340 
OLIVER CROMWELL. 
sacred a relation to him as that of his sovereign, cannot be excused. 
During the last scenes of the king’s life, he talked jestingly, and acted 
buffoonery ; and this, too, when he was confessing himself guided by 
Providence ; and with a hypocritical countenance lamented the situa- 
tion of him whose miserable fate he was fixing. 
While the trial of the king was carrying on, he laughed and jeered 
in the court of wards; and even in the solemn act of signing the war- 
rant for his majesty’s execution, he marked the face of one of his 
eonipanions with his pen, — who returned the compliment. 
it is likewise a well-known fact, that he went to feast his eyes upon 
the murdered king; and it is said that he put his finger to the neck, 
to feel if the head was entirely severed. On viewing the inside of 
the body, he observed bow sound it was, and hovV well made for lon- 
gevity. And yet, notwithstanding these unequivocal marks of satis- 
faction at the tragical steps that had been taken, he mocked his Ma- 
ker, both before and during the trial and execution, with hypocritical 
prayers on his sovereign’s behalf, and was often seen to shed tears for 
his unhappy situation and death. The artful manner by which, after 
Charles's catastrophe, he drove his masters 'and employers (the parlia- 
ment) from the sovereignty, and stepped into it himself, is too well known 
to need a repetition here. He accomplished the latter with the same 
consummate art and resolution with which he had brought about the 
former ; and on the 12fch of December, T653, he was elected the supreme 
head of the British empire, by the style and title oi Lord Protector. 
His first inauguration into the protectorate took place in the court 
of chancery at Westminster, on the Ibth of the same month, in the 
jiresence of the lords commissioners of the great seal of England, 
the barons of the exchequer, and the judges, the council of the com- 
monwealth, the lord mayor, aldermen, and recorder of the city of 
London, and many of the chief officers of the army. And a few days 
after, a second and more solemn investiture was performed in West- 
minster-ball, where scaffoldings were erected for the purpose, and at 
the upper end of which a chair and canopy of state were set. As a 
part of the ceremony, Oliver was presented by the speakers, in the 
name of the parliament, with a robe of purple velvet, a bible, a sceptre, 
and a sword ; and the oath being taken, the heralds, by sound of 
trumpet, proclaimed his highness, Protector of England, Scotland, 
and Ireland, together with the dominions thereunto belonging, requir- 
ing all persons to viold him due obedience. 
That he governed the nation, for the few years be was at the head 
of it, with an ability that wanted only legality to entitle it to the 
highest encomiums, must be allowed even by those who are most pre- 
judiced against him. He not only procured the British name honour 
throughout the world, but in his domestic administration ruled 
with as much disinterestedness as was consistent with his own safety 
and the temper of the times. 
The methods made use of both by the king of France and the king 
of Spain, to win the friendship of Cromwell, were beyond description 
humiliating. His very name was terrible to them. It is said, that he 
obliged the haughty Lewis XIV. on executing a treaty, to sign his 
name after his. He would not receive the title of Cousin from that 
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