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The royalists, consisting of the nobles and more considerable gentry, being degraded from their authority and plundered of their property, were inflamed with the highest resentment and indignation against those ignoble adversaries who had reduced them to subjection. The Presbyterians, whose credit had first supported the arms of the parliament, were enraged to find that, by the treachery or superior cunning of then associates, the fruits of all their successful labors were ravished from them. The former party, from inclination and principle, zealously attached themselves to the son of their unfortunate monarch, whose memory they respected, and whose tragical death they deplored. The latter cast their eye towards the same object; but they had still many prejudices to overcome, many fears and jealousies to be allayed, ere they could cordially entertain thoughts of restoring the family which they had so grievously offended, and whose principles they regarded with such violent abhorrence.

The only solid support of the republican independent faction, which, though it formed so small a part of the nation, had violently usurped the government of the whole, was a numerous army of near fifty thousand men. But this army, formidable from its discipline and courage, as well as its numbers, was actuated by a spirit that rendered it dangerous to the assembly which had assumed the command over it. Accustomed to indulge every chimera in politics, every frenzy in religion, the soldiers knew little of the subordination of citizens, and had only learned, from apparent necessity, some maxims of military obedience. And while they still maintained, that all those enormous violations of law and equity, of which they had been guilty, were justified by the success with which providence had blessed them; they were ready to break out into any new disorder, wherever they had the prospect of a like sanction and authority.

What alone gave some stability to all these unsettled humors was the great influence, both civil and military, acquired by Oliver Cromwell. This man, suited to the age in which he lived, and to that alone, was equally qualified to gain the affection and confidence of men, by what was mean, vulgar, and ridiculous in his character, as to command their obedience by what was great, daring, and enterprising. Familiar even to buffoonery with the meanest sentinel, he never lost his authority: transported to a degree of madness with religious ecstasies, he never forgot the political purposes to which they might serve. Hating monarchy while a subject, despising liberty while a citizen, though he retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the parliament, he was secretly paving the way, by artifice and courage, to his own unlimited authority.

The parliament,—for so we must henceforth call a small and inconsiderable part of the house of commons,—having murdered their sovereign with so many appearing circumstances of solemnity and justice, and so much real violence, and even fury, began to assume more the air of a civil legal power, and to enlarge a little the narrow bottom upon which they stood. They admitted a few of the excluded and absent members, such as were liable to least exception; but on condition that these members should sign an approbation of whatever had been done in their absence with regard to the king’s trial; and some of them were willing to acquire a share of power on such terms: the greater part disdained to lend their authority to such apparent usurpations. They issued some writs for new elections, in places where they hoped to have interest enough to bring in their own friends and dependents. They named a council of state, thirty-eight in number, to whom all addresses were made, who gave orders to all generals and admirals, who executed the laws, and who digested all business before it was introduced into parliament.[*] They pretended to employ themselves entirely in adjusting the laws, forms, and plan of a new representative; and as soon as they should have settled the nation, they professed their intention of restoring the power to the people, from whom they acknowledged they had entirely derived it.

* Their names were, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave,
Pembroke, Salisbury, Lords Grey and Fairfax, Lisle, Rolles,
St. John, Wilde, Bradshaw, Cromwell, Skippon, Pickering,
Massam, Haselrig, Harrington, Vane, Jun., Danvers, Armine,
Mildmay, Constable, Pennington, Wilson, Whitlocke, Martin,
Ludlow, Stapleton, Hevingham, Wallop, Hutchinson, Bond,
Popham, Valentine, Walton, Scott, Purefoy, Jones.

The commonwealth found every thing in England composed into a seeming tranquillity by the terror of their arms. Foreign powers, occupied in wars among themselves, had no leisure or inclination to interpose in the domestic dissensions of this island. The young king, poor and neglected, living sometimes in Holland, sometimes in France, sometimes in Jersey, comforted himself amidst his present distresses with the hopes of better fortune. The situation alone of Scotland and Ireland gave any immediate inquietude to the new republic.

After the successive defeats of Montrose and Hamilton, and the ruin of their parties, the whole authority in Scotland fell into the hands of Argyle and the rigid churchmen, that party which was most averse to the interests of the royal family. Their enmity, however, against the Independents, who had prevented the settlement of Presbyterian discipline in England, carried them to embrace opposite maxims in their political conduct. Though invited by the English parliament to model their government into a republican form, they resolved still to adhere to monarchy, which had ever prevailed in their country, and which, by the express terms of their covenant they had engaged to defend. They considered, besides, that as the property of the kingdom lay mostly in the hands of great families, it would be difficult to establish a common wealth; or without some chief magistrate, invested with royal authority, to preserve peace or justice in the community. The execution, therefore, of the king, against which they had always protested, having occasioned a vacancy of the throne, they immediately proclaimed his son and successor, Charles II.; but upon condition “of his good behavior, and strict observance of the covenant, and his entertaining no other persons about him but such as were godly men, and faithful to that obligation.” These unusual clauses, inserted in the very first acknowledgment of their prince, sufficiently showed their intention of limiting extremely his authority. And the English commonwealth, having no pretence to interpose in the affairs of that kingdom, allowed the Scots, for the present, to take their own measures in settling their government.

The dominion which England claimed over Ireland, demanded more immediately their efforts for subduing that country. In order to convey a just notion of Irish affairs, it will be necessary to look backwards some years, and to relate briefly those transactions which had passed during the memorable revolutions in England. When the late king agreed to that cessation of arms with the Popish rebels,[*] which was become so requisite, as well for the security of the Irish Protestants as for promoting his interests in England, the parliament, in order to blacken his conduct, reproached him with favoring that odious rebellion, and exclaimed loudly against the terms of the cessation. They even went so far as to declare it entirely null and invalid, because finished without their consent; and in this declaration the Scots in Ulster, and the earl of Inchiquin, a nobleman of great authority in Munster, professed to adhere. By their means the war was still kept alive; but as the dangerous distractions in England hindered the parliament from sending any considerable assistance to their allies in Ireland, the marquis of Ormond, lord lieutenant, being a native of Ireland, and a person endowed with great prudence and virtue, formed a scheme for composing the disorders of his country, and for engaging the rebel Irish to support the cause of his royal master. There were many circumstances which strongly invited the natives of Ireland to embrace the king’s party. The maxims of that prince had always led him to give a reasonable indulgence to the Catholics throughout all his dominions; and one principal ground of that enmity which the Puritans professed against him, was this tacit toleration. The parliament, on the contrary, even when unprovoked, had ever menaced the Papists with the most rigid restraint, if not a total extirpation; and immediately after the commencement of the Irish rebellion, they put to sale all the estates of the rebels, and had engaged the public faith for transferring them to the adventurers, who had already advanced money upon that security. The success, therefore, which the arms of the parliament met with at Naseby, struck a just terror into the Irish; and engaged the council of Kilkenny, composed of deputies from all the Catholic counties and cities, to conclude a peace with the marquis of Ormond.[**]