66 Ireton would have been vain. These ardent attacks of the Presbyterian leaders were only a transient gleam, the last flickering light of an expiring party. The power had passed into the hands of the Independents; and Cromwell felt his confidence mount as high as his ambition. "What a sway Stapleton and Hollis had heretofore in the kingdom," he said; "I know nothing to the contrary but that I am as well able to govern the kingdom as either of them.' Four months after fortune had apparently smiled once more upon the Presbyterians, they were expelled en masse from the House of Commons; the king was brought to judgment, and Hollis resumed, at Sainte-Mère-Eglide, on the other side of the Channel, the melancholy and inactive life of an exile. It was during his first sojourn in this retreat, that he wrote his Memoirs, to which he prefixed the following dedication: "To the unparalleled couple, Mr. Oliver St. John, his Majesty's Solicitor-General, and Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the Parliament's Lieutenant-General, the two grand designers of the ruin of three kingdoms. "GENTLEMEN, "As you have been principal in ministering the matter of this discourse, and giving me the leisure of making it, by banishing me from my country and business, so is it reason I should particularly address it to you. You will find in it some representation of the grosser lines of your features, those outward and notorious enormities that make you remarkable, and your pictures easy to be known, which cannot be expected here so fully to the life as I could wish. He only can do that, whose eye and hand have been with you in your secret councils, who has seen you at your meetings, your Sabbaths, where you have laid by your assumed shapes (with which you covered the world) and resumed your own; imparting each to other, and both of you to your fellow-witches, the bottom of your designs, the policy of your actings, the turns of your contrivances, all your falsehoods, cozenings, villanies, and cruelties, with your full intentions to ruin the three kingdoms. All I will say to you is no more than what St. Peter said to Simon the Sorcerer, Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thoughts of * Major Huntington's Reasons for laying down his Commission; in Maseres Select Tracts, vol. ii., p. 405. your hearts may be forgiven you.' And if you have not grace to pray for yourselves (as it may be you have not), I have the charity to do it for you, but not faith enough to trust you. So I remain, I thank God, not in your power, and as little at your service."* Hollis doubtless intended to publish his work, and at least to curse the enemies whom he was no longer able to combat. But the trial of the king, the establishment of the republic, the empire of Cromwell, the rapid succession of prodigious events, removed this useless design far from his own thoughts. He did not even continue his Memoirs, and they were not published until 1699, nearly twenty years after his death. The book is a historic dithyramb against the Independents, written as if the Presbyterians had never had any other adversaries, and had never themselves been conquerors and oppressors. Not only does Hollis confine his narrative to the conflicts of his party against the republicans, the fanatics, and the army, but it appears as if this was all that he had any recollection of, and that the conduct of the Presbyterians, at the commencement of the civil war, was altogether absent from his thoughts. If this great omission be borne in mind, Hollis's narrative is true, of a striking moral truth; and, notwithstanding the vehemence of his resentment, the impetuosity of his language, and the floods of invective which he forth, without, however, giving vent at any time to all the anger which he feels, he has not calumniated his enemies. He has supplied us with the most faithful picture that has been drawn of the insolent violence and imperturbable hypocrisy of a party which was both military, demagogic, and devout, animated and sustained by unbridled passions, blind faith, and shameless personal interests. pours This party derived a portion of its strength, it is true, from a purer source; for the Independents, and the various factions which were connected with them, had caught glimpses of some truths regarding social organisation and the rights of man, far superior to the political theories of the Presbyterians. But the time was not ripe for the application, or even comprehension, of these truths; they were confused, disordered, and stifled beneath monstrous absurdities, and were as yet capable neither of forming a system, nor of founding a * Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis, pp. xiii.-xv. (London, 1699). government. Thus, although they powerfully assisted in securing the momentary success of the Independent party, they exercised no great or lasting influence upon its conduct; and no one need be astonished that Hollis, in common with the noblest spirits of his time, could discern in this party nothing save the passions of an ignorant multitude, and the ambition or avidity of its chiefs. So long as Cromwell reigned, Hollis resided in Normandy, in sad and dignified inaction, sometimes sharing in the secret hopes and proceedings of the Royalist party, but taking no part in the intrigues of the Cavaliers of the court. Too clearsighted and proud to lend himself to the frivolous hopes or subaltern schemes which ill-fortune suggests to exiles, he was, nevertheless, one of those who, in their frank and persevering courage, never renounced the idea of serving their cause and combating its enemies. When, in 1659, after the death of Cromwell, England, restored to herself, was compelled to seek on all sides for a government, in the midst of the lassitude and impotent agitation of all the factions which the revolution had produced, Hollis re-appeared at the head of the Presbyterians, who foresaw, and prepared the way for, the restoration of Charles II. He could labour in this cause without abandoning his principles, or belying, in the slightest degree, his past life; as a high-born gentleman and open partisan of monarchy, far from having ever thought of dethroning the Stuarts, he had never ceased to protest against their expulsion. He was, however, one of those Presbyterians who, though desirous to recal Charles II., wished to make terms with him, and impose upon him some of those conditions which his father had so often refused. But the people cried, "The king! the king!" The Presbyterians themselves were weary, and powerless to renew an energetic struggle with the Cavaliers. Monk employed his taciturn ability to prevent any one from hindering the progress of events, and diverting the country from the course which it had resolved to take. Charles II. returned unconditionally. The Presbyterians submitted silently to a defeat as inevitable as its consequences were certain. Hollis was one of the committee who proceeded to Breda to present the king with the homage of the House of Commons. He was specially appointed to be spokesman. At the moment when he was advancing towards the king, Mr. Henry Howard, brother of the Earl of Arundel, roughly interrupted him, saying that it was great insolence in him to pretend to an honour which belonged to another commissioner, his relative. Hollis haughtily maintained his right; the quarrel grew warm; at length Charles interfered, and requested Mr. Hollis to discharge his commission.* His discourse was an effusion of loyalty and joy, sometimes rising into eloquence, interspersed with very severe reflections upon the fallen authorities and their partisans, and breathing a deep, though repressed, feeling of the dignity of the Parliament. When Hollis had returned to London with the king, some complaints were raised in the house against the language he had used; the upholders of the republic and of Cromwell, lately so powerful, were still susceptible, and persons had not yet lost the habit of fearing them. The House, however, supported Hollis, and authorised him to print his speech.‡ Six months had not elapsed from this period, and Hollis was sitting in the High Court appointed to judge twenty-nine of those men who had lately been judges of the king and masters of the country, but who now no longer inspired fear, and had not yet become objects of commiseration. As it generally happens, vengeance smote the most courageous and sincere, those who neither denied their actions, nor would humble themselves before their conquerors. Hollis condemned them without scruple or hesitation. They were the same men whom he had zealously opposed when at the height of their power, sitting in judgment upon them even then, and declaring them guilty of the public misfortunes and the ruin of the laws. It never occurred to him that the justice of the laws ought not to reach them, or that they could be bound up with the cause of the liberties of England. However, his language during the discussion of the bill of amnesty proved that, even in the first heat of triumph, he was not favourable to violent measures, or to a spirit of reaction.§ In 1661, at the opening of the Royalist Long Parliament, Hollis left that House of Commons in which he had fought so many hard battles, and was created a peer of the realm by the title of Lord Hollis, Baron of Isfield. A new career was now about to open before him. He had lived in France, and was well acquainted with the French language. In the House of Commons, whenever any despatch * Ludlow's Memoirs, p. 346. Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. iv., col. 36. or document in that language had to be explained, it was he who generally undertook to act as interpreter.* He possessed the esteem and confidence of that national party which the new reign was careful to conciliate. In June, 1663,† Charles II. appointed him his ambassador at the court of Louis XIV. The mission was a difficult one. At the beginning of that year, the Count de Comenge, French ambassador at London, had received orders to negotiate a treaty of alliance with the English court, for the purpose of terminating the dispute of the two monarchs about the possession of Acadie, regulating freedom of trade between their subjects, and abolishing respectively the rights of escheat. The secret and special object of Louis XIV. was to prevent Charles II. from forming an alliance with Spain. But no satisfactory agreement could be arrived at regarding the conditions of the proposed alliance. The cabinet at London thought that the fault lay with the Count de Comenge, and hoped to gain better success by transferring the negotiation to Paris. He Lord Hollis was not well adapted to bring such a matter to a successful issue. He entertained against Louis XIV. and his government all the prejudices of an Englishman, a member of the House of Commons, and a Protestant. was naturally high-spirited, taciturn, and susceptible; and he thus added the asperities of his own character to the difficulties of the existing political juncture. He arrived at Paris in September, 1663, and had first of all a private audience "to greet the king." But when his first public audience was being arranged, he mooted a question of etiquette with so much obstinacy, that he delayed his audience for six months. M. de Lionne, then minister of foreign affairs, gives the following account of the matter to M. de Comenge, in a despatch dated December 30, 1663 : - "In order to perform at once the orders which the king has given me, and to fulfil your wishes as expressed in your last despatch, I shall be careful to inform you that there is no truth in the statement that we desired to impose on Mr. Hollis any conditions at all disgraceful to the crown of England, and that he has been personally ill-treated, as you inform me that the Spaniards and their partisans have spread *Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 118. † Lord Hollis's letters of credence are dated Whitehall, June 21, 1663. |