[1658 A.D.] His carriage was filled with attendants; a numerous escort accompanied him; and he proceeded at full speed, frequently diverging from the road to the right or left, and generally returning by a different route. In his palace he often inspected the nightly watch, changed his bed-chamber, and was careful that, besides the principal door, there should be some other egress, for the facility of escape. He had often faced death without flinching in the field; but his spirit broke under the continual fear of unknown and invisible foes. He passed the nights in a state of feverish anxiety; sleep fled from his pillow; and for more than a year before his death we always find the absence of rest assigned as either the cause which produced, or a circumstance which aggravated, his numerous ailments.

The

The selfishness of ambition does not exclude the more kindly feelings of domestic affection. Cromwell was sincerely attached to his children; but, among them, he gave the preference to his daughter Elizabeth Claypole. The meek disposition of the young woman possessed singular charms for the overbearing spirit of her father; and her timid piety readily received lessons on mystical theology from the superior experience of the lord-general. following passage from one of Cromwell's letters to his daughter Ireton, will perhaps surprise the reader: "Your sister Claypole is (I trust in mercye) exercised with some perplexed thoughts, shee sees her owne vanitye and carnal minde, bewailinge itt, shee seeks after (as I hope alsoe) that wch will satisfie, and thus to bee a seeker, is to be of the best sect next a finder, and such an one shall every faythfull humble seeker bee at the end. Happie seeker, happie finder. Who ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some sense of self-vanitye and badness? Who ever tasted that graciousness of his, and could goe lesse in desier, and lesse than pressinge after full enjoyment? Deere hart presse on: lett not husband, lett not anythinge coole thy affections after Christ." But she was now dying of a most painful and internal complaint, imperfectly understood by her physicians; and her grief for the loss of her infant child added to the poignancy of her sufferings. Cromwell abandoned the business of state that he might hasten to Hampton Court, to console his favourite daughter. He frequently visited her, remained long in her apartment, and, whenever he quitted it, seemed to be absorbed in the deepest melancholy. It is not probable that the subject of their private conversation was exposed to the profane ears of strangers. We are, however, told by Clarendon m that she expressed to him her doubts of the justice of the good old cause, that she exhorted him to restore the sovereign authority to the rightful owner, and that, occasionally, when her mind was wandering, she alarmed him by uttering cries of "blood," and predictions of vengeance.

Elizabeth died August 6th. The protector was already confined to his bed with the gout, and, though he had anticipated the event, some days elapsed before he recovered from the shock. A slow fever still remained, which was pronounced a bastard tertian. One of his physicians whispered to another (Aug. 17th), that his pulse was intermittent; the words caught the ears of the sick man; he turned pale, a cold perspiration covered his face; and, requesting to be placed in bed, he executed his private will. The next morning he had recovered his usual composure; and when he received the visit of his physician, ordering all his attendants to quit the room but his wife, whom he held by the hand, he said to him: "Do not think that I shall die; I am sure of the contrary." Observing the surprise which those words excited, he continued: "Šay not that I have lost my reason: I tell you the truth. I know it from better authority than any which you can have from

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Galen or Hippocrates. It is the answer of God himself to our prayers; not to mine alone, but to those of others who have a more intimate interest in him than I have." The same communication was made to Thurloe, and to the different members of the protector's family; nor did it fail to obtain credit among men who believed that "in other instances he had been favoured with similar assurances, and that they had never deceived him." Hence his chaplain Goodwin exclaimed, "O Lord, we pray not for his recovery; that thou hast granted already; what we now beg is his speedy recovery."

In a few days, however, their confidence was shaken. For change of air he had removed to Whitehall, till the palace of St. James's should be ready for his reception. There on August 28th his fever became a double tertian, and his strength rapidly wasted away. Who, it was asked, was to succeed him? On the day of his inauguration he had written the name of his successor within a cover sealed with the protectorial arms; but that paper had been lost, or purloined, or destroyed. Thurloe undertook to suggest to him a second nomination; but the condition of the protector, who, if we believe him, was always insensible or delirious, afforded no opportunity. A suspicion, however, existed, that he had private reasons for declining to interfere in so delicate a business.

The 30th of August was a tempestuous day: during the night the violence of the wind increased till it blew a hurricane. Trees were torn from their roots in the park, and houses unroofed in the city. This extraordinary occurrence at a moment when it was thought that the protector was dying, could not fail of exciting remarks in a superstitious age; and, though the storm reached to the coasts of the Mediterranean, in England it was universally referred to the deathbed of the protector. His friends asserted that God would not remove so great a man from this world without previously warning the nation of its approaching loss; the cavaliers more maliciously maintained that the devils, "the princes of the air," were congregating over Whitehall, that they might pounce on the protector's soul.'

On the third night afterwards (Sept. 2nd), Cromwell had a lucid interval of considerable duration. It might have been expected that a man of his religious disposition would have felt some compunctious visitings, when from the bed of death he looked back on the strange, eventful career of his past life. But he had adopted a doctrine admirably calculated to lull and tranquillise the misgivings of conscience. "Tell me," said he to Sterry, one of his chaplains, "Is it possible to fall from grace?" "It is not possible," replied the minister. "Then," exclaimed the dying man, "I am safe; for I know that I was once in grace." Under this impression he prayed, not for himself, but for God's people. "Lord," he said, "though a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee through thy grace, and may and will come to thee for thy people. Thou hast made me a mean instrument to do them some good, and thee service. Many of them set too high a value upon me, though others would be glad of my death. Lord, however thou disposest of me, continue, and go on to do good for them. Teach those who look too much upon thy instruments, to depend more upon thyself, and pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too.'

Early in the following morning, he relapsed into a state of insensibility. It was his fortunate day, the 3rd of September, a circumstance from which his sorrowing relatives derived a new source of consolation. It was, they observed, on the 3rd of September that he overcame the Scots at Dunbar; [Von Ranke notes that when the news of Cromwell's death reached Amsterdam, people danced in the streets crying, "The devil is dead!"]

H. W. - VOL. XX. N

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on that day, he also overcame the royalists at Worcester; and on the same day, he was destined to overcome his spiritual enemies, and to receive the crown of victory in heaven. About four in the afternoon he breathed his last, amidst the tears and lamentations of his attendants. "Cease to weep, exclaimed the fanatical Sterry, "you have more reason to rejoice. He was your protector here; he will prove a still more powerful protector, now that he is with Christ at the right hand of the Father." With a similar confidence in Cromwell's sanctity, though in a somewhat lower tone of enthusiasm, the grave and cautious Thurloe announced the event by letter to Henry Cromwell the deputy of Ireland. "Never was there any man so prayed for as he was during his sickness, solemn assemblies meeting every day to beseech the Lord for the continuance of his life; so that he is gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and upon the wings of the prayers of the saints."

VARIOUS ESTIMATES OF CROMWELL; HIS DISSIMULATION: LINGARD Till the commencement of the century, when that wonderful man arose, who, by the splendour of his victories and the extent of his empire, cast all preceding adventures into the shade, the name of Cromwell stood without a parallel in the history of civilised Europe. Men looked with a feeling of awe on the fortunate individual who, without the aid of birth, or wealth, or connections, was able to seize the government of three powerful kingdoms, and to impose the yoke of servitude on the necks of the very men who had fought in his company to emancipate themselves from the less arbitrary sway of their hereditary sovereign. That he who accomplished this was no ordinary personage, all must admit; and yet, on close investigation, we shall discover little that was sublime or dazzling in his character. Cromwell was not the meteor which surprises and astounds by the rapidity and brilliancy of its course. Cool, cautious, calculating, he stole on with slow and measured pace; and, while with secret pleasure he toiled up the ascent to greatness, laboured to persuade the spectators that he was reluctantly borne forward by an exterior and resistless force, by the march of events, the necessities of the state, the will of the army, and even the decree of the Almighty. He seems to have looked upon dissimulation as the perfection of human wisdom, and to have made it the keystone of the arch on which he built his fortunes. The aspirations of his ambition were concealed under the pretence of attachment to "the good old cause"; and his secret workings to acquire the sovereignty for himself and his family were represented as endeavours to secure for his former brethren in arms the blessings of civil and religious freedom, the two great objects which originally called them into the field.

Thus his whole conduct was made up of artifice and deceit. He laid his plans long beforehand; he studied the views and dispositions of all from whose influence he had any thing to hope or fear; and he employed every expedient to win their affections, and to make them the blind unconscious tools of his policy. For this purpose he asked questions, or threw out insinuations in their hearing; now kept them aloof with an air of reserve and dignity; now put them off their guard by condescension, perhaps by buffoonery; at one time, addressed himself to their vanity or avarice; at another, exposed to them with tears (for tears he had at will), the calamities of the nation; and then, when he found them moulded to his purpose, instead of assenting to the advice which he had himself suggested, feigned reluctance, urged objections, and pleaded scruples of conscience. At length he yielded; but it was not till he had acquired by his resistance the praise of moderation, and the

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right of attributing his acquiescence to the importunity of others instead of his own ambition.

Exposed as he was to the continued machinations of the royalists and levellers, both equally eager to precipitate him from the height to which he had attained, Cromwell made it his great object to secure to himself the attachment of the army. To it he owed the acquisition, through it alone could he ensure the permanence, of his power. Now, fortunately for this purpose, that army, composed as never was army before or since, revered in the lord-protector what it valued mostly in itself, the cant and practice of religious enthusiasm. The superior officers, the subalterns, the privates, all held themselves forth as professors of godliness. Among them every public breach of morality was severely punished; the exercises of religious worship were of as frequent recurrence as those of military duty; in council, the officers always opened the proceedings with extemporary prayer; and to implore with due solemnity the protection of the Lord of Hosts, was held an indispensable part of the preparation for battle. Their cause they considered the cause of God; if they fought, it was for his glory; if they conquered, it was by the might of his arm. Among these enthusiasts, Cromwell, as he held the first place in rank, was also pre-eminent in spiritual gifts. The fervour with which he prayed, the unction with which he preached, excited their admiration and tears. They looked on him as the favourite of God, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and honoured with communications from heaven; and he, on his part, was careful, by the piety of his language, by the strict decorum of his court, and by his zeal for the diffusion of godliness, to preserve and strengthen such impressions. In minds thus disposed, it was not difficult to create a persuasion that the final triumph of "their cause" depended on the authority of the general under whom they had conquered; while the full enjoyment of that religious freedom which they so highly prized rendered them less jealous of the arbitrary power which he occasionally assumed.

On the subject of civil freedom, the protector could not assume so bold a tone. He acknowledged, indeed, its importance; it was second only to religious freedom; but if second, then, in the event of competition, it ought to yield to the first. He contended that, under his government, every provision had been made for the preservation of the rights of individuals, so far as was consistent with the safety of the whole nation. He had reformed the chan

cery, he had laboured to abolish the abuses of the law, he had placed learned and upright judges on the bench, and he had been careful in all ordinary cases that impartial justice should be administered between the parties. This indeed was true; but it was also true that by his orders men were arrested and committed without lawful cause; that juries were packed; that prisoners, acquitted at their trial, were sent into confinement beyond the jurisdiction of the courts; that taxes had been raised without the authority of parliament; that a most unconstitutional tribunal, the high court of justice, had been established; and that the major-generals had been invested with powers the most arbitrary and oppressive. These acts of despotism put him on his defence; and in apology he pleaded, as every despot will plead, reasons of state, the necessity of sacrificing a part to preserve the whole, and his conviction, that a "people blessed by God, the regenerated ones of several judgments forming the flock and lambs of Christ, would prefer their safety to their passions, and their real security to forms." Nor was this reasoning addressed

[The Venetian ambassador Sagredo 4 observes that during the protectorate, London wore the appearance of a garrison town, where nothing was to be seen but the marching of soldiers, nothing to be heard but the sound of drums and trumpets.]

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in vain to men who had surrendered their judgments into his keeping, and who felt little for the wrongs of others, as long as such wrongs were represented necessary for their own welfare.

Some writers have maintained that Cromwell dissembled in religion as well as in politics; and that, when he condescended to act the part of the saint, he assumed for interested purposes a character which he otherwise despised. But this supposition is contradicted by the uniform tenor of his life. Long before he turned his attention to the disputes between the king and the parliament, religious enthusiasm had made a deep impression on his mind; it continually manifested itself during his long career, both in the senate and the field; and it was strikingly displayed in his speeches and prayers on the last evening of his life. It should, however, be observed, that he made his religion harmonise with his ambition. If he believed that the cause in which he had embarked was the cause of God, he also believed that God had chosen him to be the successful champion of that cause. Thus the honour of God was identified with his own advancement, and the arts, which his policy suggested, were sanctified in his eyes by the ulterior object at which he aimed - the diffusion of godliness, and the establishment of the reign of Christ among mankind.e

The Opinion of a Contemporary Royalist, Lord Clarendon

He was one of those men, quos vituperare ne inimici quidem possunt, nisi ut simul laudent; "whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time"; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment. He must have had a wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men, and as great a dexterity in applying them; who, from a private and obscure birth (though of a good family) without interest or estate, alliance or friendship could raise himself to such a height, and compound and knead such opposite and contradictory tempers, humours, and interests into a consistence, that contributed to his designs, and to their own destruction; whilst himself grew insensibly powerful enough to cut off those by whom he had climbed, in the instant that they projected to demolish their own building. What was said of Cinna may very justly be said of him: "He attempted those things which no good man durst have ventured on; and achieved those in which none but a valiant and great man could have succeeded." Without doubt, no man with more wickedness ever attempted anything, or brought to pass what he desired more wickedly, more in the face and contempt of religion, and moral honesty; yet wickedness as great as his could never have accomplished those designs, without the assistance of a great spirit, an admirable circumspection, and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution.

When he appeared first in the parliament, he seemed to have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament of discourse, none of those talents which use to conciliate the affections of the stander by: yet as he grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had concealed faculties, till he had occasion to use them; and when he was to act the part of a great man, he did it without any indecency, notwithstanding the want of custom. In all other matters, which did not concern the life of his jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for the law, rarely interposing between party and party. As he proceeded with this kind of indignation, and haughtiness, with those who were refractory, and durst contend with his greatness, so towards all who complied with his good pleasure, and courted his protection, he used great civility, generosity, and bounty.