Part 57

{49} Dr John Owen, Joseph Caryl, and Philip Nye, were three of the most eminent divines of this eventful age. Caryl, who was a moderate independent, was the author of the well-known “Commentary on Job.” Dr Owen enjoyed the especial favour of Cromwell, who made him Dean of Christchurch, Oxford; in his youth he had shown an inclination to Presbyterianism, but early in the war he embraced the party of the Independents. He was a most prolific writer. Nye was also an eminent writer: previous to 1647 he had been a zealous Presbyterian, but on the rise of Cromwell’s influence he joined the Independents, and was employed on several occasions by that party.—T. W.

{50} Col. John Ireton was the brother of the more celebrated Henry Ireton, and was an alderman of London. He appears to have been clerk of the Council of Officers at Wallingford House.

{51} Col. Robert Tichbourne was also an alderman, and had been Lord Mayor in 1658. He was an enthusiast in religion of the Independent party, and published several books, among which one was very celebrated, and is often referred to in the tracts of this period, entitled, “A Cluster of Canaan’s Grapes. Being severall experimented truths received through private communion with God by his Spirit, grounded on Scripture, and presented to open view for publique edification.” London, 4to, Feb. 16, 1649. In a satirical tract of the year 1660 he is made to say, “I made my mother, the city, drunk with the clusters which I brought from Canaan, and she in her drink made me a colonel.” After the return of the secluded members to the House, and the triumph of the city and the Presbyterian party, Ireton and Tichbourne were committed to the Tower, charged with aiming at the overthrow of the liberties of the city, and other grave misdemeanours. There are in the British Museum two satirical tracts relating to their imprisonment: 1. “The Apology of Robert Tichborn and John Ireton. Being a serious Vindication of themselves and the Good old Cause, from the imputations cast upon them and it by the triumphing city and nation in this their day of desertion. Printed for everybody but the light-heeled apprentices and head-strong masters of this wincing city of London.” (March 12, 1659–60.) 2. “Brethren in Iniquity: or, a Beardless Pair; held forth in a Dialogue betwixt Tichburn and Ireton, Prisoners in the Tower of London.” 4to. (April 30, 1660.)

{52} George Monk and John Lambert.

{53} The eleventh of February was the day on which Monck overthrew the Rump, by declaring for the admission of the secluded members.

{54} On the tenth of February Monk, by order of the Parliament, had entered the city in a hostile manner. “Mr Fage told me,” says Pepys, “what Monck had done in the city, how he had pulled down the most parts of the gates and chains that he could break down, and that he was now gone back to Whitehall. The city look mighty blank, and cannot tell what in the world to do.” The next day he turned from the Parliament, and took part with the city.

{55} Thomas Scot and Luke Robinson were sent by the Parliament to expostulate with Monk, but without effect.

{56} Pepys gives the following description of the rejoicings in the city on the evening of the eleventh of February:—“In Cheapside there were a great many bonfires, and Bow bells and all the bells in all the churches as we went home were a-ringing. Hence we went homewards, it being about ten at night. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonfires! there being fourteen between St Dunstan’s and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires. In King-street seven or eight; and all along burning, and roasting, and drinking for Rumps, there being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of a spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the further side.”

{57} In a satirical tract, entitled “Free Parliament Quæries,” 4to, April 10, 1660, it is inquired “Whether Sir Arthur did not act the Raging Turk in Westminster Hall, when he saw the admission of the secluded members?” Pepys gives the following account of the reception of Monck’s letter from the city on the 11th of February:—“So I went up to the lobby, where I saw the Speaker reading of the letter; and after it was read Sir A. Haselrigge came out very angry, and Billing, standing by the door, took him by the arm and cried, ‘Thou man, will thy beast carry thee no longer? thou must fall!’”

{58} Haselrigge was accused of having been a dupe to Monck’s cunning intrigues.

{59} The celebrated Praise-God Barebone, at the head of a body of fanatics, had (February 9th) presented a strong petition to the House in support of the Good old Cause, which gave great offence to the Presbyterian party and the citizens, although it was received with thanks. According to Pepys, one of Monck’s complaints against the Parliament was, “That the late petition of the fanatique people presented by Barebone, for the imposing of an oath upon all sorts of people, was received by the House with thanks.” The citizens did not omit to show their hostility against the presenter of the petition. On the 12th, Pepys says, “Charles Glascocke . . . told me the boys had last night broke Barebone’s windows.” And again, on the 22nd, “I observed this day how abominably Barebone’s windows are broke again last night.”

{60} Miles Corbet, as well as Tichbourn, had sat upon the King in judgment. In a satirical tract, published about the same time as the present ballad, Tichbourn is made to say, “They say I am as notorious as Miles Corbet the Jew.” In another, entitled “The Private Debates, etc., of the Rump,” 4to, April 2, 1660, we read, “Call in the Jews, cryes Corbet, there is a certain sympathy (quoth he), methinks, between them and me. Those wandering pedlers and I were doubtless made of the same mould; they have all such blote-herring faces as myself, and the devil himself is in ’um for cruelty.” He was one of those who fled on the Restoration, but he was afterwards taken treacherously in Holland, and, being brought to London, was executed as a regicide. In another satirical tract, entitled “A Continuation of the Acts and Monuments of our late Parliament” (Dec. 1659), it is stated that, “July 1, This very day the House made two serjeants-at-law, William Steele and Miles Corbet, and that was work enough for one day.” And, in a fourth, “Resolved, That Miles Corbet and Robert Goodwin be freed from the trouble of the Chief Register Office in Chancery.” Mercurius Honestus, No. 1. (March 21, 1659–60.)

{61} William Lord Monson, Viscount Castlemaine, was member for Ryegate in the Long Parliament. He was degraded from his honour at the Restoration, and was condemned to be drawn on a sledge with a rope round his neck from the Tower to Tyburn, and back again, and to be imprisoned there for life. It appears, by the satirical tracts of the day, that he was chiefly famous for being beaten by his wife. In one, entitled “Your Servant, Gentlemen,” 4to, 1659, it is asked, “Whether that member who lives nearest the church ought not to ride Skimmington next time my Lady Mounson cudgels her husband?” And in another (“The Rump Despairing,” 4to, London, March 26, 1660) we find the following passage:—“To my Lord Monson. A sceptre is one thing, and a ladle is another, and though his wife can tell how to use one, yet he is not fit to hold the other.”

{62} Pudding John, or Jack Pudding, was a proverbial expression of the times for a Merry Andrew. In an old English-German Dictionary it is explained thus:—“Jack-Pudding, un buffon de theatre, deliciæ populi, ein Hanswurst, Pickelhering.” The term was applied as a soubriquet to any man who played the fool to serve another person’s ends. “And first Sir Thomas Wrothe (Jack Pudding to Prideaux the post-master) had his cue to go high, and feele the pulse of the hous.” History of Independency, p. 69 (4to, 1648).

{63} An allusion to James Harrington’s “Oceana.”

{64} James Harrington, a remarkable political writer of this time, had founded a club called the Rota, in 1659, for the debating of political questions. This club met at Miles’s Coffee-house, in Old Palace Yard, and lasted a few mouths. At the beginning of the present year was published the result of their deliberations, under the title of “The Rota: or, a Model of a Free State, or Equall Commonwealth; once proposed and debated in brief, and to be again more at large proposed to, and debated by, a free and open Society of ingenious Gentlemen.” 4to, London, 1660 (Jan. 9).

{65} William Prynne, the lawyer, who had been so active a member of the Long Parliament when the Presbyterians were in power, was one of the secluded members. He returned to the House on the 21st of January, this year. Pepys says, “Mr Prin came with an old basket-hilt sword on, and had a great many shouts upon his going into the hall.”

{66} John Wilde was one of the members for Worcestershire in the Long Parliament. In Cromwell’s last Parliament he represented Droitwich, and was made by the Protector “Lord Chief Baron of the publick Exchequer.” In a satirical pamphlet, contemporary with the present ballad, he is spoken of as “Sarjeant Wilde, best known by the name of the Wilde Serjeant.” Another old song describes his personal appearance:

“But, Baron Wild, come out here, Show your ferret face and snout here, For you, being both a fool and a knave, Are a monster in the rout here.”

Loyal songs II. 55.

{67} See footnote {60}.

{68} Alderman Atkins.

{69} Ludlow was well known as a staunch Republican. The incident alluded to was a subject of much merriment, and exercised the pen of some of the choicest poets of the latter half of the seventeenth century.—T. W.

{70} Lambert, with his army, was in the North, and amid the contradictory intelligence which daily came in, we find some people who, according to Pepys, spread reports that Lambert was gaining strength.—T. W.

{71} Marchamont Nedham.

{72} Lambert and “his bears” are frequently mentioned in the satirical writings of this period. Cromwell is said to have sworn “by the living God,” when he dissolved the Long Parliament.—T. W.

{73} Speaker of the Long Parliament.

{74} Harry Marten, member for Berkshire, a man of equivocal private character. In the heat of the civil wars he had been committed to the Tower for a short time by the Parliament, for speaking too openly against the person of the King. When he attempted to speak against the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, the latter reproached him with the licentiousness of his life.—T. W.