ORIGIN OF THE ANTI-MONARCHIAL PRINCIPLE IN MODERN EUROPE.
IT has been recently considered by an eminent writer, that the passion for “republican politics,” was so unknown to us, that “at the meeting of the Long Parliament, we have not the slightest cause to suppose that any party, or any number of persons, among its members, had formed what must then have appeared so extravagant a conception.” Our ardent writer, therefore, conceives that the year 1645, is that to which we must refer the appearance of a republican party in considerable numbers, though “not yet among the House of Commons.”[1]
It must be observed, that it harmonises with the preconceived system of Mr. Hallam, to assign so late a period for the appearance of the Republicans in this country, in order to enforce his principle, that in the King’s own conduct, we are to look for the true origin of Republicanism, or rather the anti-monarchical spirit. Still, however, in the wide circuit of his reading on this subject, Mr. Hallam must have received some indistinct notions, that the genius of Republicanism was abroad, and no stranger in this country,—and with that candour which his ample knowledge often exerts, we may here observe how the historian admits Truth unadorned as he finds her, up the back-stairs, although he sometimes dresses her to his own taste, for the more public audience. Hence it is that the text and the notes of the Constitutional History so often differ ; in the text, the author’s particular feeling is prevalent, and in the notes all his knowledge to complete the subject, however often the annotation may stand in opposition to the text. He thus acknowledges “that a very few speculative men, by the study of antiquity, or by observations on the prosperity of Venice and Holland, might be led to an abstract preference of republican politics.” And what is more extraordinary, Mr. Hallam has himself discovered in the House of Commons, at the moment he tells us, that the spirit of “Republicanism had not yet appeared there,” several leading members, whose republican sentiments are unquestionable ; and many are to be added to that number.
To me it seems that the genius of Democracy had long before been busied in this country, and that the period which Mr. Hallam has assigned for its sudden birth, is about that of its growth and stature, as well in the place in which he says it did not yet appear, as in others where it had also shown itself.
The ill-disguised republic of ducal Venice, under a haughty and merciless aristocracy, however prominent at this time in the intrigues of European cabinets, offered no model of a popular government to our fierce democratic spirits. The dark mysteries of that artificial government could only be maintained by the intricacy of its movements, silence, secrecy, and assassination ! The dispatches of their ambassadors differed from others ; these men were the busybodies of the diplomatic corps—political panders to the restless passions of their Lords, whose Government seemed to exist more by cunning and watchfulness, than by real force or true greatness. Astute spies in all foreign Courts, though feeble, and timid, by their unceasing communications among themselves, they were masters of the secrets of the Cabinets of Europe, could foresee approaching wars, or detect exhausted enmities, so that they were at all times ready to afford the ally they courted their private intelligence, or their timely mediation — but the word “Liberty” was not whispered by a Venetian even at a distance from the lion’s mouth.
With the Flemings, indeed, our country had from the earliest times formed an uninterrupted intercourse, and when the Netherlanders aspired to throw off the yoke of the Spaniard and the Inquisition, never did two nations so fraternally sympathize in the same unity of interests. So closely connected were the two countries, that the burgher of Antwerp, or Amsterdam, was often a resident in London.
The Flemish factor Meteren, who stole many an hour from his meals and his sleep to build up the mighty tome of his nation’s history, often passing and repassing from Antwerp, long sojourned and finally died in England. A witness of the Marian persecution, and of the extended reign of Elizabeth, and even of a part of that of James the First, he has chronicled many curious details of our own domestic history not elsewhere to be found. So strict was the union of the commonalty of the two people, that it seemed as if one country had two languages. If in this great national intercourse we sometimes adopted their idioms, we also caught their less refined manners, which has been observed by the antiquary Camden, the satirist Nash, and other contemporary writers. Our nation had combated for the Hollanders, and they had struck medals to commemorate the destruction of that fleet, so proudly called the Armada, which had threatened the English shores.
We must however observe, that the republic of the United Provinces had not been founded on republican principles. In their extreme necessity, they had first offered themselves to a French Prince, and at length humbly proffered the sovereignty of their country to the British Queen, and their deputies had declared to Elizabeth that “they were a people as faithful and as great lovers of their Sovereign, as any other in Christendom.”[2]
Towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, the Republic had finally emancipated itself from the tyranny of Spain. The age of heroism, in which the founders of empire flourish, was now settling into the age of polity, when the strength of dominion lies in the conservative wisdom of statesmen. Already the fleets of Holland had distant colonies to guard and to conquer, and the genius of commerce was fast supplanting that nobler spirit which had made them a nation. To renovate their diminished population, to restore their cities which betrayed the ruins of many sieges, and to fertilize the long-persecuted land of their fathers, they made their country the asylum of the world. There the fugitive became a dweller by his own hearth, and there the persecuted met his brothers gathered together to participate in the strange and general freedom. There the English Brownist retired to his conventicle ; there the Portuguese Hebrew sat in his synagogue ; and had the Mussulman chosen, doubtless some tall mosque had cast its shadow in the streets of Amsterdam, or Middleburgh.
The nation which invites the unhappy to become citizens, will secure patriots, and in a country where industry is the first virtue, and the sole means of existence, the excessive multiplication of a people need not raise the terrors of the political economist.
The erection of this powerful republic, or of the New States, for thus the United Provinces were at first distinguished in our country, appears to have affected England, who had reared up this infant commonwealth against its Spanish oppressors, in some respects, as the American revolution is considered to have influenced France. The common intercourse of their mutual subjects increased, but at the same time this novel government became a refuge for all the English malcontents, equally under Elizabeth as under Charles.
There they contemplated on that toleration which was denied at home, and there they inflated their egotism with the bewitching spell of their “parity” or political equality. They viewed trade and magistracy united in the same burgomaster ; nothing was regal in “the New States,” but every thing plebeian, and this was more congenial to the comprehension of those fiery spirits, haughty, at least, as Venetian nobles, than even an inscription in the golden book of the Adriatic.
Elizabeth, who had already been threatened by a spiritual Republic from the Puritans, was now equally uneasy with respect to a temporal one. At the latter end of this Queen’s reign, it was an usual phrase to speak and even to pray for “the Queen and State.” This word State we are told by a very powerful writer, was learned by our neighbourhood, and commenced with the Low Countries, as if we were, or affected to be, governed by States. This the Queen saw, and hated ; and such was the political dread in our cabinet, that at her death the Earl of Oxford, in his propositions to James the First, warned the new monarch to prevent “this humour,” i.e. the passion for democracy, among that class of malcontents, whom the writer expressively styles “Innovators, Plebicolæ, and King-haters.”[3]
James, we shall find, hardly required this friendly hint, and long after, he himself styled the Commons the five hundred Kings ! The conduct of James was, indeed, long dubious, with respect to the reception in England of these rising[4] “States;” he had been more civil to them in Scotland, where they had displayed a princely munificence at the baptism of Prince Henry, but now that they aspired to rank among Sovereigns, the royal etiquette was lamentably deranged.
The public affronts offered by the Spanish ambassador at our Court to the first Dutch ambassador, Noel Caron, whom he called “the Representative of his Master’s Rebels,” and the reluctant civilities so grudgingly accorded by the Monarch, are pathetically narrated by the courtly Sir John Finet, in his Diary, as Master of the Ceremonies. This historian of levees and harmoniser of what, in the technical style of Court etiquette, he calls “clashes,” was puzzled in what seats to place “the New States.” Sometimes, he would altogether hide the Deputies, or place them apart at a public ceremony, where the Spaniard took great caution to measure out the greatest length of distance ; even little Florence was mawkish, and Savoy sternly stood on precedence. The first time James saluted “the New States” as “Messieurs les Etats,” occasioned an instant revolution in the English Cabinet ; our Ministers were startled by a change of measures. This political courtesy had indeed been suggested to James in that memorable and secret conversation with Sully, when that able statesman opened that grand scheme for preserving the peace of Europe which the assassination of Henry the Fourth frustrated.
James the First, when he published his Basilicon Doron, painted with vivid touches the Anti-monarchists or Revolutionists of that day. He describes “their imagined democracie, where they fed themselves with the hope to become tribuni plebi ; and so in a popular government, by leading the people by the nose to bear the sway of all the rule. I was ofttimes calumniated because I was a King.”
After many researches to discover the first appearance of the anti-monarchical spirit in modern Europe, I must trace English Republicanism ; not to any elevated design to emulate the splendid though the unhappy democracies of Greece, nor the might and vastness of the Roman Commonwealth, but to a more obscure and ignoble source. In my opinion, we are to seek for the origin of our republican principles in that petty “discipline” of Geneva, which was substituted by Calvin for its abolished Episcopacy. This discipline, truly, was the code of that apostolical community which was suited to the infant feebleness of primitive Christianity ; but this purity of Presbyters was more adapted to the polity of a parish vestry than for the government of a great empire. This, indeed, was but a religious institution, and hardly a political state, and rather threatened gorgeous hierarchies than potent monarchies.
Those, however, who had rejected their spiritual, required but a single step to resist their temporal lords. And when once the cause of civil freedom had been grafted on that of the new religion, the Corahs, the Dathans, and the Abirams soon mingled with the prophets of insurgency. The Hollanders in vain seeking for a sovereign, at length found a ruler in their Religion. Applying to civil affairs the same principles of conduct and regulation which they had adopted in their spiritual concerns the Dutch, deprived of Valois, and rejected by Elizabeth, became Republicans.
The anti-monarchical, or republican principles of modern times, were doubtless influenced by two awful catastrophes, which sovereigns hurried on, in their blind rage, against their Protestant subjects—the Marian persecution in England, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew in France.
The ban of Mary had driven our fugitive religionists to Calvin’s Geneva, and in that democracy their keen and wounded spirits perfected the entire theory of Anti-monarchy, the holy duty of insurrection, the power of deposing kings, and the possible justice of assassinating tyrants. It assumed, that all legitimate government was solely derived from the people themselves ; or, in the words of Buchanan, “Populus rege est prestantior et melior,” — “the people are better than the King, and of greater authority.” These republican doctrines, the Scotchman John Knox, and the Englishman, Christopher Goodman, as if the bearers of a new mission from Heaven, for their style was scriptural, promulgated in their native countries, as a new revelation, which was to abrogate that to which the world had hitherto assented. But I must not here anticipate a subject which may enter into our future inquiries.
The reader, however, must now learn, that there existed a communion of principles among the foreign Calvinists and our own. The same principles produced that unity of conduct which we observe in both countries. Knox frequently appeals to his foreign connexions as a sanction for his acts and his axioms ; and we know how these were applauded by the great founder of this novel system-the atrabilarious and apostolical Calvin.
Those revolutions in public opinion, which are silently operating, without yet manifesting any overt acts, can only be detected in those histories of mankind which are furnished by themselves—Books ! These are the precursors, or the recorders, of whatever is passing in Europe. There is a philosophy in the aridity of bibliography which few bibliographers have discovered ; there is a chronology of ideas as well as facts ; and the date of an opinion is far more interesting than any on the Colophons.
The massacre of Paris occurred in 1572: nine years before, appeared an anonymous work, by a protestant, which inculcated the doctrines which Knox had so warmly espoused. Many passages in the Scriptures were applied against the authority of kings, and of magistrates established by kings.[5] The Protestants, who had not all entered so deeply into these theological politics, were shocked at the avowal of principles which tended to subvert the government ; and to give a public testimony that Protestants were not rebels, the book was solemnly consigned to the flames by a Protestant assembly.
The massacre which struck all Europe with horror, except the heartless bigots who have framed apologies for sanguinary politics, was the occasion of producing a multiplicity of what the French historians denominate “seditious writings.” One put forth a dialogue on the power, the authority, and the duty of princes, and the liberty of the people. Another inquires into the nature of the obedience due to the magistrate, according to the word of God, and infers that the oppressed subject may arm against the sovereign. Another on “Voluntary Slavery” would shame the timorous into revolt. One of the most ingenious inventions of the Anti-monarchial party in France, at this period, was “an advice on the means of establishing the perfect despotism of Turkey,” said to have been presented to the King, Catherine de Medicis, and the Duke of Anjou, by a traveller, one Chevalier Poncet. This Chevalier, after having detailed every mode of arbitrary power, being interrogated how such a government could be established in France, furnishes some nefarious propositions which exceed the inventions of Machiavel. The Chevalier, who was a real personage, indignantly asserted that the whole was a calumny. It is more certain that it forms one of the severest satires of the abuses of royalty which was ever penned. In a rejoinder to Poncet, he is reproached for having been the occasion of hastening the Parisian massacre.
These, however, were but rude beginnings ; there were better workmen, intent on more elaborate works, and who, having adopted the great revolution in the public mind, gave coherence to looser principles, and converted into a terrible system these novel doctrines. The “Franco-Gallia” of the learned Hotman, lays down for its first principle, that the crown of France was not hereditary as the estates of individuals ; that men formerly ascended the throne by the votes of the nobles and the people ; and that females, in all times, were incapacitated to perform any acts of royalty. It is a rather curious fact, that in this fervour against monarchical power, at this moment, one of the objects of attack was the domination of women ! Mary of England ; the two Maries of Scotland ; Elizabeth of England ; Margaret Duchess of Parma, the governess of Flanders ; Catherine de Medicis ; and other females, were the rulers of Europe, and all Romanists, except our Elizabeth. Knox, indeed, had already preceded Hotman by his famous “first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment (government) of women.” Hotman and Knox, in the course of events, were placed in a similar dilemma. On the accession of Henry the Fourth in France, the principles of Hotman were alleged by the opposite party against the right of his royal patron, and Hotman had to confute his own arguments, in which it is said he was not unsuccessful.
When the Protestant Elizabeth succeeded her Roman sister, Knox, who had anathematised female dominion, contrived an artful salvo ; he offered to maintain the Queen’s authority if her Majesty would consider her right of sovereignty as a miraculous exception, and as an extraordinary dispensation of Providence.
Among the great works which have survived these anti-monarchical books, is the famous “Vindicicæ contra Tyrannos,” which bears on its title the portentous pseudonym of Junius Brutus. The theme is of a loftier nature, concerning the legitimate power of the Prince over the people, and the people over the Prince. It is the work of an ardent republican who leans entirely on the side of democracy. Hubert Languet, the credited writer, had composed the celebrated apology of the Prince of Orange, when he was put under the ban and edict of the Spanish monarch. The doctrines of Buchanan, in his famous work, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, assert the most positive and comprehensive anti-monarchical principles. All these books appeared before 1580, and betray a perfect unity of anti-monarchical principles.
But we must now look for acts as well as writings. When these novel politicians of Geneva had assumed as their grand postulatum, that all legitimate government originates with the people—that religion, politics, sovereign power, and, we may add, sovereign wisdom, all came from the multitude, they were sure by this flattery of the people every where to find willing auditors. “We are a hundred thousand strong,” exclaimed one of the ecstatic seers of revolt. But Knox, and men like himself, well knew that “the commonalty” were hands, and not heads. The oracle was therefore delivered as Knox has it, that “God has appointed the Nobility to bridle the inordinate appetites of Princes.”
From that moment, a new brotherhood was formed, which bound together the discontented grandee with the meanest of the people. “The commonalty” could not establish themselves in power but by the nobles, nor could the turbulent noble support his ambition by a more formidable instrument than the people. It was long before the people discovered that they were only engaging in the quarrels of the few, in which they had no concern whatever, and that the interests of their chiefs were often distinct from the cause which they had openly adopted.
It might have been supposed that this principle would have produced a similar mode of action as speedily in England as in France. Yet it so happened, from the nature of circumstances, that it was in France that first appeared the design of establishing republics. The Geneva politicians did not frame ordinances in Parliament till long after !
During the weak minority of Louis the Thirteenth, the French Protestants had become so formidable, that they held in equilibrium the power of the Sovereign after three civil wars. They had followed up the oracular decree of Knox :—any fiery Prince of the blood—any Duke who aimed at an independent sovereignty—any nobleman who had a quarrel with his family—passed over to the Protestants. It was well known that many of the French dukes, who were at the head of the Protestants, were none of their well-wishers, and that many of their leaders held all their Protestantism at the point of their sword. Yet Princes, Dukes, and Counts, perpetually adopting the cause of the Reformed, conferred on them that power and consideration which a sect of itself never could have acquired.
As late as in 1621, the Huguenots, in their assembly at La Rochelle, had formally declared the erection of federative Republics in France ; they had divided France into circles, and had even assigned to each department its respective “commandant.” This new Republic, which was avowedly formed on the model of the Republic of Holland, we are assured by a very judicious historian,[6] would have been finally established, had the leaders united in their views. It was chiefly by their divisions that Richelieu succeeded, in course of time, in annihilating this powerful faction. There were among the Protestants a considerable party who were not republicans,—a circumstance which often occasioned the most contrary or ambiguous conduct ; the republicans, anxious to manifest to the world what their monarchical companions were as anxious to conceal. This strange discordance appeared when the assembly of La Rochelle resolved on having a new seal engraved to stamp their commissions and ordinances. The Genevan system, politics grafted on religion, discovered itself in an extraordinary manner, by the design on the seal of La Rochelle. An angel leaning on a cross, was holding a book high in the air, bearing the Latin inscription—Pro Christo et Rege (for Christ and the King;) but by the ambi-dexterous contrivance of the state-engraver, who had to obey two very different masters, the true reading was—Pro Christo et Grege (for Christ and the flock.) This was effected by faintly engraving the G, which the sharper eyes of the republicans exultingly traced, and appealed to as an evidence that they had thrown off the yoke of monarchy, and were only obeying the Republic, which they sanctified as “the flock of Jesus Christ.”
Had Charles the First been as well acquainted as ourselves with the secret history of his brother, Louis the Thirteenth, and the factions at his Court, how often might this Monarch have contemplated on an image of events, which afterwards were connected with his own fortunes, and he might have taken even a perspective view of a new Republic in Europe, the precursor of that wonderful one, whose first public act was the most astonishing deed ever done in civilized Governments—the execution of their Sovereign !
It can hardly be doubted, for it is in the natural course of human events, that the republicanism of the Rochellers must have been wafted over the seas to our shores ; and that the Genevan system of politics and religion, already not new to our country, received a considerable impulse by the heroes who had combated, and the sages who had counselled in that memorable siege, and who were now fugitives and emigrants in England.
The rigid monarchists of our country do not appear to have been insensible of the tendency of these new doctrines, and could hardly discern the nice paint which separated rebellion from reformation. As early as in 1628, Republicanism in the House of Commons was more than suspected by Charles the First, which appears by the very denial of the House itself—for they declare, that “Nothing so endangers us with his Majesty as that opinion that we are anti-monarchically affected,” and they proceed to declare that, “had they to choose a government, it would be this monarchy of England above all governments in the world.” But it is not the minority which draw up public addresses. That there was a Republican party in the House of Commons before 1645, the period at which Mr. Hallam declares it had not yet entered the House, is unquestionably proved by those curious conversations which Clarendon has given in his “Life,” between himself, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Henry Martin, which occurred in 1641.
They had partaken of a political dinner at Pym’s lodgings, where Hampden, Sir Arthur Haslerigg, and others of the party, clubbed together. Fiennes, in riding out with him, communicated to Hyde, who they were solicitous to gain over, their firm determination to extirpate the hierarchy ; but a day or two afterwards, Henry Martin opened himself with more freedom ; that witty and unprincipled man declaring, that, as for some particular men who governed the House, he thought they were knaves ; but when they had done as much as they intended to do, they should be used as they had others. Hyde pressing to know what they intended, Henry Martin, after a little pause, summoned resolution, however, to let Hyde into the grand secret, by roundly answering, “I do not think one man wise enough to govern us all.”
Clarendon, it is true, declares that this was the first word he had ever heard spoken to that purpose. But we cannot infer from this, that it would have been new to many others—it fell from the lips of a great Republican in Parliament in 1641. We may be quite certain, that the establishment of a Commonwealth, even at that time, would not have had only the single vote of Henry Martin. I would answer for Haslerigg, and have no doubt of Nathaniel. It was, indeed, too early to have carried the motion through the House. Such mighty changes are hewn and laboured out of the mass only by degrees, and the frankness of Harry Martin would not have been imitated by those, who, though equally intent on the same design, would not, however, dare to be equally open.
The awful controversies between the Monarch and the Parliament ; the arbitrary measures to which the royal distresses had driven Charles ; the popular terror of papistry ; the principles of passive obedience to “the divine right” of Church and State ; the pseudo-Brutus Felton, who, in his self-devotion, seemed to the kingdom to rise in glory from the refulgent stroke of a patriot’s poignard ; all these were the elements of the Spirit of Republicanism. Men were to speak, in those times ; we had yet no Sidneys and Lockes ; opinions and feelings are long silently propagated before they can assume the lasting form of published works. In the history of mankind, there is one moral principle as certain in its effects, as we find in the physical world is that of gravitation ; it is the re-action of our natures. In the indissoluble chain of human events, things make themselves without being made, for the last seem only consequences of those which precede them. Passive obedience inculcated in a monarchy engenders the opposite principle of the popular freedom of republicanism. Man, in changing his posture, imagines he finds relief, by placing himself in quite a contrary attitude.
Already the lower classes of society were formed for democratic notions ; but with them it was long limited to the Hierarchy. Armed with the sacred Scriptures, they applied the revolutionary events, and quoted the democratic style in which the historical parts abound ; but as, in the spirit of the “parity” of the presbytery of Geneva, they only deemed Bishops as “the tail of the Beast,” these pious fanatics need not at present enter into our consideration.
But a new race was rising, who were now carrying their theoretical ideas of government into anti-monarchical views ; men who, twenty years afterwards, became the founders of the English Commonwealth. It would be a preposterous notion to imagine that the Monarchy of England could be suddenly changed into a Republic, unless men’s minds had been long in training to hazard such a political empiricism.
I have often considered that the stern republicanism and the personal hatred of Charles the First, which so strongly characterised our immortal Milton, was early imbibed ; not only from his first tutor, the “puritan in Essex who cut his hair short,”—as Aubrey, in his colloquial meanness of style, describes a learned man, who abandoned his country, but returning under the Protectorate, had the Mastership of Jesus College, Cambridge, assigned to him—there was another of his associates calculated to form his anti-monarchical feelings ; a man more remarkable than famous.
Milton’s second tutor, and beloved friend, was Alexander Gill, the son of Dr. Gill, master of St. Paul’s School, and usher under his father. We know of this intimacy by three latin epistles addressed to Gill by Milton, and to the honour of Gill be it told, he entertained a just conception of his immortal pupil. Gill, who appears to have led an unsettled and turbulent life, was not scrupulous in concealing his sentiments ; and they were expressed in the vulgar tone of the lowest democracy. He conducted himself so indecently when a reading clerk in the chapel service, that the scholars of Trinity tossed him in a blanket. Wood notices, that he was frequently imprisoned ; and when he succeeded his father in the Mastership of St. Paul’s School, he was compelled to retire from that honourable office in 1635, on complaints of his extreme severity, if not cruelty, to the scholars, a circumstance to which Jonson alludes:
“To be the Denis of thy father’s school.”
Of such a man, not ill-adapted to become even a founder of the English Commonwealth, which he did not, however, live to witness, we shall not be surprised to find, that speaking and acting throughout life without restraint, naturally produced one,—for he was at length put into the Star-Chamber. It was at Trinity College cellar, that Gill drank a health to honest Jack (Felton), with a gentle comment, that he was sorry he had deprived him of the honour of doing that brave act ; that the Duke had gone down to Hell to see King James—and of bad to give the worse, that the King (Charles) was fitter to stand in a Cheapside shop, with an apron before him, and say “what lack ye ?” than to govern a kingdom. In the manuscript letter which gives this account, I find that the offensive words concerning his Majesty were not read in open court. But Gill had long indulged his democratic spirit, for he had kept up a political correspondence with the great Chillingworth for some years, in which, as Aubrey confesses it, “they used to nibble at State matters.” Chillingworth is censured for having betrayed this confidential intercourse to Laud, when in one of his letters Gill distinguishes James and Charles, as “the old fool and the young one.” We shall not be surprised to find, at this period, that this fiery Revolutionist was brought into the Star-Chamber, sentenced to lose one ear at London, and the other at Oxford, and, as usual, heavily fined two thousand pounds. The tears of the old doctor, when supplicating on his knees before the King, and his petition being backed by Laud, the penalty was mitigated, and the ears were spared. As Laud was not usually merciful on these occasions, I am inclined to think that Chillingworth, who has been blackened by his treachery, had not given his information without a promise of Laud’s intercession—perhaps he meant only to check our radical Gill, whose republican feelings appear by a silly satire of the day—
Thy alehouse barking ’gainst the King
And all his brave and noble Peers.
It is clear that Gill had anticipated the Republic about to be ; in such affairs there is always a forlorn hope, who must be first sacrificed. That Gill’s illustrious pupil was influenced by his democratic turn of mind, and that he appears to have caught some portion of his friend’s severity to his pupils, and that they were both staunch republicans before even Charles came to the throne, cannot be doubtful. Milton and Gill can only be considered as the representatives of a large class of that new race, who, in theory or in practice, were prepared to advocate anti-monarchical principles.
On this subject of “republican politics,” there is a remarkable circumstance connected with an extraordinary character, whose name appears in our history, but the story of whose life, could it now be obtained, would probably throw new lights on the secret history of that party, which for a short but fatal period was predominant.
The circumstance which I am about to disclose requires a preliminary anecdote concerning two eminent persons,—a baffled historian, and a minister of state.
Fulke Greville, the first Lord Brooke, who, among his greatest honours, was most desirous to be remembered by posterity as “the friend of Sir Philip Sidney,” was also the patron of Camden and Speed, a votary of poetry and history !
He had once designed a life of his late mistress, Queen Elizabeth, from which he had only been deterred by the political trepidations of the famous Secretary Cecil. In an amusing anecdote of the historical inquirer and the Minister, we may detect the insurmountable objections of a statesman to the inconvenience of contemporary history.
On the first request of the future historian, his friend the Minister warmly embraced his proposal, and promised to furnish his warrant for researches among the State papers. At a second interview, the Minister strangely shifted his ground, and turning short on the inquirer after truth, wondered how Sir Fulke could dream out his time in writing a story, when no one was a more rising man than himself—(a whisper of preferment!);—then he expostulated on the danger of delivering many things of the former reign, which might be prejudicial to the present. A writer of history, replied the half-disappointed historian, though bound to tell nothing but the truth, was not, he presumed, equally bound to tell all the truth ; he was to spare the tenderness of individuals or families, nor was he to injure the existing interests of governments. This seemed a compromise, and came so unexpectedly on the Minister, that he had nothing to add ; but as he had settled his resolution before the visit of the historian, he closed the conversation, by informing him, that “the council-chest must not lie open without his Majesty’s approbation.” The baffled writer of history, who had already degraded his office by offering to be the discloser of half-truths, now gave up his projected history in despair ; aware, as he expresses it, that “sheet after sheet was to be reviewed” by other eyes than his own, and that so many alterations would be required, that his history would turn out to be “a story of other men’s writing, with my name only put to it.”
The passion for history had not, however, diminished in the breast of its votary ; and about 1628, Sir Fulke Greville, now become Lord Brooke, founded an Historical Lecture at Cambridge, endowing it with no penurious salary for that day—one hundred pounds per annum. Why an Englishman was not found worthy of the professorship has not been told. The founder invited the learned Vossius of Leyden to fill this chair ; but the States of Holland having at that moment augmented his pension, Vossius recommended to his lordship, Dr. Dorislaus, an excellent scholar and a doctor in civil law.
The learned Hollander, so early as in 1628, was sent down to Cambridge by Lord Brooke, with the King’s letters to the Vice-chancellor, and the heads of colleges, who immediately complied with the design of the noble institutor of this new professorship.
Dr. Dorislaus delivered two or tbree lectures on Tacitus, but he had not yet gone beyond the first words, Urbem Romanam primo Reges habuere, when he discovered that he was addressing critical ears. He disserted on the change of government in Rome from kings to consuls, by the suggestion of Junius Brutus ; he dwelt on the power of the people ; and touching on the excesses of Tarquin, who had violated the popular freedom which the people had enjoyed, under his predecessors, he launched out in vindication of his own country in wresting their liberties from the tyranny of the Spanish monarchs.
There was a tone of democracy in the lectures of the Dutchman, a spirit of republican fierceness to which the heads of houses had not yet been accustomed ; and though the Doctor had particularly excepted such monarchies as those of England, where he said “the people had surrendered their rights to the King, so that in truth there could be no just exception taken against the sovereign,” yet the Master of Peter-house, quick at analogies, and critical at deductions, communicating with the master of Christ College and the Vice-chancellor, a murmur rose which reached London, and at length the King’s ear, of the tendency of these republican doctrines.[7] Dr. Dorislaus at first offered to clear himself before the heads of houses ; he proposed to dispatch letters to his patron, and other eminent personages, to explain his opinions, but at length resolving to address himself personally to Lord Brooke, he suddenly suppressed these letters, observing, that “he would see an accuser, before he replied to an accusation.”
What occurred at Court is obscure. The Bishop of Winchester, in his Majesty’s name, suspended our history-lecturer ; but shortly after, the suspension was annulled, and the Doctor allowed to return to his chair. Fuller, who alludes to this transaction, tells us that “Dorislaus was accused to the King, troubled at Court, and after his submission hardly restored to his place.” His first patron however, who differed in his political sentiments from his successor, the republican Lord Brooke, in a letter to the Doctor requested that he would retire to his own country, assuring him, however, of his stipend during life. Lord Brooke, shortly after this generous offer, was assassinated by his servant.
The Doctor, it is certain, never contemplated returning to his republic, and it is suspected that he had his reasons. This scholar and adventurer was “a fair conditioned man,” as indeed appears by his portrait. He married an Englishwoman, was established a Professor at Gresham College—and this foreigner, whom Fuller describes as “a Dutchman very anglicised in language and behaviour,” became a very important personage in the great Revolution of the land of his adoption.
A history of this Dutch Doctor of Civil Laws, and Republican, would furnish a subject of considerable interest in our own political history. Although we have not hitherto been enabled to trace the private life of this remarkable character, for the long interval of twenty years, in which he was settled in this country, yet it is quite evident, that during this period he cultivated an intimate intercourse with the English Republicans of that day ; for he became their chief counsellor, a participator in their usurpations, and acted in a high station in the Commonwealth. His death was not less political than his life.
The first patron of Dr. Dorislaus, Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, was succeeded in his title by his cousin, Robert Greville, whom he had adopted as his son. The young Lord was then scarcely of age, and the republican sentiments of the second Lord Brooke, imbibed by the generous temper of youth, were so opposite to the monarchical character of the first Lord, that we have no difficulty in discovering his tutor in his own historical lecturer of Cambridge. In the dreams of his soul, lofty views of human nature broke forth, and in a romantic passion of patriotism and misanthropy, he had planned, with another discontented noble Lord Say and Sele, to fly to the forests of New England, to enjoy that delusive freedom which he conceived that he had lost in the Old.
Whether Dr. Dorislaus would have accompanied his pupil, and have forsaken the Academy of Gresham for an American savannah, may be doubted. The Doctor had abandoned his own Republic for a more comforting abode in a Monarchy. The founders of sects are often very different in their views and temperaments to their proselytes. A cool head has often inflamed hot ones, as water feeds fire. Lord Brooke’s motives were the purest which human nature can experience, yet such a secession from our father-land may be condemned as betraying more sullenness than patriotism.
It was this Lord Brooke who afterwards sided with the Parliament, and whose extraordinary prayer, on the day of his death, at the storming of the church-close at Litchfield, has been adduced by those who presume to explore into the secret ways of Providence, as a demonstration of what they are pleased to term particular providences, or judgments, while the opposite party, who do not object to these divine catastrophes whenever they happen to their enemies, never recognise one in the fate of their friend ; thus it happens that the man whom one party considers as the object of divine vengeance, is exalted by the other into the beatitude of a saint. It would have been more reasonable to have remarked, that this very prayer, from the pure and noble mind of Lord Brooke, perhaps argued some painful doubts about the cause which he had espoused, and for which he was to die.
If we consider the intimacy which this Lord Brooke must necessarily have cherished with the historical Professor placed on the foundation of his relative, and the whole tenor of his lordship’s actions, from his early days, it will be evident that this noble enthusiast was the political pupil of his republican Professor of Civil Law.
When the rebellion or the revolution broke out, our speculative philosopher, Doctor Dorislaus, became a practical politician. The notions of government which he maintained well suited that base minority, who in those unhappy days triumphed over the monarchy and the aristocracy of England, and an indissoluble bond of political connection was formed between Dorislaus and the popular chiefs. The Dutch Doctor of Civil Law became their learned Counsellor, and their resolute agent, and the political adventurer received the gratitude of the co-partners and the profits of the co-partnership. We discover Doctor Dorislaus as the Judge Advocate in Essex’s army ; we find Doctor Dorislaus presiding as one of the Judges of the Admiralty ; we behold the republican foreigner standing between the Attorney and the Solicitor Generals at the trial of the King of England ; and when his ability had served the English Commonwealth so zealously at home, we see him commissioned by his friends in power, to return to his native land, as their representative—the ambassador of England !
There, when scarcely arrived, and in a manner the most unexpected, the Doctor terminated his career. His character was too flagrant not to attract the notice and indignation of the English emigrants. Some Cavaliers, maddened by loyalty and passion, who knew how actively Dorislaus had occupied himself in forwarding the unparalleled catastrophe which the world had witnessed, avenged the murder of their sovereign by an unpardonable crime—the crime of assassination. A party rushed into his apartment while he was at supper, and dispatched the ambassador of the new Commonwealth.
This foreigner must have obtained an ascendancy in the Government not yet entirely discovered, and had been most intimately consulted on the events of the times, and more particularly in the conduct of the most criminal of the acts of the men in power.
This appeared by the predominant party decreeing him a public funeral, attended by the Council of State, the Judges, and the whole Parliament. Evelyn has chronicled this public funeral for “the villain who managed the trial against the King.”
It has been urged in favour of Dorislaus, that he did not speak at the trial of the King. It is probable that this foreigner might not have acquired all the fluency of forensic elocution necessary to address those who were called the English people, on an occasion so tremendously solemn. Those, moreover, who had been forced up into supreme power, might also have still retained some slight remains of decorum, and scarcely have desired that a stranger, with a foreign accent, should plead for the English people against their Sovereign. But was Dorislaus less active because he was mute ? As a civilian, he was most competent to draw up the indictment, such as it was ; and he acted so important a part in the trial itself, that in the print we may observe this Dutch Doctor standing between the Commonwealth’s Council, Cooke and Aske.
Such is the story of Doctor Dorislaus, a foreigner who was more busied in our history than appears by the pages of our historians. The concealed design of his historical lectures, when the professorship was first founded at Cambridge, seemed doubtful to many, but less so to discerning judgments. The whole tenor of the professor’s life must now remove all doubts. Dr. Dorislaus was a political adventurer, a Republican by birth and principle, the native of a land where, in the youthhood of the Republic, a nation’s independence had broke forth ; there was no small town, scarcely an obscure spot, which did not commemorate some stratagem of war, some night assault, some voluntary immolation, or which bore not the vestige of some glorious deed. There the siege had famished the city ; there the dyke, broken by the patriot’s hand, had inundated his own province. The whole face of the country was covered with associations of unconquered patriotism.
Dorislaus had willingly deserted this popular freedom and poverty to endure the servitude of monarchy in ease and competence. The Dutch Republican consented to join the English people, to adopt his own expressions, in “surrendering their rights to their sovereign.” Perhaps he afterwards deemed that “the majesty of the people” retained the power of revoking their grant. His Roman intrepidity, if our lecturer on the seven Kings of Rome ever possessed it, was now lurking among intriguers, and his republican pride at length was sharing in the common spoil.
Such is the picture of a Republican whose name appears in our history, and who acted a remarkable part in it, but who has not hitherto received the notice which he claims.
From all which we have observed, we would infer that the republican party must have long prevailed before it could enter into the House of Commons, where we find these anti-monarchists several years before the period assigned by the constitutional historian.
I have thus endeavoured to throw some light upon the origin in modern Europe, and particularly in England, of that mighty principle which produced such tremendous effects in the era which is the subject of our investigation. We have detected it in its secret birth, we have observed it passive in theory, we have witnessed it repressed by the strong arm of authority. We are now approaching the epoch of its open, its active, and its triumphant career. A monarchy subverted, an aristocracy abolished, a hierarchy abrogated, are results which never could have taken place without the exertion by all parties of a power of thought, and an energy of action, without the occurrence of a variety of events, and the appearance of a diversity of characters, the study of which should teach us in some degree, how to think and how to act, how to contemplate events, and how to judge men. It is when considering the age of which we treat, in this political and moral point of view, that I have often been inclined to conclude, that in a right, understanding of the life and reign of Charles the First, are involved most of those subjects, the knowledge of which is valuable and necessary ; to all men, at all times, but above all, to Englishmen !
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
LONDON :
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1 Hallam’s Constitutional History of England.
2 Meteren, fol. 254.
3 An extraordinary letter ab Ignoto, unquestionably by a profound politician.—Cabala, p. 378.
4 When James was King of Scotland, he invited “the New States,” to send some envoy to be present at the baptism of Prince Henry. The presents of the higher powers were rich, but the Dutch ambassadors modestly presented two cups of fine gold, accompanied by a golden casket, which, on opening, enclosed a sealed letter—it was a grant of five thousand florins to be paid annually during the Prince’s life by the States.
5 Thuanus, Lib. LVII.
6 Père Griffet, xvi. 284.
7 The idea of these lectures I found in Archbishop Usher’s Life, by Parr. Letter 393, from one who says, “we fear we shall lose the lectures.”