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CKOMWELL 



victories gained by his fleet under Blake over the 

 Spaniards brought him at once glory and treasure. 

 His troops, with those of France, won the battle of 

 the Dunes, and he obtained Dunkirk as his share 

 of the spoil. He sedulously fostered British com- 

 merce, and by the hand of Blake chastised the 

 pirate-states of Barbary. His boast that he would 

 make the name of Englishman as respected as that 

 of Roman had been, was, so long as he reigried, 

 fulfilled ; and his bitterest enemies could not deny 

 the impression which he had made on the world, or 

 the height to which he had raised his country. 

 His court was simple and frugal, yet dignified ; and 

 though there was a strain of coarseness in his 

 character (as illustrated in occasional horseplay), 

 his bearing in public upheld the majesty of the 

 state. 



Cromwell had always been a most loving husband 

 and father, and the palace of the Protector was a 

 virtuous English home. His speeches are very 

 rough and unmethodical as compositions, but they 

 are marked by sense, force, and intensity of pur- 

 pose. He was fond of music, and not without 

 regard for art. It seems that his government Ayas 

 striking root, since people of rank were beginning 

 to ally themselves with it, and his heir succeeded 

 without the slightest opposition. But disease and 

 care, together with grief at the death of his 

 favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, cut short his 

 life. He died September 3, 1658, and the fabric of 

 government which his mighty arm had sustained 

 fell speedily to the ground. 



The records of Cromwell's life are very imper- 

 fect. Of his greatness as a soldier and states- 

 man there can be no question, but it is difficult 

 across two centuries and a half to see into his 

 heart and pronounce how far ambition mingled 

 with higher motives. That the religious enthusiasm 

 which sent him out to expose his life in war at the 

 age of forty-three was sincere cannot be doubted ; 

 but religious enthusiasm is often associated with 

 fanaticism and self-deception. One who knew 

 Cromwell well has described him as ' in body com- 

 pact and strong, about five feet ten in height, with 

 a head which you might see was a vast treasury 

 of natural parts, with a temper exceeding fiery but 

 under strong moral restraint, and compassionate 

 even to an effeminate measure. ' ' A larger soul, I 

 think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than 

 his was.' He was laid with great pomp in 

 the tomb of the kings at Westminster, but after 

 the Restoration his body was exposed on the gibbet 

 at Tyburn and afterwards buried under it. 



See Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of 

 Cromwell (1787) ; Cromwell, Life of O. Cromwell and his 

 Sons ( 1820 ) ; Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches 

 (1846) ; Sanford, Studies of the Great Rebellion (1853) ; 

 Gold win Smith, Three Enr/lixh Statesmen ( 1867 ) ; Jas. 

 Waylen, The House of Cromwell ( 1892 ) ; books on the 

 Protector by F. Harrison (1888), R. F. D. Palgrave 

 (1890), S. H. Church (1894), Horton (1897), S. R. 

 Gardiner ( 1897 and 1899), Baldock (1899), and Paterson 

 (1899); and works cited at CHARLES I. and II. 



Cromwell, RICHARD, third son of Oliver, was 

 born October 4, 1626. By the deaths of his two 

 elder brothers, Robert and Oliver, he became his 

 father's heir. He was an amiable and popular but 

 weak man devoted to field-sports and fond of 

 pleasure. He lived for some time in com- 

 parative privacy, but when the Protector had been 

 empowered to nominate his successor, Richard was 

 brought to the front, and an effort was made to 

 train him to the work of government, but in vain. 

 Scarcely had he entered on his office, when the 

 forces of anarchy, both parliamentary and military, 

 broke loose, and he found himself utterly unable to 

 restrain them. It was probably with little reluc- 

 tance that he quitted Whitehall and retired into 



private life. After the Restoration he lived for a 

 time abroad under a feigned name ; but he returned 

 to England about 1680, and passed the remainder 

 of his life at Cheshunt, where he died July 12, 

 1712, and was buried in the church at Hursley, 

 Hampshire. 



Cromwell, THOMAS (malleus monachorum, 

 'the hammer of the monks'), was born about 

 1485, the son of a Putney blacksmith, cloth- 

 shearer, brewer, and innkeeper. His youth was 

 turbulent and adventurous. During eight or nine 

 years passed on the Continent (1504-12), he seems 

 to have served as a common soldier, to have been 

 befriended at Florence by Frescobaldi the banker, 

 to have acted as clerk at Antwerp and to a Vene- 

 tian merchant, to have visited Rome, and to have 

 traded on his own account at Middelburg. Any- 

 how, by 1513 he was back in England and married ; 

 there, step by step, he rose to wealth and import- 

 ance as a wool-stapler and a scrivener, half usurer, 

 half lawyer, having originally been bred to the law. 

 Wolsey employed him as early as 1514 ; through 

 Wolsey, probably, he got into parliament (1523); 

 he was Wolsey's chief agent in the unpopular work 

 of suppressing certain smaller monasteries for the 

 endowment of his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford 

 (1525); and finally he became his factotum and 

 secretary. He stepped to greatness over his fallen 

 master. Cavendish tells how on All-Hallows Day, 

 1529, he found 'Master Cromwell saying of Our 

 Lady matins which had been since a very strange 

 sight in him ' and bewailing his own misadven- 

 ture, but intending to ride from Esher to the court, 

 'where,' quoth he, 'I will either make or mar.' 

 And Pole tells how, a few months earlier, Cromwell 

 bade him take Machiavelli for his guide. Both 

 stories illustrate the very man. 



He was cheaply faithful to the cardinal, aiding 

 him not only by quick-witted advice, and by plead- 

 ing his cause in parliament, but even with 5 out 

 of liis own savings. Withal, he made himself friends 

 of Wolsey's enemies ; and his fidelity ingratiated 

 him with Henry VIII. Him Cromwell promised 

 to make the richest king ever in England, and coun- 

 selled him to cut the knot of the divorce by declar- 

 ing himself supreme head of the church. Counsel 

 and promise were carried into effect by the Act of 

 Supremacy (1534) and by the dissolution of the 

 monasteries ( 1536-39). To abolish papal authority, 

 break the power of the church, humble the nobility, 

 and make the king absolute, were Cromwell's aims ; 

 in their accomplishment he stuck at nothing. At 

 heart, it would seem, still a Catholic for so late as 

 1535 he bequeathed 46 for a priest to sing mass for 

 his soul he yet did his utmost to Protestantise the 

 English Church, whose 'polity,' in the words of 

 Mr Froude. Cromwell's admirer, ' remains as it was 

 left by its creator.' It is often hard to determine 

 whether he was tool or instigator, to dissever his 

 actions from those of Henry ; both must be treated 

 under Henry's reign. But here may be noticed his 

 winning manners and ungraceful person, his venal- 

 ity and profusion, his purposeful ruthlessness and 

 ubiquitous industry, his army of spies and vast 

 correspondence above all, the fact that that 

 English 'Terror,' in which perished More and 

 Fisher and hundreds of lowlier victims, set in with 

 Cromwell's rise, and ebbed with Cromwell's fall. 

 Among the posts and honours showered on him 

 were those of privy-councillor ( 1531 ), chancellor of 

 the exchequer (1533), secretary of state and master 

 of the rolls (1534), vicar-general (1535), lord privy 

 seal and Baron Cromwell of Oakham (1536), knight 

 of the Garter and dean of Wells ( 1537 ), lord great 

 chamberlain ( Io39), and finally, on 17th April 1540, 

 Earl of Essex. 'He had,' says Professor Brewer, 

 ' engrossed in his oAvn hands powers such as no 

 subject and no sovereign in this country had ever 



