By his stern but just rule he restored peace to the stricken country, and made England respected again by her foreign neighbours. Men did not love his rule, but they accepted it, because it brought about the order they desired. But his life was a hard one, and the difficulties only increased with time, for there were some questions which could not be settled by military methods, and his success depended too much on his own personal abilities.

On June 26th, 1657, Cromwell was for the second time installed as Lord Protector, this time not only as the nominee of the army. The ceremony was in Westminster Abbey, and partook somewhat of the solemnity of a coronation: the Speaker hung over his shoulders an ermine-lined robe of purple velvet, and placed in his hands a golden sceptre, a sword was girded at his side, and a Bible presented to him. But his reign of toil and triumph was nearing its close.

His health had suffered for some time from the unceasing strain of such a life, and his increasing difficulties with Parliament aggravated the attacks of fever or ague from which he suffered. He was far too clear-sighted not to know how much his rule had depended on his own force of character, and how little of it would remain when he was gone.

E

His love for his country was his deepest feeling, and he struggled for her sake against his increasing weakness, just as for her sake he had fought all other foes.

On the 6th of August, 1658, he lost his dearlyloved daughter, Mrs. Claypole, and was much broken down with sorrow at the blow.

The attacks of fever recurred. The Quaker Fox, who met him riding at the head of his body-guard in Hampton Court Park, declared: "Before I came to him I felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead man."

He wanted to live, and to the last he tried to dispute the verdict of the physicians; but he had met the one enemy against whom he had no power.

It was to the Palace of Whitehall that they brought him, thinking the change might do him good, and it was there that his mighty spirit wrestled for days in prayer with the God whom he had faithfully served throughout the fifty-nine years of his life. "For God's cause," and "God's people," he prayed continually; it was not of himself he thought at the last, not of his wife or children, but of the people for whom his strength had been spent. "Thou hast made me, though very

unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good and Thee service. . . . Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love, and go on to deliver them. ... Teach those who look too much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself.. And pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a good night if it be Thy pleasure."

Within the palace the stricken household waited for the end, while without a terrible storm raged; the lightning playing on the darkened windows, and the thunder at times drowned by its crashes the feeble voice of the dying man.

So fierce a storm had hardly been known in England; trees fell, and houses had their very roofs torn from them. And while the Puritans prayed in awestruck sorrow for the great spirit in its passing hour, the mocking Royalists declared that the "devil had come to fetch his own."

But neither prayers nor gibes were heeded by the dying patriot in his lonely death-strugglelonely, though in the midst of his family, for none could share feelings such as his.

The storm passed, and he lay quiet, breathing faint words of prayer to the last. "I would be

willing," he said, "to live to be further serviceable to God and His people, but my work is done." And so he died, in the afternoon of September 3rd, the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester.

Clarendon has called him a "brave bad man." Carlyle says of him he was "not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truths"; and of his own life he said, with the same simplicity with which he prayed at the end for a "good night," "I have been called to several employments in this nation, and I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man to God and His people's interest."

CHAPTER III

THE CAVALIERS: PRINCE RUPERT, MONTROSE,

AND GORING

AROUND the name of Cavalier lingers much of the spirit of Romance-that spirit which in earlier days breathed in the actions of Percival and Galahad and their brethren of the Table Round; the spirit of chivalry, reverence, and loyalty, which was characteristic of the gallant Englishmen who fought the dying cause of absolute monarchy under Charles I.

With such a king the failure of their immediate object was inevitable, but not the death of the ideals for which they fought.

Each side felt Heaven above it, but the Cavaliers had the easier part, for they went out in simple loyalty to give themselves and all they had for "King and Faith" with the unreasoning fidelity of the sailor Grenville; while the Puritans stood grim and stern, in the strength of newly awakened views, to wrest, if possible, the much-abused power from the hands of their lawful king.

Of the Cavaliers Macaulay writes that they