OLIVER CROMWELL. 
33^ 
No presages of the future greatness of our hero marked his birth j 
at least none have been handed down to us. An incident that threat-- 
ehed to put an early period to that existence which teemed with so much 
hiingled glory and infamy, must not, however, be omitted. While he vvas 
yet an infant, being at Hinchen brook, the* residence of his grandfather 
Sir Henry Cromwell, a monkey, which was suffered to go loose, took 
him from the cradle, and ran with him to the leads of the house, where 
he stood exhibiting all the imitative tricks of his species. The family, 
greatly alarmed for the safety of the child, ran with beds, blankets, 
&c. to the spot on which he was expected to tumble from the arms of 
his inexperienced nurse, in order to break the fall; but the sagacious 
animal, to the great joy of the anxious beholders, brought young Oliver 
down, with the same care and circumspection that he had conveyed 
him to the dangerous eminence. Whether this instance may be con- 
strued into an ominous token of his future exaltation, and of the ma- 
nifold anxieties and hazards that jireeminence was attended with, is 
left to the opinion of the reader ; as likewise are the following tradi- 
tions, which are said not to want credible authentications. 
Hinchenbrook, at that time the seat of Sir Oliver Cromwell, as 
being near Huntingdon, was generally one of the resting places of 
any excursions of the royal family into the north. When Charles I. 
then duke of York, was on his journey from Scotland to Loudon, 
in the year 1604, he called at that place.. The knight, to divert the 
young prince, sent for his nephew Oliver, that he, in addition to his 
own sons, might play with his royal highness. But they had not been 
long together, before Charles and Oliver disagreed ; and the former 
being weakly, and the latter strong, the royal visitant was worsted. 
Even at this early age, Oliver so little regarded dignity, that he made 
the blood flow in copious streams from the prince’s nose. When the 
civil wars afterwards commenced, and Oliver began to grow conspicu- 
ous, this circumstance was considered as no very favourable presage for 
the king. 
Oliver likewise used to aver, that as he lay one night awake, a 
gigantic figure opened the curtains of his bed, and told him that he 
should be the greatest person in the kingdom. The word ‘‘ king” was 
not mentioned ; but from a part of the subsequent conduct and ex- 
pectation of Oliver, it may be supposed that he concluded the expres- 
sion made use of to convey that idea. Upon his repeating it in the 
morning, he was severely chastised by his schoolmaster, at the par- 
ticular request of his father. And though he was told it was traitor- 
ous to relate it, yet he could not be prevented from frequently repeat- 
ing it, and often, after he had arrived at the height of his glory, he 
spoke of it as a fact, and noticed the accomplishment of it. Bui 
to return. 
Oliver’s father, who appears to have been a gentleman of good 
sense and competent learning, placed him at the free grammar school 
of Huntingdon, where the proficiency he made in his scholastic stu- 
dies has been a matter of dispute : by som.e it is said to have been 
very considerable; by others it has been no less decried; but from his 
speeches, and from other instances where he had occasion to exhibit 
proofs of his learning, nothing more than mediocrity is observable. In 
