exercised these rights of sovereign authority, returned in procession to his carriage, and repaired in state to Whitehall. The same day the establishment of the government by a lord protector and triennial parliaments, and the acceptance of the protectorship by the lord general were announced to the public by proclamation, with all the ceremonies hitherto used on the accession of a new monarch.*

It cannot be supposed that this elevation of Cromwell to the supreme power was viewed with satisfaction by any other class of men than his brethren in arms, who considered his greatness as their own work, and expected from his gratitude their merited reward. But the nation was surfeited with revolutions. Men had suffered so severely from the ravages of war, and the oppression of the military; they had seen so many instances of punishment incurred by resistance to the actual possessors of power; they were divided and subdivided into so many parties, jealous and hateful of each other, that they readily acquiesced in any change which promised the return of tranquillity in the place of solicitude, danger and misery. The protector, however, did not neglect the means of consolidating his own authority. Availing himself of the powers entrusted to him by the "instrument," he gave the chief commands in the army to men in whom he could confide; quartered the troops in the manner best calculated to put down any insurrection, and among the multitude of ordinances which he published, was careful to repeat the acts enforcing the engagement; to forbid all meetings on racecourses or at cockpits; to explain what offences should be deemed treason against his government; and to establish a high court of justice for the trial of those who might be charged with such offences.

1654. He could not, however, be ignorant that even among the former companions of his fortunes, the men who had fought and bled by his side, there were several who, much as they revered the general, looked on the protector with the most cordial abhorrence. They were stubborn, unbending republicans, partly from political, partly from religious, principle. To them he affected to unbosom himself without reserve. He was still, he protested, the same humble individual whom they had formerly known him. Had he consulted his own feelings he would rather have taken the staff of a shepherd than the dignity of protector. Necessity had imposed the office upon him; he had sacrificed his own happiness to preserve his countrymen from anarchy and ruin; and as he now bore the burthen with reluctance, he would lay it down with joy the moment he could do so with safety to the nation. But this language made few proselytes. They had too often already been the dupes of his hypocrisy, the victims of their own credulity; they scrupled not, both in public companies and from the pulpit, to pronounce him "a dissembling perjured villain," and they openly threatened him with "a worse fate than had befallen the last tyrant." If it was necessary to silence these declaimers, it was also dangerous to treat them with severity. He proceeded with caution and modified his displeasure by circumstances. Some he removed from their commissions in the army, and their ministry in the church; others he did not permit to go at large till they had given security for their subsequent behaviour; and those who proved less tractable, or appeared more dangerous, he incarcerated in the Tower. Among the last were Harrison, formerly his fellow labourer in the dissolution of the long parliament, now his most implacable enemy; and Feakes and Powell, the anabaptist preachers who had braved his resentment during the last parliament. Symson, their colleague, shared their imprisonment, but secured his liberty by submission.

* Whitelock, 571-8; Thurloe I., 639, 641; Ludlow II., 40. The alteration in the representation which had been proposed in the long parliament was generally considered an improveClar. Hist. III., 495.

ment.

CROMWELL IN POWER.

MRS. HUTCHINSON.

Cromwell and his army grew wanton with their power, and invented a thousand tricks of government, which, when nobody opposed, they themselves fell to dislike and vary every day. First he calls a parliament out of his own pocket, himself naming a sort of godly men for every county, who meeting and not agreeing, a part of them, in the name of the people, give up the sovereignty to him. Shortly after he makes up several sorts of mock parliaments, but not finding one of them absolutely for his turn, turned them off again. He soon quitted himself of his triumvirs, and first thrust out Harrison, then took away Lambert's commission, and would have been king but for fear of quitting his generalship. He weeded, in a few months time, above a hundred and fifty godly officers out of the army, with whom many of the religious soldiers went off, and in their room abundance of the king's dissolute soldiers were entertained, and the army was almost changed from that godly religious army, whose valour God had crowned with triumph, into the dissolute army they had beaten, bearing yet a better name. His wife and children were setting up for principality, which suited no better with any of them than scarlet on the ape; only to speak the truth of himself, he had much natural greatness, and well became the place he had usurped. His daughter Fleetwood was humbled, and not exalted with these things, but the rest were insolent fools. Claypole, who married his daughter, and his son Henry, were two debauched ungodly cavaliers. Richard was a peasant in his nature, yet gentle and virtuous, but became not greatness. His court was full of sin and vanity, and the more abominable; because they had not yet quite cast away the name of God, but profaned it by taking it in vain upon them. True religion was now almost lost, even among the religious party, and hypocrisy became an epidemical disease, to the sad grief of col. Hutchinson, and all true-hearted Christians and Englishmen. Almost all the ministers everywhere fell in and worshipped this beast, and courted and made addresses to him. So did the city of London, and many of the degenerate lords of the land, with the poor-spirited gentry. The cavaliers, in policy, who saw that while Cromwell reduced all the exercise of tyrannical power under another name, there was a door opened for the restoring of their party, fell much in with Cromwell, and heightened all his disorders. He at last exercised such an arbitrary power that the whole land grew weary of him, while he set up a company of silly mean fellows, called major-generals, as governors in every country. These ruled according to their wills, by no law but what seemed good in their own eyes, imprisoning men, obstructing the course of justice between man and man, perverting right through partiality, acquitting some that were guilty, and punishing some that were innocent as guilty. Then he exercised another project to raise money, by decimation of the estates of all the king's party, of which actions 'tis said Lambert was the instigator. At last he took upon him to make lords and knights, and wanted not many fools, both of the army and gentry, to accept of and strut in his mock titles. Then the earl of Warwick's grandchild and the lord Falconbridge married his two daughters; such pitiful slaves were the nobles of those days. At last Lambert, perceiving himself to have been all this while deluded with hopes and promises of succession, and seeing that Cromwell now intended to confirm the government in his own family, fell off from him, but behaved himself very pitifully and meanly, was turned out of all his places, and returned again to plot new vengeance at his house at Wimbleton, where he fell to dress his flowers in his garden, and work at the needle with his wife and his maids, while he was watching an opportunity to serve again his ambition; which had this difference from the protector's; the one was gallant and great, the other had nothing

but an unworthy pride, most insolent in prosperity, and as abject and base in adversity.

The cavaliers, seeing their victors thus beyond their hopes falling into their hands, had not patience to stay till things ripened of themselves, but were every day forming designs, and plotting for the murder of Cromwell, and other insurrections, which being contrived in drink, and managed by false and cowardly fellows, were still revealed to Cromwell, who had most excellent intelligence of all things that passed, even in the king's closet; and by these unsuccessful plots they were the only obstructors of what they sought to advance, while, to speak truth, Cromwell's personal courage and magnanimity upheld him against all enemies and malcontents. His own army disliked him, and once when sevenscore officers had combined to cross him in something he was pursuing, and engaged one to another, Lambert being the chief, with solemn promises and invocations to God, the protector hearing of it, overawed them all, and told them, "it was not they who upheld him, but he them," and rated them, and made them understand what pitiful fellows they were; whereupon they all, like rated dogs, clapped their tails between their legs, and begged his pardon, and left Lambert to fall alone, none daring to own him publicly, though many in their hearts wished him the sovereignty. Some of the Lambertonians had at that time a plot to come with a petition to Cromwell, and, while he was reading it, certain of them had undertaken to cast him out of the window at Whitehall that looked upon the Thames, where others should be ready to catch him up in a blanket if he escaped breaking his neck, and carry him away in a boat prepared for the purpose, to kill or keep him alive as they saw occasion, and then set up Lambert. This was so carried on that it was near the execution, before the protector knew anything of it. Col. Hutchinson being at that time at London, by chance came to know all the plot; certain of the conspirators coming into a place where he was, and not being so cautious of their whispers to each other before him, but that he apprehended something, which making use of to others of the confederates, he at last found out the whole matter, without being committed to him as a matter of trust, but carelessly thrown down in pieces before him, which he gathered together, and became perfectly acquainted with the whole design; and weighing it, and judging that Lambert would be the worst tyrant of the two, he determined to prevent it, without being the author of any man's punishment. Hereupon having occasion to see Fleetwood (for he had never seen the protector since his usurpation, but publicly declared his testimony against it to all the tyrant's minions), he bade Fleetwood wish him to have a care of petitioners, by whom he apprehended danger to his life. Fleetwood desired a more particular information, but the colonel was resolved he would give him no more than to prevent that enterprise which he disliked. For indeed those who were deeply engaged, rather waited to see the cavaliers in arms against him, and then thought it the best time to arm for their own defence, and either make a new conquest, or fall with swords in their hands. Therefore they all connived at the cavaliers' attempts, and although they joined not with them, would not have been sorry to have seen them upon equal terms with the protector, that then a third party, which was ready both with arms and men, when there was opportunity, might have fallen in and capitulated with swords in their hands, for the settlement of the rights and liberties of the good people: But God had otherwise determined of things; and now men began so to flatter with this tyrant, so to apostatise from all faith, honesty, religion, and English liberty, and there was such a devilish practice of trepanning grown in fashion, that it was not safe to speak to any man in those treacherous days.

After col. Hutchinson had given Fleetwood that caution, he was going into the country, when the protector sent to search him out with all the earnestness and

haste that could possibly be, and the colonel went to him; who met him in one of the galleries, and received him with open arms and the kindest embraces that could be given, and complained that the colonel should be so unkind as never to give him a visit, professing how welcome he should have been, the most welcome person in the land, and with these smooth insinuations led him along to a private place, giving him thanks for the advertisement he had received from Fleetwood, and using all his art to get out of the colonel the knowledge of the persons engaged in the conspiracy against him. But none of his cunning, nor promises, nor flatteries, could prevail with the colonel to inform him more than he thought necessary to prevent the execution of the design, which when the protector perceived, he gave him most infinite thanks for what he had told him, and acknowledged it opened to him some mysteries that had perplexed him, and agreed so with other intelligence he had, that he must owe his preservation to him: "But," says he, "dear colonel, why will you not come in and act among us?" The colonel told him plainly, because he liked not any of his ways since he broke the parliament, as being those which led to certain and unavoidable destruction, not only of themselves, but of the whole parliament party and cause, and thereupon took occasion, with his usual freedom, to tell him into what a sad hazard all things were put, and how apparent a way was made for the restitution of all former tyranny and bondage. Cromwell seemed to receive this honest plainness with the greatest affection that could be, and acknowledged his precipitateness in some things, and with tears complained how Lambert had put him upon all those violent actions, for which he now accused him and sought his ruin. He expressed an earnest desire to restore the people's liberties, and to take and pursue more safe and sober counsels, and wound up all with a very fair courtship of the colonel to engage with him, offering him any thing he would account worthy of him. The colonel told him, he could not be forward to make his own advantage, by serving to the enslaving of his country. The other told him, he intended nothing more than the restoring and confirming the liberties of the good people, in order to which he would employ such men of honour and interest as the people should rejoice, and he should not refuse to be one of them. And after, with all his arts, he had endeavoured to excuse his public actions, and to draw in the colonel; who again had taken the opportunity to tell him freely his own and all good men's discontents and dissatisfactions; he dismissed the colonel with such expressions as were publicly taken notice of by all his little courtiers then about him, when he went to the end of the gallery with the colonel, and there, embracing him, said aloud to him, "Well, colonel, satisfied or dissatisfied, you shall be one of us, for we can no longer exempt a person so able and faithful from the public service, and you shall be satisfied in all honest things." The colonel left him with that respect that became the place he was in; when immediately the same courtiers who had some of them passed him by without knowing him, when he came in, although they had been once of his familiar acquaintance, and the rest who had looked upon him with such disdainful neglect as those little people use to those who are not of their faction, now flocked about him, striving who should express most respect, and, by an extraordinary officiousness, redeem their late slightings. Some of them desired he would command their service in any business he had with their lord, and a thousand such frivolous compliments, which the colonel smiled at, and quitting himself of them as soon as he could, made haste to return into the country. There he had not long been but that he was informed, notwithstanding all these fair shows, the protector, finding him too constant to be wrought upon to serve his tyranny, had resolved to secure his person, lest he should head the people, who now grew very weary of his bondage. But though it was certainly confirmed to the colonel how much he was afraid of his honesty and freedom,

and that he was resolved not to let him longer be at liberty, yet, before his guards apprehended the colonel, death imprisoned himself, and confined all his vast ambition and all his cruel designs into the narrow compass of a grave.

THE DEATH OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

GUIZOT.

For four years, from 1654 to 1658, the family of Oliver Cromwell was visited by no misfortune; it continued to enjoy unmixed happiness and prosperity. But during the winter of 1658, death entered it with unusual severity; three months after her marriage, his daughter Frances lost her husband, Robert Rich, at the early age of twenty-three; and three months later, Mr. Rich's grandfather, the earl of Warwick, the most intimate of Cromwell's friends among the nobility, and a man who never failed to serve him with sound advice and true devotion, followed his grandson to the tomb. Cromwell felt these losses keenly; the one was premature, the other warned him of the approach of old age, and the irreparable voids which it creates. But ere many weeks had passed, he had to endure a still heavier blow. His beloved daughter, lady Claypole, had long been weak and invalid; and he had sent her to reside at Hampton Court Palace, that she might have the benefit of country air and complete tranquillity. Finding that her illness increased, he went to reside there himself, that he might watch over her with tender and constant care. She possessed,

in his mind, great and peculiar attractions; she was a person of noble and delicate sentiments, of an elegant and cultivated mind, faithful to her friends, generous to her enemies, and tenderly attached to her father, of whom she felt at once proud and anxious, and who rejoiced greatly in her affection. When fatigued, as he often was, not only by the men who surrounded him, but by his own agitated thoughts, Cromwell took pleasure in seeking repose in the society of a person so entirely a stranger to the brutal conflicts and violent actions which had occupied, and still continued to occupy, his life. But this pleasure was now changed into bitter sorrow ; the complicated internal disease of lady Claypole grew rapidly worse; she became subject to convulsion-fits, during which she gave utterance, in her father's presence, sometimes to her own cruel sufferings, and sometimes to the grief and pious anxiety which she felt regarding himself. Sitting constantly by his daughter's bedside, Cromwell had need of all his self-control to endure these painful impressions. On the 6th of August, 1658, lady Claypole died. The protector took a melancholy pleasure in surrounding his daughter's coffin with all the pomp which he could command; her body was conveyed to the painted chamber at Westminster, where it lay in state for twenty-four hours; after which it was taken to Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and solemnly interred in a special vault, among the tombs of the kings.

When lady Claypole fell ill, Cromwell himself was not in good health. Although he had successfully resisted the attacks of fever which he had suffered during his campaigns in Scotland and Ireland, his strong constitution had been shaken by them; he was subject to many painful maladies, which might at any time prove exceedingly dangerous. When he had any attack which prevented his attending to business, he grew impatient and ordered his physicians to set him right again at any At the time when lady Claypole's illness assumed a dangerous character, he was suffering from an attack of gout; while giving audience to the Dutch ambassador, Nieuport, on the 30th of July, he felt so unwell, that he broke off the interview, and adjourned the business to the following week. After the death of lady Claypole, the protector made an effort to resume his labours: he held his

cost.