bayne reduces the chances of being misled through bias, or rather, gives the benefit of it to his hero for the time being. We have observed indeed that, with decided enough views of his own, he holds the historical scales with eminent fairness ; a fair- ness that his Christian charity and tolerance seem rather un- willing to extend towards some of his contemporaries. In the opening chapter, Mr. Bayne treats of the dominant ideas of the Puritan period as contrasted with those of our own time, and in tracing from the earliest stages the defection from the religion of the Church, he lays stress on the primarily spiritual and personal character of the movement, and its indifference to system. Later on, parties were to advance to what Hallam calls "the last stage of persecution," in efforts to " bend the reluctant conscience to an insincere profession of truth ;" and it is well to explain, by the side of the new -fangled divine right of Bishops, the divine right of Puritans, whose confident persuasion of perfection was grounded on their identifying emotional excitement with the inspiration of God. Mr. Bayne is, in severe strictness, right when he con- templates the Puritan Revolution "as primarily a readjustment of conceptions and arrangements arising out of man's relation to the Infinite." But we think he is probing his foundations un- necessarily deep, when he invites us to inquire into the ultimate basis of impassioned faith in God.

"The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first study of a statesman." So argued Burke ; and Burnet saw that " Shaftesbury's strength lay in the knowledge of England, and of all the considerable men in it," for "he under- stood well the size of their understandings, and their tempers."

• The Chief Actors is the Puritan fitt,vtution. By Peter Bayne, KA. London: Jaime Clarke awl Co. 1878. It is simply a particular instance of the general art of dealing with people. But to understand the temper of their subjects was no part of the kingcraft of the Stuarts. They were fatally blind to the religious and political signs of the times, and the interested servility of courtiers confirmed their belief that they saw all things clearly. The new moral and religious impulse har- monised with and fostered the growing desire of fuller political freedom. If Elizabeth had little or no religious sentiment, this deficiency was all but compensated by her vigorous political sagacity ; but even she had outlived her popularity, and had long done her utmost to avoid the ticklish business of dealing with intractable Parliaments. The accession of James affords Macaulay an unusually solid basis for some of his most brilliant antitheses. James's personal characteristics and his kingcraft hurried the- Crown along the inclined plane. Adhering in a general way to his early Calvinism, he still tolerated Catholics at home, and he refused to strike a blow for the Protestant cause abroad, and manceuvred for intimate relations with Spain, while his people were in a religious ferment, and on very good grounds associated indissolubly in their minds Spain and Popery and civil thraldom. His securest title to the English Throne was the will of the English nation, yet he never let slip an opportunity of flinging in their face his odious theory of divine right. Mr. Bayne, perhaps, goes quite far enough in giving James the benefit of a charitable construction, but he does especially well to deprecate the too common contempt for the King's cowardice. The physical side of the case is a fundamental consideration, which Mr. Bayne might have insisted upon still further, tracing it in much wider ramifications, even for generations downwards. The misfortunes both of Tristram Shandy and of James began before their birth, and their conduct was similarly uncertain ; with both, however sagaciously the future might be planned, what did happen was always the unexpected. The down-hill pace was accelerated by Charles. Unpopular, to begin with, chiefly from his religious tendencies, and cursed with many a legacy of his father's, and with an actively intriguing, wrong-headed Catholic wife, Charles went rapidly from bad to worse. Mr. Bayne shows bow much was due to Buckingham, and how very much was due to Henrietta Maria. The chapter on Henrietta is really brilliant, and shows Mr. Bayne in the most chivalrous mood. It contains many new points, too, but we- would suggest to Mr. Bayne whether Charles was not just as well without Henrietta's brains, for in that case his head would certainly have been struck off many years sooner than it was. Mr. Bayne seems to us to have successfully vindicated Laud in many respects, but at the same time, he sees clearly enough that Laud's distinctions, however just absolutely, were beyond the intelligence of nearly everybody else, and could not but bring him to grief. Laud's Anglicanism, though not essen- tially and necessarily, yet indirectly and practically came to the Puritan estimate, namely, that it led to Popery ; and the Puritans held themselves justified in requiring that the breach with Rome should be not doubtful, but absolute and complete. Laud was also very ignorant of the popular feeling, and whatever his good qualities, he helped greatly to drag Charles down. Wentworth saw farther than any of them all, yet he, too, miscalculated fatally. Mr. Bayne traces in clear and firm- lines the religious and political transactions that brought Laud, and Strafford to the block. We cannot follow in detail the insane perversities of the King, but we think Mr. Bayne far

too indulgent to Charles's success in the casuistical manage- ment of his conscience. To say that he laid his head with placid dignity on the block, because he had not "sinned against light," is to show an amiable and exclusive regard for a not very large fraction of the case. To speak of "a glory more sublime than that of success, the glory of martyr heroism and saintly endurance," is extravagant ; it would be enough to say vaguely that, with the exception of Charles's thankless love for the Queen, "nothing in his life became him like the leaving it." We pass over the interesting chapters on the operations in Scotland, the " damnable " Covenant, and the brilliant and ill- starred Montrose. We must come to Vane and Cromwell. The "subtle spirit" of Sir Harry Vane would appreciate the dis- criminating judgment here passed on his career. Mr. Bayne does proper justice to his high moral excellence. He repudiates, and justly, Clarendon's charge that "Vane was chosen to cozen and deceive a whole nation," the Scots ; and perhaps he does as much as can be done for Vane in regard to the breach with Cromwell. Their previous association is continuously unfolded, as a necessary preliminary to a sound judgment upon the unfortunate rupture. The understanding under which Cromwell maintained that they parted on April 19, 1653, would seem to have been a mis- understanding; and though Vane should have recognised how dangerous it was to hurry through a Bill by way of thwarting the known desire of Oliver, something must be -conceded to his zeal for the supremacy of Parliament. If Crom- well's practical sagacity was too roughly decisive for the rigid formality of Vane, we should still support Cromwell on his plea of necessity, bat at the same time respect the scruples of the strictly constitutional and weaker statesman. It was un- -doutedly a "great emergency." Of "the greatest Prince

that has ever ruled England," Mr. Bayne is for the most part strenuously appreciative. While giving all honour to Carlyle, he does not hesitate to record a reasoned dissent on -various

points, and notably on the characters of Pym and Hampden, and on Cromwell's intention of leaving England in the event of the failure of the Great Remonstrance. Mr. Bayne strikes one more blow at the unkillable lie that "traitor Scot sold his King for a groat." He does not appear to have got any clue to the precise origin of the suggestion or purpose to execute the King ; we find nothing more definite than that, after iCharlea's trifling with Cromwell, and intriguing behind him with the Presbyterians, who now became rather for- midable, "the soldiers, with Cromwell preaching and pray- ing among them, found it borne in upon their minds that if the Lord gave them victory over the multitude of enemies rising -against them, it would be their duty to call to account the man of blood, Charles Stuart." At the death of the King, Mr. Bayne is still all for Cromwell ; and on a review of his subsequent career, he rather vaguely "thinks that there was a vein of culpable ambition in Cromwell's character ; but history names few men greater, either morally or intellectually." Though he protests strongly against Macaulay's exaggeration of the Puritan gloom, we do not understand him to deny that in those days the English took their pleasures sadly. And as for the alleged pre-

valence of hypocrisy in the public service, Mr. Bayne asserts 4' that since the world began, there never was a time or place in

svhich word corresponded more closely to deed than in England in the days of Cromwell."

The lives of Milton and Clarendon, the poet and the historian -of the times, were coextensive with the Puritan Revolution. _Milton was the most Puritan of the Puritans. Unfortunately, we must confess to some disappointment with Mr. Bayne's treatment of the poet, especially in the earlier period. Perhaps our expec- tations were pitched too high, but apart from this, we think we find much irrelevant matter, and not a little questionable literary criticism. Milton's opinions are clearly explained. In the exami- nation of the great epic of Puritanism, there is nothing more striking than Mr. Bayne's energy of revulsion from the doctrine of everlasting torment, which prompts a rash doubt of the

permanence of Paradise Lost "among the household treasures of mankind." Mr. Bayne concludes with a much better chapter

on Clarendon, the ablest chapter in his book. Here is his main thesis :—

" What renders Hyde supremely interesting as an historical character is neither his having been the chief Minister of two Stuart Sovereigns, nor his having written the history of his time, but his having been the man who, of all then living, might have done most to save the patriots of the Long Parliament from being forced to make this election [be- tween a divine-right Episcopacy and a divine-right Presbyterianism, when they believed in neither]. Had Hyde taken a course even slightly different from that which he pursued, Pym, Hampden, and the whole party which they led, instead of choosing the less of two evils, with calamity annexed for decades and malign results for centuries, might have seen their way to a perfectly workable, broadly comprehensive ecclesiastical scheme, acceptable to the people, loyal to a constitutional throne, and making it possible for England to escape both the murderous contention of the seventeenth century and the misery and heartbarning of our modern social war between Church and Dissent."

it is dangerous to speculate on " might-have-beens," and we think Mr. Bayne is unduly hopeful. Everything depended on Charles, and "sweet reasonableness" could never have been infused

into Charles, unless he could have been literally born again ; his perverse wilfulness reached such perfection of stupidity, that the ;

very gods would have contended against it in vain,—did contend!

against it in vain. But though we are much less hopeful of this position than Mr. Bayne, it undoubtedly allows the light to fall most searchingly upon the weaknesses of Hyde. The middle ground that Hyde occupied might seem to have afforded him the opportunity of playing a great part ; but really, we ' suspect, the mere fact of occupying it, whether in honesty or in worldly prudence, almost necessarily implies the missing of the opportunity. Mr. Bayne looks mainly to the chances offered on the presentation of the Great Remonstrance. But assuming Hyde to have been honestly patriotic, his very

opposition at this juncture indicated the most profound misappre- hension of the real situation of affairs. Considering together the character of the debate and the narrowness of the majority, we doubt greatly whether energetic action on the part of Hyde would have turned the scale : the men that voted on that occasion were fully persuaded in their own minds ; Hyde, to have been success- ful, should have taken his stand earlier. But supposing he had turned the scale, what then ? Are we to believe that Charles would have been saved, that he would have settled down into harmonious relations with his Parliament ? Would the victory of Charles have prevented the attempted arrest of the Five Members, and all similar mad outbursts on the part of his gracious Majesty ? Admitting for a moment that the Parliament had spoken to Charles with one voice, would this not have simply excited him to further machinations against his rebellious subjects ? In a narrow view, no doubt, Hyde might see his way to patching up an accommodation, but of the broad question at issue between King and parliament he hardly grasped the very fringes. He saw that the King was far from being altogether in the right, but we will not be so hard upon him as to agree that he understood the situation. The substantial truth about Clarendon might probably be come better at by carefully following up the earliest sure indications of his character. Thus, although confessedly no better than he should have been, Hyde, the young law-student, took very good care to avoid "notable scandal of any kind ;" his first proposal of marriage was confessedly prompted by "appetite to a convenient estate." These facts, indulgently interpreted, will take us a long way, and they are by no means irreconcilable with his regard for Church and religion. We will not recur to the episode of the making known of Anne Hyde's marriage with the Duke of York, nor will we follow Mr. Bayne's remarks, often severe and mostly just, on the subject of the History.

We commend the book to our readers. Mr. Bayne writes well, if he would only refrain from occasional elevations, which, to use his own words, are felt to be "as much out of place as Jove and his Court would be in the Epistle to the Romans." He has burrowed "in the pamphletary catacombs of the British Museum," and fraternised with the people of the seventeenth century in dingy pages unread for centuries. Most unfortunately, he has not preserved references. Even where we differ from him, he is always suggestive, and his work is a very welcome addition to the literature of the subject.- Before parting with him, we must do him the pleasure of putting him on the track of another unkillable lie, implied in his own expression, "the motives and standards of Walpolian politics, every man bearing his price." Will Mr. Bayne see to this, before a second edition ?