: ORIC SKETCHES. 





itself in the ponton of hi* own king, by 1 u to a public 



.i i l- :i..i.- . I.-- u.. u. : .- in m who had overcome all 

 il r.-l>els against hia owu authority, and Mated 



lirnily on th tlirone of king* (baring beon originally bat 

 ry i^ntl.-m i-i> i hon 'h he had refused, and refused reso- 

 lutely, the name and omblotns of royalty. 



:inl .if S.-pt -mber, the day Cromwell was wont to 

 cull liU f..rtimut" .1 iv. i i.i .L :!nl of September he overcame tho 



army lit I "an! . ir. w 1 ion, looking at the position of his army 



in a military point of vi.>w, ho was committed to certain destrno- 



tiou at ili.-ir h:iu. Is ; on a 3rd of September be had fought tho 



i \V<>rivsti-r, the Ix>rd'B orowning mercy to him," an he 



it, when the royalist cause was lout in Midland, HO long as 

 1 1.1 move a regiment or man a ship. His wife and 



mis hopod much from this rinMimstanro, that the worst of 



. <<r soomod to oomo upon him on this his fortunate day. 



Fortunate imlf<l if ho ooaldNllM i his own case the assertion 



of tli.' wise kintf, that tho day of one's death is bettor than tho 



dny of hi birtli ; fortunate too, still, if ho could feol that death 



. th" "iitranoe into life, the outlet from a world of which, 

 and of the people and things in which, he was heartily tired and 

 . -. by which, and by which only, ho could enter 

 into rest. 



In this last sense surely tho 3rd of September was still Crom- 

 well's fortunate day, for if ever a man was weary of life and 

 anxious to be quit of the cares of it, Cromwell must have been 

 that man. 



Whether he was to be blamed or not for tho part ho had taken 

 in the recent troubles whether ho was the murderer of the 

 kin _'. or whether in putting him to death he had done but a 

 solemn act of justice tho result to him was tho same: tho 

 weight of the government pressed heavily upon his shoulders, 

 and ho found at the end of ten years that all he had for the 

 labour which he hod taken under tho sun was vanity and vexa- 

 tion of spirit. Fatigue of body and mind, continuous and severe, 

 occasioned by causes acting from without, wore supplemented 

 latterly by a spring of bitterness welling up within, sapping the 

 strong man's energy, gnawing away at the very vitals of his 

 strength, overwhelming him with a dreadful sense of responsi- 

 bility and fear lest ho had striven in vain and in the wrong 

 direction. Once he had felt no hesitation about what he should 

 do, and believed that his decision was an inspiration direct from 

 the Spirit of the Almighty ; now he doubted whether all things 

 were lawful or expedient unto him. Once he had felt no difficulty 

 in telling his troopers, by way of assurance against their fears 

 as to the propriety of offering personal violence to the king, " If 

 I should meet tho king in battle, I would shoot the king;" now 

 he was uneasy in his mind when oven his favourite daughter, 

 Mrs. Claypole, suggested to him doubts as to tho integrity of his 

 conduct in the sight of God. Even his old friends, the men who 

 had stood by him through good report and evil until his genius 

 eclipsed them and turned them into rivals and opponents, these 

 too had forsaken him, and left him alone in the state like a lodge 

 in a garden of cucumbers. Then ho found how, without being 

 bitter, a man's household may be among his foes. His mother, 

 a homely woman, quite incapable of realising tho magnitude and 

 the difficulties of her son's position, disquieted him in return for 

 his filial devotion to her with the expression of her convictions 

 that they and tho liko of them had no business in tho royal 

 palaces. His children were incapable, excepting perhaps Henry, 

 of appreciating his statesmanship and his motives, and were 

 therefore divided from him by a great gulf of want of sympathy ; 

 while some of them, if tho accounts of those times are to be 

 trusted, actually reproached him for what he had done for the 

 country. On one side, a numerous and implacable enemy, burn- 

 ing with desire to revenge the unpardonable death of " the royal 

 martyr," and the losses they hod incurred in his behalf on 

 another side, a formidable array of enemies who had once been 

 frii'iids and associates ; tho hatred of foreign nations, only kej>t 

 from finding expression by the fear inspired by his sword ; chronic 

 rebellion at home ; within the camp lukewarm allies, ready to 

 fall away liko water as soon as they should " perceive the least 

 rub in his fortunes ;" his own kith and kin not with him, and 

 uneasy in his own mind about grace and acceptance ; doubtful, 

 too, as has been said, whether or not he had striven in vain for 

 tho ultimate good of his country what comfort could he have 

 in livin<,' 'i Ho iv.is alone, and he felt it keanly ; tho still strong 

 man felt the need of somo sympathy, some didder of cores with 



whom he ooold reliore himself of the grot burden of pabiio and 

 private oar* which came upon him daily in the ningnlarly excep- 

 tional position in which he found himself placed. AM age 

 increased he suffered more and more from the chilling wind of 

 isolation, and teemed to yearn after that rent which the weary 

 lore. Yet the j. y within him, the duty which ho 



believed he was called to discharge in England, itrove to prevent 

 his wih to depart ; ho saw his work all unfinished, and he knew 

 that he bad no fit HUOOOMOT ; ha believed ome nay affected to 

 boliove that hU work was God's work, and ho wUbed to do it 

 to the utmost of hi* power. For duty's sake and religion'*, and 

 because it was " God's high gift," be guarded bis lift- 

 scathe and wrong," and his hold on life WM not a little treugUt- 

 enod by tho natural dread a man has of loosening it through 

 sudden violence and deadly malice. Snob a dread bad Cromwell 

 for a companion, in addition to hi* load of carking cares and 

 weighty trouble*. Plots to assassinate him were continually 

 being made, and were only baffled by tho most watchful energy 

 and the most exemplary punishments. The knowledge of their 

 existence, and tho consciousness that at any moment he might 

 fall a victim, contributed to make a man whose mind was 

 already overladen, a man who had a religious or superstitious 

 dread of being sent to his account suddenly, " disappointed, 

 unaneled," without any reckoning made, excitable and nerrous 

 to an almost unbearable deyree. 



In August, 1658, he was at Hampton Court Palace, watching 

 tho sure progress of disease in the body of his best beloved 

 child, Elizabeth Claypole. He was, and had been for some time, 

 for from well, but the absorbing attraction* of hi* daughter's 

 state made him oblivious or indifferent to his own ills. On the 

 6th of August the strongest link of affection that bound him to 

 the world was snapped ; Elizabeth Claypole died, and then the 

 Protector found out, what other men had known long fince, 

 that ho was very ill. For a time he distracted himself by 

 the sad cares of the last offices for his daughter, whom he 

 caused to bo buried with imperial pomp among kings and 

 queens in Westminster Abbey ; but this done he had leisure to 

 find out that ho was mortal. At the moment of his daughter's 

 death he was confined to his bed with gout, and upon that fever 

 supervened. His pulse became intermittent, but bis physicians 

 did not seem to be anxious, and he, on his wife expressing her 

 fears as to the issue of his illness, bode her be sure he should 

 not die, since he knew he should not " from better authority 

 than any which yon can have from Galon 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." 



For sake of the change ho had moved from Hampton Court 

 to Whitehall, where he llook to his bed, and within a month of 

 his daughter's decease ho had followed her to her long home. 

 Thurloo, his faithful secretary and most devoted friend, 

 announced the event to the Deputy of Ireland in a letter 

 wherein ho said of Cromwell, " He is gone to heaven, embalmed 

 with the tears of his people, and upon the wings of the prayers 

 of the saints." 



With a magnificent ceremonial, copied from that which was 

 used at tho funeral of the Spanish King Philip II., in 1598, the 

 Republican Government laid the body of Oliver Cromwell in 

 Westminster Abbey, where it remained with those of prince* and 

 senators till the restoration of the monarchy, when the spirit of 

 revenge wreaked itself on the corpse of the spoiler of kings by 

 causing it to be exposed on the gallows at Tyburn, and then buried 

 in a hole liko the carcase of a dog. To Cromwell himself it could 

 scarcely have mattered much whore they laid his body or what 

 they did with it after he had done with it ; the splendid funeral 

 at St. Peter's was as little in accordance with liis habit* and 

 ways as the ignominious barbarity at Tyburn. He was beyond 

 the reach of honour and dishonour, insensible to flattery as to 

 blame ; but to those who remained these two ceremonial* sig- 

 nified something. What had Cromwell done that gave signifi- 

 cance to them ? 



In order to answer this question it is necessary to take a 

 survey of the life of the man, as the history of it is presented to 

 us in the records of his time, and by the light of dispassionate, 

 truth-seeking inquiry instituted since then. 



Oliver Cromwell was born on April 25, 15J>9, at Hunting- 

 don, and was the son of a country gentleman of moderate 

 estate, who was of the same family as that Thomas Cromwell, 



