THE

YOUTH'S INSTRUCTER

AND

GUARDIAN.

MARCH, 1853.

JOHN THURLOE, ESQ.,

SECRETARY OF STATE OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

(With a Portrait.)

THE waves of religious and political agitation were tossing high. The external reformation of Henry VIII. disfigured and spoiled by the passions and bigotry of the tyrant;-the peaceful and really evangelical reformation of Edward VI.; -the horrible reaction of Popery under bloody Queen Mary; the stern, but just, and eminently British reign of Queen Elizabeth ;-the cowardly and insignificant position of the English government under that "double-minded man James I.;-the retribution that brought Charles I. to the scaffold, when his best subjects had no longer power to forbear; and when others, not the best, plunged themselves into the guilt of regicide; these were the heavy and overwhelming oscillations that rocked the vessel of the State until it could no longer hold together, but went to pieces on the rocks of what was then, by a pleasant euphemism, called a commonwealth, but, if it were now to come to pass again, would be recognised in Europe as a military republic.

The person whose portrait faces this page played an active part during the ten or eleven years of that republic, and also held some public offices both before and after, under the Kings Charles I. and Charles II. We shall merely observe him in relation to two or three events, characteristic of the time. By the interest of his patron, Oliver St. John, an eminent VOL. XVII. Second Series.

F

lawyer, Solicitor-General to Charles I., and Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas, he was appointed one of the Secretaries of the twelve Parliamentary Commissioners, who were united with some others from Scotland, to meet a body of sixteen Commissioners from the King, at Uxbridge, where they spent some days in fruitless negotiations, in the beginning of the year 1645. From this time his ability for business brought him important employments, and a growing reputation; not the least fruit of which was the Secretaryship of an Embassy to the United Provinces, conducted by Lord Chief Justice St. John, and Walter Strickland, Esq. Then, in 1652, we find him Secretary to the republican Council of State. When men pass over so gently from one situation to another, without suffering at all from the shock of revolution, we cannot refrain from inquiring the cause. In this instance it appears that both the Chief Justice and the Secretary had stood aloof from the extreme parties; the one applying himself to the duties of his high station for the common benefit of the country, and the other contenting himself with discharging the subordinate duties of his office. Examples of the kind so frequently occur as to become familiar; and therefore the continuance of Thurloe in estimation as a man of business must not be taken, in itself, to indicate any dereliction of principle on his part, although, if his conduct were closely scrutinised, it would not be found blameless, nor such as to be in the least degree exceptional to the Divine aphorism-employed with an infinitely higher application that "no man can serve two masters."

No one can have any interest now in assailing or defending the character of John Thurloe, whose chief historical importance consists in the connexion of his name with seven folio volumes of very valuable "State Papers," that provide large material for all writers on that sad episode in English history; but, as Cromwell has latterly been brought much into view by some overstrained efforts to canonise him in the estimation of the religious world, and while the name of Charles I. is also used as a catch-word by another and a very opposite party, a letter from Thurloe, clearing himself and his patron from any complicity in the death of that infatuated Monarch, may not be uninstructive. Few of the readers of the "Youth's

Instructer

can have access to the "State Papers" whence the letter is extracted; and, as it is a document of great value, they may not be sorry to find it here, at length.

"HONOURABLE Sir,

66

Hearing it reported that I should, about the time of the King's trial and death, declare to divers officers of the army that it was the judgment of my Lord St. John that the King ought to be put to death, and that the nation could not be safe without it; and that the said Lord St. John was a chief adviser of Oliver to set up himself, and in the managing of his public affairs; and that I was the medium, or hand, between them, by which their counsels were communicated to each other; and, further, that the Lord St. John had a great hand in setting up Richard, and did also plot and endeavour the restoration of him after his resignation; and knowing these reports to be altogether false and groundless, I thought it a duty I owe to the truth, to take notice thereof to you; and the testimony which I give herein, is that which I am ready to be deposed upon.

“1. And, first, as to that of the King's trial and death, it is utterly untrue that I declared or spake either to the officers of the army, or any other, that my Lord St. John's judgment was His Majesty's trial or death. I was altogether a stranger to that fact, and to all the counsels about it, having not had the least communication with any person whatsoever therein: and I do believe that it was very far from being my Lord St. John's judgment, because I heard him speak in dislike of it, and of the proceedings of the army then and long before that time; and therefore I should have done him great wrong to have reported that of him, as they have done me, who have raised these reports of me.

"2. As to his advising the setting up of Oliver, and counselling him in the management of his affairs by the medium of me, who am supposed to be the instrument that went between them; my Lord St. John was so far from advising him to set up himself, that, to the best of my knowledge and observation, he was a great enemy to it, and hath often to me spake against it. And as for that called the instrument of

government, I never spake with my Lord St. John, either about the whole or any part of it, (nor ever heard that anybody else did,) until some months after it was published in print; when, going to visit him after a long and dangerous sickness, which he fell into before the instrument was ever spake of before me, he told me he had just then read our government; and, taking it up in his hands, he cast it from him in great dislike, and said, 'Is this all the fruit the nation shall have of their war?' or words to that purpose; and then took occasion to speak much against it. And, as he had nothing to do in setting up this government, so neither was there, so far as I know, or have heard, any communication of counsels between Oliver and him, mediately or immediately, touching the management of any part of the public affairs, my Lord St. John always refusing to meddle in anything but what concerned his place as a Judge; and in that he refused to proceed upon any of the laws made under that government; for which he was complained of to the Council, and it was imputed to his example that the Judges refused to act upon the last High Court of Justice. Nor was he (to my knowledge) advised with in the petition and advice. The truth is, that my Lord St. John was so far from being a confidant, that some, who loved and valued him, had something to do to preserve him under that government.

"3. As to the setting up Richard, or endeavouring to restore him again after his resignation, I have never heard, nor do I believe that my Lord St. John knew anything at all about his being made successor, nor did he ever advise with Oliver, or any other person whatsoever, touching the succession; nor do I know or believe, that he ever designed, endeavoured, or indeed wished his restoration, because I have often heard him express his judgment against it; and I believe would, in his station, have opposed it. I humbly take leave to sign myself,

"Your most humble and obedient servant,

"To the Right Honourable Sir Harbottle Grimston, Speaker of the House of Commons."*

Thurloe's "State Papers," vii., 914.

"J. T.

Although Thurloe was no blind admirer of his master, and disapproved of many of his measures, he appears to have served him with fidelity, and, at the same time, to have borne in mind the claims of humanity, and the interests of this country. While Cromwell was in perpetual terror, through apprehension of plots to take away his life, the prudent Secretary, from the time of entering on that office, in 1653, until his master's death, in 1658, never ceased to endeavour to assuage his fears, and prevent him from injuring others under the notion of saving himself. And, while Thurloe hired spies, wrote in cipher, and dived into the political criminalities that were to be found on every side, he steadily disapproved of those expedients by which weak and arbitrary governments are wont to suspend or supersede the laws; and by habitual confidence, he must have saved the lives of many. Yet he was quite as vigilant and prompt as necessary. It was he who detected the plot of the Fifth Monarchy men, which would seem to have been contemptible enough at the beginning; but the ignorance, fanaticism, and fury that then prevailed in England, were fit elements for the spread of any conflagration. Those Fifth Monarchy men had strange notions about a temporal reign of our Lord Jesus Christ in the world, and even thought themselves able to set it up. They held secret meetings in London and the neighbourhood; their chief places of rendezvous being Mile-End-green and Shoreditch. The women of England were just then in peril of being drawn into some disrepute by the intemperance of certain sisters of the humbler sort, who constituted a Committee of distribution for proclamations of the new spiritual reign, and for carrying on correspondence with kindred zealots; while the stouter portion of the community was to be called in to set up the kingdom of the saints by force. Not quite unconscious of their weakness, even the fighting men said that, taken altogether, they were but a worm; but then they boasted that "the worm would thrash mountains." A party of His Highness's horse, instructed by Thurloe, surrounded their place of congregation, took twenty of the men into custody; and so, at one tread, they crushed the worm. The most interesting remnant of the Fifth Monarchy that we