had once been felt for him, while his patriotism was pure and unsullied by ambition, than the unrivalled pomp of his funeral. His obliquities seemed to be all forgotten, and the glory of his name alone-a glory in which the nation had the largest share-seemed to move all men to do him honour. This was the spontaneous and honest tribute paid to his high talents and eminent services before the influence of party-feeling had poisoned the public mind, or spread abroad its insinuations against his sincerity and piety.

Almost the only fault which the protector displayed, at least the only one of glaring criminality, and with which his country had to do, was ambition. Hence his government became in the end one of expedients and not of principles. There can be no doubt that the object uppermost in his heart from first to last, was the happiness and virtue of the people, over whom he had almost insensibly gained the rule. He assuredly believed that he had been placed by Providence in circumstances that compelled him to assume that rule, and he never seems to have been unconscious that he had accepted that rule exclusively for the purpose of promoting the welfare of the nation. The moral and religious improvement of his subjects was the object of his anxious solicitude. His character has been little understood, because it fell to his enemies to misrepresent it, as the means of purchasing favour to themselves. It is however daily emerging more and more illustrious from the falsifying and calumniating pens of such writers as Clarendon, Keath, and Hume.

"He was a

Milton speaks of him with enthusiastic admiration. soldier thoroughly accomplished in the art of self-knowledge, and his first successes were against the internal enemies of human virtue, vain hopes, fears, aspirings, and ambition. His first triumphs were over himself; and he was thus enabled, from the day that he beheld an enemy in the field, to exhibit the endowments of a veteran. Such was the temper and discipline of his mind, that all the good and the valiant were irresistibly drawn to his camp, not merely as the best school of martial science, but also of piety and religion; and those who joined it were necessarily rendered such by his example. In his empire over the minds of his followers, he was surpassed neither by Epaminondas, nor Cyrus, nor any of the most vaunted generals of antiquity. Thus he formed to himself an army of men, who were no sooner under his command than they became the patterns of order, obedient to his slightest suggestions, popular, and beloved by their fellow-citizens, and to the enemy not more terrible in the field than welcome in their quarIn the towns and villages where they sojourned, no way offensive or rapacious, abstaining from violence, wine, intemperance, and impiety, so that suddenly the inhabitants, rejoicing in their disappointment, regarded them not as enemies, but as guests and protectors, a terror to the disorderly, a safe-guard to the good, and by precept and example, the teachers of all piety and virtue." George Fox, the founder of the quakers, gives a coincident testimony to that of Milton; and William Penn winds up his account by saying,-" Many sons have done virtuously; but thou excellest them all." The public measures of Cromwell respecting the promotion of protestantism and the liberties of protestants in foreign countries, are worthy of perpetual memorial. His declaration respecting the protestants of Pied

ters.

mont became a Christian of enlarged mind; "that the calamities of these poor people lay as near, or rather nearer to his heart, than if it had concerned the dearest relations he had in the world."

His measure for removing immoral clergymen out of the church, above most of his acts, has been misrepresented and condemned; but let the judgment of Baxter upon that subject-himself no admirer of Cromwell-determine its wisdom and utility:-" The commissioners under this act saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers,-that sort of men who intend no more in the ministry than to say a sermon, as readers say their common prayers, and so patch a few good words together to talk the people asleep on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with them to the ale-house, and harden them in sin; and that sort of ministers who either preach against a holy life, or preach as men that were never acquainted with it: these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted any that were able, serious preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that though many of them were partial to the independents, separatists, fifth monarchy men, and anabaptists, and against the prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt that they brought to the church, that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in, and grieved when the prelatists afterwards, (in August 1662,) cast them out again."

It is observed by Mr Godwin in his history of the commonwealth, that "Cromwell's character perpetually rose in the estimation of his subjects. He appeared to them every day more like a king, and less like the plain and unambitious descendant of the Cromwells of Hinchinbrook and Ramsey. His abilities were every hour more and more evident and confessed. His capacity for government became daily more unquestionable. He looked into every thing; he provided for every thing; he stood himself unmoved, yet causing every threatening and tempestuous phenomenon by which he was assailed to fly before him." He had six children, four daughters and two sons. Richard succeeded him for a short period in the protectorate. He died in 1712. Henry was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and deceased in 1674. Bridget, married first to Ireton and afterwards to Fleetwood. Elizabeth, married to John Claypole, Esq. of Northamptonshire. Mary, married to Lord Fauconberg; and Frances, married to the earl of Warwick, and subsequently to John Russel, Esq. of Cambridgeshire.

John Bradshaw.

DIED A. D. 1659.

JOHN BRADSHAW, who presided during the ever-memorable trial of Charles I., was descended from an ancient family of Lancashire. We have no memorials of his early years. He first appears in history as a favourite and well-employed chamber-counsel of the parliament party, to whose interests he was zealously devoted. He did not however confine himself to chamber-practice, but on several public occasions distinguished himself by great powers of eloquence, and the most daunt

less intrepidity in avowing and defending these sentiments to which he adhered throughout the whole of his political and judicial career, which terminated only with his life. Milton, whose kinsman he was,' and who seems to have known him thoroughly, speaks of him in highly eulogistic terms: "Being of a distinguished family, he devoted the early part of his life to the study of the laws of his country. Hence he became an able and an eloquent pleader, and subsequently discharged all the duties of an uncorrupt judge. In temper neither gloomy nor severe, but gentle and placid, he exercised in his own house the rites of hospitality in an exemplary manner, and proved himself on occasions a faithful and unfailing friend. Ever eager to acknowledge merit, he assisted the deserving to the utmost of his power. Forward at all times to publish the talents and worth of others, he was always silent respecting his own. No one more ready to forgive, he was yet impressive and terrible, when it fell to his lot to pour shame on the enemies of his country. If the cause of the oppressed was to be defended, if the favour or the violence of the great was to be withstood, it was impossible in that case to find an advocate more intrepid or more eloquent, whom no threats, no terrors, and no rewards could seduce from the plain path of rectitude." 2

In December, 1644, he was appointed high sheriff of Lancashire. In October 1646, when the great seal was placed in commission, he was appointed one of the commissioners. In October, 1648, he was called to the rank of serjeant as a preliminary step to the intended filling of the seats of the judges; and in the following February both houses voted him chief-justice of Chester.

When the commissioners for the trial of the king met to nominate counsel and the officers of court, their choice of president fell upon Bradshaw, who at first seemed much surprised, and endeavoured to excuse himself from compliance with the nomination. Clarendon of course represents Bradshaw's apparent unwillingness to accept of so high and so responsible an office as sheer hypocrisy. But this is a calumnious and totally unsupported assertion. The situation was one from which any but men of the very firmest nerves must have shrunk ; it was also a highly invidious and a dangerous one. There was therefore much room for hesitating even before a man so resolute as Bradshaw could undertake to preside at the king's trial. And besides all this, that the nomination was unexpected by him is more than probable from the circumstance that in the first list of commissioners for the trial his name did not appear. It was only after the rejection of the ordinance by the upper house, and the subsequent erasure of the names of six lords, that his name with those of five others was substituted. A man thus introduced at the eleventh hour, as it were, into a body constituted for such a purpose as were the commissioners, could certainly not anticipate that the general vote would fall upon him. His conduct towards the king during the trial has also been pronounced harsh and unfeeling. It should be recollected, however, that no ordinary criminal stood before him, and moreover, that the temper and spirit of the court over which he presided was not likely to brook much ceremony and mildness on his part. Its members felt that they were met for the discharge of a

II.

Lives of E. and J. Philips, p. 336.
3 L

• Defensio secunda.

high and solemn duty; they saw and felt the responsibility of their situation, and they were quite competent to calculate the risk to which they were exposing themselves in sitting as judges upon him who had so recently been their monarch. It was no season then for any unnecessary formalities or courtesies on the part of any one, and least of all from him who was to head their deliberations and speak their sentiments and determination to the prisoner. Something also should be allowed for natural constitution, in estimating the comparative coldness or harshness of his bearing. Bradshaw was a man who would not have shrunk from doing justice on his own son. The stern and rigid administration of the law was, according to his estimate of things, the first and highest duty of a man occupying the situation which he filled. And this feeling was not likely to be greatly softened, but otherwise, by the consideration that the man upon whom he sat in judgment had been a king his own lawful sovereign. Such was the stern and unbending firmness of the man, and so firm his conviction that in acting the part he did, he was discharging his duty to God and to his country, that on death-bed he declared that were Charles again before him, on the same charges which had been preferred against him in the high court of justice, he would be the first man to give his voice for condemnation.

On the death of Cromwell, and the restoration of the long parliament, Bradshaw obtained a seat in the council, and was elected president. He would also have been appointed commissioner of the great seal, but his infirm state of health obliged him to decline the latter office. He died on the 22d of November, 1659, and was pompously interred in Westminster abbey. At the restoration, his ashes were dug up and treated with the same wretched indignity which was offered to the remains of his brother-patriots, Cromwell and Ireton.

Sir Henry Vane.

BORN A. D. 1612.-DIED A. D. 1661.

THE family of Vane was originally settled in the county-palatine of Durham, but afterwards removed to Kent. Sir Henry Vane, born in 1589, was knighted by James I. in 1611, and was distinguished for his attachment to the royal family; although he promoted the impeachment of Strafford, and was dismissed from his office of secretary of state for the part he took in bringing that notorious political profligate to justice. He died in 1654, at his seat of Raby castle, to which he had retired some years before the death of Charles I.

His eldest son, the subject of the present sketch, was one of the leading spirits during the troublous but heroic period of the English. commonwealth. He was born in 1612, and educated at Westminster school, whence he went to Magdalene hall, Oxford. It was during his residence at college that he first imbibed those political principles and feelings which subsequently rendered him one of the sternest and most uncompromising republicans of the age. His subsequent residence at Geneva," from which place, as from its seminary, the spirit of popular liberty has so often gone forth to other nations,"_expanded and confirmed those views of civil and ecclesiastical government which he

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had begun to entertain before quitting home. On his return to EngJand, finding how obnoxious his sentiments were to the party at least to which his father was attached, he instantly resolved to abandon his country rather than sacrifice any of those great principles which had become identified in his mind with truth and justice. Accordingly, with the consent of his father, who saw no hopes of obtaining political preferment for such a son at home, he retired to New England, and was almost immediately upon landing raised to the government of Massachusetts. Neal says he was no sooner advanced to the government than he appeared to be a person of no conduct, and no ways equal to the part he was preferred to. Being a strong enthusiast, he openly espoused the Antinomian doctrines, and gave such encouragement to the preachers and speakers of them as raised their vanity, and gave them such an interest among the people, as the very next year had like to have proved fatal both to the church and commonwealth." Mather and Baxter write to the same effect. But when we consider the enthusiastic complexion of Vane's character, and that he was at this time a youth of only twenty-three years of age, we cannot but regard the strictures which those writers have passed upon his brief transactions in America as too severe and uncharitable. If Vane encouraged the Antinomians of New England, it cannot be said of him that he discouraged any other religious party or creed, for none was ever more tolerant in religious matters.

He seems to have returned to England in 1636, and soon after married Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher Wray of Ashby, in Lincolnshire. At his father's instance, he was now appointed, with Sir William Russell, to the treasurership of the navy. He, nevertheless, took deep disgust at the measures of the court, and throwing up his office, attached himself to the cause and fortunes of the country-party,—" a course," says Lord Nugent, "sufficiently explained by the earliest and uniform disposition of his mind, but which has been lightly and ungenerously impugned by some who have imputed it, without any probability of truth, to resentment, on account of the mortified ambition and disappointed intrigues of his father, Clarendon insinuates that the whole conduct of both the elder and younger Vane, in the matter of Strafford's impeachment, was dictated by offended pride. The minion had been created, or rather created himself Baron Raby, in 1639, in sheer contempt of the pretensions which the elder Vane had advanced to that title. This was probably the secret origin of the eider Vane's antipathy to his unfortunate colleague, but the son was too high-minded to be influenced by any such paltry and personal motives in any part of his political career.

In 1643, Vane was sent as one of the parliamentary cominissioners to Scotland. He executed the delicate and important mission then entrusted to him with great skill and success. The Scots at first stood out for their own peculiar form of church polity and government being adopted in England, but Vane, with much persuasion, prevailed upon them to agree to the solemn league and covenant, by which instrument it was stipulated that "the protestant religion should be sustained in Scotland, according to the forms already established," while the "reformation in England should be effected agreeably to the word of God, and the example of the best reformed churches." Here was no com