all imposts, sequester those who did not pay the decimation, and commit to prison any persons whom they suspected; and there was no appeal from any of their acts, but to the Protector. In each canton he raised a body of horse and foot, who were only to be called out in cases of necessity, and then to serve a certain number of days at their own charge; if they served longer, they were to receive the same pay as the army, but they were to be under the major-general of their respective canton. A certain salary was allowed them, that of a horseman being eight pounds a year. But the advantage which he might have derived from this kind of yeomanry force (that of all other which may most reasonably be depended upon for the preservation of order), brought with it a new danger from the power of the majorsgeneral; and Cromwell removed these Bashaws in time, without difficulty, because they had made themselves odious to the nation.

He called his next parliament* with more confidence, because the war in which he had engaged against Spain had made him master of Jamaica, and two treasure-ships, with a frightful destruction of the Spaniards, had been taken. The treasure was brought in waggons from Portsmouth to London, and paraded through the city to the Tower. Most of the members took the test which he required; they passed an act binding all men to renounce Charles Stuart and his family; they declared it high treason to attempt the life of the Protector, and granted him larger supplies than had ever before been raised, one of the imposts being a full year's rent upon all houses which had been erected in and about London, from before the beginning of the troubles. Finally, they offered him the title of king, which was the great object of his ambition. The republicans, from whom he expected most danger, had been carefully excluded by management in the elections, or by the test. Vane and Harrison were in confinement, for Cromwell feared the craft of the former, and the enthusiasm of the latter, which placed him above all means of corruption or intimidation. Yet there was more opposition than he had anticipated; and one member applied to him in the House, the words of the prophet to Ahab, "Hast thou killed and also taken possession?" Lambert, who had hitherto

[* 3rd September, 1654, dissolved 31st January, 1654-5.]

forwarded all the views of Oliver, because he expected to be the next Protector himself, being the second man in the army, declared against a proposal which would have been fatal to his ambition and there were members bold enough to say, that if they must submit to the old government, they would much rather choose to obey the true and lawful heir of a long line of kings, than one who was but at best their equal, and had raised himself by the trust which they had reposed in him. Upon such opposition Cromwell would have trampled, if he had found support in his own family and nearest connexions. But his sons were without ambition. Richard, the eldest, indeed was believed to be at heart a royalist; Desborough, who had married his sister, and Fleetwood, who was his son-in-law (having married Ireton's widow), with a stupid obstinacy objected to his assuming the name of king, though they had no objection to his exercising a more absolute authority than any King of England had ever possessed. Colonel Pride, who had purged the parliament to make him what he was, procured a petition from the majority of the officers then about London, against his taking the title; and information, to which he gave full credit, was conveyed to him, that a number of men had bound themselves by oath to kill him, within so many hours after he should accept it. Under these disheartening circumstances, after a long and painful struggle with himself, and some curious discussions with the deputation of members, who were sent to urge his acceptance, he concluded by refusing it upon the plea of conscience.*

In thus yielding to men of weaker minds than his own, Cromwell committed the same error which had been fatal to Charles. The boldest course would have been the safest; the wisest friends of the royal family were of opinion, that if he had made himself king de facto, and restored all things in other respects to the former order, no other measure would have been so injurious to the royal cause. Everything except the name was given him; the power of appointing his successor in the protectorship was now conferred upon him by parliament, and the ceremony of investiture was performed for the second time, and with a pomp

[* 8th May, 1657. On the 16th December, 1653, he was installed Lord Protector, and on the 26th June, 1657, inaugurated Lord Protector. (Whitelock, p. 571 and p. 662, ed. 1732.]

which no coronation had exceeded. The Speaker presented him with a robe of purple velvet, a mixed colour, to show the mixture of justice and mercy, which he was to observe in his administration; the Bible, the book of books, in which the orator told him he had the happiness to be well versed, and which contained both precepts and examples for good government;" a sceptre, not unlike a staff, for he was to be a staff to the weak and poor; and lastly, a sword, not to defend himself alone, but his people also: "If," said the Speaker, "I might presume to fix a motto upon this sword, as the valiant Lord Talbot had upon his, it should be this: Ego sum Domini Protectoris, ad protegendum populum meum, I am the Lord Protector's, to protect my people.”

So great was the reputation which Cromwell obtained abroad by his prodigious elevation, the lofty tone of his government, and the vigour of his arms, that an Asiatic Jew is said to have come to England for the purpose of investigating his pedigree, thinking to discover in him the Lion of the tribe of Judah! Some of his own most faithful adherents regarded him with little less veneration. Their warm attachment, and the more doubtful devotion of a set of enthusiastic preachers, drugged the atmosphere in which he breathed; and yet, while his bodily health continued, the natural strength of his understanding prevailed over this deleterious influence, and he saw things calmly, clearly, and sorrowfully as they were. Shakspeare himself has not imagined a more dramatic situation than that in which Cromwell stood. He had attained to the possession of sovereign power, by means little less guilty than Macbeth, but the process had neither hardened his heart, nor made him desperate in guilt. His mind had expanded with his fortune. As he advanced in his career, he gradually discovered how mistaken he had been in the principles upon which he had set out; and, after having effected the overthrow of the church, the nobles, and the throne, he became convinced, by what experience (the surest of all teachers) had shown him, that episcopacy, nobility, and monarchy were institutions good in themselves, and necessary for this nation in which they had so long been established. Fain would he have repaired the evil which he had done; fain would he have restored the monarchy, created a House of Peers, and re-established the Episcopal church. But he was thwarted and overruled by the

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very instruments which he had hitherto used; men whom he had formerly possessed with his own passionate errors, and whom he was not able to dispossess: persons incapable of deriving wisdom from experience, and so short-sighted as not to see that their own lives and fortunes depended upon the establishment of his power by the only means which could render it stable and secure. Standing in fear of them, he dared not take the crown himself; and he could not confer it upon the rightful heir :-by the murder of Charles, he had incapacitated himself from making that reparation which would otherwise have been in his power. His wife, who was not elated with prosperity, advised him to make terms with the exiled king, and restore him to the throne; his melancholy answer was, "Charles Stuart can never forgive me his father's death; and if he could, he is unworthy of the crown.” He answered to the same effect, when the same thing was twice proposed to him, with the condition that Charles should marry one of his daughters. What would not Cromwell have given, whether he looked to this world or the next, if his hands had been clear of the king's blood!

Such was the state of Cromwell's mind during the latter years of his life, when he was lord of these three kingdoms, and indisputably the most powerful potentate in Europe, and as certainly the greatest man of an age in which the race of great men was not extinct in any country. No man was so worthy of the station which he filled, had it not been for the means by which he reached it. He would have governed constitutionally, mildly, mercifully, liberally, if he could have followed the impulses of his own heart, and the wishes of his better mind; self-preservation compelled him to a severe and suspicious system: he was reduced at last to govern without a Parliament, because, pack them and purge them as he might, all that he summoned proved unmanageable; and because he was an usurper, he became of necessity a despot. The very saints, in whose eyes he had been so precious, now called him an "ugly tyrant," and engaged against him in more desperate plots than were formed by the royalists. He lived in perpetual danger and in perpetual fear. When he went abroad he was surrounded by his guards. It was never known which way he was going till he was in the coach; he seldom returned by the same

way he went; he wore armour under his clothes, and hardly ever slept two nights successively in one chamber. The latter days of Charles, while he looked on to the scaffold, and endured the insolence of Bradshaw and the inhuman aspersions of Cook, were enviable when compared to the close of Cromwell's life. Charles had that peace within which passeth all understanding; the one great sin which he had committed in sacrificing Strafford had been to him a perpetual cause of sorrow and shame and repentance; he received his own death as a just punishment for that sin under the dispensations of a righteous and unerring Providence; and feeling that it had been expiated, when he bowed his head upon the block, it was in full reliance upon the justice of posterity, and with a sure and certain trust in the mercy of his God. Cromwell had doubts of both. Ludlow tells us, that at his death "he seemed, above all, concerned for the reproaches, he said, men would cast upon his name, in trampling on his ashes when dead!" And the last sane feeling of religion which he expressed implied a like misgiving, concerning his condition in the world on which he was about to enter—it was a question to one of his fanatical preachers,* "if the doctrine were true, that the elect could never finally fall?" Upon receiving a reply, that nothing could be more certain, "Then am I safe," he said, "for I am sure that once I was in a state of grace." The spiritual drams which were then administered to him in strong doses, acted powerfully upon a mind debilitated by long disease, and disposed by the nature of that disease to delirium. He assured his physicians, as the presumptuous fanatics by whom he was surrounded assured him, that he should not die, whatever they might think from the symptoms of his disorder, for God was far above nature, and God had promised his recovery. Thanks were publicly given for the undoubted pledges of his recovery, which God had vouchsafed! and some of his last words were those of a mediator rather than a sinner, praying for the people, as if his own merits entitled him to be an intercessor. Even his death did not dissipate the delusion. When that news was brought to those who were met together to pray for him, "Mr. Sterry stood up and desired them not to be troubled: for," said he, "this is good news! because, if he was of great use to

[* John Goodwin.]