OLIVER CROMWELL : 
 
 AN 
 
 Historical Romance. 
 
 EDITED 
 
 BY HORACE SMITH, ESQ. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "BRAMBLETYE HOUSE." 
 
 Yet is the tale, true though it be, as strange 
 As full, methink., of wild and wondrous change 
 As any that the wandering tribes require 
 Stretched in the desert round their evening fire 
 As any sung- of old in hall or bjwer 
 To minstrel-harps at midnight s witching h.ur. 
 
 ROGERS s Poems. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, 
 
 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 1840. 
 
WHITING, BEAVFOKT HOUSE, STRAND. 
 
THE 
 
 EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 IT is no slight evidence of the superior im 
 portance attached to the life and times of 
 Cromwell, that while most of our legitimate 
 sovereigns are allowed to repose quietly in their 
 coffins, undisturbed by any other inquest than 
 that of the general historian^ the Lord Protector 
 is constantly finding new and special bio 
 graphers : and it is not less honourable to the 
 character of that illustrious man, than to the 
 candour of his recent chroniclers, that they 
 nearly all concur in vindicating his just fame? 
 by removing some portion of the unmeasured 
 calumny and wrong which party rancour and 
 religious intolerance had combined to heap upon 
 his memory. Dr. Vaughan s " Protectorate" 
 had hardly issued from the press when Mr. 
 Forster s work* was announced, almost simul- 
 
 * Oliver Cromwell. Lives of eminent British Statesmen, 
 Vol. VI., of which there is an elaborate and vigorously written no 
 tice in the London and Westminster Review for October, 1839- 
 
 204 
 
vi THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 conjure up a prophesying phantasm is probable 
 enough ; and, indeed, Mr. Forster has adduced 
 abundant evidence to prove that in his boyhood 
 he was subject to morbid hypochondriacal pa 
 roxysms, which savoured of temporary halluci 
 nation. But it is not probable, if both " fate 
 and metaphysical aid" had thus conspired to 
 " have him crowned withal/* that he should 
 have remained a mere plodding country-gentle 
 man until his fortieth year, without a single 
 attempt to realize this stimulating prediction, 
 had he been naturally of an ambitious tempera 
 ment. In the most excitable period of life, and 
 when the country was already agitated by the 
 commencement of those fierce struggles between 
 the King and the Parliament which speedily 
 burst into civil war, we find Cromwell proposing 
 to withdraw from the approaching conflict by 
 emigrating to America, a resolution hardly 
 reconcileable either with the tale of the supposed 
 vision, or the charge of an ungovernable desire 
 of personal aggrandizement. Had there been 
 any seeds of this passion in his earlier mind, 
 must they not have germinated and borne fruit 
 under circumstances so favourable to their 
 growth ? Instead of assigning the actions of 
 men to their innate propensities, it would per- 
 
THE EDITOR S PREFACE. vi 
 
 haps be more philosophical to affirm, as a general 
 proposition, that characters are rather created 
 than developed by circumstances ; a view of 
 human faculties and impulses which will explain 
 many of the seeming contradictions in the op 
 posite aspects of Cromwell, at different periods 
 of his life. Of these external influences the 
 importance, as to results, will of course be com 
 mensurate with the power and aptitude of the 
 mind upon which they operate, and we may 
 fairly estimate the superiority of Cromwell s 
 intellect by the skill and courage with which he 
 seized upon opportunities, however unexpected ? 
 and moulded them to the lofty purposes which 
 they suggested, and almost called upon him to 
 execute. The civil war gave him rapid promo 
 tion in the army promotion led him to qualify 
 himself for higher command ; his first victory 
 inspired confidence ; confidence ensured suc 
 cess; and thus the country-gentleman, whose 
 primary exertions in parliament bore reference 
 to the draining of the Cambridge fens, eventu 
 ally became Lord Protector. 
 
 Ambition seems to have been the result rather 
 than the cause of his elevation ; and when once 
 exerted, it found its gratification in the aggran 
 dizement of his country rather than of himself; 
 
viii THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 in the realization of his patriotic boast that he 
 would cause the name of a Briton to be as much 
 respected throughout the world as ever was that 
 of an antique Roman; in raising England from 
 the prostration and contempt in which he found 
 her, and into which she so quickly relapsed after 
 his death, to a condition of greater power and 
 dignity than she had ever attained under the 
 most fortunate of her lawful sovereigns ; and 
 above all, in enforcing religious toleration, a 
 lofty object, of which, notwithstanding the great 
 peril of its maintenance, in an age of sectarian 
 bigotry, he was ever the steady and uncom 
 promising champion. If this be an inordinate 
 ambition, where shall we look for a patriotism 
 sufficiently pure and restricted to merit our 
 unqualified applause ? 
 
 To the charge of consummate hypocrisy it is 
 more difficult to provide an answer, since it is 
 one which (in religious matters at least) does 
 not easily admit either of proof or refutation. 
 If we admit him to have been sincerely and 
 deeply inspired with spiritual enthusiasm, at the 
 outset of his career (and this will hardly be 
 denied), who shall fix the exact point, if indeed 
 it ever occurred, when he ceased to deceive 
 himself and began to deceive others ? Illusion 
 
IX 
 
 often lapses into dissimulation, and not infre 
 quently the process is removed, while the 
 parties themselves remain totally unconscious 
 of the interchange. How then shall others 
 penetrate these inscrutable workings of the 
 human mind ? Cromwell s advancement to su 
 preme power in England, and to permanent 
 influence as an European sovereign, assumed 
 so much the appearance of a miracle, that it 
 might well confirm him in the belief of his 
 being a chosen instrument of the Lord, and 
 might thus preserve to the last, in all their 
 ardour, sanctity, and integrity, those devout 
 convictions which, having been imbibed in boy 
 hood, seem to have " grown with his growth, 
 and strengthened with his strength." 
 
 From political hypocrisy we shall not attempt 
 to defend him further than by inquiring what 
 king or statesman, either before the days of 
 Machiavel, or since, has ever scrupled to employ 
 finesse in the exercise of his craft ? tf such men 
 be justified in concealing their real purposes and 
 effecting false ones, why should we condemn the 
 use of similar weapons in the Lord Protector, 
 assailed as he was on all sides by the machina 
 tions and manoeuvres of many furious factions, 
 and exposed to ever-recurring treasons, strata- 
 
x THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 gems, and plots against his authority and his 
 life? To open evidences he had invariably op 
 posed the courage of the lion : against secret 
 foes he had no other defence than by recurring 
 to the cunning of the serpent. As a general 
 position it may safely be affirmed, that whenever 
 he was driven to measures of a severe and des 
 potic nature, or descended to the practice of 
 artifice and duplicity, it was against his better 
 nature, and under the coercion of a stern ne 
 cessity, which rendered such courses absolutely 
 necessary to his self-preservation. Dr. Vaughan 
 has quoted part of an article from the twenty- 
 fifth volume of the Quarterly Review, which 
 concurs in these sentiments, and which deserves 
 every eulogy for the candid and generous spirit 
 in which it is written. 
 
 These preliminary remarks have been deemed 
 necessary, because the reader who may have 
 derived his opinions from the pages of Hume 
 and similar partisans, may perhaps be startled 
 at the exalted character ascribed to Cromwell in 
 the following work. To the editor it appears 
 that the novelist s privilege of embellishment has 
 not been abused, even for his historical hero ; 
 his defects, his delusions, his deathbed re 
 morse, are stated as frankly and fully as his 
 
THE EDITOR S PREFACE. xi 
 
 great actions; arid though his portrait be un 
 doubtedly drawn by a friendly hand, no com 
 petent judge will deny that it presents, upon 
 the whole, a faithful and a striking likeness, 
 executed by an artist of no common powers. 
 
 It may be thought, too, by some, that the un 
 fortunate Monarch and his Queen are painted in 
 darker colours than they deserve ; a charitable 
 conclusion which history and truth will hardly 
 warrant. After making all due allowance for 
 the despotic principles in which Charles had 
 been educated, for the sinister influence of his 
 queen, and the evil counsels of headstrong and 
 incompetent advisers, misfortunes which go far 
 to explain, if they cannot extenuate his misdeeds, 
 enough will remain to convict him substantially* 
 if not literally, of every thing laid to his charge 
 in the ensuing pages. Not until after repeated 
 and flagrant confirmations of utter faithless 
 ness was Cromwell driven to assert in the House 
 of Commons, that "the King was a very able 
 man, but whithalagreat dissembler ; one in whom 
 no trust could be reposed, and with whom, there 
 fore, they ought to have nothing to do for the 
 future/ 5 For the groundwork of the inter 
 cepted letter in the novel, wherein the King 
 boasts of his trickery with Ireton and Cromwell, 
 and expresses a hope that instead of a silken 
 
xii THE EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 garter, he shall live to fit them with a hempen 
 rope, there is the authority of Roger Coke ; 
 whom Hume, however, calls "a very foolish and 
 passionate historian, totally unworthy of credit." 1 
 The circumstances attending the seizure of the 
 letter in question, seem to have been taken, with 
 very little embellishment from Lord Broghill s 
 memoirs. 
 
 The fictitious characters introduced are few 
 in number, and generally kept subordinate to 
 the historical personages, a proof of the author s 
 good judgment; for the times were so stirring, the 
 public events so startling, not to say romantic, 
 the great drama of reality so absorbing in its 
 interest, that the brightest creations of fancy 
 must have "paled their ineffectual fire" before 
 the dazzling, though sometimes baleful and omi 
 nous splendours of actual life. 
 
 In closing these prefatory remarks, the editor 
 may perhaps be allowed to express his belief 
 that the work which they introduce to public 
 notice is destined to take a high place among 
 the class to which it belongs; and that few 
 readers can rise from its perusal, without pro 
 nouncing it to be an interesting, manly, and 
 vigorous production. 
 
 H. S. 
 
 BRIGHTON, August, 1840. 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 Not to the embattled field 
 Shall the achievements of the peaceful gown, 
 
 The green immortal crown 
 Of valour, or the songs of conquest yield. 
 
 Not Fairfax wildly bold, 
 While bare of crest he hewed his fatal way 
 
 Through Naseby s firm array, 
 To heavier dangers did his breast oppose 
 
 Than PynTs free virtue chose 
 When the proud force of Strafford he controlled. 
 
 AKENSIDE. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Can this be HE 
 
 That hath no privilege of gentle birth, 
 Beauty, nor grace, nor utterance sublime 
 Of words persuasive, nor the bloodbought skill 
 That wins i the foiigbten field ? 
 
 "EvEN as you will, fair sir! Though, an 
 you ride for Huntingdon this night, and wish 
 not, ere it be two hours the later, that you had 
 tarried here at the White Dragon, then am not 
 I called Walter Danforth, nor have I drawn 
 good ale in Royston these forty years and 
 better!" 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CROMWELL. 
 
 With this prophetic sentence did the lord of 
 cup and can wind up a long narration of roads 
 impassable, and bridges broken, and " all the 
 moving accidents of flood and field " with which, 
 according to time-honoured usage among the 
 heroes of the spigot, he was endeavouring to 
 beguile the lated wayfarer. In the present in 
 stance, however, it would seem that the ominous 
 warning of the worthy Boniface was destined 
 to be of none effect ; for with a cheery smile the 
 traveller answered 
 
 " Tis like enough, good host of mine, so all 
 the cates of the White Dragon vie with this 
 puissant Bourdeaux" and, as he spoke, he 
 proffered to the landlord s grasp the mighty 
 flagon of bright pewter, which, despite his 
 eulogy, he had left still mantling with its gene 
 rous Jiquor; "but, were the venture deeper, I 
 must on to-night ; and, in good sooth, too often 
 have I journeyed through the midnight passes 
 
CROMWELL. 5 
 
 of the wild Abruzzi, and the yet wilder Pyre- 
 nean hills of Spain, to ponder gravely on a late 
 ride, or a sprinkled doublet, among these chalky 
 wolds of Hertfordshire/ 
 
 " Ay ! were that all" returned the other, 
 heaving a long breath after the potent draught 
 by which he had exhausted the flagon, and 
 eyeing wistfully the coins which had dropped 
 with so sweet a jingle into his greasy palm, 
 "Ay! were that all; but there are worse cus 
 tomers on Ermine-street than darkness, or storm 
 either though the clouds be mustering so black 
 in the west yonder, over the woods of Potton. 
 Wise men ride not forth nowadays an hour 
 after sundown, nor earlier save in company. * 
 
 " Then must Old England be sore changed, 
 since last I left her," replied the traveller, a 
 shade of thought or sorrow, for it might be 
 either, crossing his features, and not entirely 
 effaced by the frank smile, which followed it. 
 
6 CROMWELL. 
 
 " And if she be" he paused, unwilling, as 
 brave men ever are, to utter sentiments, which 
 might, however justified by the occasion, sound 
 boastfully. 
 
 " And if she be ?" inquired the interested 
 Walter, seeing that his guest hesitated to com 
 plete his sentence, " and if she be sore 
 changed ?" 
 
 " Why then hath Brown Bess borne me 
 through worse frays than I am like to meet, I 
 trow, on this side Huntingdon; nor will it be 
 small peril that shall arrest her now ! and so^ 
 good e en, fair landlord I" 
 
 " A bold bird, and a braggart I 39 muttered the 
 disconcerted publican, as the horseman, giving 
 the spur to the high-bred mare of which he 
 had just spoken, rode briskly off; "but if he 
 meet with those I wot of, he may yet crow 
 craven I" 
 
 Who those were, to whom his words so 
 
CROMWELL. 7 
 
 pointedly alluded, is not perhaps a question of 
 more than ordinary moment, unless it be from 
 the vast conception of their prowess which ap 
 pears to have been entertained by the landlord 
 of the White Dragon ; for, in truth, the gentle 
 man who had earned his ill-will merely by a 
 natural reluctance to tarry in Royston, when his 
 occasions called him elsewhere, was of very 
 different mould from one of whom it would be 
 said, that he was like to fall an easy or un 
 resisting prey to any who should dare dispute 
 his progress. Removed alike from the green 
 ness of inconsiderate youth, and from the in 
 activity of advanced age, the rider might be 
 looked upon as exhibiting a specimen of man 
 hood, in the full -vigour of its endowments, both 
 mental and corporeal, as fair as is permitted by 
 the imperfections of humanity. Considerably 
 above the ordinary height of men, broad-shoul 
 dered, deep-chested, and thin-flanked, he sat 
 
8 CROMWELL. 
 
 his charger with an ease and firmness resulting 
 more from natural grace, and flexibility of limb, 
 than from the practised art of the manege. His 
 eye was clear and even quick, though thought 
 and calmness seemed to belong, rather than 
 energy or fire, to its general expression quali 
 ties belied neither by the broad imaginative 
 forehead, nor by the firm and slightly-com 
 pressed outline of his lips. He wore a small 
 mustache, but neither beard nor whiskers, al 
 though both these were common in the last 
 years of the unhappy monarch who at that 
 time swayed the destinies of England. His hair, 
 as was the wont among the higher classes of 
 society, flowed in loose curls, trained with pecu 
 liar care, far down the neck, and over the collar 
 of the doublet, while a single ringlet, longer and 
 more assiduously cherished than the rest, seemed 
 to indicate that the wearer was not of one mind 
 with the pamphlet, then recently published by 
 
CROMWELL. y 
 
 the notorious master Prynne, on the " Unloveli- 
 ness of Lovelocks." 
 
 The dress of this cavalier, a loose velvet 
 jerkin of that peculiar shade which, from 
 being the favourite colour of the greatest painter 
 of his day, has been dignified with the immortal 
 title of Vandyke, was slashed and broidered 
 with black lace and satin; tight breeches of 
 buff leather guarded with tawny silk, high 
 boots, and massive spurs, completed his attire ; 
 all save a broad-leafed hat of dark gray beaver, 
 with one black ostrich feather drooping, from 
 the clasp which held it, over the left eyebrow. 
 His military cloak of sable cloth and velvet was 
 buckled to the croup of his war-saddle, while 
 from beneath the housings of the bow peered 
 out the heavy pistols, which had not long before 
 supplanted the lance, as the peculiar weapon of 
 the horseman. A long rapier, with its steel scab 
 bard and basket-hilt of silver delicately carved, 
 B 3 
 
10 CROMWELL. 
 
 from a shoulder-scarf of the same colour 
 with his doublet, matched by a poniard of yet 
 more costly fabric in his cordovan leather girdle. 
 
 When it is added, that the mare, which he 
 had styled Brown Bess, was an animal that 
 might be pronounced unrivalled, for the rare 
 union she displayed of strength and beauty, of 
 English bone and high Arabian blood the 
 latter manifested in the clean limb, full eye, and 
 coat glancing like polished copper to the sun 
 light nought will be wanting to the picture of 
 the traveller who was now journeying right 
 onward, undismayed, if not incredulous, of all 
 that he had heard, across the bleak and barren 
 hills which skirt the southern verge of Cam 
 bridgeshire. 
 
 The season was that, usually the most deli 
 cious of the English year the bright and 
 golden days of early autumn, when the promises 
 of spring and summer are fulfilled in the 
 
CROMWELL. 11 
 
 rustling harvest-field, and the rich orchard, and 
 before the thoughts of change, decay, and 
 death, are forced upon the mind by the sere 
 leaf and withered herbage. The day had 
 been mild and calm, and though evening 
 was far advanced, the sun was still shooting 
 his slant rays over the rounded summits and 
 grassy slopes of the low hills, through which 
 the ancient Roman way holds its undeviating 
 course. Ere long, however, the clouds, of 
 which the landlord had spoken as gathering so 
 darkly to the westward, though at that time 
 visible only in a narrow streak along the edge 
 of the horizon, began to rise in towering masses, 
 until the light of the declining day-god was first 
 changed to a dark and lurid crimson, and then 
 wholly intercepted. After a while the wind, 
 which had been slight and southerly, veered 
 round, and blew in fitful squalls, now whirling 
 the dust and stubble high into the air, and 
 
12 CROMWELL. 
 
 again subsiding into a stillness that, from the 
 contrast around, seemed unnatural. Such was 
 the aspect of the night when the sun set, and 
 the little light which had hitherto struggled 
 through intervals of the increasing storm-cloud 
 waned rapidly to almost utter darkness. 
 
 To render the traveller s position yet less en 
 viable, he had already passed the open country, 
 and was now involved in the mazes of scattered 
 woodland, which in the seventeenth century 
 overspread so large a portion of that country. 
 The way, too, which had thus far been firm and 
 in good order, now running between deep hollow 
 banks, resembled rather a water-course deserted 
 by its torrent, than a public thoroughfare ; so 
 that his progress was both slow and painful^ 
 until he reached the banks of -the Cam ; at that 
 place, as throughout much of its course, a strong 
 and turbid stream wheeling along in sullen 
 eddies, between shores of soft black loam. Here 
 
CROMWELL. 13 
 
 daylight utterly deserted him, its last glimpse 
 barely sufficing to show that the bridge had 
 been carried away, and that the river was appa 
 rently unfordable ; since a miry track wandered 
 away from the brink to the left hand, as though 
 in search of a place where it might pass the 
 current, and resume its natural direction to the 
 northward. 
 
 While he was considering what course it 
 would be most advisable that he should pursue 
 a few large heavy drops of rain plashed on the 
 surface of the gloomy stream, warning the 
 stranger to hasten his decision. Then, as he 
 turned to follow, as best he might, the devious 
 and uncertain path before him, the windows of 
 the heavens were opened, and down came the 
 thick shower, pattering on the thirsty earth, 
 and lashing the river s bosom into a sheet of 
 whitened spray. Thoroughly drenched, and 
 almost hopeless of recovering the true direction 
 
14 CROMWELL. 
 
 of his journey until the return of daylight, it 
 yet was not a part of that man s character to 
 hesitate, much less to falter or despair. Having 
 once determined what it would be for the best 
 to do, he went right onward to his purpose ; 
 though it oftentimes required the full exercise of 
 spur and rein to force the gallant animal which 
 he bestrode, against the furious gusts and 
 pelting storm. 
 
 For a weary hour, or more, he plodded on 
 ward, feeling his way, as it were, step by step, 
 and guided only by the flashes of broad light 
 ning which from time to time glared over the 
 desolate scene, with an intensity that merely 
 served to render the succeeding gloom more 
 dreary. At length, by the same transient illu 
 mination, he discovered that his path once more 
 turned northward, sinking abruptly to the verge 
 of that black river. 
 
 Of the further bank he could distinguish 
 
CROMWELL. 15 
 
 nothing ; and, though for many minutes he 
 awaited the return of the electric light before 
 attempting to stem the unknown ford, with that 
 singular perversity, which even things inanimate 
 and senseless at times seem to exhibit, the 
 flashes returned no more. Still, no word of 
 impatience or profanity rose to his lip, as he 
 spurred the reluctant mare resolutely down the 
 steep descent, holding his pistols, which he had 
 drawn from their holsters, high above his head. 
 At the first plunge, as he had well expected, all 
 foothold was lost, and nothing remained but a 
 perilous swim, not without considerable risk of 
 finding an impracticable bank at the further side ; 
 but, whether it was the result of skill or for 
 tune, or more probable than either, a combination 
 of the two, after a few rough struggles, and a 
 scramble through the tenacious mire, horse and 
 man stood in safety on the northern verge. 
 
 Not yet, however, could the adventures of 
 
16 CROMWELL. 
 
 that night be deemed at an end; for, having 
 once deviated from it during the hours of dark 
 ness, it was no easy matter to recover the line 
 of the high-road. The storm, it is true, after a 
 while abated, and the by-path into which he 
 struck was sufficiently hard to enable the 
 cavalier to travel at a pace more rapid than he 
 had tried since quitting Royston ; but, notwith 
 standing this, so much time had been lost, and 
 so small did the prospect seem of reaching his 
 destination, or indeed any other village at which 
 to pass the night, that the merciful rider was 
 beginning to occupy himself in searching for 
 such temporary shelter as a cattle-shed, or the 
 lee side of some lonely haystack might afford, 
 when his eye was attracted by a distant light, 
 now seen, now lost, among the young plant 
 ations, or scattered stripes of forest, which 
 checkered every where the scenery. 
 
 It required but a moment s pause to discover 
 
CROMWELL. 17 
 
 that the light was in motion, and at a smaller 
 distance than he had at first conjectured ; and, 
 though there might have been grounds for sus 
 picion and distrust to the weak or timid, in the 
 place and manner of its appearance, quickening 
 his pace to a gallop, and somewhat altering his 
 course, he rode straight for the object. Five 
 minutes brought him to a bank and ditch, evi 
 dently skirting the road of which he was in 
 quest. The clatter of the horse s hoofs, as he 
 leaped the trifling obstacle, and landed safely 
 on the rough pavement of the Roman way, was, 
 it should seem, the first intimation of his ap 
 proach that reached the bearers of the light ; 
 for ere he could distinguish more than the 
 figures of two or three rude-looking countrymen, 
 one of them bearing on his shoulders what re 
 sembled the carcass of a deer, it was either 
 extinguished altogether, or suddenly veiled 
 from sight. 
 
18 CROMWELL. 
 
 "They are upon us," cried a hoarse voice, 
 " shoot, Wilkin," and instantly the clang of a 
 steel cross-bow, and the whistle of the heavy 
 bolt, as it narrowly missed the rider s ear, showed 
 that the mandate was complied with as promptly 
 as delivered. 
 
 "Hold! Hold your hands!" he shouted, 
 " or ye will fare the worse. Ye know me not, 
 nor care I aught for ye I" 
 
 " Fare the worse, shall we ?" interrupted the 
 other, " that shall we see anon ! Come on, brave 
 boys, and down with this proud meddler \" and 
 with a loud fierce cry, some six or seven ruffians, 
 as he judged from the sound of their footsteps, 
 rushed against him. In the moment which had 
 elapsed since the first outrage, he had prepared 
 his weapons, and was already on his guard ; 
 but it was not destined that he should, this 
 time, need their service; for, just as he reined 
 up his steed, and parried the first blow aimed 
 
CROMWELL. 19 
 
 at him with a crow-bar, or a quarter-staff, the 
 quick tramp of coming horsemen was heard 
 upon the road behind him, and with their 
 swords drawn., as if excited by the shout of the 
 ruffians, two or three persons galloped rapidly 
 to his assistance. 
 
 " What knaves be these 1" inquired a loud 
 and dissonant voice, from the foremost of the 
 new-comers, as the cavalier fell back toward his 
 welcome rescuers, " what knaves be these, that 
 make this coil on the highway?" 
 
 "Down with the thieving Girgashites !" 
 shouted another of the riders, er^an answer 
 could be rendered to the querist; and, at the 
 word, he fired a petronel at random, its momen 
 tary flash displaying the marauders struggling 
 as best they might, through a strong blackthorn 
 fence, which parted the road from a wild tract of 
 coppice, glade, and woodland. 
 
 " Deer-stealers, master Oliver/ 5 he continued, 
 
20 CROMWELL. 
 
 reslinging his now useless weapon, "after the 
 herds of my Lord de la Warr ! but I have 
 scared them for the nonce !" 
 
 " More shame to thee, Giles Overton," cried 
 the same voice which had first spoken, "and 
 more sin likewise, to use the carnal weapon thus 
 in causeless strife ; setting the precious spirit of 
 a being like to, or it may well be better than, 
 thyself, upon the darkling venture of chance- 
 medley; and bartering a human life against the 
 slaughter of a valueless and soulless beast ! 
 Go to ! Giles Overton, see that thou err not 
 in the like sort again ! But art thou hurt, good 
 sir ?" proceeded the speaker, turning in his 
 saddle toward the traveller for whose safety he 
 had come up so opportunely " or have we, by 
 the mercy of the Lord, who may in this if it 
 be not presumptuous in me, considering how 
 unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement 
 of my talent, so to judge of his workings have 
 
CROMWELL. 21 
 
 vouchsafed to preserve thee for a chosen vessel, 
 have we, I would say, come in season to 
 protect thee from these sons of Animon V 9 
 
 " Thanks to your timely aid, fair sir," replied 
 the cavalier, not a little astonished at the strange 
 address of his preserver, for he had but recently 
 returned to his native land after protracted ab 
 sence, and, at the time of his departure, the 
 language of puritanism was not yet in vogue. 
 "I am uninjured; and now, I pray you to 
 increase yet further this your kindness, by in 
 forming me the straightest road for Hunting 
 don ; it cannot be, I do suppose, far distant." 
 
 " Good lack a stranger by your question 
 ing," answered he who had been called Oliver. 
 " Huntingdon do I know right well ay ! even 
 as one knoweth the tabernacle of his abode, and 
 the burial-place of his fathers ; but I profess to 
 you that it is distant by full thirteen miles, and 
 those of sorry road. But ride thou on with me 
 
22 CROMWELL. 
 
 to Bourne, some three miles further, and I will 
 bestow thee at a house where thou mayest tarry 
 until morn the Fox tavern I would say 
 Phineas Goodenough, my glove hath fallen, I 
 pray thee reach it to me a clean house truly, 
 kept by a worthy man yea, verily a good 
 man, one that dwelleth in the fear of the Lord 
 alway." 
 
 "A stranger am I, doubtless/ 3 returned the 
 other, "else had I not inquired of thee that 
 which then I had well known ; and, of a truth, 
 I know not now that I can do aught better than 
 to accept your proffer frankly as it is made \" 
 
 " Be it so !" was the ready answer. " Will it 
 please you to ride somewhat briskly for my 
 self, I am bound an hour s ride farther, to 
 worshipful master Pym s, nigh Caldecote." 
 
 " Ha ! Pym, the friend of Hampden and 
 John Milton. I knew not he lived hereabout," 
 exclaimed the cavalier. 
 
CROMWELL. 23 
 
 " And what knowest thou, so I may ask it," 
 queried Oliver, " of Hampden or John Milton ? 
 Truly I took thee for a carnal-minded person, 
 but, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge !" 
 
 " For what it liketh your wisdom to mistake 
 me, I know not ; nor, to speak frankly, do I 
 care greatly," replied the other ; " but, to satisfy 
 your question, of Hampden I know nothing, 
 save that the mode of his resistance to that 
 illegal claim of ship-money hath reached my 
 ears, even where the tongue of England would 
 have sounded strangely. John Milton, if it 
 concerns you any thing to hear of him, was, and 
 that too for many months, my chosen comrade 
 of the road, and my most eloquent tutor in the 
 classic lore of Italy !" 
 
 "In Italy, saidst thou? In Italy, and with 
 John Milton?" inquired Oliver, after a long 
 meditative pause; and, as he continued, his 
 voice had lost much of its harshness, and 
 
24 CROMWELL. 
 
 his manner not a little of its offensive peculi 
 arity. " A better comrade couldst thou not 
 have chosen than that pure-minded Christian 
 that most zealous patriot. Verily, I say to you, 
 that in consorting with that sanctified, elected 
 vessel, you must needs have imbibed some 
 draughts more worthy than the profane and 
 carnal lore of those benighted heathens, whose 
 bestial and idolatrous rites are even now to be 
 found corrupting with their accursed stench the 
 faith which claims to be of Jesus, even as the 
 stinking fly poisoneth the salve of the mediciner. 
 Verily, I will believe that he hath opened unto 
 you the door of that wisdom which is alone all 
 in all ! Ay ! and as I find you here returning 
 hard upon his heels, even as he hath of late re 
 turned, from the city of her that sitteth on the 
 seven hills, clothed in the purple of the harlot, 
 may I not humbly hope I would say confi 
 dently trust that you will also draw the sword 
 
CROMWELL. 25 
 
 of truth, to defend this sore-aggrieved and 
 spirit-broken people from the tyrannous oppres 
 sion of their rulers, and the self-seeking idola 
 tries of those that sit in the high places of the 
 land !" 
 
 ee Fair sir/ 5 replied the cavalier, " you ques 
 tion somewhat too closely, and converse, me- 
 thinks, too freely for a stranger. That I come 5 
 summoned homeward by the rumour of these 
 unhappy broils between our sovereign and his 
 parliament, is not less true, than that I care not 
 either to conceal or to deny it ! Beyond this 
 what part soever I may play in that which is to 
 come pardon my plainness, sir I do not deem 
 it wisdom to discourse with a chance cus 
 tomer. Nor have I yet, indeed, decided what 
 that part shall be, until I search more narrowly 
 the grounds, and so find out my way, twixt over- 
 licence on the one hand, and, as it seems to me, 
 intemperance on the other, and too fiery zeal !" 
 
 VOL. i. c 
 
26 
 
 CROMWELL. 
 
 "Edgar Ardenne," returned the puritan, his 
 naturally harsh voice subsiding into a hollow 
 croak," Edgar Ardenne, for I do know you, 
 though, as you have truly spoken me, a 
 stranger,- I tell you now this nation totters on 
 the brink of a most strange and perilous con 
 vulsion ! We are the intruments vile in 
 struments it is true, but still instruments in the 
 hands of Him who holds the end of all things. 
 Watched have we, and prayed, yea wrestled 
 with Him in the spirit, for a sign and lo ! a sign 
 was sent us. It may be, we shall achieve 
 deliverance for our country freedom from 
 corporeal chains and spiritual bondage ! It 
 may be we shall fail, and, failing, seek the 
 shelter of that New Jerusalem beyond the 
 western ocean, wherein there be no kings to 
 lord it o er men s consciences, and to compel 
 them how to worship God ! But fail we, or 
 succeed, the sign hath been given to us from 
 
CROMWELL. 27 
 
 on high, and therefore shall we venture ! And 
 fail we, or succeed, mark my words, Edgar 
 Ardenne, for thou shalt think on them hereafter 
 thy lot is cast with ours ! Thy spirit is of 
 our order, thy heart is with us, and thy tongue 
 shall be, yea and thy sword likewise !" 
 
 "How you have learned my name, I com 
 prehend not," answered Ardenne) for so must 
 he be styled henceforth), veiling whatever of 
 suspicion or annoyance he might feel, beneath 
 the semblance of a cold and dignified in 
 difference ; " but were it worth the while, I 
 could assure you that in learning this, you have 
 learnt all. What part you play in this wild 
 drama, whether you be hypocrite or zealot, 
 patriot or traitor, I care nothing ; but if we 
 meet hereafter, you will learn that neither 
 sophistry nor canting can affect my head, nor 
 the dark phrensy of fanaticism reach my 
 heart !" 
 
 c 2 
 
28 CROMWELL. 
 
 " We shall meet/ answered the stranger, 
 " we shall meet again and shortly ! and then 
 shall you too learn if I be saint or hypocrite, 
 if I be patriot or traitor ! and, above all, then 
 shall you learn if, in these things that I have 
 spoken, I be a lying prophet, or a true ! But 
 lo you now ! this is the Fox at Bourne, and here 
 comes honest Langton, to whose good offices 
 I do commit you !" 
 
 As he spoke, they drew up their horses before 
 the door of the little wayside hostelry, a low and 
 whitewashed tenement imbosomed in deep 
 woodlands, and nestling as it were amid the 
 verdant foliage of jessamine and woodbine : 
 while warned already of their coming by the 
 clatter of hoofs and the sound of voices, the puri 
 tanic person of mine host, bearing on high a 
 huge and smoky flambeau, stalked forth to 
 meet them. On his lean and starveling form 
 Ardenne cast but a passing glance, being 
 
CROMWELL. 29 
 
 employed in scrutinizing, by the illumination 
 which streamed full upon them, the features of 
 his singular companion, who had paused for 
 a moment to allow his horse to drink, and to 
 hold a whispered conversation with the land 
 lord. There was, however, nothing familiar to 
 him, though he probed his memory to its lowest 
 depth of youthful recollections, in that manly 
 yet ungraceful figure, or in those lineaments 
 harsh and ill-favoured to the verge of downright 
 ugliness. Ill-favoured was that countenance, 
 indeed, with its deeply-furrowed lines and its 
 sanguineous colouring ; its sunken eyes, twink 
 ling below the penthouse of the heavy matted 
 brows ; and its nose prominent, rubicund, and 
 swollen. Yet was there a world of thought, 
 in the expansive temples, and the massive fore 
 head, and an expression of firmness that might 
 restrain an empire, in the downward curve of 
 the bold mouth, and a general air of high 
 
30 CROMWELL. 
 
 authority and indomitable resolution, pervading 
 the whole aspect of the man. The head of this 
 remarkable-looking individual, at a period when 
 the greatest attention was lavished on the hair 
 by all of gentle birth, was covered with coarse 
 locks, already streaked with gray, falling in 
 long disordered masses on either cheek, and 
 down the muscular short neck, from underneath 
 a rusty beaver, steeple-crowned, and unadorned 
 by feather, loop, or tassel. Instead of the 
 cravat of Flanders lace, he wore a narrow 
 band of soiled and rumpled linen ; and his 
 sword, a heavy iron-hilted tuck, was not sus 
 pended from a scarf or shoulder-knot, but 
 girt about his middle, over a doublet of black 
 serge, by a belt of calfskin leather, correspond 
 ing to the material of his riding-boots, which 
 were pulled up above the knee to meet the 
 loose trunk hose, fashioned, as it would be 
 supposed, by some ill country tailor, from the 
 
CROMWELL. 31 
 
 same unseemly stuff with his cloak and doublet. 
 The only part of his appointments, which 
 would not have disgraced the commonest 
 gentleman, was his horse, a tall gray gelding, 
 of great power and not a little breeding ; yet 
 even he was badly accoutred with mean and 
 sordid housings. 
 
 Such was the appearance of the person 
 whose conversation had not been listened 
 to by Edgar Ardenne without deep inte 
 rest ; and now even while he confessed 
 to himself that the man s frame and features 
 entitled him to no regard as a person of supe 
 rior caste or bearing, there was still something 
 in his air, which produced an indescribable 
 effect on the mind of the cavalier, forcing him, 
 as it were, despite his senses, to admit that he 
 was in some wise remarkable, above, and at the 
 same time apart from, ordinary mortals, and not 
 
32 CROMWELL. 
 
 unlike to one who might be indeed the mover 
 of great changes in the estate of nations. 
 
 While Edgar was yet gazing on him with ill- 
 dissembled curiosity, the stranger, in his loud 
 hoarse notes, bade him adieu, and striking at 
 once into a rapid trot, was swallowed up with 
 his companions in the surrounding gloom. 
 Edgar, after a fruitless effort at ascertaining 
 from the saintly and abstracted publican the 
 name and quality of his late companion, applied 
 himself to creature comforts, as the landlord 
 termed them, of a higher order, and to a bed 
 more neatly garnished, than he could have au 
 gured from the lowly exterior of the village 
 inn. 
 
CROMWELL. 33 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A gentle being, delicately fair ; 
 
 Full of soft fancies, timorous, and shy , 
 
 Yet high of purpose, and of soul so firm, 
 
 That sooner shall you the round world unsphere 
 
 Than warp her from the conscious path of right ; 
 
 A bright domestic goddess, formed to bless, 
 
 And soothe, and succour oh, most meet to be 
 
 The shrined idol of a heart like his. 
 
 Two days had elapsed, and the third was 
 
 already drawing toward its close, since the 
 
 encounter of the cavalier with his saintly ally ; 
 
 for the sun, scarce elevated thrice the breadth 
 
 c 3 
 
34 CROMWELL. 
 
 of his own disk above the horizon, was now 
 almost perceptibly declining in the west, though 
 he still darted long pencilled rays of light 
 athwart the landscape, from between the folds 
 of gauzelike mist which veiled his splendours 
 from the eye. 
 
 One of these straggling beams had found its 
 way into a nook, as sweet as ever poet sung, or 
 fairy haunted. It was an angle in one of those 
 broad green lanes, which form so beautiful a 
 feature in the rural scenery of England. Car 
 peted with deep unfaded verdure, through 
 which meandered a faint wheel-track ; bordered 
 by hedges, so thick and tangled as to resemble 
 natural coppices rather than artificial fences ; 
 embowered by the fragrant honeysuckle, and 
 spangled with the dewy flowers of the yet 
 sweeter eglantine; decked with the golden 
 blossoms of the broom, the fringelike fern, and 
 the flaunting bells of the white and crimson 
 
CROMWELL. 35 
 
 foxgloves ; canopied by the dense umbrage of 
 the broad-leaved sycamore, the gnarled and 
 ivy-mantled oak, or the lighter and more 
 graceful ash ; and watered by a tiny brooklet, 
 that stole along, now on one side, now on the 
 other, of the rarely-trodden path, here tinkling 
 over its many-coloured pebbles with a mirthful 
 music, there silently reflecting the tufted rushes, 
 and the mossy log that spanned its surface with 
 a sylvan bridge that solitary nook might well 
 have furnished forth a tiring-room for Shak- 
 speare s wild Titania. 
 
 Nor, though the days of Puck and Oberon 
 were already numbered with the things that 
 had been, did that lone bower lack its presiding 
 genius; for on a trunk, cushioned with hoary 
 lichens, and overlooking a crystal basin formed 
 by the rill which undermined its tortuous roots, 
 and had, perchance, in bygone ages, caused its 
 decay and ruin, there sat a female form, lore- 
 
36 CROMWELL. 
 
 liest of the lovely. She was gazing, as at first 
 sight it seemed, Narcissus-like, upon her watery 
 image ; but in truth so deeply buried in her own 
 imaginings, that she was no less ignorant of 
 all she looked upon than was the senseless 
 stump on which she leaned so gracefully. She 
 was a girl perhaps of twenty summers ; for, 
 looking on her, it had been impossible to reckon 
 save by summers, so sunny was the style of her 
 young beauty. On either side of her white 
 and dazzling forehead, ringlets in rich exube 
 rance, of the deepest auburn so deep, that, 
 saving where they glittered goldlike in the 
 sunshine, they might have been deemed black 
 fell off behind her ears, and wantoned down 
 her swanlike neck ; while, in the luxury of 
 calm abandonment, her velvet hat, dropped by 
 her side, lay on the grass, its choice plumes 
 ruffling the mirror of the pool. Her eyes were 
 bent so steadfastly upon the waters at her feet, 
 
CROMWELL. 37 
 
 that it was by the long dark lashes only, pen 
 cilled in clear relief against the delicate com 
 plexion of her cheek, that they could be judged 
 large, and suited to the character of her most 
 eloquent features. Of an almost marble pale 
 ness, with scarce a rosy trace to tell of the 
 pure blood which coursed so warmly through 
 those thousand azure channels that veined her 
 neck and bosom, there was yet a transparency, 
 a glowing hue, in her fair skin, that spoke of 
 all the lively elasticity of health; while to 
 remove a doubt, if doubt could have existed, 
 the sweet curve of that small mouth, wooingly 
 prominent, was tinged with the rich hue of the 
 dark red carnation. Though Grecian in their 
 outlines, there yet was more of intellect and 
 energy in the expression of her features, than 
 of that poetical repose which forms the general 
 character of the classic model. 
 
 The shape of this fair creature, as she reclined 
 
38 CROMWELL. 
 
 along her rustic couch, though of voluptuous 
 roundness, was rather slight than full ; and the 
 ankle, displayed somewhat too liberally by 
 the disordered draperies of her satin riding- 
 dress, was slender as a sylphid s limb. Her 
 dimpled chin was propped, in attitude of busy 
 thought, on so diminutive a hand, as would 
 alone have proved her pedigree from the un- 
 conquered race of Normandy. Nor was the 
 attitude belied by aught of consciousness or 
 coquetry, for all betokened the deep hush of 
 natural and unstudied meditation. 
 
 A beautiful white palfrey, with ribboned rein, 
 and velvet housings, which stood unfettered at 
 her side, awaiting, docile and gentle creature, 
 the pleasure of his mistress, pawed, and tossed 
 his head, till the silver bits rang audibly, and 
 uttered once or twice a tremulous impatient 
 neigh, unheeded, at the least, if not unheard. 
 
 A vagrant spaniel of the Blenheim breed, with 
 
CROMWELL. 39 
 
 soft dark eyes, and ears that almost swept the 
 ground one from a number that had followed 
 the fair girl, and now dozed listlessly upon the 
 grass around her had been for some time 
 rustling among the dewy bushes, and now sent 
 forth a shrill and clamorous yelping, as pheasant 
 after pheasant whirred up on noisy wings into 
 the higher branches, whence they crowed, with 
 outstretched necks, defiance to their powerless 
 assailant. 
 
 Still there was no sign in the demeanour of 
 the lady, to indicate that she had marked the 
 sounds, harmonizing as they did with the spirit 
 of the place and hour, and blending naturally 
 with the low of the distant cattle, the cawing 
 of the homeward rooks, and the continuous 
 hum of the thousand insect tribes which were 
 still disporting themselves in the September 
 sunset, not the less merrily that their little 
 
40 CROMWELL. 
 
 glass of life had already run even to its latest 
 sands. 
 
 But anon a noise arose, which, in itself by no 
 means inharmonious, was not so much attuned 
 to the rural melodies around, but that it jarred 
 discordantly on the ear. It was the clear and 
 powerful voice of a man, venting his feelings as 
 he rode along ; for at times the tramp of a horse 
 might be distinguished, when his hoof struck 
 upon harder soil than common, mingling with 
 the measured tones, as perhaps unconscious of 
 his occupation, the rider recited aloud such 
 passages from the high poets of the day, as 
 were suggested to his memory by all that met 
 his senses. At first the accents were indistinct 
 from distance, and their import quite inaudible ; 
 then, as the speaker drew so nigh that his 
 words might partially be understood, the voice 
 ceased altogether; but, after a brief pause, it 
 
CROMWELL. 41 
 
 again broke forth in the pure poetry of 
 Drummond. 
 
 Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, 
 
 Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own ! 
 
 Though solitary, who is not alone, 
 
 But doth converse with that eternal love ! 
 
 O how more sweet is birds harmonious moan, 
 
 Or the hoarse sobbings of the widowed dove, 
 
 Than those smooth whispers near a prince s throne, 
 
 Which make good doubtful 
 
 As these words passed his lip, the horseman 
 turned the last angle of the winding lane ; and, 
 for the first time discovering that the free out 
 pourings of his spirit had found a listener, 
 Edgar Ardenne for the moralist was no other 
 paused in his sonnet and checked his steed, 
 by a common impulse, and as it seemed a single 
 movement. His eyes flashed joyfully, as they 
 met the large and violet-coloured orbs which 
 the fair girl had raised, at first in simple wonder 
 ment, but which now lightened with a gleamy 
 
42 CROMWELL. 
 
 radiance that he was not slow to construe into 
 delighted recognition. 
 
 "Sibyl sweet Sibyl!" 
 
 " Edgar, can it indeed be you ? welcome, 
 oh, welcome home !" 
 
 At once, without a moment s interval, the 
 words burst forth from either, as they hastened 
 he with impetuous hurry from his charger, 
 she gathering her ruffled robes about her, and 
 rising from her rustic throne with the unblush 
 ing ease of conscious modesty to manifest their 
 pleasure at this unexpected meeting. 
 
 Were they friends, or kindred, or more dearly 
 linked than either by the young ties of holy, 
 unsuspicious, and unselfish love? They met. 
 The formal fashions of the day would scarcely 
 have allowed the gallant to fold even a sister to 
 his bosom. Edgar clasped her not, therefore, in 
 the arms that evidently yearned to do so, but 
 with a polished ease, belied by the flushed 
 
CROMWELL. 43 
 
 brow, and frame that quivered visibly with eager 
 ness, and first ungloving himself, he raised her 
 white hand to his lips, which dwelt upon it 
 even too fervidly for brotherly affection. 
 
 A deep blush glowing, the more remarkably 
 from its contrast to her wonted paleness, over 
 brow and cheek, and visible, though with a 
 fainter hue, even upon her neck, and such brief 
 portion of the bosom as might be descried be 
 tween the fringes of rich lace, that edged her 
 bodice, she yet expressed not aught of wonder 
 or of reluctance at his familiar greeting. Though 
 the small hand trembled in his grasp with a 
 perceptible and quick emotion, it was not with 
 drawn; nor, while he gazed upon those eloquent 
 eyes, as steadfastly as though through them he 
 would have read the inmost feelings of the soul 
 that so informed them, did she shrink from his 
 evident, though chastened admiration. A mo 
 ment or two passed ere either again spoke ; it 
 
44 CROMWELL. 
 
 might be that their passionate feelings were 
 better to be interpreted from silence, than ex 
 pressed by words ; it might be that their hearts 
 were full to overflowing, and that so they dared 
 not to unlock those secret channels, lest they 
 might be led he into such betrayal of his feel 
 ings, as is deemed weak and womanish by the 
 great mass of men, themselves too calculating 
 or too cold to feel at all she into such disclo 
 sure of her soul s treasured secret, as oftentimes 
 is censured, and not perhaps unjustly, as at the 
 least impolitic, if not immodest or unmaidenly. 
 
 It was, however, Sibyl, who with the delicate 
 and ready tact peculiar to her sex, first broke 
 the silence, which had endured so long already 
 as to become almost embarrassing ; and, as she 
 spoke, her words explained their relative posi 
 tion, although it might even then be doubted 
 whether the full extent of their connexion was 
 as yet divulged. 
 
CROMWELL. 45 
 
 " I can hardly trust my eyes," she said, in 
 those low and musical tones, which are indeed 
 an excellent thing in woman, " when they tell 
 me, truant as you are and traitor, that you stand 
 bodily before me. So long have our hearts been 
 rendered sick by hope deferred so often have 
 we gazed, from peep of morn till the sad close 
 of evening, for your expected for your pro 
 mised coming and gazed but to be disappointed 
 that now, when you have truly come, we had 
 ceased not to hope indeed and pray, but surely 
 to expect." 
 
 " Oh ! Sibyl, did you know how many an 
 anxious thought, how many a bitter pang, these 
 wearisome delays have cost me, you would pity, 
 rather than upbraid " 
 
 " Fair words and flowery, good cousin 
 Edgar," she replied, with an arch glance, and 
 a light thrilling laugh, " and with such, you 
 
46 CROMWELL. 
 
 lords of the creation as in your vanity you 
 style yourselvesdeem you can wipe away the 
 heaviest score of broken vows, and perjured 
 promises, from the frail memories of easy and 
 deluded damsels. But, in good sooth, I marvel 
 not that you should slight poor me, when you 
 have questioned nothing, and that, too, after a 
 three years 5 absence, of your noble father; arid 
 when you stand here dallying within a scant 
 mile of his presence, sounding your false ex 
 cuses into a credulous lady s ear. For shame, 
 sir ! for my part, if I felt it not, then would I 
 feign at least some natural affection." 
 
 " Wild as thou ever wert, fair Sibyl," an 
 swered Edgar, a beautiful smile playing over his 
 grave features, and revealing a set of teeth 
 even and white as ivory. " I hoped, when I 
 beheld you so pensive and so melancholy, 
 musing beside yon lovely pool, that years grow- 
 
CROMWELL. 47 
 
 ing toward maturity might have brought some 
 thing of reflection to tame those girlish spirits ; 
 .but, in good faith, I should have known you 
 better. But am I not assured, were it but by 
 your being here so blithe and beautiful, that all 
 goes well at home ?" 
 
 " Well parried, if not honestly," still laugh 
 ing, she replied ; " and, for your taunts on my 
 demeanour, I defy you ! But help me to my 
 horse, Sir loiterer, and we will homeward ; for 
 I do believe, despite your manifold enormities, 
 that you would fain see those who, to your 
 shame be it spoken, will feel more joy to greet 
 you, than you have shown alacrity to do so 
 much as ask of their well-being. I warrant 
 me, if you had met Sir Henry first, you had 
 not once inquired whether poor I were in ex 
 istence." 
 
 In another moment the lady was mounted on 
 her white palfrey, and, with the cavalier beside 
 
48 CROMWELL. 
 
 her bridle-rein, rode toward her home more 
 joyously than she had done for many a month 
 before. Not, however, in loud mirth, nor even 
 in the sprightly raillery which she had adopted 
 on their first meeting, was her happiness di 
 vulged to common ears ; but her soft eyes, 
 dwelling fondly on the features, long unseen, of 
 her accepted and acknowledged lover, though 
 they were lowered modestly so often as they 
 caught his answering glances, and the subdued 
 and quiet tones of her melodious voice, as they 
 conversed of old home scenes, and sweet familiar 
 recollections, more endeared to them, all trivial 
 as they were, than loftier memories, were con 
 firmations, strong as an angel s voice, of her 
 unchanged affection. 
 
 After a short ride, rendered shorter yet to 
 them by the enjoyment, for so long a time 
 unused, though not forgotten, of each other s 
 converse by the sweet consciousness of mutual 
 
CROMWELL. 49 
 
 love ; and by the full expansion of their feelings, 
 unrestrained by the cold formalities of that most 
 heartless intercourse which men have styled 
 society, and untrammelled by any chains, save 
 those instinctive bonds of pure and delicate 
 propriety, which noble natures ever wear about 
 them in the guise of flowery garlands, gracing 
 while they dignify the motions which they in 
 no respect impede. 
 
 After a short ride through the windings 
 of that verdant lane> here rendered almost 
 gloomy by the shadows of occasional wood 
 lands which it traversed, here running past 
 the door of some secluded cottage, its thatched 
 porch overhung with bowering creepers, and its 
 narrow garden gay with tall hollyhocks ana 
 autumnal flowers here looking forth, from 
 intervals in the tali hedges, over some sunny 
 stubble-field on which the golden shocks stood 
 fair and frequent, or some deep pasture, its 
 
 VOL. i. D 
 
50 CROMWELL. 
 
 green surface dotted with sleek and comely 
 cattle, they reached a rustic gate of unbarked 
 timber, woven into fantastic shapes, and through it 
 gained admittance into a demesne, as rich as ever 
 was transmitted by its first winner of the bloody 
 hand to a long line of undegenerate posterity. 
 
 Even to the wandering and homeless stranger 
 there is a calm and quiet joy in the stately 
 solitude of an English park, in its broad velvet 
 lawns, sloping southwardly away, studded with 
 noble clumps, or solitary trees more noble yet, 
 down to the verge of some pellucid lake or 
 brimful river, in its swelling uplands, waving 
 with broom and fern, meet haunt for the pro 
 geny of the timid doe, whence glitter frequently 
 the white stems of the birch, or the red berries 
 of the mountain-ash, in the wild bellowing of 
 the deer, heard from some rock-ribbed glen, 
 where they have sheltered during the hot noon 
 tide, in the cooing of the pigeon, or the re- 
 
CROMWELL. 51 
 
 peated tap of the green woodpecker, in the 
 harsh cry of the startled heron, soaring on his 
 broad wings from the sedgy pool, before the 
 intruder s footstep, in the lazy limp of the 
 pastured hares, and in the whirr of the rising 
 covey. What, then, must be the feelings sum 
 moned by the same picture, to the heart of one 
 who hears in every rural sound, and witnesses 
 in every sylvan scene, the melodies that soothed 
 his earliest slumber, and the sights that nursed 
 his youngest meditation ? To him these stately 
 solitudes are peopled with a thousand holy 
 recollections ; the step, perchance, of a de 
 parted mother still roams beneath those imme 
 morial trees ; her musical voice still speaks to 
 his heart audibly, and in the very tones his 
 childhood listened to, when all its cares were 
 hushed ; to him each bosky bourn and twi 
 light dingle has its memory of boyish exploit, 
 each murmuring rill of boyish reverie. 
 D 2 
 
52 CROMWELL. 
 
 Home home hackneyed as is the thought, 
 and time-worn what a world of treasured 
 sweetness is there in that one word, Home! 
 To the humblest and to the highest in sorrow 
 and in mirth to the needy exile as to the 
 successful adventurer for ever dear, for ever 
 holy crowded out, perhaps, from the selfish 
 spirit, by the bustle, the tumult, the conflict of 
 the day but still returning with undiminished 
 force, when the placid influence of night and 
 slumber shall have stilled the fitful fever, and 
 restored to the sullied heart, for one short hour, 
 the purity it knew of yore. 
 
 Oh ! if there be on the broad face of earth 
 the being that loves not, with an unquenchable 
 and everliving love, the native home curse 
 him not, when ye meet he is accursed already. 
 Vindictive men have warred against ambitious 
 men have sacrificed and sordid men have sold 
 their countries; but these ay, each, and all 
 
CROMWELL. 53 
 
 of these if we could read their souls, have 
 had their moments of repentant thought, their 
 moments of triumphant fondness. What then 
 must be the feelings of a mind like that of 
 Ardenne a mind, coupling the severe and dis 
 ciplined philosophy of schools with the warm 
 and wild romance of a poetic fancy a mind, 
 which had learned wisdom, without learning 
 vice, amid the fierce pleasures and the fiercer 
 strife of a licentious world a mind, no less 
 unselfish than it was reasonable and regular 
 a mind, filled with the beautiful principles of 
 that universal love which is honour, and pa 
 triotism, and every shape of virtue virtue, not 
 cold in itself, as the wicked say, and chilling 
 all things that it touches, but genial, and 
 enlivening, and warm with every generous 
 aspiration. What must have been the feelings 
 of a man endowed with such a mind, returning 
 
54 CROMWELL. 
 
 to his unforgotten home, from years of restless 
 wandering, in pursuit, not of the idol mammon, 
 not of the phantom fame, but of that high 
 philosophy which is derived from the perusal 
 of men, not books ; which is learned not in the 
 solitary chamber, nor by the midnight lamp, 
 but on the tented field, and in the dazzling 
 court; at the banquet and the masque; amid 
 the treacheries of men, and the wilier fasci 
 nations of beauty; what must have been his 
 feelings, riding by the bridle of his own be 
 trothed, through the very fields in which he had 
 won, years before, her virgin heart, hastening to 
 the embrace of a father, whom, much as he re 
 vered and honoured him, he loved yet more ? 
 
 Who may describe that wonderful and deep 
 sensation, that tincture of joy and sorrow, of 
 bitterness and pleasure, which must be mingled 
 to make up the draught of human happiness, 
 
CROMWELL. 55 
 
 exhibited no less in the gushing tear, than in 
 the glittering smile, in the choked voice and 
 suffocating spasm, than in the flashing eye 
 and the exulting pulse ? 
 
 Enough Ardenne was for the moment 
 happy, absolutely, and, if aught mortal may be 
 called perfect, perfectly happy. The antiquated 
 hall burst on his vision, as he passed a belt 
 of sheltering evergreens, its tall Elizabethan 
 chimneys sending their columns of vaporous 
 smoke far up into the calm heaven ; its 
 diamond-paned oriels glowing like sheets of 
 fire to the reflected sun ; its hospitable porch 
 opening wide to admit stranger or guest alike 
 with kindly welcome ; its freestone terraces with a 
 group of lazy greyhounds basking on the steps, 
 and a score or two of peacocks perched upon 
 the balustrades, like the ornaments of an 
 eastern throne, or strutting to and fro on the 
 broad flagstones in all their pride of gorgeous 
 
56 CROMWELL. 
 
 plumage. He saw he had no words but 
 his gentle companion might perceive his nether 
 lip to quiver with strong emotion, and a tear, 
 unrestrained by selfish pride, to trickle down 
 his manly cheek. 
 
 A heavy bell rang out there was a bustle, 
 and a rush of many servitors, badged and blue- 
 coated men, with hoary heads and tottering 
 limbs the heirlooms of the family, transmitted, 
 with the ancestral armour and the ancient plate, 
 from sire to son. 
 
 With difficulty extricating himself from the 
 familiar greetings of these domestic friends, 
 Ardenne hurried up the steps; but, ere he 
 crossed the threshold, a noble-looking man, far 
 past the prime of life as might be seen from 
 his long locks already streaked with the wintry 
 hues of age but vigorous still and active fell 
 upon his neck with a quick shrill cry "My 
 son ! my son \" the hot tears gushing from 
 
CROMWELL. 57 
 
 his eyes ; not that he mourned, but that he did 
 rejoice, as (in the magnificent words of the Greek 
 lyrist) he beheld his chosen offspring, the state 
 liest of the sons of men. 
 
 D3 
 
58 CROMWELL. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Minstrel of freedom England s holiest bard 
 His were the electric strains, that spurn control ! 
 That stir with lightning touch a nation s soul, 
 Filling each heart with aspirations high, 
 With zeal to do to suffer and to die ! 
 With fear of tyrants conquering fear of strife ! 
 With that high love more strong than lore of life 
 Which arms may not subdue, nor fetters pine 
 The deathless love of liberty divine ! 
 
 IT was a beautiful and tranquil evening ; the 
 broad bright hunter s moon was riding through 
 the cloudless firmament, filling the whole ex 
 panse of heaven with a radiance so pervading, 
 that the myriads of stars were wellnigh 
 
CROMWELL. 59 
 
 quenched in her more lustrous glory. It was 
 one of those evenings, on which we cannot gaze 
 without comparing the pure and passionless 
 quiet of the world above with the fierce solici 
 tudes, the selfish strife, the angry turmoil of the 
 world around us one of those evenings which, 
 at any time, must infuse a sentiment of peace 
 ful melancholy into every bosom, even of the 
 wild and worldly, but which has at no time so 
 deep an influence on the spirit, as when contem 
 plated from the near vicinity of some large city. 
 The contrast between the chaste paleness of those 
 celestial lamps, and the ruddy glare which 
 glanced from many a casement, between the 
 perfect calm aloft, unbroken save by the gentle 
 murmur of the wind, and the confused uproar 
 below, rife with the din of commerce, the disso 
 nance of mingled tongues, and now a distant 
 scream, and now a burst of unmelodious laugh 
 ter, must needs impress more strongly on the 
 mind than aught of homily or lecture, that 
 
60 CROMWELL. 
 
 contempt for the mortal world, and the base 
 things its tenants, that ardent and inexplicable 
 yearning after something of truer and more sub 
 stantial happiness than we can here conceive, 
 that wish for " wings like a dove, that we might 
 flee away, and be at rest/ 5 which constitutes? 
 perhaps, the most essential difference, as exhi 
 bited on earth, between ourselves and the yet 
 lower animals, content to fatten and to perish. 
 
 Such was, not improbably, the strain of 
 thought into which the aspect of the night had 
 led one a man not yet advanced beyond the 
 prime of life, of elegant though low proportions, 
 who stood gazing heavenward, as he leaned 
 against the low wall of a pleasant garden, which 
 girt about with its tall edges of clipped box or 
 hornbeam, its gay parterres, and its bowery 
 walks, a fair suburban villa, situate in what was 
 then, as now, termed Aldersgate, though at 
 that period not a densely peopled thoroughfare, 
 but a long straggling street, half town, half 
 
CROMWELL. 61 
 
 country, with leafy elms lining the public way, 
 and many a cultivated nursery, and many a 
 grassy paddock, intervening between the scat 
 tered dwellings of the retired trader, or the 
 leisure-loving man of letters. 
 
 The countenance of this person, as it was 
 directed with a pensive wistful gaze toward the 
 melancholy planet, receiving the full flood of its 
 lustre, was singular for softness and attraction. 
 He wore no covering on his head, and his 
 luxuriant tresses of light brown hair, evenly 
 parted on the foretop, hung down in silky 
 waves quite to his shoulders. The hues of his 
 complexion, delicately coloured as a woman s, 
 and the somewhat sleepy expression of his full 
 gray eye, accorded well with the effeminate ar 
 rangement of his locks, and indeed entitled him 
 to be considered eminently handsome ; for there 
 was so much of intellect and of imagination in 
 the forehead, low but expansive, and so many 
 
62 CROMWELL. 
 
 lines of thought about the slightly sunken 
 cheeks, now faintly traced and transient, but 
 which would, with the advance of years, in 
 crease to furrows, that the softer traits, while 
 adding to the beauty, detracted nothing from 
 the dignity and manhood of his aspect. His 
 form, though slight and small, was yet compact 
 and muscular, affording promise of that power 
 ful agility which is paramount even to superior 
 strength, in the use and skill of weapons. 
 Neatly clad enough in a loose coat of dark gray 
 cloth, with vest and hose of black, cut plainly, 
 without lace or fringe, and above all, not 
 wearing even the common walking-sword, at 
 that time carried throughout Europe by all of 
 gentle rank, the meditative loiterer would have 
 excited little or no attention among the greater 
 body of mankind, ever caught by the glitter, 
 and deluded by the glare, but careless, as it is 
 undiscerning, of true merit, when harbingered to 
 
CROMWELL. 63 
 
 its opinion by nought of pride or circumstance. 
 He might have been an artisan, or merchant of 
 the city, but that the slouched hat lying, with 
 a staff of ebony, beside him on the wall, distin 
 guished him from the flat-capped dwellers to 
 the east of Temple-bar ; while his hands, which 
 were delicately white, and tender as a lady s, 
 showed that they had never been exercised in 
 the ungentle labour of a mechanic calling. 
 But, stronger even than these tokens, there was 
 that vivid and inexplicable impress of exalted 
 genius, that looking forth of the immortal spirit 
 from the eyes, that strange mixture of quiet 
 melancholy with high enthusiasm, pervading all 
 his features, which must have made it evident, 
 to any moderately keen observer, that figure or 
 decoration could be but of small avail, when 
 considered as the mere appendages to such a 
 mind. 
 
 He stood awhile in silence, though his lips 
 
64 CROMWELL. 
 
 moved at intervals, perusing the bright wander 
 ers of heaven with a gaze so fixed and yearning, 
 as though his spirit would have looked into the 
 very tabernacle and abode of the Omnipotent. 
 At length he spoke articulately, in a voice deep, 
 slow, majestic, and melodious, but in the un 
 conscious tones of one who meditates or prays 
 aloud, without reference or respect to aught 
 external. 
 
 " Beautiful light!" he said, "beautiful lamp 
 of heaven ! what marvel, that the blinded and 
 benighted heathen should ignorantly worship 
 thee? What marvel, that a thousand altars, 
 in a thousand ages, should have sent up their 
 fumes of adoration unto thee, the mooned Ash- 
 taroth, unto thee, the Ephesian Diana, unto 
 thee, the nightly visitant of the young-eyed 
 Endymion ? What marvel, that to those who 
 knew not, neither had they heard of the One, 
 Uncreate, Invisible, Eternal, thou shouldst have 
 
CROMWELL. 65 
 
 seemed meet Deity to whom to bend the knee, 
 thou first-born offspring of his first-created gift ! 
 thou blessed emanation from his own ethereal 
 glory what wonder, when I, his humble fol 
 lower, his ardent, though unworthy worshipper, 
 when I, an honest though an erring Christian, 
 do strive in vain to wean my heart from love 
 of thee ; indoctrinating so my spirit, that I may 
 kiss the rod with which, I am assured too well, 
 HE soon will chasten me, in changing the fair 
 light, that glorious essence in which my soul 
 rejoiceth, for one black, everlasting, self- 
 imparted midnight? Yet so it shall be. A 
 few more revolutions of these puissant planets, 
 a few more mutations of the sweet-returning 
 seasons and to me there shall be no change 
 again on earth for ever ! no choice between 
 the fairest and the foulest ! no difference of 
 night or day ! no charm in the rich gorgeous- 
 ness of flowery summer, above the sere and 
 
66 CROMWELL. 
 
 mournful autumn ! no cheery aspect in the 
 piled hearth of winter ! no sweet communion 
 with the human eye compassionate ! no in 
 tercourse with the great intellects of old, dead, 
 yet surviving still in their sublime and solid 
 pages!" 
 
 He paused for a space, as though he were 
 too deeply moved to trust his thoughts to 
 language; but, after a moment, drawing his 
 hand across his eyes 
 
 " But if it be so/ he continued, " as I may 
 not doubt it will if his fiat be pronounced 
 against me, of dark corporeal blindness what 
 duty yet remains? what, but to labour that 
 the blindness be not mental also? what, but 
 to treasure up even now, during my brief- 
 permitted time, such stores of hoarded wisdom, 
 as may in part suffice, like to the summer- 
 gathered riches of the industrious and thrifty 
 bee, to nourish and to cheer me at the coming 
 
CROMWELL. 67 
 
 of my sunless season ? what, but to profit, 
 even as best I may, by those good opportu 
 nities which his great mercy hath vouchsafed 
 to me ; to sow the seed even now, during the 
 fertile autumn, that by his blessing it may 
 swell and germinate during the brumal darkness 
 of the approaching winter, and in his good time 
 give forth to light a crop improved and glo 
 riously surpassing that from which it sprung ? 
 what, but to give thanks alway, and to praise 
 the tender-heartedness and love of Him, to 
 whom it were no harder task to plunge the 
 mind in lunatic and senseless stupor, than to 
 seal up the fount of light to the poor eye, of 
 Him who, giving all the thousand blessings I 
 enjoy, judges it fitting to deprive me but of 
 one, haply that, from its single loss, others 
 may fructify, and bear good harvest to my use ? 
 Wherefore, oh ! merciful and mighty one, be 
 it unto me as thou wiliest, and thou only ! 
 
68 CROMWELL. 
 
 And, oh ! above all things be it unto me, as 
 now, so alway, humbly to cry, and happily, 
 Thy will be done ! " 
 
 Even as the pious scholar brought his medi 
 tations to a close, the footsteps of one advanc 
 ing, though still unseen, through the mazes of 
 the shrubbery, were heard upon the crisp and 
 crackling gravel ; and, ere he had resumed his 
 hat, which was steeple-crowned and of the 
 puritanic fashion, the intruder made his appear 
 ance, in the guise of an humbly-clad and grave- 
 eyed serving-man, who announced, in phrase 
 ungarnished by much form of reverence towards 
 his master, the presence of three gentlemen 
 within, praying to speak with him. 
 
 fe In faith/ 5 good Andrew, returned the other, 
 " tis an unseasonable hour for visitants. Who 
 be these gentles ?" 
 
 " Master Cromwell is among them/ an 
 swered the attendant ; " but of the rest I know 
 
CROMWELL. 69 
 
 not, save that I heard the name of St. John 
 pass between them. They await your coming 
 in the summer parlour/ 
 
 Without further query or reply, the scholar, 
 as if satisfied that his presence was indeed 
 required, traversed the garden with quick 
 steps, and entering the house, a small but 
 cheerful dwelling, through an entrance hung 
 round with maps and charts of statistics or 
 chronology, passed to the chamber in which 
 his guests expected him. It was a pleasant 
 room, with a bay-window looking upon the 
 garden, but cheaply decorated with hangings 
 of green serge, to which a splendid organ, by 
 the first maker of the day, and a choice collec 
 tion of rare books, several of the number being 
 papyri of great worth, afforded a remarkable 
 contrast. In the recess formed by the window 
 there stood a reading-desk, curiously carved 
 in old black oak, with cushions of green velvet 
 
70 CROMWELL. 
 
 somewhat the worse for wear, supporting a 
 noble folio bible in the Greek text of Geneva. 
 The table was loaded with a heterogeneous 
 mass of books and papers, an original manu 
 script of the Bacchae of Euripides, reposing on 
 a Hebrew copy of the Septuagint, and a stray 
 duodecimo of Petrarch s sonnets marking the 
 place at which the reader had closed the pages 
 of a huge tome of controversial divinity ; while 
 on a marble slab, opposite the chimney, lay a 
 couple of foils, with their wire masks and 
 gloves, partially hidden by the draperies of a 
 threadbare mantle of black velvet, a violin, a 
 guitar, some written music; and, peering out 
 from beneath the whole, the iron basket-hilt and 
 glittering scabbard of a heavy broadsword. 
 
 In this, the student s sanctum, he found the 
 three gentlemen who had been announced, 
 evidently engaged in whispered conversation of 
 deep import, for they did not, till he had stood 
 
CROMWELL. 71 
 
 for a moment or two almost beside them, per 
 ceive the presence of their host, who had thus 
 ample opportunity of examining their persons 
 by the light of a brazen lamp, of antique 
 form, with several burners, which hung from 
 the ceiling immediately above the abstracted 
 group. 
 
 Nearly opposite the door, with his searching 
 eyes fixed upon another of the company, who 
 was speaking with considerable emphasis, 
 though in an under tone, stood the same 
 individual who had assisted Ardenne on the 
 night of his adventure near to Royston, wear 
 ing the very garb in which he had appeared 
 on that occasion, save that for his riding- 
 boots he had substituted a pair of coarse gray 
 woollen stockings drawn tight to the mid- 
 thigh, with ill-blacked shoes of calfskin laced 
 to the instep, and bearing neither rose nor 
 buckle. 
 
72 CROMWELL. 
 
 The speaker to whose words he lent so 
 careful heed, was a tall and slender person, 
 handsomely though gloomily attired in a 
 full suit of black, with silken hose and velvet 
 cloak to match, a mourning rapier hanging 
 at his side, though evidently worn for fashion 
 rather than for use. His countenance, though 
 not of pleasant favour, much less such as could 
 be termed handsome, was nevertheless one 
 from which men could not easily withdraw 
 their eyes, possessing as it did attributes of 
 unquestionable talent, though accompanied by 
 an expression which the dullest must wish 
 to fathom. His eyes, which were large and 
 black, had a bright and flashing glance, when 
 under the influence of excitement, almost 
 painful to the beholder ; while a continual and, 
 as it would seem, involuntary sneer sat on 
 his thin and writhing lip. His hair, black as 
 the raven s wing, was long and curling, though 
 
CROMWELL. 73 
 
 not worn after the flowing; fashion of the 
 
 O 
 
 cavaliers ; but the most remarkable trait of 
 his aspect was the immovable gloom, which 
 overshadowed his dark saturnine features with 
 a cloud so constant, that it has been recorded of 
 him, that seldom, even in his moments of 
 hilarity, was he beheld to smile. 
 
 The remaining person of the trio was a finer 
 and more comely man than either of his com 
 rades ; fairly proportioned, though not above 
 the middle height; with a brow rather full 
 than lofty, a quick and penetrating eye, and 
 an intelligent expression, thoughtful rather 
 than grave, and with no touch of sternness or 
 morosity on his noble features, lighted up as 
 they were from time to time by a smile of 
 singular and cheerful sweetness. He was 
 habited, as became a gentleman, in a rich 
 garb of maroon-coloured velvet, his costly 
 sword suspended from a scarf of good white 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 CROMWELL. 
 
 taffeta, and a white feather in his beaver; the 
 whole, though plain enough, if compared with 
 the luxurious bravery of the cavaliers,-whose 
 dresses would oftentimes have been too cheaply 
 rated at a year s income of their patrimony, 
 conveying an idea of absolute magnificence 
 when viewed beside the simple habiliments of 
 his fellow-visiters. 
 
 After he had surveyed this group for a few 
 moments space, satisfied apparently with the 
 survey, the master of the house stepped for 
 ward, startling them slightly by his motion, and 
 cutting short their converse. 
 
 " Give you good evening, Master Cromwell," 
 he said, addressing himself to the most slovenly 
 apparelled of the company" it shames me to 
 have caused you wait my coming."^ 
 
 "Not so, good sir," returned the other 
 "it is we rather, who have trespassed on your 
 studies ; coming thus at an hour surely unsea- 
 
CROMWELL. 75 
 
 sonable. But, of a truth, I had forgotten I 
 pray you, Master Milton/ (for it was no other 
 than the immortal poet, who had deplored, in 
 such heartfelt yet unrepining language, the 
 advent of that dread calamity which had 
 already been predicted to him, by the first 
 physicians of the day, as the sure consequence 
 of his persisting in his arduous and unremitted 
 labours) "I pray you, Master Milton, know 
 these most worthy and god-fearing gentlemen 
 this" motioning with his hand toward the 
 taller and more gloomy figure " this, my good 
 friend Master Oliver St. John and this my 
 well-beloved and trusty cousin, honest John 
 Hampden I" 
 
 " Of a truth, Master Cromwell," replied the 
 poet, (in those days better known, by his 
 magnificent and stately prose, for a controver 
 sial writer of unequalled power, than by the 
 slight though beautiful effusions of poetry 
 E 2 
 
76 CROMWELL. 
 
 which hitherto he had cast forth merely as the 
 erratic sports of leisure moments, stolen from 
 graver studies, and not yet as the sublime 
 continuous soarings of his unrivalled genius) 
 "Of a truth, Master Cromwell, I owe you 
 more of thanks than I am wont to offer, that 
 you have brought to my poor dwelling these, 
 the most constant and the noblest cultivators 
 of that fair vineyard, to the renewal and reform 
 of which I too, an humble fellow-tiller, have 
 devoted my unworthy labours !" 
 
 And he turned to the companions of his 
 friend, esteemed already by all the worshippers 
 of freedom, as the wisest, the purest, and the 
 best of her adorers as the pilots who might 
 alone be trusted to hold the shattered helm of 
 state aright, amid the terrors, the confusion, 
 and the storm of the approaching crisis as 
 the champions [who had already reared the 
 banner of undaunted opposition to all that was 
 
CROMWELL. 77 
 
 corrupt, or bigoted, or arbitrary in religious 
 or in civil rule as the leaders who, above 
 all others, were endowed with the talent, 
 and worth, and, more than these, with the 
 unflinching energy, to wring the iron sceptre 
 of usurped prerogative from the high hand that 
 wielded it with such despotic sway ! He 
 greeted them with words savouring more of 
 courteous deference, than of that plain-spoken 
 and uncompromising brevity, on the use of 
 which his party prided themselves" so deeply, 
 in their intercourse of man with man ; there 
 was, however, nothing of vain or worldly adula 
 tion, much less of that fawning sycophancy, 
 that low servile manworship, for which the 
 courtiers of the day were so deservedly con 
 temned by the stern puritans, in his frank 
 though reverential bearing. 
 
 After a few seconds spent in civilities, which 
 were accepted, as indeed they were intended. 
 
78 CROMWELL. 
 
 for the befitting homage of one surpassing 
 intellect to others, though in a different sphere 
 of not inferior merit homage, degrading not 
 the giver, while it added to the real dignity 
 of the receiver the party fell into the ordinary 
 demeanour of men familiar, if not with the per 
 sons, at least with the minds and principles, 
 each of the others ; and the conversation flowed 
 as quietly on the accustomed topics of the 
 time, as though the speakers had been in the 
 daily habit of mingling in the same social 
 intercourse. There was, however, not only 
 nothing of levity or licence, but nothing of 
 common import or every-day occurrence, in 
 the interchanged ideas of those high spirits, 
 devoted, one and all, to the same pursuit of 
 patriotism, and equally engrossed in the quick- 
 succeeding incidents of fearful and pervading 
 interest, which rendered every hour of that 
 eventful year a great historic epoch. 
 
CROMWELL. 79 
 
 " Have ye received aught new from Ire 
 land," inquired the poet "ye of the lower 
 house touching this perilous and damnable 
 rebellion?" 
 
 "Ay, of a surety, have we!" answered 
 Cromwell ; " full confirmation full, ay, and 
 overflowing all that we had heard before !" 
 
 "All Ulster is in one light blaze !" cried St. John, 
 his dark eye flashing with indignant fire " the 
 forts all captured ; and that most subtle villain* 
 Phelim O Xeil, wading knee-deep with thirty 
 thousand fanatic and phrensied papists knee- 
 deep in Protestant and English gore ! 
 Connaught and Leinster revelling in red- 
 handed massacre, and the five counties of 
 the Pale arrayed by the Lords Justices to 
 quell the insurrection, united to their brother 
 rebels!" 
 
 "None may conceive the horrors none may 
 enumerate the sufferings, or recount the wretched 
 
80 CROMWELL. 
 
 sufferers !" continued Hampden, a deep shade of 
 melancholy settling down on his fine lineaments. 
 te At the least reckoning, twenty thousand of our 
 brethren, men, women, and children, yea, the 
 very infants at the breast, have perished ! No 
 insult, no atrocity that Romish perfidy could 
 plan, or fiendish cruelty perform, no last ex 
 tremity of famine, cold, or torture, has been 
 spared to their defenceless victims by the bar 
 barian Irish their very priests setting the torch 
 of midnight conflagration to the planter s dwell 
 ing, and hounding on their furious followers to 
 massacre and havoc !" 
 
 " But of the king, fair sirs ?" 
 
 " Well hast thou said, John Milton," inter 
 rupted the harsh voice of Cromwell, before the 
 other had concluded his inquiry. " Well hast 
 thou said, and truly I tis of that man of Belial ! 
 ay, root and branch of him, and his self- 
 seeking carnal cavaliers !" 
 
CROMWELL. 81 
 
 " It is, we fear, too true/ said Hampden, in 
 reply to the bewildered looks of the anxious 
 auditor," it is, we fear, too true ! O Neil, in his 
 dark proclamation, boasts openly his own au 
 thority from the great seal of Scotland ! Sir 
 William St. Leger, trusty alike and brave, hath, 
 as we learn, dismissed his levies, and laid down 
 the arms he had assumed on the first outbreak 
 of the rebels, at sight of a commission, with 
 Charles Stuart s manual sign, held by that mur 
 derous bigot, Lord Musquerry !" 
 
 "And last, not least," sneered Oliver St. John, 
 " Macmahon hath confessed, at shrewd solici 
 tation of the rack, that the original scheme of 
 this rebellion was brought to Ireland, from our 
 gracious king and governor, by Dillon, and the 
 members of the late committee !" 
 
 "Of a truth/ 5 said Cromwell, in reply to the 
 words of his milder cousin, " of a truth there 
 may be cause for fear, ay, and for grief yet, 
 E 3 
 
82 CROMWELL. 
 
 wherefore ? Verily tis a hard thing to rejoice 
 to rejoice in the midst of slaughter and abomi 
 nation ! yet who shall deem, or boast himself to 
 know of that which is to come, save He that 
 holdeth the end I say the end and the accom 
 plishment of all things in the hollow of his hand ? 
 But I will tell ye this yea ! but mistake me 
 not this will I avouch to ye, that / fear not, 
 but do rejoice ! ^Tis a sad thing, in truth, that 
 an anointed king, even a king in Israel, should 
 arm his hand against his people, and turn away 
 his countenance from the well-beloved of the 
 Lord, inclining his ear likewise unto the idolatries 
 of the beast, and unto the charmings of the 
 Moabitish woman ; yea, and pour out the vials 
 of his wrath upon the heads of the sons of right 
 eousness ! But, of a surety, it is not for a man 
 to judge, save thus for I will speak, even as it 
 is put into my mouth save thus that to a man 
 fore-weaponed and forewarned, less dangerous is 
 
CROMWELL. 83 
 
 an open enemy, yea, if he be mightier by ten 
 fold, than one who lurketh privily, beneath the 
 vesture of a friend, looking in secret whom he 
 may devour !" 
 
 " Forewarned, indeed, ye are, replied the 
 poet, musingly ; " and your own fault twill be. 
 if ye be not fore-weaponed likewise ; for, in good 
 sooth, I do believe the lives of none are safe 
 the lives and liberties of none who dare uplift 
 their voices in defence of England s constitution, 
 or the church s purity !** 
 
 "And is it not to this end," cried Oliver, " is 
 it not to this end that we are watching, even 
 now, with our loins girded, and our lights burn 
 ing, unto the protection of those that are de 
 fenceless, and unto the enlightening of those that 
 sit in darkness ? And is it not to this end that 
 we have now come to thee, John Milton, trusting 
 to gain a strong ally even a valiant, and a 
 heart-whole, and a spirit-stirring soldier seek- 
 
84 CROMWELL. 
 
 ing to learn from thee so far as it is for man to 
 learn of man yet, neither confident in worldly 
 wisdom, which is ignorance before the Lord 
 nor relying altogether on the judgment of a fel 
 low worm, howsoever excellent he may be in 
 the gifts of carnal knowledge seeking, I say, to 
 learn from thee, the character and principles of 
 one, with whom we do believe that you so long 
 have communed, as to know the thoughts of his 
 heart, ay, and to interpret the workings of his 
 inward man 1" 
 
 (t Such is, indeed, our object in this untimely 
 visit," continued Hampden, while St. John fixed 
 his searching eye upon the beautiful features of 
 the listener, with keen and interested scrutiny. 
 " We have but now received intelligence of the 
 decease of that shrewd counsellor and honest 
 patriot, Elias Chaloner, the fellow-townsman of 
 my worthy cousin Cromwell, and lately knight 
 for the godly town of Huntingdon ; and, with 
 
CROMWELL. 85 
 
 this same intelligence, the great charge has been 
 laid upon us, by the zealous burghers of the 
 place, of commending to their choice a person 
 who shall honourably fill the seat of him that is 
 departed." 
 
 "And how you would ask John Milton," 
 Cromwell broke in 6f for I can read the query 
 on your brow how, you would ask, can you 
 assist us in this matter? Verily thus for it 
 hath been suggested to our souls, when we were 
 seeking out the Lord in prayer ; yea, wrestling 
 with him in the spirit, that he should guide us 
 to a sure election it was, I tell you truth, I do 
 profess borne in upon the ears of our minds, 
 as with an audible and spoken voice ye shall 
 call to aid the man, even the young man, Edgar 
 Ardenne " 
 
 "With whom," interrupted St. John, evi 
 dently weary of the prolix verbose haranguing 
 of the other, " with whom, as we are well as- 
 
86 CROMWELL. 
 
 sured, you, master Milton, have mingled much 
 in foreign travel, having thereby good oppor 
 tunity to judge of his opinions, and to learn his 
 heart. We would hear from you, therefore, 
 worthy sir, whether this gentleman of high ex 
 traction, born of a race devotedly, I had well- 
 nigh said slavishly , loyal whether this gentle 
 man be indeed, as we would wish to find him, a 
 firm, uncompromising lover of his country ; 
 one who would pledge himself, and keep his 
 plight religiously, to advance the views and 
 serve the interests of our party. May it please 
 you, tell us, fully, what of yourself you know, 
 and what may be your judgment, of this your 
 fellow-traveller and above all, whether he may 
 be wrought, and by what means, to further our 
 purposes 1" 
 
 " For years/ replied the poet, after a mo 
 ment s pause, " have I been wont to read the 
 living minds of men, with even more of study 
 
CROMWELL. 87 
 
 than I have expended on their embalmed and 
 written thoughts for years ! and never, I 
 can say it honestly and freely, for I do believe 
 I know his inmost inspirations even as I am 
 conscious of my own never have I found, or 
 even read of, such a head, combined with such 
 a heart, as that of Edgar Ardenne : a worship 
 per of wisdom, of liberty, of truth, purer and 
 far more fervently devoted, than the great spirits 
 of the old republics ! a scholar in the study, 
 and that too of the ripest; an orator in the 
 forum, strong, stirring, and persuasive; a soldier 
 in the field, well tried, and as well proven ; an 
 adorer of all that is beautiful, but one who sees 
 no beauty save in virtue ; a Christian, fervent 
 and sincere, yet tolerant, and of much charity : 
 ambitious, but ambitious only to do good ! If 
 ever there was born a man wholly unselfish, 
 that man is Edgar Ardenne. Such and on my 
 judgment well may you rely such is the man 
 
88 CROMWELL. 
 
 whom you would take into your counsels. 
 Gain him, then, gain him, if ye may for cer 
 tainly as Edgar Ardenne could achieve aught to 
 benefit his country, though every hope, every 
 feeling, every passion of his soul were listed to op 
 pose it, so certainly would he tread hope, feeling, 
 passion, into the very dust beneath his feet. He 
 has a head so clear, he cannot fail to see the 
 right ; he has a heart so true, he would not fail 
 though at the price of all he holds most dear 
 to follow it. Beware, however, beware, if ye 
 decide to gain him, how ye show aught of 
 doubt, much less suspicion! proffer to him 
 the seat for Huntingdon untrammelled ! say not 
 a word of party not a word of opposition to 
 the court make ye not one condition ask 
 not one pledge ! for had ye heaven itself to 
 tender him, and were to tender it, so bribing 
 him ay were it even to act well my life ! 
 he would refuse even heaven. If, therefore, 
 
CROMWELL. 89 
 
 ye can resolve unpledged to trust him, seek 
 not to sound his views for as well might ye 
 assay to fathom the most central depths of 
 ocean ; seek not to bind his actions for as 
 well might ye go forth to chain the subtile and 
 pervading lightning; but proffer to him in 
 plain terms the seat, at the free choice of the 
 burghers and if he do accept it, as well I 
 trust he will, be sure there is no man in England 
 that better knows the duties of a member in the 
 Commons house of Parliament, or trulier will 
 discharge them I" , ^ : 
 
 " You have described," replied the calm and 
 meditative Hampden "you have indeed de 
 scribed a man, such as there are but few, this 
 side the grave ! your words, too, tally well with 
 the surmises I have formed from his known 
 actions." 
 
 And would you then," asked the moody St. 
 John, " set so great a matter on the casting of 
 
90 CROMWELL. 
 
 a die ? Do you not know that even now we 
 have but a ^majority, not overstrong, nor over 
 certain that many have already been won, 
 or put to silence that Hyde and his moderate 
 partisans daily gain strength, and only lack 
 occasion to join the court in open and unblush 
 ing servitude ? know you not that Falkland 
 wavers, and that if he go over, ten votes, at 
 least, will instantly apostatize ? and would you 
 then elect this cavalier, for such in truth he is, 
 on vague hopes and uncertain indications ?" 
 
 " I said not so/ replied Hampden, quickly 
 " I said not so, but only that I believe him 
 wise and honest. Further I will say now, that 
 if, on any terms, we shall decide to recommend 
 him to the choice of the electors, my voice is 
 for so doino- with nothing of restriction. If 
 
 O S 
 
 he be honest, it needs not to bind him by a 
 promise if otherwise, twere madness to sup 
 pose that promises will bind him. But on this 
 
CROMWELL. 9 L 
 
 matter we will speak more anon we have 
 already trespassed over long upon the leisure 
 and the patience of our honourable host." 
 
 St. John replied not ; and Cromwell, who had 
 perhaps made up his mind already, had fallen 
 into a long and rambling exposition of some 
 doctrinal point, wholly remote from the subject 
 in question, to which Milton listened with a 
 tranquil smile playing about his lip, and with 
 the air apparently of discovering what was the 
 meaning, if there indeed were any, of the wild 
 and ill-digested oratory of the member for 
 Cambridge, at this time just beginning to 
 attract the notice of the house, though no one 
 could, perhaps, assign a cause for his increasing 
 influence. 
 
 For a short space, the others spoke apart, 
 warmly, though in an under tone Hampden, 
 as it seemed, urging on his grave confederate 
 some dubious and unpalatable measure ; the 
 
92 CROMWELL. 
 
 energy of his manner gradually rising, while 
 the opposition of his friend waxed fainter, until 
 the habitual sneer departed from his lip, and 
 the accustomed cloud partially yielded to an 
 opener and more cheery aspect. 
 
 "Be it so!" he said, at length, raising his 
 voice, as the discussion was finished by his 
 assent " Be it so, if you will, and, in faith, 
 I believe you are in the right on t. Now, Mas 
 ter Cromwell," he continued, turning toward 
 him as he spoke, " it lacks but a scant hour 
 of midnight, and our host s oil, I trow, is wont 
 to lend its light to purposes of more import 
 ance, than our further converse. Give you 
 good night, fair sir," he added, with a short 
 inclination to the poet, as gathering his cloak 
 about him he led his comrades, after brief 
 ceremony, into the moon-lit streets ; while 
 he whom he had last addressed, applied him 
 self in solitary diligence to the exercise of his 
 
CROMWELL. 93 
 
 pen, slight instrument of mightiest powers, 
 whether for good or evil, and, in the hand of 
 the philosopher, prime mover of more potent 
 revolutions thanlts dread rival and confederate, 
 the mortal sword. 
 
94 CROMWELL. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Oh what more blest than that serene repose, 
 Which steeps the soul forespent with foreign woea, 
 What time we turn, our weary wanderings o er, 
 To the old homestead, thence to roam no more, 
 And stretch our limbs in calm luxurious rest, 
 On the dear bed our careless childhood press d. 
 
 CATULLUS. (Free Translation.) 
 
 NONE know, but those who have, for years, 
 been wanderers from the paternal roof, whether 
 of choice or of necessity it matters not who 
 have for years been sojourners, not dwellers, on 
 the broad desert earth who, in the midst of 
 
CROMWELL. 95 
 
 friends almost, perhaps, as dear as those who 
 girt as with a magic cestus the unforgotten fire 
 side of their childhood, have craved with an 
 insatiate and yearning appetite the well-known 
 aspect of the old home-places who have lan 
 guished for a father s blessing, a mother s wist 
 ful eye, a sisters holy kiss who have felt, with 
 the patriotic Syrian, that " Abana and Pharphar, 
 rivers of Damascus," are truly to the exile 
 " better than all the waters of Israel ;" none 
 know, but these, the deep calm happiness of 
 being once again the centre of that sweet 
 domestic circle of receiving the fond welcome 
 of every living thing ay, even to the house 
 hold dog, or superannuated horse, that yelps or 
 whinnies in the fulness of his recognition of 
 lying down to rest beneath the very curtains, 
 and on the very bed, which had so often wooed 
 them to repose, before they knew the bitterness 
 of sin or sorrow. 
 
96 CROMWELL. 
 
 Fully indeed, and far more sensibly than it is 
 tasted by the common pilgrim of life s journey, 
 did this impression of tranquil bliss pervade the 
 breast of Ardenne, as he leaned, gazing upon 
 the familiar landscape, from out the open case 
 ment of his chamber, that chamber, which had. 
 never for a moment faded from his memory, 
 with its oaken wainscoting and faded apestries 
 its angular recesses, peopled by his youthful 
 fantasy with lurking shapes of terror its plea 
 sant seats in the deep bay windows its brazen- 
 handled cabinets of qu .int device its bed >vith 
 carved tester, and dark hangings and, more 
 than all. its ebon desk with the velvet-bound 
 and silver-studded bible, whence his long-lost 
 and long-regretted mother had lessoned him so 
 lovingly while he was yet a boy. 
 
 The moonlight lay upon the velvet park, and 
 tufted elms, as though it loved to sleep among 
 that peaceful scenery ; and if, at intervals, it 
 
CROMWELL. 97 
 
 shone reflected from the surface of some quiet 
 water, it lingered even there with a half- 
 shadowed lustre, not flashing out with the bright 
 gleams of gorgeous sunshine, but calmly har 
 monizing with the spirit of the place and hour. 
 So clear, however, was the mellow light, that 
 the graceful attitudes of the slumbering deer 
 might be distinguished on the open lawns, 
 while the pinion of the gliding owl was seen to 
 glance against the massy shadows of the sur 
 rounding forest. 
 
 Yet now, although he gazed upon all that 
 was most beautiful of natural scenery, all that 
 was most endeared to him by boyish recollec 
 tions although he was surrounded by the very 
 objects that he had most earnestly desired to 
 see although he was at the very point, which 
 he but yesterday would have esteemed the 
 summit of fruition he was not happy. It is 
 true, that he had found in her, on whom his 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
98 CROMWELL. 
 
 mind had dwelt most fondly and most fre 
 quently during his absence, the very being he 
 had loved so fervently of yore bearing no 
 traces of the years which had elapsed, save in 
 the ripening of her mind to excellent maturity, 
 and in the rounding of her sylph-like figure 
 into the exquisite proportions of young woman 
 hood ! It is true, that the father, whom he had 
 honoured and obeyed with that old-fashioned 
 filial reverence, which ill betide the change ! 
 
 + O 
 
 has long since passed away, together with the 
 diamond-hilted rapiers, and the somewhat formal 
 courtesy of our progenitors, had welcomed him 
 to his affections, a man yet in the prime of in 
 tellectual vigour ! It is true, that he had 
 brought back to his native land a heart un 
 tainted by the follies and the sins of foreign 
 countries ; a mind well satisfied, not by the 
 baseless arguments of boyish prejudice, but by 
 he strong convictions of experience, that his 
 
CROMWELL. 99 
 
 own earth-fast island was indeed the home best 
 calculated for the seekers of that sweet domestic 
 quietude, that fireside, church-going happiness 
 that calm enjoyment of the duties, the la 
 bours, and the pleasures of a country life, blent, 
 as these ever are, with a romantic taste for the 
 green fields and slumbering woodlands, the 
 gentle river and the smooth hillside which 
 have, at all times, formed a feature so distinc 
 tive in the English character ! But it is no less 
 true, that, even at the moment when his hand 
 might have been said to grasp all that his soul 
 desired, his spirit was disturbed, and his heart 
 ill at ease. 
 
 It were perhaps the wisest, as it surely were 
 the happiest, course, for mortals to " take no 
 heed for the morrow." Yet, in a strict sense, 
 obedience to this injunction is perhaps impos 
 sible impossible at least to any man endowed 
 with enough of intellect and mental vigour to 
 F 2 
 
100 CROMWELL. 
 
 perceive the connextion between present causes 
 and eventual effects to foresee with prescient 
 sagacity the crop which will spring up to 
 morrow from the seed laid in the ground to 
 day ! For who could sit at ease, appreciating 
 the full quality of each delicious viand, and 
 pleasantly debating on the flavour of each fra 
 grant wine, knowing that the sword of Damocles 
 was swinging by a single hair and that too 
 yielding at every instant to the weight above 
 his head ? 
 
 Had it not been for this had it been possible 
 for Ardenne to seal up his eyes, and close his 
 ears, against the evidence of what to-morrow 
 must bring forth had he lacked the wisdom to 
 discover the future destinies of England, her 
 vitals, even now convulsed by the first throes of 
 the incipient earthquake, or the patriotism to 
 sympathize with the afflictions which, as that 
 wisdom taught him, must, ere another year 
 
CROMWELL. 101 
 
 befall his country he might have surrendered 
 himself to momentary pleasure, careless or ig 
 norant of the approaching woe ! And so rare of 
 occurrence, and so brief when they do occur, 
 are the periods, during human life, even of com 
 parative happiness, perhaps, had he so done, 
 he had been able to look back in after days to 
 more of sunny hours than he could count among 
 the strange and mingled incidents of his eventful 
 life. But, constituted as he was, it was not in 
 his power to fix his gaze on the bright present 
 aspect of the things around him, without observ 
 ing the huge melancholy clouds which were 
 already rising up in the political horizon, threat 
 ening to overshadow with their gloomy pall, and 
 perhaps to overwhelm, in the wild tempest they 
 must soon discharge, the feeble shallop of his 
 fortunes, together with the stronger vessel of the 
 constitution. 
 
 At an early period of his life a visiter of south- 
 
102 CROMWELL. 
 
 ern lands, where be had wandered, not to mark 
 alone the sunny skies and desolated fields, the 
 ruined temples and the beautiful cascades, but 
 to muse on the conditions of the nations once so 
 powerful, and so degraded now ; to ponder on 
 their rise and fall; to draw deep lessons of the 
 future from the contemplation of the past ; he 
 had learned to cherish liberty the more from 
 having witnessed if not himself endured the 
 wrongs, the misery, and the oppression, of un 
 limited authority. Summoned of late by ru 
 mours, rife throughout the world, of present 
 disagreement and of public strife between the 
 King and Parliament of his own country, he had 
 returned to England at the instigation of his na 
 tural sense of duties which forbade him to ex 
 pend his energies of heart and hand in the service 
 of a foreign prince, when both might be required 
 to better the cause of liberty or loyalty, no less 
 than at the dictates of those natural affections 
 
CROMWELL. 103 
 
 which, sooner or later, will point, as surely as 
 the magnetic needle to the north, toward the 
 home of childhood. While on the journey all 
 his thoughts had been of joy of that serene and 
 moderate happiness, which makes the days flow 
 onward, like a broad and tranquil river, fertil 
 izing some fair plain, rich with the hopes of 
 thousands beautiful, but with an indescribable 
 and unromantic beauty presenting none of 
 those wild charms, those scenes at once sublime 
 and lovely to the eye, which mark the course of 
 far-famed torrents amid the savage glens of 
 moorland, moss, and mountain but leaving on 
 the mind a mingled sentiment of gratitude and 
 bliss that will be fresh and vivid, when the 
 sterner memory of its rival shall have yielded to 
 oblivion. His spirit had looked forward to a 
 long perspective of sunshining years years not 
 to be degraded by the selfish sloth of luxury ; 
 not to be wasted in the mere sports of the field 
 which useful, ay, and ennobling in their tend- 
 
104 CROMWELL. 
 
 encies, when partaken but as a relief to grave 
 and solid duties, so surely brutalize if they be 
 exalted to a daily occupation ; not to be dreamed 
 away in apathetic musings and would-be philo 
 sophy, but to be dignified by high and patriotic 
 labours, by the cultivation of the sciences and 
 arts, by the promotion of public virtue, and do 
 mestic worth, to be enlivened by the gay com 
 munion of the noble and the good ; to be soft 
 ened by the sweet charities, the endearing ties, 
 the holy sympathies, that clasp within their 
 pale the members of a happy family, and to be 
 closed, at length, by a calm deathbed, amid 
 weeping friends, and a grave beneath the elms 
 of the ancestral churchyard, still to be decked 
 with flowers, and pointed out to far posterity as 
 the long home of one whose life had been a 
 course to which death had but brought the con 
 summation of unbending honour. 
 
 Such, when the chalky cliffs looked white and 
 lofty, such were the fond anticipations, the ima- 
 
CROMWELL. 105 
 
 ginations never perhaps to be realized, which 
 poured their gilded halo round the heart of 
 Ardenne ; and when he felt his foot once more 
 securely planted on the parent soil, when all 
 those gushing influences of mingled ecstasy 
 and tenderness swept in an overwhelming 
 torrent over his every sense, he deemed 
 that all his hopes were on the point of being 
 gratified, that he was indeed about to be the 
 happiest of men. The rumours of evil seemed 
 to fade away; the menaces of political discord, 
 perchance even of civil strife, to mutter only at 
 a distance, if not unheard, at least unworthy to 
 create solicitude; the fears that would at 
 times arise unbidden, clouding with darker 
 shades the bright views of his mental painting, 
 were all forgotten. And when he arrived, as he 
 had done that night, at the dear home of his 
 boyhood when he perceived the mighty plea 
 sure that lightened forth from every feature of 
 F 3 
 
106 CROMWELL. 
 
 his admiring father when he found himself 
 revelling in the manifest affections of his des 
 tined bride, and knew that she partook of the 
 same rapture, and in no less degree, he for a 
 while abandoned his whole soul to the tide of 
 feeling, he suffered himself to be carried away 
 by his enjoyment of the present, careless and 
 fearless of the future ; he felt, perhaps for the 
 first time of his life, during those brief hours, 
 that elastic buoyancy of temper which seems to 
 tread the earth with winged steps, about to soar 
 aloft, insensible to aught that may depress, 
 reckless of all that may oppose; that rapt 
 intoxication of the spirit, which is succeeded so 
 invariably by the contrary extreme of listless, 
 sad despondency, that in the northern parts of 
 Britain it has given rise to a pervading super 
 stition, to an undoubting creed, that such is the 
 forerunner and the omen, not of a causeless 
 gloom, but of a coming evil. 
 
CROMWELL. 107 
 
 However this may be, it nevertheless is cer 
 tain that scarcely had Ardenne retired from that 
 delicious intercourse to the seclusion of his own 
 apartment, ere the exhilaration, which had 
 almost surprised himself while he indulged it, 
 gave place, first, to an uncertain sense of rest 
 lessness, then to a consciousness of some im 
 pending evil increasing in distinctness, moment 
 after moment, till it assumed at length the 
 shape of an anxiety, if not a fear positive, 
 well-defined, and, alas ! but too well grounded. 
 Nothing, indeed, but the whirl of mingled 
 
 sensations leaving room for nought of serious 
 . 
 meditation, could have, even thus far, blinded 
 
 Ardenne to the difficulties and the dangers of 
 his future course. The boasted loyalty of his 
 forefathers, their fond devotion, stronger almost 
 than life, to the king, not as a person, but as a 
 portion, and that the most important, of the 
 state, their orthodox and sturdy zeal, condemn- 
 
108 CROMWELL. 
 
 ing all as sectaries and fanatics, who differed in 
 the least from the established canons of the 
 church, their prejudiced affection for all that 
 was antique, even for antique error ! their 
 holding up all those who would improve or 
 alter, with the most diffident and sparing hand, 
 as innovators on the good old times, as levellers 
 of rank and order, as iconoclasts of the holy 
 constitution, as traitors to their monarch, to 
 their country, to their God ! 
 
 All these, he could not but remember, had 
 been the principles impressed upon his dawning 
 intellect as the very elixir of political wisdom, 
 as the examples which must point the steps of 
 every Ardenne ; as the dogmata, for the main 
 tenance of which he must, if ever called upon 
 to do so, rejoicingly expend his fortune and his 
 blood ! All these, he could not but foresee, 
 must still, according to all human calculation, 
 be the favourite maxims of his father, who as 
 
CROMWELL. 109 
 
 he felt in contradiction of those hopes which, 
 even in spite of hope, he knew unfounded 
 would be too like to deem the slightest deviation 
 from the footsteps of his idols, as the worst 
 apostacy ! the most respectful opposition to 
 the arbitrary will of the misguided sovereign, as 
 flat rebellion ! the most moderate interference 
 in behalf of liberal views and privileges of the 
 people, as a banding, against the legitimate 
 aristocracy of the land, with all that was low 
 and sordid and degraded ! too like, in short, 
 to deem the part, which Edgar felt already to 
 be the only one he could in honour or in honesty 
 espouse, a base abandonment of his natural 
 position, a shameful departure from the prin 
 ciples and virtues of his race, a crime not to be 
 atoned for, even by exclusion from his heart, 
 and expulsion from the home of his fathers! 
 And had he been able even heretofore, and at 
 a distance, to close his eyes against this fatal 
 
110 CROMWELL. 
 
 certainty, he must indeed have been both blind 
 and deaf of heart, had he not marked the words 
 of blasting sarcasm of fierce and fiery hatred, 
 which flashed forth as oft as any casual mention 
 intervened of those who had stood forth to check 
 the headlong declination of the English church 
 toward dreaded popery, or the more rapid increase 
 of prerogative toward absolute and autocratic 
 sway. But they had not escaped him ! although 
 unnoted, or at least unremarked, amid the free 
 and flowing conversation of that first evening, 
 and unable for the time to dash his most un 
 usual exuberance of animal spirits, they had 
 sunk deep into his heart ; and now they rose in 
 long array against him, ghastly and gloomy 
 shapes, reproaching him with his unnatural and 
 foolish joy, and pointing to an endless course of 
 tribulation and of sorrow. Nor was this all ! 
 though this had been enough to overshadow a 
 temperament more sanguinely inclined than that 
 
CROMWELL. 1 1 1 
 
 of Edgar Ardenne, determined as he was to 
 follow that which he himself should deem the 
 wise, the upright, and the honourable way of 
 action ; though such should be avenged by the 
 prostration of all his fancy s idols by the ruin 
 of his fortune by the blighting of his nearest 
 and dearest aspirations and, more intolerable 
 far than all beside, by the forfeiture of that 
 high opinion which his merit had induced, and 
 the frustration of that just expectance which 
 his promise had excited in the bosom of his 
 friends and kinsmen. 
 
 Nor was this all ! For, as he pondered now 
 in the lone stillness of the night, as he reviewed 
 with a dispassionate keen-sighted judgment the 
 occurrences of the past day as he recurred to 
 every word which had fallen from the lips to 
 which he looked for love and life and every thing 
 to every expression which had wreathed in 
 smiles, or clouded with disapprobation the soul- 
 
112 CROMWELL. 
 
 fraught lineaments of Sibyl, he could not bless 
 himself with the conviction, scarce even with 
 the hope, that she was not, although in a less 
 stern degree, the holder of the same ancestral 
 prejudices a worshipper of the same creed, 
 hallowed as it was by much that naturally would 
 call forth the sympathies of a mind imbued 
 with all the poetry of feudal recollections, not as 
 yet faded from the earth by the high chivalrous 
 devotion the noble and unselfish confidence 
 the enthusiastic valour the unsullied memory 
 and cloudless glory of the days when kings were 
 loved as second only to the gods when loyalty 
 was regarded as a virtue among men, in the 
 same rank with piety toward Heaven. 
 
 Whither, then whither had fallen his exulting 
 fancies whither had flown his visionary pro 
 spects of a useful and a happy life, of an honoured 
 and regretted end if the paths of happiness 
 and honour were destined to run diverse ? If, 
 
CROMWELL. 113 
 
 his heart burning with the pure and hallowed 
 flame of liberty, his head clearly appreciating 
 the miserable and abhorred aims of the rash 
 man who wore the crown of England, his whole 
 soul glowing with patriotic ardour, he must 
 either prostitute his energies to make what to 
 him seemed the worse appear the better cause 
 must either lift his voice to justify and to defend 
 time-honoured wrong and new-devised oppres 
 sion must either edge the weapon of the despot 
 with all the powers of his arm or, following 
 the dictates of his own conscience, ranking him 
 self among the vindicators of the constitution 
 to its early purity, among the assertors of a 
 legitimate and tempered freedom as far re 
 moved from the wild anarchy and licence of 
 falsely-styled republics, as from the forced 
 obedience and intolerant rule of arbitrary go 
 vernors must be content to sacrifice all that his 
 heart held worthy its acceptance ? If, in short. 
 
114 CROMWELL. 
 
 he must act a part dishonest and unworthy, so 
 to gain those ordinary means of happiness, to 
 which none so lowly but they do aspire ; or must 
 surrender every hope, nay every possibility of 
 earthly bliss at the inflexible commands of duty 
 and honour. 
 
 These were the dark reflections into which 
 the mind of Ardenne had relapsed, as he stood 
 alone, gazing from the lattice of his chamber 
 into the bosom of the night, profiting by, if 
 not enjoying, the first moments of calm soli 
 tude, the first opportunity for quiet and heart- 
 searching meditation, that had fallen to his lot, 
 since he had been numbered once again among 
 the dwellers beneath the oaken shades of his 
 paternal Woodleigh ; nor, as the hours of night 
 passed, not unheralded by musical chimes from 
 the old belfry, and the moonlight waned in the 
 peaceful sky, did his wild thoughts and sad 
 forebodings give way to aught of weariness; 
 
CROMWELL. 115 
 
 the more he pondered, the less able did he 
 seem to find the slightest clue to guide his 
 footsteps through the gloomy labyrinth of the 
 future the longer he sat gazing on the pallid 
 stars, the less he felt disposed for slumber ; 
 till at length, the spirit moving as it were too 
 rapidly, and the blood coursing through his 
 veins too fiercely to permit the body to remain 
 inactive^ he arose, scarce conscious that he did 
 so, and paced the oaken floor backward and 
 forward, with swift [irregular steps, the livelong 
 night. 
 
 Gradually the coming of the early twilight 
 dappled the darkness of the eastern sky; a 
 bird or two, of those which had securely roosted 
 under the ivy-curtained eaves, awaking with a 
 lively chirp, gave notice of the dawn ; and 
 anon the calm and colourless light of an au 
 tumnal morning crept into Ardenne s chamber, 
 dispelling from its every nook, the massy 
 
116 CROMWELL. 
 
 shadows which had nestled, like unholy spirits, 
 in those deep recesses beneath the partial in 
 fluence of the moon. But all unnoted by its 
 occupant had those successive changes circled 
 the firmament ; and when the sound of voices 
 and of footsteps, passing to and fro the corri 
 dors, announced the return of those bright 
 hours allotted to so much of human toil and 
 sorrow, he absolutely started in surprise, and 
 almost doubted whether it could indeed be 
 morning that had stolen on his waking dreams 
 and found him still a watcher. 
 
 With something like a smile at his own 
 
 O 
 
 thoughtful carelessness, he turned to change 
 and alter his disarranged attire; and as he 
 dashed the pure cold water over his throbbing 
 temples, and bathed his feverish hands, he 
 perceived that its refreshing coolness pervaded 
 not his body only, but calmed and soothed his 
 mind ; and when the merry bell summoned its 
 
CROMWELL. 117 
 
 hearers to that most unrestrained and sociable 
 of meetings, the morning meal, he descended 
 the old staircase gazing upon its walls decked 
 with time-honoured banners and glittering with 
 starry groups of weapons, and its landing-places 
 guarded by complete panoplies of steel stand 
 ing erect with advanced arms and lowered 
 visors, as if still tenanted by the strong frames 
 that had supported them of yore amid the din 
 of battle if not with a heart at ease, at least 
 with a countenance that bore no traces of the 
 conflict still at work within. 
 
 On entering the summer-parlour, as such 
 rooms were termed in the quaint language of 
 the time, wherein meet preparations for a 
 breakfast far more solid than are used in these 
 degenerate days had been already made, he 
 found his destined bride alone in a projecting 
 oriel window, seated on the broad-cushioned 
 ottoman which circled the recess, with a light 
 
118 CROMWELL. 
 
 frame before her, filled with a gorgeous Indian 
 silk, on which her art had traced some fair 
 embroideries yet incomplete; but though the 
 many-coloured skeins assorted within reach, and 
 the well-filled needle between her taper fingers 
 showed that she had commenced her feminine 
 and graceful occupation, the thoughtful attitude 
 of her head languidly propped on her left hand, 
 while the right lay motionless on the rich tex 
 ture, belied her fancied industry. 
 
 So noiselessly had Edgar s step fallen on the 
 soft Turkey carpet,-that Sibyl had not perceived 
 his entrance ; and so beautiful was the picture 
 of still life which she afforded to her lover s 
 gaze, that he lingered for a moment ere his 
 voice should rouse her into animation. A flood 
 of morning lustre streamed downward with a 
 golden hue, caught from the tinted panes, upon 
 her glossy hair and pure complexion, circling 
 her entire form with a halo of rich light, no 
 
CROMWELL. 119 
 
 unlike that with which the painters of the 
 Romish school are wont to hallow their female 
 saints and martyrs. The outlines of her beau 
 tiful shape were mellowed, as it were, and 
 shrouded partially by the hazy beams of sun 
 shine which fell in oblique lines between the 
 observer s eye and her person, simply arrayed in 
 a close bodice, accurately fitted to her fine 
 bust, and a full robe of white. Her luxuriant 
 tresses folded plainly about the contour of her 
 small and classic head, without ornament or 
 gem of any kind ; and the exceeding repose, if 
 it might not be termed melancholy, of her 
 features, giving, together with the accidents of 
 light and shade, a Madonna-like and sainted 
 aspect to her figure, which would have en 
 chained an artist with no less of fascination 
 than it exercised, from different reasons, over 
 the mind of Ardenne. 
 
 As he approached, her delicate ear detected 
 
120 CROMWELL. 
 
 him ; she turned her head, and springing to her 
 feet, " Dear Edgar !" she exclaimed, her eye 
 discovering with instinctive quickness the trace 
 of melancholy left upon his lineaments, however 
 faintly, by his nightly musings, "you are ill at 
 ease. Nay, smile not tis a ghastly smile, not 
 of your own expression ! you are ill at ease, 
 have you passed a sleepless night 1" 
 
 " Sweet Sibyl," he replied, with a wan smile, 
 and gently pressing her extended hand, " you 
 are indeed a keen observer ; too keen, believe 
 me ! How should I be, but well and happy, 
 surrounded thus by all I love most tenderly ?" 
 
 " How, indeed Edgar !" she answered, even 
 more sadly than before. " How, indeed if 
 you do love so tenderly ? But ill at ease you 
 are, and have been sleepless ! All night long 
 have I heard your heavy strides upon the 
 chamber-floor, and those not regular and 
 measured as your wont, but fitful and uncer- 
 
CROMWELL. 121 
 
 tain. The happy do not so pass their first 
 night beneath the roof that saw their birth." 
 
 "If I do love, Sibyl, z//" he exclaimed, 
 with deep almost reproachful energy " But, 
 in good truth, I am a poor dissembler, and 
 could scarcely feign, were it to win even thy 
 heart, Sibyl and, for it seems I must confess 
 me, I am somewhat, though slightly, ill at 
 ease " 
 
 " I knew I knew it, at a glance," she in 
 terrupted him ; C and wherefore then conceal 
 it? Good Doctor Masters, though somewhat 
 past his prime, still ministers, and skilfully, to 
 his familiar patients an hour will have him 
 here" and she moved hastily toward a silver 
 hand-bell, which stood, with books and draw 
 ings and a lady s lute, upon a fairy-looking 
 cabinet of tortoiseshell and marquetry. 
 
 " Nay ! nay !" he cried, gently arresting 
 her, " I meant not so ! Be not alarmed, 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 CROMWELL. 
 
 dear Sibyl, mine is a robust frame, not oft or 
 easily affected by aught of feebleness or 
 ailment. My mind hath been of late some 
 what overwrought but a few days consumed 
 in the enjoyment of home, happiness, and the 
 delights of your society, shall speedily restore 
 me. Look not so grave so sad I do beseech 
 you " 
 
 " Oh, Edgar," she interrupted him again, 
 " tell me, if you do love me, tell me all ! Long 
 years have we been parted parted, as I have 
 hoped as, from your kind and fervent letters, 
 I have well believed in body, not in soul ! 
 and is it now oh ! is it to be thus ? Are we 
 to be but more divided, when we are more 
 together? Have we but met to be more 
 widely and more coldly severed ? Oh ! if you 
 love me, let me know your griefs ! Who, 
 before me, should know or who, as I, would 
 share them ?" 
 
CROMWELL. 123 
 
 "All all," he answered, in the hollow 
 voice of one who struggles vainly with his 
 feelings, forcing a smile as faint as a Decem 
 ber s sunbeam. " You shall share all grief 
 happiness life death eternity ! All, all, 
 sweet Sibyl, if that indeed you be so minded ! 
 From you I have had I will have, no secrets ; 
 but now, I do assure you, I am not in grief, 
 how should I ? Something of gloomy 
 thought may have come over me something 
 of moody sadness causeless and senseless 
 such as will float at times across the brains 
 of all, who think as I do deeply. But no, 
 Sibyl, no, I am not unhappy ! Not for the 
 proudest station upon earth would I exchange 
 this fond proximity to thee not for the 
 universal blast of the world s approbation 
 would I barter that bright tear shed for me, 
 Sibyl or that yet brighter tear, that chases 
 it. Cheer up, my own, own, love, we will 
 G 2 
 
124 CROMWELL. 
 
 talk more of this anon for lo! here comes 
 my father !" 
 
 And as he spoke, attired in hunter s garb 
 of green, booted to the mid-thigh, with bugle- 
 horn and wood-knife usurping the place of 
 rapier and of poniard, and with two gallant 
 stag-hounds at his heel, the noble veteran 
 entered. 
 
 "Alert alert!" he cried, with a gay smile 
 " you of young blood ! Methought I was 
 myself full early stirring, but here are ye, in 
 rising as in all else, beforehand with me. 
 What ho ! ye loitering knaves, hurry our 
 breakfast ! 5 Tis a rare morning, Edgar a soft 
 mild wind, a heavy dew last eventide, and the 
 clouds gently rising. Old Stavely tells me he 
 has harboured a right hart of grease a stag 
 of ten ! and I have sent out riders these four 
 hours agone, to rouse the country. The 
 Outrams will be here anon you mind the 
 
CROMWELL. 1 25 
 
 Outrams, boy, your college mates of yore, 
 and now right noble gallants ; and Atherstone, 
 of Ashstead Hall, and old Lord Middleton, 
 with his brave sons ! Friends all true friends, 
 though some of them, I doubt, forgotten ! 
 But fore George we will make a day of it !" 
 
 Thus the old man ran on, overlooking in 
 his light-hearted cheerfulness the evident ab 
 straction of his listeners, although they rallied 
 up enough of animation to maintain some sort 
 of conversation during their hasty meal, which 
 scarce was ended ere Sir Henry started from 
 his seat. 
 
 " See ! see !" he cried, as a fair cavalcade 
 swept past the windows, their plumes waving 
 in the light west wind, spurs jingling, and 
 steeds curvetting. "" See ! they be here even 
 now ; and lo ! the pack I" As, with their 
 attendant huntsmen, and half a score of prick 
 ers, splendidly mounted on blood-horses, and 
 
126 CROMWELL. 
 
 attired in forest jerkins sumptuously laced, 
 round caps, and huge French-horns encircling 
 their shoulders, restrained by many an echoing 
 shout, and many a clanging lash, some twenty 
 couple of tall northern bloodhounds came 
 trotting slowly up the lawn, in all that perfect 
 condition and accuracy of detail, which has, in 
 every period of her history, been so distinctive 
 of the field-sports of England ! 
 
 " Fly, Sibyl fly, my fairy/ cried the im 
 patient veteran. " Do on your riding-gear 
 right speedily Ariel is champing on his bits 
 even now, to summon you ! Edgar and I 
 meanwhile will look to our guests in the great 
 hall. Dally not, girl, I pray you the sun is 
 shrouded even now, and the scent will lie most 
 bravely-r-~I would not, to be Prince of Wales* 
 lose such a morning! What ho! my jovial 
 roisters," he continued, in a louder tone, 
 striding into the huge vaulted hall through 
 
CROMWELL. 127 
 
 one door, as his fair niece vanished at the 
 other. "What ho!" addressing the laughing- 
 group, who waited his arrival. " Here have ye 
 an old friend, whom some of ye perchance have 
 not as yet forgotten." 
 
 And with a prouder air, and more exulting 
 smile, he introduced his gallant son, unseen for 
 many a year, to his admiring friends. 
 
 A short half-hour flitted pleasantly away in 
 heartfelt greetings, and gay converse, of light 
 moment, but lively, joyous, and sincere. Then 
 every high-plumed hat was doffed, and every 
 voice was lowered, as Sibyl Ardenne, with her 
 attendant maidens, meetly equipped for the field, 
 entered the hall. 
 
 " To horse ! to horse !" was now the word ; 
 and the ladies were assisted to their velvet selles 
 by favoured cavaliers, and the gallants vaulted 
 to their saddles, and threw their chargers on 
 their haunches by dint of curb and spur, and 
 
128 CROMWELL. 
 
 drew their forms to the most graceful attitude, 
 as with courtly merriment and sylvan music, 
 they swept away through shadowy avenues and 
 over shaven lawns, to the wilder coppices and 
 more secluded glades of chase and forest. 
 
CROMWELL. 129 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The chase is o er go couple up the pack, 
 And let your lusty horn ring holyday 
 To the s winked foresters we ll hunt no more, 
 Since duty calls of gravest import stern, 
 And deep election of high causes twain 
 Which is the better! 
 
 THE hunt was at its height ! The noble stag 
 which had been harboured, on the previous night, 
 in a deep swampy thicket, situate at the extreme 
 western verge of the chase, and adjoining a wild 
 tract of semi-cultivated moorland disdaining 
 to seek refuge in the recesses of the devious 
 G 3 
 
130 CROMWELL. 
 
 woodland, had broken covert gallantly, as the 
 first crash of deep-mouthed music burst from 
 his stanch pursuers, and clearing by a gigan 
 tic effort the rough park-palings had taken to 
 the open country, crossing hill and dale in a line 
 scarce less direct than the crow s flight, and at 
 a pace that, ere an hour had passed, reduced 
 the number of those who followed the now mute 
 and panting hounds from a score or two of 
 fearless horsemen to scarcely half a dozen of 
 the boldest and best-mounted riders. 
 
 The ladies of the party had long since been 
 thrown out, scarcely indeed having cantered 
 a half-mile along the nearest road, after the 
 hounds had left the confines of the park ; but 
 still the foremost of the field, with all the hair- 
 brained courage of a boy, and all the deep saga 
 cious foresight of a veteran sportsman, rode old 
 Sir Henry Ardenne ; his manly features flushed 
 with the excitement of his healthful exercise, 
 
CROMWELL. 131 
 
 and his gray hair floating on the current of air 
 created by his own swift motion, as cap in hand 
 he cheered the laggards of the pack with a voice 
 that had lost nothing of its full-toned round 
 ness. 
 
 At length^ in a sequestered dell clothed on 
 each hand with a dense growth of underwood 
 feathering its rocky and precipitous declivities,, 
 down which a sandy road wound in short toil 
 some curves, and watered by a bright and brawl 
 ing rivulet, hard-pressed and weary the brave 
 quarry turned to bay. The deep note of the 
 leading hound changed to a shrill and savage 
 treble as he viewed his prey, and at the same 
 instant the loud death-halloo rang from the 
 exulting lips of the old baronet, as he caught 
 and comprehended the import of that sharp 
 yell. 
 
 Another minute brought him to the brink of 
 a wide pool, embayed between rough cliffs of 
 
132 CROMWELL. 
 
 sandstone, and overlooked by a gnarled and 
 leafless oak, on the highest branch of which 
 a solitary raven sat unmoved by the fierce 
 clamour, and expecting with a sullen croak its 
 share of the after-carnage. In the farther cor 
 ner of this basin, clear as the virgin crystal in 
 its ordinary state, but turbid now and lashed to 
 foam by the conflict of the animals, the stag had 
 turned on his pursuers nor had he turned in 
 vain ! for one, a brindled bloodhound, the bold 
 est of the pack, unseamed from shoulder-blade 
 to brisket by a thrust of the terrible brow- 
 antler, lay underneath his stamping hoofs a life 
 less carcass; while others bayed at a distance, 
 reluctant, as it seemed, again to rush upon an 
 enemy who had already left such painful evi 
 dences of his strength and valour on their gored 
 and trampled limbs. 
 
 Nor, though his velvet coat was clogged and 
 blackened with the dust and sweat, and though 
 
CROMWELL. 133 
 
 the big tears tokens of anguish in its expression 
 wellnigh human rolled down his hairy cheeks, 
 did the noble animal exhibit ought of craven 
 terror at the approach of his inveterate pursuers ; 
 but, as the veteran advanced upon him, with 
 the glittering wood-knife bared and ready, 
 leaving the dogs as if beneath his notice, he 
 dashed with a bold spring against his human 
 persecutor, eye, hoof, and horn, in perfect con 
 cert of quick movement. 
 
 The slightest tremor in the huntsman s nerves, 
 the most trifling slip or stumble, might have 
 well proved fatal; but, although seventy winters 
 had shed their snows upon his head, his muscles 
 had been indurated so by constant exercise in 
 his beloved field-sports, that many a younger 
 arm had failed in rivalling their powerful though 
 unelastic firmness. When the despairing deer 
 made his last effort, eluding by a rapid turn his 
 
134 CROMWELL. 
 
 formidable front, Sir Henry struck a full blow 
 as he passed, completely severing the tendons 
 of the hinder leg. Hamstrung and crippled, the 
 gallant brute plunged headlong forward, and 
 received in the next instant the keen point in 
 his gullet. 
 
 One short gurgling bleat, and two or three 
 convulsive struggles of the agile limbs, the full 
 eye glazed, and in a moment all the fiery energy, 
 the bounding life that had so lately animated 
 that beautiful form, was utterly extinct for ever. 
 
 Then came the thundering shouts, and the 
 long cadences of the French-horns, their joyous 
 notes multiplied by the ringing echoes, and sent 
 back from every heath-clad knoll or craggy 
 eminence, the merry narrative of harmless 
 accidents, the self-congratulations of the select 
 and lucky few, who from the start to the death 
 had kept the hounds in view, the queries for 
 
CROMWELL. 135 
 
 the absent, the praises of some favourite horse, 
 or daring rider, the stingless raillery, the 
 honest unfeigned laughter ! 
 
 " Who hath seen Ardenne ? What chance - 
 hath hindered Edgar 1" suddenly inquired one 
 of the younger of the party. 
 
 "Edgar not here !" exclaimed his father, for 
 the first time discovering his absence. " Edgar 
 not here ! Tore George ! but he must bide the 
 jest for this I" 
 
 "Tis strange, Sir Henry passing strange, 
 though !" interposed an old gray-headed forester. 
 " None here can match the master s horseman 
 ship ; and that brown mare hath the pace in 
 her and the bottom too. Pray Heaven he be 
 not hurt!" 
 
 " I fear he may I fear he may be hurt/ 5 
 exclaimed another. " He was beside me just be 
 fore we crossed the northern road. I marked him 
 charge the Hartley bourn right gallantly, and 
 
136 CROMWELL. 
 
 noticed the mare s stride nigh thirty feet, I 
 warrant it." 
 
 In a moment or two the wonder had increased 
 until it might be called anxiety excitement 
 the more so, as at intervals the laggards of the 
 chase came straggling in, with mud- stained garb 
 and jaded horses; yet none brought tidings of 
 the absent cavalier. 
 
 At length, sounding their horns from time 
 to time, they turned their horses heads to 
 ward home, asking for tidings of their missing 
 comrade, from every traveller or peasant they 
 encountered. Nought did they learn, however, 
 till they had neared the park, when an unlucky 
 groom leading his lame and weary hunter by 
 the rein, informed them that the young master 
 had been accosted as he crossed the great north 
 road by a passing stranger, a marvellously sour- 
 looking knave, the servant said, with a cropped 
 pate 5 that he had curbed his horse to listen to 
 
CROMWELL. 137 
 
 him, and on the receiving of some packet or 
 despatches, he knew not which, had ridden 
 slowly homeward in deep converse with the 
 bearer. 
 
 "St. George ! and with a puritan !" cried one 
 of the young Outrams, a harebrained, light- 
 hearted cavalier "A rascally, starved, round 
 head !" 
 
 " He must be strangely altered then, I trow," 
 muttered the aged huntsman who, perhaps, had 
 taught him when a boy to ride so well " an he 
 be gone home with a musty beggar ; the hounds 
 running breast-high, too, over the vale of 
 Bardsey ! 
 
 " Tush ! tell me not ; he is too true an Ar- 
 denne," cried his father almost angrily, "that 
 he should e er consort with base and brutal 
 fanatics Heaven s curse upon them !" 
 
 The report of the fallen rider was nevertheless 
 true in its most minute particular of circum- 
 
138 CROMWELL. 
 
 stance ; for, as he leaped the fence into the road, 
 and pulled upon his rein, to spare his horse s 
 feet on the rough pavement, a strange-looking 
 man gaunt, grim, and tall, with an affected 
 air of sanctified austerity on his pinched features, 
 wearing his coarse and foxy hair shorn close to 
 the skin, and clipped into small peaks alike un 
 seemly and ridiculous, with a tall steeple-crowned 
 hat, and a sad-coloured doublet, threadbare and 
 travel-worn, presenting altogether an appearance 
 as dissimilar as possible to that of a gentleman 
 called to him in a pert shrill voice, 
 
 " Canst tell the distance hence to Woodleigh, 
 the residence of Ardenne him men call Sir 
 Henry; cumbering their tongues with vain dis 
 tinctions, titles alike unsavoury and profitless ?" 
 
 " A brief three miles," frankly returned the 
 cavalier. " But you may spare yourself even 
 that short distance, an you list! There rides 
 Sir Henry, he on the chestnut horse ! I will 
 
CROMWELL. 139 
 
 o ertake and stop him, an your business may 
 not tarry I" 
 
 " Nay, friend," returned the other; " my 
 call is not with the old, vain-minded, carnal, 
 cavalier; but with his son a godly youth, 
 men say honest, and sanctified ! yea, one of 
 the elect." 
 
 " A truce to thine impertinence, sir knave ! 5 
 Edgar replied, in a quick angry tone, " a 
 truce to thine impertinence, an thou wouldst 
 not receive its wages ; nor deem thy fulsome 
 flattery toward myself shall anywise excuse 
 thy ribald scoffing at my father ! Begone, 
 sir tempt me, an you be wise, no further!" 
 
 He had already touched his mare with the 
 spur, in order to regain his place beside the 
 hounds, which had gained on him some two 
 fields 1 width during the interruption, when the 
 puritan reined his hackney short across his 
 path, crying out in a voice somewhat dimi- 
 
1-10 CROMWELL. 
 
 nished of its self-importance, " Nay ! no 
 offence ; for if thou be est the man, twere 
 worth thy while to tarry I am the bearer of 
 a letter ! yea ! of two letters, for the good 
 youth, Edgar Ardenne I pray thee to relieve 
 me of the charge." 
 
 " Begone, sir ! To your duty ! w again voci 
 ferated Ardenne, in a tone yet sterner than he 
 had used before. " Begone to Woodleigh, 
 and await my leisure. When I return, twill 
 be, I warrant me right soon enough to look 
 to these despatches. I know not who should 
 write to me, by such a low and scurvy comrade, 
 that I should lose my sport to minister to his 
 convenience !" 
 
 " Well ! be it as thou wilt/ muttered the 
 puritan ; " but an John Milton s worshipful 
 John Milton s letter meet with no better treat 
 ment, I had as well wend back again to Hun 
 tingdon !" 
 
CROMWELL. 141 
 
 " Milton ! ha !" answered Ardenne, who had 
 already moved to some considerable distance 
 before he caught the name, " Milton ! why 
 said st not so before perverse and insolent ? 
 Dally with me no further, thou wert best but 
 give at once thy missives, and follow me direct 
 to Woodleigh P 
 
 Ere he had finished speaking, he received 
 the packets the one a large and cumbrous 
 parcel, wrapped in a skin of thick discoloured 
 parchment, and fastened by a triple band of 
 flaxen thread with a huge seal stamped with 
 armorial bearings charged on a broad municipal 
 escutcheon the other a small neatly folded 
 letter of smooth white vellum, secured by a 
 skein of delicate sleeve-silk and drop of wax 
 impressed with a superb antique the stern 
 and rigid features of the elder Cato. 
 
 The former of these packets was addressed, 
 with cramped mercantile penmanship, to "Ed- 
 
142 CROMWELL. 
 
 gar son of the worshipful Sir Henry Ardenne, 
 knight banneret, and baronet, of Woodleigh, 
 nigh to Stamford, in the good Shire of Rut 
 land ; with haste and diligence post haste!" 
 The latter was directed in a beautiful but bold 
 and manly hand, " To the noble youth Edgar 
 Ardenne." This was the first he opened, and 
 a pleasing smile played over his fine features 
 as he perused the well-turned periods of his 
 already celebrated friend. 
 
 " I much rejoice to hear/ thus did the 
 letter run, " most excellent and esteemed sir, 
 that you have now accomplished, with no hurt 
 or detriment, your long-looked-for return to 
 England ; and, what redounds so vastly to 
 your credit, that you have come weaning your 
 thirsty soul from those delicious draughts of 
 pure Parnassian waters, in which you have so 
 bathed of late your fancy ; and casting aside 
 your delectation in those Italian cities wherein 
 
CROMWELL. 143 
 
 you have so profited by cultivating high pursuits 
 of literature, and conversations of the learned 
 to turn the complete vis and vigour of your 
 intellect toward the miserable strait in which 
 our native land lies struggling 
 
 Ut clausus Gyarae scopulis parv&que Scripho 
 
 A strait so fearful, that she wellnigh has lost 
 not only the fruition present and temporal of 
 her liberties, both civil and religious, but the 
 very hope of their redemption. And yet most 
 earnestly do I rejoice, that you are called 
 so suddenly, and with so honourable circum 
 stance, to take your place in that high council 
 of the nation, for which your genius and your 
 talents so excellently do befit you. I would 
 not wish you in so much to ponder on the 
 character and principles of them that have 
 united in this tribute to your worth, if they 
 
144 CROMWELL. 
 
 should be in aught although good patriots 
 and true distasteful to your feelings, as on 
 the mighty services you well may be an instru 
 ment to render, and on the duty paramount 
 which should enforce you so to render them, 
 in that most glorious and free assemblage on 
 which hangs every hope of England. But 
 with respect to this, without attending my 
 injunctions, you have an admirable monitor, 
 a very entire and pure guide, in your own 
 sense of right, which to obey is to be virtuous 
 and wise, and in obeying which you shall at 
 once fulfil the wishes of your oppressed and 
 lamentable country, and give the highest 
 pleasure to your wellwisher, and friend con 
 stantly, 
 
 " JOHN MILTON. 
 
 "From my villa, Aldersgate, Oct. 12, 1641." 
 
 The calm deliberation with which the cava- 
 
CROMWELL. 145 
 
 Her had opened, and applied himself to read 
 the familiar letter of his trusty fellow-traveller, 
 gave way, long ere he had concluded, to mani 
 fest and restless eagerness ; and if he read it 
 through, before he tore asunder the fastenings 
 of the larger packet, it was rather that he 
 hoped within itself to find a clue whereby to 
 solve its mystery, than that he was indifferent 
 to learn what was the nature of the call, to 
 which his friend alluded. But, when he closed 
 it, still in ignorance of that which it behoved 
 him most to know, his colour went and came, 
 and his heart beat quick, as he turned hastily 
 to the sole remaining source of information. 
 
 The paper that first caught Edgar s eye, on 
 opening the packet, was a fair document in 
 large clear characters, engrossed on vellum, 
 and purporting to be an invitation from the 
 freeholders of the good town of Huntingdon 
 to Edgar Ardenne, that he would present him- 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
146 CROMWELL. 
 
 self a candidate to fill the seat, as member for 
 their borough, in the most worshipful the Com 
 mons House of Parliament, lately made vacant 
 by the untimely death of their regretted and 
 right trusty delegate, Elias Chaloner. The 
 second was a brief explanatory statement, 
 signed by the mayor and several of the leading 
 burghers of the town, assuring him that all he 
 had to do in order to secure election, was to 
 make known to them his willingness to serve in 
 parliament, as no other candidate was in the 
 field, nor, if there were, could any have the 
 smallest chance of coping with success against 
 a nominee so universally admired and approved 
 by every class of voters. No pledge was asked 
 no line of conduct indicated, to which it was 
 expected that he should adhere no query 
 hinted at concerning his attachment to either 
 of the parties, between which the whole of 
 England was at that time divided. They were 
 
CROMWELL. 147 
 
 sufficiently assured, the letter stated, of the 
 integrity, the wisdom, and the constancy of 
 him on whom their choice had fallen so well 
 assured, that they were perfectly content, with 
 out condition specified or question asked, to 
 place their interests, their hopes, their fortunes, 
 and, if need were, their lives, at his dis 
 posal. 
 
 In mute astonishment, Edgar read succes 
 sively these several documents ; and still, the 
 more he read, the more his wonder and his 
 doubts increased. That he, who had been 
 absent from the land of his fathers almost from 
 the day on which he first wrote man that he, 
 unstamped by any public act or private decla 
 ration uncommitted to any party or opinion 
 nay, undecided, for aught that the world knew, 
 in his own mind, as to which cause he should 
 espouse in the approaching contest, foreseen by 
 him, as by all men endowed with ordinary 
 H 2 
 
148 CROMWELL. 
 
 prescience of events, that he should be thus 
 summoned, within two weeks of his arrival in 
 his native country, and that without a pledge, 
 to fill a place the most conspicuous to which a 
 private individual can well aspire, that he 
 should be thus eminently trusted, and by men 
 whose very names were strangers to his ears ; 
 whose town he had never even entered, save as 
 a passing traveller; whose principles, but from 
 the somewhat formal and affected plainness of 
 their style, together with the unseemly gar 
 ments and austere demeanour of their mes 
 senger, he had no means of so much as 
 conjecturing; and who, so far as he could 
 comprehend, must be still more at a loss to 
 judge of the parts or principles of him to 
 whom they had so confidently offered the repre 
 sentation of their interests, the proxy of their 
 united voices ; all this was indeed sufficiently 
 embarrassing, nay, unaccountable at any time ; 
 
CROMWELL. 149 
 
 and the more so at a period when political 
 intrigue and treachery were rife, beyond all 
 precedent, among the men reputed as the 
 leaders in the councils of the nation. 
 
 That such a call was flattering, and that in a 
 degree not trivial or accustomed, could not be 
 doubted or denied ; but while he felt that 
 sweetest, most ennobling of sensations, the con 
 viction that his character was understood, and 
 his worth appreciated by his fellow-citizens, 
 mingled with a high consciousness that his 
 eloquence, his learning, and experience, might 
 indeed minister not smally to the welfare of his 
 country, Ardenne was yet perplexed, anxious, 
 and doubtful. 
 
 Nor did it seem that he was destined easily, 
 or by any effort of his own, to extricate himself 
 from this uncertainty ; for when, after musing 
 long and vainly on the import of the letters, he 
 turned for information to the messenger, that 
 
150 CROMWELL. 
 
 worthy, doubtless resenting with all the ran 
 cour of a petty mind the merited rebuke of 
 Edgar, wrapped himself up in such a veil of 
 real or pretended dulness, as defied every 
 species of cross-examination applied to wring 
 from his fanatic obstinacy the reluctant truth. 
 et He had been sent," he said, " a hired mes 
 senger to carry certain missives, not to expound 
 enigmas, nor to illuminate the darkness of those 
 whom, it might be, Jehovah had for their sins 
 involved in the dark night of ignorance. He 
 knew not aught of the matter ; nor, if he had 
 known, should he have deemed it fitting to 
 reveal that which those worthy persons, his em 
 ployers, had found it meet to leave uncertain. 
 
 The burgh of Huntingdon, he answered, when 
 Edgar varied the subject and the manner of 
 his investigation, was a true town, and godly. 
 Its late member, good Elias, Chaloner, a man 
 learned beyond his fellows, not in the vain and 
 
CROMWELL. 151 
 
 carnal lore of the idolatrous and God-defying 
 heathen, but in the pure and sanctifying wis 
 dom of the gospel. Of its politics he knew 
 not any thing, nor cared. Some cavaliers there 
 were debosht rakehelly profligates such as 
 the Knight of Hinchinbrook, uncle of worthy 
 Master Cromwell, now sitting in the Commons 
 House, for the right saintly town of Cambridge, 
 and others, not a few. But of a truth the 
 citizens, craftsmen, and artisans, ay, and the 
 mayor and council, were pious and God-fearing 
 men, seeking the Lord alway, day and night, 
 in prayer and meditation. For the rest, if it 
 were so that they had summoned Master Ar- 
 denne to be their deputy in parliament, verily 
 theirs was the power to do so; ay, and they 
 knew right well the wherefore ! They were 
 not men, he trowed, to leap i* the dark and to 
 repent at leisure. If Master Ardenne thought 
 it good to^uit himself to this promotion, his, as 
 
152 CROMWELL. 
 
 was very fitting, would be the honour and 
 advancement : if not, the men of Huntingdon 
 would be at little trouble to elect as good, if not 
 an abler statesman, to represent their voices. 
 
 In this unsatisfied and dubious state of mind, 
 Edgar, with his uncourtly comrade, arrived at 
 the park-gates, and quickening his pace, rode 
 hastily along the noble avenue of elms to the 
 main entrance, flung his rein to a groom, and 
 consigning his companion to the attentions of 
 the gray-headed steward, passed with a hurried 
 and irregular step to his own chamber ; there, in 
 undisturbed and silent solitude, to ponder on 
 his singular position. 
 
 Hours fled by, as with his head propped on 
 his hands, and his eyes fixed on the characters 
 of which his mind, however, took no note, he 
 racked his brain with almost hopeless efforts to 
 conjecture who might be the secret movers 
 in this matter. That his friend Milton had 
 
CROMWELL. 153 
 
 ever been an ardent votary of liberty, in its 
 most liberal and extended sense, a dreamer of 
 those bright Utopian visions concerning perfect 
 commonwealths and absolute equality of men, 
 which, in whatever age or country, never have 
 been, never can be, realized a modeller of 
 constitutions, excellent in contemplation, but 
 untested by experience ; or, if tested by the 
 self-styled republics, but real aristocracies, of 
 early Rome, or earlier Greece, proved only to 
 be fickle, changeful, and unstable, Ardenne 
 well knew, and often with delighted ears had 
 listened, and with mind that yielded to the 
 enthralling grandeur of those theoretic dream- 
 ings, while it perceived their fallacy, *to the 
 deep-souled and burning eloquence with which 
 he loved to advocate his wild but splendid 
 projects. He had, moreover, heard that sub 
 sequently to his return from Italy, the sage 
 enthusiast had devoted himself with stern and 
 H 3 
 
154 CROMWELL. 
 
 self-denying application, to the maintenance of 
 the most rigid puritanic forms of protestant 
 morality and doctrines against the laxer customs 
 of the church of England, at that time assimi 
 lating itself daily more and more, through the 
 bigoted obstinacy of its reckless monarch, and 
 of that most dangerous of all his counsellors, 
 the haughty and half-papish Laud, to the 
 detested ritual and creed of Rome, 
 
 Nor could Edgar doubt, well as he was in 
 formed of the almost inseparable league between 
 puritanism in religion and the love of freedom 
 in the state, that the already celebrated author 
 of the " Reformation in England," and " the 
 Reason of Church-government," was no less 
 strongly interested in opposition to that ex 
 tension of prerogative already stretched to the 
 very verge of absolute and irresponsible auto 
 cracy, than his illustrious admirers and asso 
 ciates, Hampden and Pym. Still he could not 
 
CROMWELL. 155 
 
 easily give credence to the fancy that Milton 
 only for to him alone, of all those patriots 
 with whom his spirit sympathized so warmly in 
 their devoted struggles in behalf of England s 
 constitution, was he personally or intimately 
 known should have possessed the power to 
 procure him that untrammelled offer of a seat 5 
 which individuals of far greater eminence might 
 have been proud to occupy. 
 
 Amid these painful meditations, too, there 
 ran a mingled strain of deeper, because more 
 personal, disquietude an agonizing apprehen 
 sion, amounting almost to a certainty, that a 
 seat in parliament, entailing on him as it 
 necessarily must, the highest of all moral 
 obligations binding him, with fetters stronger 
 a hundred-fold than the poetic adamant, to the 
 upholding of that cause which his mature 
 unbiassed judgment should deem right must 
 
156 CROMWELL. 
 
 set him on the instant in direct unnatural oppo 
 sition to his father, and, yet worse, must sever 
 him from her whose love he surely prized above 
 all mortal blessings. 
 
 It was in vain that he attempted to shake off 
 the leaden weight of this dark apprehension 
 it was to no purpose, that hope whispered to his 
 bosom, how all might yet be well it was to 
 no purpose that he strove to reconcile the 
 diverse paths of duty and of pleasure. A 
 dozen times he took his pen in hand, to write 
 an answer to the perplexing invitation, and as 
 often threw it from him in utter inability to frame 
 a single sentence. Once, at suggestion of his 
 warmer passions, and yielding to the persuasion 
 of that single grain of selfishness, which must 
 still lurk in every bosom, even of the best and 
 purest, his fingers traced three lines of absolute 
 denial ; but ere the clause was finished the 
 
CROMWELL. 157 
 
 juster sense returned, and the torn sheet was 
 in an instant shrivelling amid the logs that 
 cracked on the hearthstone. 
 
 " No, no !" he cried aloud, in the low 
 husky tones, which tell so fearfully of inward 
 agony, "no, no my country, never will I 
 betray thee at thine utmost need ! What 
 though my heart be broken in the strife 
 what though I lose all things that make this 
 earth a paradise and not a hell what though 
 I perish or, yet worse, live homeless, friend 
 less, fatherless, deserted hated by whom I 
 most adore, and cursed by whom I bless 
 that though /, / one man and for one little 
 life, must bear all anguish that a life can 
 compass, shall I for this shrink back, know 
 ing that England needs the voice, the hand, 
 the soul, of every son she has, to save her 
 from destruction, to redeem her living millions 
 her millions yet unborn from countless 
 
158 
 
 CROMWELL. 
 
 centuries of servitude and sorrow ! The cup 
 the cup is filled ! God grant me strength 
 to drain it ay to the very dregs!" 
 
 And with a calm unfaltering hand he drew 
 a brief but full acceptance of the trust so 
 proffered to his choice; pledging himself to 
 act, so long as he should represent their voices, 
 so, and so only, as his own heart should dictate. 
 te I would," he wrote, " before investing my 
 self with the great arid onerous responsibility 
 you wish to impose upon me, I would that 
 you clearly know and apprehend my principles, 
 and rule of action. All party I disclaim all 
 preconceived opinion from my soul I disavow ! 
 To hold the freedom of our land inviolate, of 
 our religion pure, I esteem the first of duties. 
 But the freedom which I look to I pray you 
 mark me now, so shall there be no blame here 
 after is the freedom of our British constitu 
 tion, not the licentious anarchy of democratic ^ 
 
CROMWELL. 159 
 
 innovation; and the religion which I will 
 maintain is the religion of my fathers the 
 reformed church of England, equally aloof 
 from the debasing superstitions of the Romish 
 creed, and from the stern fanaticism of 
 Lutheran or Calvinistic sectaries. If then, on 
 knowing these my tenets, both of church and 
 state, ye make it your election still to go 
 forward in this matter, I shall so labour, with 
 such powers both of mind and body as God 
 in his good wisdom hath assigned me, as I 
 may deem the fittest to secure unto ourselves, 
 and unto our posterity for ever, the blessings 
 of a government at once liberal and firm of 
 a religion, pure no less than tolerant and free. 
 If, on the other hand, ye doubt in aught my 
 motives, or disapprove my principles as stated 
 heretofore if ye do look that I should yield 
 at any time, or under any circumstance, my 
 own conviction to the opinion or the prejudice 
 
160 CROMWELL. 
 
 of others even of yourselves, my own consti 
 tuents then make at once a fresh selection 
 of a man more suited to your purposes ; accept 
 ing in meanwhile my high consideration of the 
 honour ye have done me in thus summoning 
 me, as yet a stranger, to the highest] station of 
 your trust." 
 
 Scarcely had he concluded his epistle ere a 
 quick heavy footstep, sounding through the cor 
 ridor, approached his chamber- door, and paused 
 beside it, followed by a short firm tap upon the 
 oaken panel. " Now comes the crisis of my 
 fate !" inwardly muttered Ardenne, as recognis 
 ing on the instant the footstep of his father he 
 hurried to admit him. 
 
 "So studious, Edgar?" cried the veteran. 
 " Plunged to your very neck in parchments ! 
 The matter must, I trow, be all important, that 
 should have won you homeward from such 
 music as was ringing in your ears, when you 
 
CROMWELL. 161 
 
 this morning left us in the vale of Bardsey ! 
 Fore George, but he ran gallantly and straight, 
 poor dapple ! turned him to bay in the witch 
 hollow beneath Leader-hill gored brindled 
 Mortimer to the death, ere I came up with him, 
 and hurt some six or eight of the others. What 
 in the fiend s name called you home ? What 
 clouds your face, even now, so darkly ? Speak, 
 Edgar : hast ill tidings ?" 
 
 11 Not ill, sir, not ill tidings but of weighty 
 import," answered Ardenne, as his father threw 
 himself upon a massive settle in the chimney- 
 corner-" and such as have urged on me much 
 grave thought ere I might answer them \" and, 
 as he spoke, he tendered to his hand the invita 
 tion from the burgh of Huntingdon. " Here, 
 if my visage be o ercast, here shall you find the 
 cause and this, when you shall have perused 
 the first, contains my answer." 
 
 With deep anxiety did the eye of Edgar 
 
162 CROMWELL. 
 
 dwell upon the keen intelligent features of the 
 aged man, fitfully lighted up by the uncertain 
 gleams from the piled hearth for evening had 
 crept on them unperceived, and the sky was 
 growing dark apace as he read the letters by 
 the firelight. Changes there were indeed upon 
 the broad unwrinkled forehead, chasing each 
 other over it in quick succession now a deep 
 frown corded the muscles of the brow, but more 
 perhaps from the effects of thought, than from 
 disgust or anger anon it was relaxed, and a 
 more bland expression played around the mouth, 
 and the full open eye shone cheerfully. But 
 again the glance was clouded, and the lip curled 
 in scorn till every hair of his mustache worked, 
 as it were instinct with life. 
 
 " The roundhead scurvy villains !" he ex 
 claimed at length, striking the extended parch 
 ment forcibly with the forefinger of his right 
 hand "The base mechanical burghers! I 
 
CROMWELL. 163 
 
 marvel they should dare pollute a gentleman^ 
 ear with their accursed puritanic cant. You 
 have refused them, Edgar indignantly hurled 
 back their most insulting proffer in their teeth ! 
 Is it not so ? Now, on your life, say ay I" 
 
 U I see it not in this light, sir," Edgar re 
 plied respectfully but firmly, " I see it not at 
 all in this light nor is there aught, to my poor 
 comprehension, either of cant or insult in this 
 invitation." 
 
 " Doubtless you have accepted it this flat 
 tering invitation !" interrupted the old man, 
 with an expression of the most bitter irony 
 " doubtless you have !" 
 
 " I have accepted it/ calmly returned his 
 son " I have, indeed, accepted it ; nor can I 
 possibly conceive " 
 
 " You have not, Edgar Ardenne," his father 
 almost shouted, as he sprang to his feet, spurn 
 ing the footstool from beneath them to the far- 
 
1 64 CROMWELL. 
 
 ther corner of the room " you have not dared 
 to do so ! You ! you ! an Ardenne heir to 
 some twenty generations of high-minded, noble, 
 loyal cavaliers you blend yourself with the 
 foul puddle blood of craftsmen, and pinched 
 beggarly mechanics ! you band yourself with 
 hypocrites and traitors against your church, 
 your country, and your king ! No, no ! it can 
 not be !" 
 
 " Indeed ! indeed ! it could not," replied 
 Edgar, in tones almost femininely soothing 
 " indeed it could not be that I should ever mix 
 myself with aught degenerate or base, much 
 jess with aught unprincipled or traitorous. But 
 of a truth, my father, I apprehend not anything 
 though straining to the utmost of my under 
 standing I apprehend not any thing here written 
 to imply aught that can by any means be tor 
 tured into treason or fanaticism. Nay, for my 
 part, I find not aught that would restrain me, if 
 
CROMWELL. 165 
 
 I should be so minded, from degrading loyalty, 
 even as the member for this very borough, into 
 most prostrate oriental slavishness from bar 
 tering our reformed religion for Romish super 
 stition ! A seat is p roffered to me freely 
 without condition, pledge, or hint of any inter 
 ference. Nay ! the constituents aver that they 
 refer themselves in all things to my judgment- 
 submit themselves to absolute dictation of my 
 individual will. Now, sir, it seems to me I 
 pray you so far pardon me, as to permit me to 
 speak to the end it seems to me, if as I see 
 no cause to deem them such these men of 
 Huntingdon be fanatics and traitors, there can 
 not be a better mode of frustrating their ill in 
 tentions, than that I, who most assuredly am 
 neither, should accept their offer, and represent 
 their bigoted and treasonable voices by a most 
 tolerant and patriotic vote !" 
 
 Sir Henry s passions had displayed their pro- 
 
166 CROMWELL. 
 
 gress on his features, during his son s rejoinder, 
 even more strongly, and with more definite 
 changes than before. At the first every line 
 and feature was inflamed almost to bursting 
 with fierce and fiery indignation varying as 
 Edgar proceeded to that air of obstinate un 
 willing coolness with which a man resigns him 
 self to some infliction which he may not avoid. 
 Then, as the truth of what was said impressed 
 itself by slow degrees upon his senses, he listened 
 with attention approaching somewhat to respect, 
 till, when the last sentence fell upon his ear and 
 he fancied that the full policy of his son was 
 there disclosed to him, his mighty satisfaction 
 flashed from his whole face, as he exclaimed 
 " Excellent ! I was dull indeed ! Excellent! 
 Edgar and so hoist the knave engineers, eVn 
 with their own petard ! Fore George, but you 
 surpass, not your old father s talents only that 
 you did ever but his utmost wishes ! And so, 
 
CROMWELL. 167 
 
 when the fool puritans would have you rob the 
 church and manacle the king, vote like a loyal 
 cavalier now out on me for an old superan 
 nuated dolt, that would not hear or compre 
 hend !" 
 
 " Nay, sir ; but even now," said Edgar, not a 
 little astonished by this ebullition of mistaken 
 pleasure, " even now you do misapprehend me 
 somewhat. I have accepted this same seat in 
 the Commons, giving the men of Huntingdon 
 to know that I will hold myself responsible to 
 no authority save that of my own conscience. 
 Party, or place, I hold not to, nor covet. In all 
 high honour, and in all accordance with my own 
 sense of just and right, will I vote ever! If 
 these men should dare propose to me, or hint, 
 that I should swerve one hairbreadth from the 
 course of truth and honour, then would I surely 
 disobey them, spit at them, and spurn them. 
 But, if they shall prove honest, as surely will I 
 
168 CROMWELL. 
 
 compromise no little of their interests or their 
 opinions ; and so far am I from suspecting aught 
 of triis, that I do well believe that my consti 
 tuents shall prove right honest men and true ; 
 else, under favour be it spoken, I deem it most 
 unlikely they should have fixed their choice on 
 me a man, perhaps not altogether void of some 
 repute and honour; and, if unknown myself, at 
 least a scion of a family that has not ever 
 stooped to fraud or to dishonour !" 
 
 l( Enough said, Edgar ! Enough said ! I was 
 a fool to doubt thee." And the old man 
 grasped his hand with warm affection, as he 
 answered, while a tear slid down his withered 
 cheek, " I was a fool to doubt thee; for thou 
 wert ever true and noble, as I was ever over 
 choleric and rash. Some things, too, in good 
 sooth, there are that might be well amended ! 
 This ship-money I like not altogether, nor these 
 violent forced subsidies ; yet less like I the 
 
CROMWELL. 169 
 
 sordid puritanic knaves who do oppose them. 
 Not that they know or understand the evil of 
 the measures which they rail at, but that they 
 would embarrass, and annoy, and if their means 
 were mated to their will, perchance o erturn the 
 government from which those measures ema 
 nate ; not that they love their country, but that 
 they hate their king ; because, being base them 
 selves, they loathe the very name of what is 
 high or generous, or noble ; because having 
 nought to lose, even in England s ruin, they may 
 gain all in the midst of uproar and confusion. 
 But enough said ! you shall receive their offer 
 since so you will it, although I hold a promise 
 of a borough from my Lord of Middleton, await 
 ing your acceptance; for which I speak it in 
 all candour I would far rather have you 
 member, than for this beggarly psalm-singing 
 body-corporate of Huntingdon. But enough 
 said ! Bear with me, Edgar, for I am old and 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
170 CROMWELL. 
 
 choleric withal, and hasty ! And now to supper ! 
 For John cook will be foaming an his goose- 
 pie be burned, or his beef boiled to rags, as 
 with overflowing eyes he swore to me they were 
 last night, and all through fault of mine !" 
 
CROMWELL. 171 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "Tis hard to part, 
 
 When youthful hearts with treasured dreams are high 
 Of sunny days, and calmest nights serene, 
 A happy future ! but oh, harder far, 
 When dark anticipation veils the scene 
 With melancholy clouds, and hard at hand 
 Sits chill despair that vulture of the soul 
 Watching the latest gleam of hope expire, 
 To pounce her conscious prey. 
 
 TIME journeyed onward, and with a flight as 
 rapid, when every day and hour was charged 
 with tidings of some great event, with some ter 
 rific rumour, or some perilous forboding, as if 
 i2 
 
172 CROMWELL. 
 
 it had ebbed noiselessly away in peace and in 
 obscurity. The golden days of Autumn had 
 already flown the last slow wain had dragged 
 its freight to the piled thrashing-floor the last 
 flower had shed its petals scentless and colour 
 less upon the frosted grass. The leaves that 
 had for many weeks clothed grove and forest in 
 a rich garb of many-coloured splendour, now 
 detached themselves one by one from the 
 sere branches, and fell whirling slowly in the 
 heavy atmosphere, like hopes blighted before 
 accomplishment, to the dark steamy earth the 
 glimpses of the sun were rarer, and more pallid 
 than their wont, and often in the depth of night 
 the mighty winds went forth^ wailing as if in 
 sorrow, over the faded glories of the year. 
 
 Nor were the signs of the times less gloomy 
 than the tokens of the season. All England 
 was in confusion and dismay and both these 
 hourly increasing till the one half of the world 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 was wellnigh maddened by its fears, the other 
 by the excitement of its own fierce and stormy 
 passions. To-day a rumour was abroad of 
 mighty armaments levied beyond the sea, and 
 even now preparing to pollute with foreign 
 weapons the free soil of England, and to erect 
 the power of her monarch, already stretched 
 beyond all limits of constitutional sway, into 
 absolute and self-controlling tyranny. On the 
 next, a tale was rife that Pym, the champion of 
 the people s cause, and king of their affections, 
 had been assailed, perhaps even murdered, by 
 the hired emissaries of a sovereign, stern and 
 cold by nature, and rendered merciless and cruel 
 by the extremity of terror. 
 
 Then came the one great accusation, swallow 
 ing up in its atrocity all lesser charges, all in 
 ferior crimes, as the sunshine drinks up and 
 blots from heaven the fainter lustre of the stars ! 
 The one great accusation at that time generally 
 
174 CROMWELL. 
 
 credited by men of every class, except, perhaps, 
 a few of the most confiding and most generous 
 cavaliers, arid since those days confirmed almost 
 beyond the possibility of doubt, that the Irish 
 rebellion, with all its horrible features of mid 
 night massacre, and midday conflagration, was 
 the premeditated, coolly-calculated work of 
 Charles and Henrietta ; the one great accusa 
 tion, penetrating every breast, in every rank of 
 persons, with mingled sentiments of pity, hor 
 ror, hatred, and disgust; imbittering still more 
 against him the foes of the misguided sovereign, 
 and alienating from his side many of those de 
 voted and enthusiastic spirits, that never would 
 have swerved from their allegiance, so long as 
 they had sense or being, had he ever shown 
 himself in the most trivial circumstances con 
 stant, not to his faithful servants, but to his own 
 true interests, or even to himself. 
 
 In the Commons house the minds of men 
 
CROMWELL. 176 
 
 were even more unsettled than in the world at 
 large; parties ran daily higher, and with a 
 greater share of virulence and private animosity 
 than at any previous period; and indeed it 
 seemed that the king himself was labouring as 
 earnestly to the advantage of his enemies, the 
 puritans, as they themselves could wish. At 
 the first meeting of the parliament, a committee 
 had been appointed to draw up a general re 
 monstrance of the state of the kingdom, and 
 the particular grievances it had sustained; 
 which after its first nomination had, however, 
 scarcely ever met, and was almost forgotten. 
 
 But now, during the causeless and protracted 
 absence of the ill-fated monarch in the sister 
 kingdom irritated by his apathy with regard 
 to bleeding Ireland appreciating fully his dis 
 honest motives, in lingering at a distance from 
 his parliament and goaded almost to madness 
 by his attempt to seize or to assassinate, as many 
 
176 CROMWELL. 
 
 did in truth believe,, Argyle and Hamilton the 
 party came to the resolve of reproducing that 
 momentous question, and in accordance with 
 their views, upon Strode 1 s motion, it was car 
 ried that "the committee of remonstrance be 
 revived, and ordered without more delay to 
 meet;" and time and place incontinently were 
 appointed. 
 
 Within a few days of this measure, a bill of 
 far more questionable character, and justified 
 alone if it might any way be justified by the 
 unwonted and most unbecoming violence of the 
 spiritual lords, who lent themselves in every 
 instance as willing instruments to aid the usur 
 pation of the sovereign, and scrupled not to 
 violate the spirit and the letter of the laws 
 against the Romish church, was introduced, 
 ordered by a majority of voices to be read, and, 
 without any opposition worthy of remark, 
 transmitted to the Lords, for the disabling the 
 
CROMWELL. 177 
 
 bishops from the exercise of voting in the upper 
 house, or of any temporal office throughout the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Just at this critical and anxious juncture, 
 with his accustomed rashness and inveterate 
 obstinacy, Charles deemed it fitting to collate 
 five preachers of undoubted eminence and learn 
 ing, but known as well for principles of state 
 the most obnoxious as for their talents, to as 
 many sees vacant by death or by translation ; 
 doing this in absolute defiance, as it seemed, 
 to the desires of the popular branch of legisla 
 tion, and contrary to the advice of his most 
 trustworthy and valuable councillors. 
 
 In the midst of the tumults for to an extent 
 which scarcely can be designated by a less 
 forcible word was the violent struggle carried 
 between the upper and the lower houses con 
 sequent upon this doubtful measure, tidings 
 arrived in London, that on a day appointed 
 i 3 
 
178 CROMWELL. 
 
 having arranged all matters in that kingdom 
 to the general satisfaction, His Majesty intended 
 to depart from Scotland on his homeward pro 
 gress; and straightways the committee offered 
 the report of their proceedings, together with 
 a draught of the remonstrance, to the House ; 
 which instantly, although divided much in 
 sentiment, and, as many thought, in general 
 opposed to this decisive stroke, proceeded to 
 discuss it with a degree of bitterness and fury 
 perhaps unprecedented except in the debates 
 upon the case of StrafTord. 
 
 In the mean while an answer had been re 
 turned to Ardenne by his constituents of Hun 
 tingdon, agreeing fully to the terms he had 
 proposed, whereon to serve them in the Com 
 mons, as their representative and member ; and 
 urging him, so soon as it might be consistent 
 with his leisure, to betake himself to London^ 
 there to assume his seat. All preparations had 
 
CROMWELL. 179 
 
 been made for his departure ; chambers secured 
 for him in Westminster ; his retinue and horses 
 sent before him ; nay, even a day fixed, whereon 
 again to leave, after so brief enjoyment of its 
 serene and tranquil pleasures, his paternal 
 home. He felt not,, it is true, that terrible 
 sensation of passionate and overwhelming 
 sorrow, which drowns the hearts of the young 
 at their first setting forth into the wide and 
 cheerless world, from the dear roof that saw 
 their birth ! much less that sullen and collected 
 bitterness with which the exile gazes, ere he 
 turn from them for ever, upon the scenes never 
 before so beautiful or so beloved ! But he did 
 feel a heavy and continual gloom clouding, he 
 knew not wherefore, all his anticipations of the 
 future an ominous and all-engrossing sense of 
 coming evil a prophetic fear, that it would 
 ne er be his again to cast away the burden of 
 his sorrows, and be, as it were, once again a 
 
180 CROMWELL. 
 
 child in spirit, beside that old domestic hearth 
 a fear not justified, perhaps, by any clear 
 perception, nor founded upon any evidence of 
 judgment; but yet oppressing his mind, no 
 less than the influence of a coming thunder 
 storm is often seen to agitate the lower grades 
 of animal creation when not a speck of cloud 
 is visible as yet above the clear horizon. 
 
 As far, indeed, as regarded any real or well- 
 founded apprehensions, Ardenne had every 
 following day less cause to dread a rupture 
 with his father in consequence of any difference 
 in politics; for so completely had the old man 
 taken up the notion that his son intended to 
 apply his nomination by the puritanic party to 
 the advancement of the royal interests, that 
 Edgar fruitlessly endeavoured to apprize him 
 of the error, and to convince him of his own 
 sincerity and singleness of purpose. 
 
 " Right ! right ! boy/ he would cry 
 
CROMWELL. 181 
 
 ee Never betray your counsel ! and in good 
 sooth, thou hast a perilous part to play, and a 
 politic best vote a few times with the canting 
 knaves so better to throw dust in their eyes, 
 that they discover not thy game ere it be fit 
 time to disclose it; husbanding so thy powers 
 as to aid our gracious master in his real straits, 
 an it should come which God avert to such 
 an issue !" 
 
 For a time, indeed, so utterly abhorrent was 
 the smallest shadow of deception to his in 
 genuous mind and rigid sense of honour he 
 strenuously and sincerely strove to make Sir 
 Henry comprehend his principles his entire 
 devotion to the laws and constitution of his 
 country as established by the precedent of 
 ages, not as interpreted by the corrupt and 
 pensioned lawyers of the court his firm attach 
 ment to the privilege of parliament as opposed 
 to the prerogative of the crown and, over all, 
 
182 CROMWELL. 
 
 his absolute disgust at the late proceedings 
 taken by the King, and in relation to the claim of 
 ship-money especially, and to the infringement 
 of the anti-catholic statutes. But finding all 
 endeavours vain to overturn his preconceived 
 opinion, he abandoned altogether the ungra 
 cious task, in an uncertain state of mind, 
 bordering at one moment upon hope, at another 
 on its opposite extreme, despair ; arguing within 
 himself, when brighter thoughts prevailed, that, 
 as his father s violence of loyalty was even now 
 so greatly modified as to permit him to allow 
 the participation of corrupt men and the exist 
 ence of evil measures in the councils of his 
 kingly idol, his own course might so far tally 
 with his views, or, at the worst, might differ 
 from them only in so small particulars, as to 
 call forth no very strenuous or lasting repro 
 bation. 
 
 Again, when giving way to gloomier, though 
 
CROMWELL, 183 
 
 perhaps more probable imaginations, foreseeing 
 that the obstinate determination of the sovereign 
 to dispense with parliaments, to recognise the 
 laws of the land but so far as they should 
 further his own imperious wishes to rule, in 
 short, as an absolute and arbitrary monarch 
 and the noble stand assumed by the delegates 
 of the people in defence of the people s rights, 
 would by no means be ever composed or recon 
 ciled, except by arbitration of the sword ; and 
 further, that in such a case, as certainly as he 
 should be himself found warring in the ranks 
 of freedom, so surely would Sir Henry arm to 
 buckler the time-hallowed names of church and 
 king, although the former should be almost 
 Romish, and the latter utterly despotic. 
 
 Thus was the mind of Edgar balanced, during 
 the interval which elapsed between his first 
 acceptance of the proffered honour and his 
 departure for the metropolis its moods as 
 
184 CROMWELL. 
 
 various as the changes of an April day ; now 
 bright with sunshiny and azure skies, now 
 blackened with the scudding rack, and howl 
 ing with the stormy gusts. 
 
 The days, however, wore onward : the chase 
 in the morning, with its heart-stirring sounds 
 arid high associations, or the stroll through the 
 highly-cultivated grounds about the homestead, 
 or the familiar visit to the independent yeomen 
 or the sturdy peasantry, consumed the earlier 
 hours; and, when the midday meal was ended, 
 the ramble in the beautiful broad park, beneath 
 the autumnal trees, with his beloved cousin 
 the ramble finished, as it seemed to them, 
 almost before it commenced beguiled the 
 hours till twilight, when the lamps would all 
 be lighted and the guests assembled in the 
 lordly hall, or the smaller circle gathered about 
 the parlour fire, to cheat the evening with lay 
 and legend, or with sprightly converse, more 
 
CROMWELL. 185 
 
 pleasantly than with loud minstrelsy and the 
 gay dance. 
 
 The days, however, wore onward, and al 
 though none else perceived the constant cloud 
 that dwelt on Edgar s brow, Sibyl had marked 
 and understood it ; and, as if in sympathy, her 
 own transparent skin showed less and less the 
 healthful hues of her elastic blood ; and her 
 deep eye was always dimmer than its wont, and 
 often tearful, as it would dwell unnoticed on 
 the overshadowed features of her lover, now 
 constantly absorbed, as he had rarely been of 
 yore, in fits of meditation, abstracting him 
 entirely from the business or the pleasure of 
 the moment. 
 
 After the morning following Edgar s return to 
 Woodleigh, although on other topics there had 
 been no reserve, however trivial, no hesitancy 
 or concealment of action, thought, or motive, 
 neither had again alluded to the subject of 
 
186 CROMWELL. 
 
 their interrupted conversation ; he shunning it, 
 not merely because he could have nought agree 
 able, but because he had nought definite, which 
 to communicate, and therefore was unwilling, 
 needlessly perhaps, to cloud her prospects with 
 certainly a distant, and, not improbably, a 
 causeless terror; and she not pressing it, be 
 cause, relying with a pure and holy confidence 
 upon her promised husband a confidence in 
 ferior only to her trust in her Creator ! because 
 seeing, that be his secret sorrow what it might, 
 he felt it not his duty at that time to impart it 
 to her ear; and because she would have scorned 
 herself could she have entertained the thought, 
 but for a moment, of obtaining that from his 
 fondness which his judgment would not warrant 
 his bestowing ! 
 
 It was not long, however, before Sibyl had 
 another and a surer reason for her silence ; for, 
 with that wondrous shrewdness which a woman s 
 
CROMWELL. 187 
 
 heart possesses in divining and discovering any 
 thing which may affect it in its own particular 
 province, she fancied herself ere long to be 
 the mistress of the causes of his hidden grief; 
 she saw the struggle in his heart between his 
 love for her and for his father, and his devotion 
 to his country. She knew that in the breast of 
 such a man the struggle could last but for a 
 single hour ere it must be decided. She 
 suffered no diminution of her self-respect, no 
 fretting of her vanity, as she acknowledged that 
 her own claims to his affection must surely 
 yield to the overruling amor patrice ; and, 
 while she sorrowed with the deep sincerity of 
 a true and loving heart, over the election 
 which she was assured he had already made, 
 she yet thought she hardly could desire that 
 he had decided otherwise. 
 
 There was even yet another cause ! a linger 
 ing hope that she might yet have been in error 
 
188 CROMWELL. 
 
 that she might falsely have interpreted the 
 outward workings of his mind a fear of banish 
 ing that lingering hope, by questioning of that 
 which she most yearned to know a dread of 
 learning that, which even now almost knowing 
 true, she would have given worlds to know 
 unreal. 
 
 The last morning broke, and the last sun 
 arose, which was to shine upon Edgar, a 
 dweller in his father s house. It was a clear, 
 bright cheerful morning. A slight touch of frost 
 on the preceding evening had imparted just 
 enough of coldness to the atmosphere to render 
 it more pure and bracing ; but the sun shone 
 warmly out, and the dew sparkled laughingly 
 upon the shrubs and grass, and the rooks clove 
 the liquid firmament with their exulting wings, 
 at an immeasurable pitch all nature seeming 
 to rejoice with a more healthful and elastic joy 
 than in the fullest flush of summer. It was, in 
 
CROMWELL. 189 
 
 short, just such a morning as would make the 
 careless and unburdened heart sit lighter on its 
 throne as would impel the mounted traveller to 
 give his horse the spur, and let his spirits loose by 
 a free and fearless gallop as would swell the 
 pedestrian s chest, and plant his stride more 
 firmly on the sod, and perchance unclose his 
 lips with something of a song 5 but it was such 
 an one withal, as would cause one departing 
 from some loved and lovely scene to need a 
 stronger effort to tear himself away, than he 
 would have been called on to exert, had the 
 skies been lowering, and theda.y in nearer unison 
 with his own sad sensations. Accordingly, the 
 tone of Edgar s feelings was unusually de 
 pressed, even as the aspect of all visible things 
 was fairer than the promise of the season ; his 
 mien was careworn, and at times it scarcely 
 would have been too strong a term to call it 
 haggard ; his gait was various and irregular, 
 
190 CROMWELL. 
 
 hasty at times arid hurried, and at times un 
 usually slow ; his eye was often fixed on vacancy, 
 and those who would address him were compelled 
 to speak their wishes more than once, ere they 
 appeared to reach his understanding. 
 
 The earlier hours were consumed in prepara 
 tions, till high noon came round, and he sat 
 down to the last meal he was for many a month 
 to taste in fellowship with those who sat beside 
 him ; while the unwelcome thought would still 
 intrude itself, that it might be indeed the very 
 last. In silence, then, if not in sorrow, dinner 
 went by, until the board was cleared of all, save 
 cup and flagon, and the old visiters withdrew, 
 and Sibyl vanished to attend perchance her 
 household duties, or more probably to give, in 
 private, vent to the gushing feelings which she 
 in public, was compelled to smother and sire 
 and son were left without companions. 
 
 Fora while the old man spoke not, resting his 
 
CROMWELL. 191 
 
 head upon his hand, as if in anxious thought, 
 and although once or twice he raised it, and 
 made as if about to speak, he yet seemed at a 
 loss for words. At length, as if mtrcte with 
 something of an effort, he aroused himself, filled 
 up his goblet from the stoup of Bourdeaux wine 
 before him, and pushing it toward his son, mo 
 tioned that he should follow the example 
 gazed for a moment wistfully upon the clouded 
 features that met his eye, and with a nod and 
 smile that vainly struggled to be lightsome, 
 emptied his wine-cup. 
 
 " Come, Edgar, come P he said, " this gloom 
 will never do ! Cheer up, kind heart, cheer up ! 
 
 Thou takest on more sadly now, methinks, than 
 
 . 
 
 when we left us for thy three years turn of ser 
 vice in the Low Countries ! But I can see how sits 
 the wind old though I be, and past these toys 
 this many a winter s day ; I mind when I was 
 a young cavalier, and not although I say it 
 
192 CROMWELL. 
 
 who should not the most unlikely in the court 
 of good Queen Bess (we ne er shall look upon 
 her like again), I mind how I was wont to 
 droop at parting from poor Alice ! Sibyl, 
 though passing fair, is nought for beauty, to 
 what she was! Well too well do I mind it !" 
 
 Ardenne, who had shaken off his air of ab 
 straction for a moment as his father drank to 
 him, was again relapsing into the same listless 
 mood on perceiving that his words were rather 
 unconnected musings, than such as called for 
 answer or remark ; but when the name of Sibyl 
 caught his ear, his eye lightened and the colour 
 rushed to his brow as he perceived that his in 
 most thoughts were about to be subjected to 
 the keen probe of mental surgery. 
 
 "Ay! ay! I can see plain how sits the 
 wind," continued Sir Henry, without pausing 
 for a reply. " Though why you should be so 
 cast down, I may not comprehend so readily. 
 
CROMWELL. 193 
 
 Your cousin Sibyl, I know right well, has long 
 possessed your love, and as long too returned it. 
 That I have in all things approved of this I 
 need not tell you now, seeing that you must 
 well perceive that knowing this, and not pro 
 hibiting, was to all needful ends consenting. 
 That you should be cast down at leaving of so 
 sweet a girl as Sibyl, is I gainsay it not 
 right natural ; nathless I cannot but imagine 
 that you do apprehend some greater evil than a 
 mere temporary separation. Now, boy, to the 
 point ! You would espouse your cousin Sibyl 
 she says not nay ! and if my interference be 
 a cause of dread to you, I say but this, that you 
 have cruelly misjudged your father s heart ! 
 My benison on you both ! I know no sweeter 
 balm for all the manifold griefs of age, than to 
 make, and to see, the youthful happy. So set 
 your soul at ease, brave boy, you shall wed Sibyl 
 when you will ; and the more quickly the more 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
194 CROMWELL. 
 
 gladly and more surely shall I witness it. You 
 start for Westminster to-night ; and I have 
 meditated somewhat often now of late on pass 
 ing this next Christmas-tide in London. Sibyl, 
 poor child, hath seen nought of court gaiety nor 
 of the world as yet, and this is but a lonesome 
 place in winter, the more so now that half the 
 gentles of the land will, as it seems too likely, 
 be detained all winter in the city by these 
 protracted sittings of the Houses which men 
 speak of. I have determined now to give you 
 a commission. Choose a fitting mansion 
 whether to rent or purchase I care not a mara- 
 vedi in the Strand if you may, if not in West 
 minster or Charing. See it right nobly furnished, 
 and write me when tis done. I will bring 
 Sibyl thither straightway, and as you may not 
 spend these holydays with us, why we will keep 
 them up with thee, I warrant me. And now 
 away to Sibyl, say to her all that I have said 
 
CROMWELL. 195 
 
 to thee, and what beside seems fitting to your 
 melancholy mood. Thou needst not me, I trow, 
 to woo her. Fix, if you may prevail on her, 
 your bridal day at once whene er ye list 
 twixt Christmas-tide and Easter. Be happy, 
 Edgar, be happy, and let me see you so. 
 Such is my only wish this side eternity, before 
 I go to my long home." 
 
 " My good my generous my gracious 
 father !" cried Ardenne, affected to weeping, as 
 he threw himself upon the old man s neck. " Too 
 good ! too generous \" 
 
 " Tush ! tush, boy ! none of this !" exclaim 
 ed the veteran, humming away the husky weak 
 ness from his throat, " none of this ! but away 
 with you to Sibyl she is a more fitting object for 
 these raptures, than an old weather-beaten trunk 
 like me. Away with you ! But hark ye here 
 is the ring that plighted my departed angel. 
 Let me behold it on her hand, whom I have 
 
 K2 
 
196 CROMWELL. 
 
 loved the best nay, I might say, the only one 
 of women, since my own Alice left me to drag 
 out my pilgrimage alone without one hope to 
 cheer it save that of meeting her once more, 
 when it shall be, O Lord, thy merciful and 
 blessed will I" 
 
 So bent was the old knight on his benevolent 
 design it would have been of no avail, even had 
 Edgar been so minded, to strive to alter or 
 oppose his projects. They were not such, 
 however, as to leave a possible desire to his 
 son which would not be, by their accomplish 
 ment, at once achieved. He had no words to 
 answer but the hot blood rushed tumultuously 
 through his veins and his strong frame 
 quivered visibly with the excitement of his 
 spirits, as he hurried from the hall to seek his 
 beautiful betrothed " Once mine, and all 
 beside is nothing ! Once mine, there will be 
 no more struggle ! Duty and pleasure will go 
 
CROMWELL. 197 
 
 hand in hand ! Once wedded, and no difference 
 of opinion then may put those asunder, whom 
 God has joined together \" 
 
 Such were the thoughts that thronged with 
 
 irresistible impetuosity, and with the speed 
 
 of light, upon his busy brain ; but he had not 
 
 made six steps beyond the threshold before 
 
 reflection changed the prospect. Would it be 
 
 noble honourable upright," thus did he 
 
 commune with himself " would it be worthy 
 
 of an Ardenne the supporter of an un- 
 
 blotted fame of generations, nay, rather, 
 
 would it not be sordid base dishonest and 
 
 degrading to the lowliest gentleman, to win a 
 
 credulous confiding woman by a fraud by 
 
 an implied, if not a spoken, lie ? To let her 
 
 wed, believing him she wedded a supporter of 
 
 the cause she deemed most holy, a soldier 
 
 armed for the warfare which alone she looked 
 
 upon as just and sacred; to let her wed in 
 
 haste, and then find out at leisure that she 
 
198 CROMWELL. 
 
 had been deceived deceived by whom by 
 him she had just sworn to honour? Not so !" 
 he cried aloud " It shall not be, by Heaven ! 
 She shall know all every thing ! Knowing 
 she shall accept my hand or knowing cast 
 me off, but not, at least, despise me !" 
 
 As his mind arrived at its mature though 
 swift conclusion, he reached the door of Si 
 byl s oriel parlour with a hesitating hand he 
 struck the panel, and so slight was the sound 
 that it conveyed no tidings to the inmate at 
 least it was unanswered. Again he knocked, 
 and louder than before he listened, and still 
 all was silence. Supposing her he sought to 
 have gone forth, he had already turned away 
 to follow her, when a faint noise, as of a 
 person breathing heavily, or perhaps gently 
 weeping, attracted his attention ; he knocked 
 a third time, and then though still unbidden, 
 entered. She was within she was alone ! 
 In the prostration in the absolute abandon- 
 
CROMWELL. 199 
 
 ment of feminine and hopeless grief ! Her 
 face was buried in her hands, as she lay 
 stretched at length on the broad pillowed 
 settle which encircled the bay-window. Her 
 light brown hair, which had broke loose from 
 the confinement of her silken head-gear, flowed 
 in redundant waves over the voluptuous outline 
 of her shoulders, trailing down even to the 
 ground. Her features were, of course, con 
 cealed ; but the large pearly tears, forcing their 
 way one by one between her fingers, had 
 already left a visible trace of moisture on the 
 damask cushions, while the convulsive starts 
 that agitated her entire frame told even more 
 the depth and anguish of her sorrow, than all 
 her weeping. 
 
 " Sibyl, 5 he whispered, stealing with noise 
 less steps over the three-piled Persian carpet 
 till he was close beside her, " my own own 
 Sibyl I" there was a deep fond pathos in his 
 
200 CROMWELL. 
 
 musical accents, which no description could 
 express a liquid melancholy tenderness that 
 sunk directly to the heart. " My own own 
 Sibyl !" and with the most respectful delicacy 
 he lifted her from her recumbent attitude 
 "and weeping too for me ! but weep no 
 longer, dearest one I come I come ! Oh 
 grant it, God ! that it may be so to wipe those 
 tears away to make thee mine for ever !" 
 
 She gazed upon him for a second s space, 
 wildly distrustfully ; then, as she perceived 
 his earnest air, and marked the hope that 
 kindled in his smile, then brighter thoughts 
 prevailed ; and with the sudden strange revul 
 sion, abandoning herself to the full tide of her 
 warm passionate feelings, she sank half faint 
 ing on the bosom of her lover. 
 
 " Oh grant it, Father of all mercies ! that 
 this too mighty treasure shall indeed be mine !" 
 he murmured fervently, as he supported her, 
 
CROMWELL. 201 
 
 and with considerate expressions of calm 
 fondness recalled her gradually to her self- 
 possession; suppressing every sentiment that 
 might embarrass her returning consciousness, 
 that might in any wise offend or agitate her 
 girlish sensibilities ; holding her hand in his 
 the while, but with a quiet unimpassioned 
 pressure, liker to the expression of a kind 
 brother s love than to the rapturous devotion 
 of a youthful suitor ; soothing her with the 
 gentlest tones of his familiar voice, till she 
 was at the least sufficiently composed to listen 
 to his self-restrained and self-accusing plead 
 ings. 
 
 "Sibyl/ he said at length, as her deeply- 
 drawn sighs subsided, and her tears ceased to 
 flow in such unnatural profusion " dear cousin, 
 soon soon, I trust, to be addressed Jby a far 
 dearer title, I have much much that I would 
 say to you before I go from hence, never unless 
 
 K3 
 
202 CROMWELL. 
 
 at your permission to return ! much from my 
 father for myself yet more ! Dry your tears, 
 dearest, dry them I beseech you it is agony 
 to me to look on them ! Dry them, and listen 
 to me, that we may, if it be Heaven s pleasure, 
 be happy as the happiest of earth s inhabit 
 ants !" 
 
 " Say on 5 she difficultly faltered forth 
 the wovds " dear Edgar with my whole soul 
 I do attend you !" 
 
 " Not here/ 5 he answered, " sweet one and 
 not yet ! But do your mantle on, and walk 
 forth with me for a little space. You are too 
 greatly agitated yet, calmly to hear, and freely 
 to decide on that, which for your happiness 
 for your life s sake, you must consider warily 
 and well ! The pleasant sunshine, the fresh 
 grateful air, and above all, the peaceful and 
 quiescent scenery will tranquilize your mind ; 
 moreover, I would not that this sun should set 
 
CROMWELL. 203 
 
 unwitnessed by us twain together. You will 
 go forth then, dearest will you not, Sibyl ?" 
 
 A smile exquisitely sweet glancing from out 
 her tears was her sole token of assent, as she 
 disengaged herself half blushingly from his sup 
 porting arms, and gathering her dishevelled 
 tresses folded them simply, but in the most 
 perfect taste, around her classically moulded 
 temples. 
 
 " Wait for me in the vestibule," she said, " I 
 will be there, ere you shall have the time to miss 
 me I" and she vanished from the room, leaving 
 a stronger hope in Ardenne s breast than he 
 had entertained many a day. He was assured 
 in his own mind, beyond the possibility of doubt, 
 that she had marked the secret conflict of his 
 soul, that she had penetrated his sole mystery, 
 and was aware already of his apprehensions as 
 to the part which it might ere long be his duty 
 to sustain, whether it should lie in the grave or 
 
204 CROMWELL. 
 
 subtle forum, or in the lamentable field of civil 
 strife ; and he now listened to the flattering voice 
 within, which whispered that it might well be, a 
 maiden so affectionate, so warm, and, above all, 
 so deeply and devotedly attached, would over 
 look the difference in their political creeds, as 
 counterbalanced, rendered nugatory and a thing 
 of nought, by their entire harmony of soul on 
 every other subject. It might well be that one 
 so strong herself in principles of honour and 
 integrity would find more to admire in the in 
 flexible and stern uprightness which will not 
 sacrifice one particle of conscience one straw s 
 bulk of that which it considers duty before the 
 shrine of its most intimate and near affections 
 than to rebuke or reprobate in the opinions or 
 the principles on which that duty hinged. 
 
 But Edgar had not long time to waste in 
 thought or speculation ; for as he reached the 
 entrance of the hall, the form he loved so well 
 
CROMWELL. 205 
 
 to look upon came gliding down the staircase, 
 
 wrapped in her walking robe, fitted above the 
 
 waist with accurate precision to the model of 
 
 her unrivalled shape, but full below and flowing, 
 
 of dark velvet furred at the cape and cuffs with 
 
 the most costly minever; and wearing on her 
 
 head a cap of ermine, its silken crown and 
 
 lining protruding from above the border of deep 
 
 fur, and hanging gracefully down, with a white 
 
 ostrich feather drooping over it, so as to flush 
 
 one delicate cheek more warmly than its 
 
 sister with a tint borrowed from its own bright 
 
 crimson. With a passionate and fitful light, far 
 
 different from the calmness of their wonted 
 
 radiance, the eyes of Edgar dwelt upon the 
 
 finely-modelled person and the features, not the 
 
 less exquisitely fair that they now wore a 
 
 melancholy downcast aspect, of her on whose 
 
 acceptance or denial of his present k suit his all 
 
 of hope was fearfully suspended. So long, in- 
 
206 CROMWELL. 
 
 deed, and evident was that fixed gaze of ad 
 miration, and so much was she pained by its 
 expression, that the bashful blood rushed like a 
 torrent to brow, cheek, and neck, with blushes 
 scarcely natural, so vivid was their hectic 
 colour. 
 
 Perceiving instantly the cause of her con 
 fusion, with an air of deep humility he lowered 
 his offending eyes, and as he took her hand to 
 lead her forth fe Pardon/ 5 he whispered in low 
 reverential tones, "pardon me, gentle cousin, 
 my most unwitting and involuntary fault ! if 
 fault it be," he added with a voice that faltered, 
 and then abruptly paused, as if he were unable 
 to complete the sentence. 
 
 A quiet pressure of the fingers that yet lin 
 gered in his tender grasp, replied at once and 
 reassured him; and in the silence caused by 
 feelings or by thoughts too powerful for utter 
 ance how widely different from that of apathy 
 
CROMWELL. 207 
 
 or dulness! they for the last time wandered 
 forth into the pleasant solitudes of the broad 
 sylvan chase. 
 
 Throughout the greater part of its extent, this 
 ornamented tract, although diversified enough 
 by change of dale and upland to redeem its 
 beauties from the charge of tameness or mo 
 notony, was rather of a level than a broken 
 character ; i ts charms were chiefly of that tran 
 quil and composing cast which is found rather in 
 expanses of deep meadow-land, carpeted by a 
 sward so fresh and so luxuriant as to lose little 
 of its verdure even in the dead months of the 
 winter in the massive foliage of the scattered 
 clumps or more continuous groves of stately timber 
 trees, and in the sheets of limpid but unrippled 
 water, than in the features of a scenery, which 
 if more romantic is far less alluring, if more en 
 chanting to the first astonished glance, bears not 
 so well the test of daily and familiar observation. 
 
280 CROMWELL. 
 
 Towards its northern and north-western boun 
 daries, however, the ground was swelling and 
 uneven ; the hills heaved up more boldly from 
 the valleys, which were in places so abrupt and 
 narrow as almost to deserve the name of glens 
 or dingles ; and often wore a coronet of gray and 
 rifted sandstone above the purple heather that 
 clothed their flanks with a dark purple mantle 
 wheresoever the soil was too poor or too shallow 
 to support the taller growth of hazel, birch, and 
 mountain-ash which clustered round their bases, 
 or straggled up their sides where any casual 
 streamlet had worn a channel to protect them 
 from the western gales, and afforded by its 
 waters a grateful although scanty nutriment to 
 their dwarfed and thirsty roots. 
 
 Imbosomed in these rugged eminences, at a 
 short mile s distance from the manor, there lay 
 a little tarn, or mountain lake, scarce larger than 
 an artificial pool, but so deep that its glassy 
 
CROMWELL. 209 
 
 waters shone black as polished jet even beneath 
 the azure skies of summer. Narrow, however, 
 as it was, it yet could boast its islets two, 
 fringed from the water s edge with tangled under 
 wood above which waved three or four tall trees 
 the third, a bold and barren rock whereon 
 some feudal ancestor had perched his solitary 
 fastness, dismantled now and roofless. On 
 every side but one the hills sank steeply down 
 to the lake s brink, leaving no space for the 
 adventurous foot of man, feathered with coppice 
 springing from every rift or crevice of their rocky 
 sides but on that one a turfy glade sloped 
 gently to the marge, where it was bordered by a 
 stripe of silver sand which formed a bright and 
 snowy frame to the dark mirror it enclosed. 
 Just where the turf and sand united a single and 
 gigantic oak, known as the Friar s tree for 
 miles around, reared its short massive trunk, 
 garnished with limbs as tortuous and forked as 
 
210 CROMWELL. 
 
 the antlers of the wild herds that loved to rub 
 their budding horns against it in the early 
 springtide, but supporting, even in the Hush of 
 summer, only a spare and scanty garland of 
 green leaves, which rustled now all sere and 
 yellow in the melancholy breath of autumn. 
 
 Immediately beneath the shadow of this forest- 
 patriarch, and partly overlapped by the encroach 
 ment of its twisted roots, lay a huge block of 
 deep-red freestone, bearing the marks of rude 
 and half-obliterated sculptures, in which some 
 village antiquarian had traced or fancied a re 
 semblance to a cowled and sandalled figure, 
 whence the prevailing appellation of the tree ; 
 which, ancient as that relic evidently seemed, 
 had probably been in its prime already, when 
 there it had been placed placed only to sur 
 vive the memory of the event or actor it had 
 fondly been intended to immortalize. It might 
 have been the cover of a tomb it might have 
 
CROMWELL. 211 
 
 been a monument designed to celebrate some 
 great or wonderful achievement but whatsoever 
 was its pristine use or destination, it afforded 
 now a pleasant seat, cushioned with soft luxu 
 rious mosses, and sheltered equally from summer 
 heat or wintry gales by the huge stem and 
 gnarled boughs that overhung it. 
 
 A lovely and romantic spot this was so still, 
 so lonely, so sequestered from the eye by inter 
 vening thickets, that, although situate at scarce 
 a bowshot from the most frequented walks, it 
 yet was rarely visited but by some passing 
 forester or some true lover of the undecorated 
 face of nature. For this cause, perhaps, it had 
 ever been a favourite haunt of Sibyl, who, when 
 a fairy maiden of fifteen, was wont to resort 
 thither with book, lute, or pencil, as the fancy 
 of the moment prompted, and for no other 
 reason had it been the usual termination of her 
 young wooer s wanderings. 
 
212 CROMWELL. 
 
 What was the aim of Edgar in choosing this 
 fair solitude to be the scene of that most sacred 
 audience which he had come forth to demand, 
 he could not have, perhaps, himself explained. 
 It might be he had formed some half-confessed 
 and indistinct idea, that here, in the familiar 
 trysting-place the home of such sweet recol 
 lections, the shrine of such innumerable hopes 
 she would lean to the^soft side of the heart 
 would be more liable to yield herself to fond and 
 passionate impressions, than to weigh matters 
 with an equable calm scrutiny. It might be, 
 that habit merely and the trick of old associa 
 tion had conducted his feet thither, while the 
 mind was far removed from thought of time or 
 place : or it might be that, wise and philosophic 
 as his spirit was, there yet lay dubiously con 
 cealed within it one of those strange supersti 
 tious touches those creeds of the heart, not of 
 the judgment from which the bosoms of so 
 
CROMWELL. 213 
 
 few, even the coolest and most stern inquirers^ 
 can altogether wean themselves one of these 
 fancies, which we all at times have felt, that 
 some peculiar spot, or hour, or person, is secretly 
 connected with the clue and crisis of our des 
 tiny is as it were the hinge whereon the portals 
 of our fortune turn, opening to our steps the un 
 known paths of future good or evil. 
 
 Whatever were Edgar s thoughts, however, 
 during their silent progress to the Friar s tree, 
 scarcely had he placed Sibyl on the monu 
 mental stone, and stretched himself before her 
 on the dry white sand, ere he poured forth in a 
 voice of so sweet harmony as might have well 
 beguiled the ear and won the heart of the most 
 determined votary of celibate, a tide of language 
 fraught with such eloquence and yet so prac 
 tical in meaning so deep in sentiment, and yet 
 so pointed in expression, that few lips, perhaps, 
 but his could have delivered it, without incurring 
 
214 CROMWELL. 
 
 some reproach of studied insincerity, or awaken 
 ing some feeling of distrust. He told her of his 
 hopes, his doubts, his terrors he told her how 
 a cloud, he knew not wherefore, had over 
 shadowed his horizon, chilling as it were the 
 very sources of his most permanent and warm 
 affections ; he told her, how he valued her the 
 most of all things earthly the most of all 
 things save his God, his country, and his 
 honour ! How to him her wedded love would 
 be indeed the all-in-all capable of making that 
 which else were misery the highest and most 
 pure enjoyment; how, to win it, he would lay 
 down willingly rank, name, fame, fortune, every 
 thing save virtue ! He told her, that without 
 that crowning gift, he should, though wealthier 
 than the wealthiest, bear but a beggared heart 
 though girt with myriads of friends, be deso 
 late and lonely though dwelling in his very 
 birthplace, be a divorced and homesick exile ! 
 
CROMWELL. 215 
 
 He told her of the violent and ceaseless strife 
 between his passion and his conscience of his 
 profound devotion to herself, battling and 
 scarcely to be overcome by his more deep devo 
 tion to his country s weal. 
 
 " It may be," he r continued, " that I am 
 but a timorous dreamer but a trembling 
 visionary, shaking at causeless and unreal ter 
 rors, that the trials, which 1 shudder merely at 
 foreseeing, shall never come to the proof; but 
 this is what I dread and what, though dread 
 ing, I may not, if it come to pass, avoid or 
 shrink from, even to win what were to me a 
 thousand times more dear than life. The mise 
 ries of intestine war let loose to devastate our 
 smiling country ! A wild and bloody strife, 
 dividing brother against brother, sire against 
 son, husband sweet Sibyl husband against 
 wife! A strife between a king determined to 
 
216 CROWMELL. 
 
 be absolute a people, to be free! If these 
 things come to pass though my life be barren, 
 arid my deathbed deserted yea! though my 
 heart be broken in the conflict yet must I be 
 for ever the sworn soldier of my country s free 
 dom. It may, however, be Heaven grant it 
 so that I do falsely calculate the signs of 
 coming wrath; it may moreover be that as I 
 am, so are you a friend to liberty and justice, 
 more than a worshipper of kings ! and if so 
 all shall yet be well. My father, Sibyl, my old 
 kind father, hath proffered freely his consent 
 hath urged me to obtain your promise, that you 
 will be my own before this coming winter shall 
 have made way for spring flowers hath im 
 plored me that he may see us happy such is 
 his only wish this side eternity before he go to 
 his long home ! Be mine, then, Sibyl oh, be 
 mine, ere the fierce storm shall burst, which 
 
CROMWELL. 217 
 
 may divide us, and for ever be mine to cheer, 
 to guide, to comfort, and to bless be mine for 
 weal and wo for time and for eternity !" 
 
 While he had spoken, though her lips quivered 
 often, and parted more than once as if she would 
 have interrupted him though her colour went 
 and came in brief and fitful flashes the lovely 
 girl had never once withdrawn her eyes from 
 his pale face, pale with the struggle of contend 
 ing passions, nor yet relaxed her pressure of his 
 cold damp hand ; and as he paused from his 
 deep-souled and eager pleading, she replied at 
 once, though her voice faltered, and the big 
 tears slid down her cheeks. 
 
 " It is, then, 55 she said, " as I dreaded ; and 
 our young hopes have been but as a morning 
 vision ! Oh ! Edgar, Edgar ! I have thought, 
 I have hoped, I have prayed, that these things 
 might not be ; and yet, too oh ! too surely 
 have I known they must!" and she hurried 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 CROMWELL. 
 
 onward with her speech, as if she feared that 
 she should lack the strength to act up to her 
 resolution. " Men will say/ she went on with 
 increasing passion, "and say truly but I care 
 not that it is unmaidenly in me to speak, in 
 words, how madly, how devotedly, I love you ! 
 My hope of hopes has been you cannot doubt 
 it, Edgar no, no, you cannot to know myself 
 your wife ; and now my hopes are changed to 
 anguish and despair. But, think not that I 
 blame you that I love you, honour you, adore 
 you, one thousandth part the less, when I say 
 God grant me strength to bear it! when I 
 say, that we can never, never now be one. 
 Your father has to me been as nay, more 
 more than a father. To his heart your defection 
 such will he term and feel it your defection 
 from the loyalty of your high race, will strike 
 a wound, that but one other blow could aggra 
 vate or deepen. Were I to fall off likewise, he 
 
CROMWELL. 219 
 
 would die, Edgar die, and leave to us his 
 sole bequest, a father s malison. No, no ! I 
 must stay with him, must console the old man 
 in his barren and unfriended sorrows, must 
 soothe his cares and turn aside his anger, lest 
 it wax hotter and more deadly than you, you 
 Edgar, shall be able to endure. Nor is this all. 
 I am a poor weak girl a frail, confiding crea 
 ture, of a sex whose duty and whose nature is 
 obedience obedience to our king, our hus 
 band, our God ! I argue not ! I hope not, 
 fancy not, that I can change your judgment, 
 founded, as it must be, on firm conviction ; nor 
 would I change it if I could : that which in 
 women is nature, virtue, may well in men be 
 cowardice and crime. Your intellect is strong, 
 and wise, and wonderful, mine, womanish and 
 weak. Nor should I love and venerate you as 
 I do, could you surrender up your wisdom at 
 the bidding of my weakness ! Then, as I do 
 L 2 
 
220 CROMWELL. 
 
 respect your scruples, respect mine also. The 
 sapling bends, indeed, to the wild blast that 
 bows it ; but when the hurricane is overpast, it 
 stands no less erect than the proud oak that 
 yielded not an inch to the storm s fury. I in 
 my weakness you in your strength, we are 
 alike immovable. Yours I can not be now 
 may not be ever! but of this be certain; 
 wedded or single, royalist or republican, living 
 or in death, you only shall I love, you only 
 honour honour and love more deeply, that I 
 know you greater in adherence to that which 1 
 must deem fancied and erroneous duty, than 
 did you think as I. There is one hope for us, 
 Edgar my Edgar one! If this wild storm 
 pass by- if the green homes of England be 
 unstained with native blood and how more 
 fervently than ever shall I now pray they be 
 so then may we yet be happy \" 
 
 The blood rushed coldly to his heart as he 
 
CROMWELL. 221 
 
 heard her out ; nor, though he had expected 
 every word she uttered, was the shock less 
 stunning, or the anguish lighter, than if the 
 stroke had fallen on him unaware. Too well, 
 however, did he know, and too entirely respect 
 the principles which doomed hirn to eternal and 
 unutterable sorrow, to speak one syllable in 
 answer or entreaty. 
 
 " One kiss/ he murmured through his set 
 teeth ; " one last kiss, my own lost Sibyl \" and 
 she fell upon his bosom unresisting, and her 
 white arms were twined about his neck with a 
 convulsive clasp, and their cold lips mingled in 
 a long embrace that had no taste of passion 
 or of pleasure, and their tears flowed together 
 in that gush of unchecked misery. 
 
 Before an hour had passed, Ardenne had left 
 the mansion of his fathers. The old knight 
 wondered, and was grieved, but silent ; he saw 
 at an eye s glance that his own hopes, his first 
 
222 CROMWELL. 
 
 horn s happiness, had been dashed rudely down; 
 but to imagine wherefore, conjecture was itself 
 at fault. He wept upon his neck, blessed him, 
 and sent him forth ! A pale form, indistinctly 
 seen through the fast-gathering twilight, stood 
 in the oriel window as Edgar slowly mounted ; 
 but the burst of agonizing sobs that followed 
 his departure, was distinctly audible. Enough ! 
 Timanthes veiled the face, on which the ex 
 tremity of sorrow was engraved in characters so 
 fearful as to defy the utmost skill of human 
 portraiture. 
 
CROMWELL. 223 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 This is true liberty, when freeborn men, 
 Having to advise the public, may speak free, 
 Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise ; 
 Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace ; 
 What can be juster in a state than this ? 
 
 MILTON, from Euripides* 
 
 ON a dark and gloomy afternoon, in the lat 
 ter days of November, Ardenne, having already 
 gone through all the necessary steps preliminary 
 to his entering on his novel duties, and having 
 devoted a few days to renewing ancient intima 
 cies, or forming new relations, with some of the 
 
224 CROMWELL. 
 
 more leading men of either party, took his way, 
 for the first time, toward the honoured precincts 
 of St. Stephen s, around the walls of which, now, 
 alas ! levelled to the ground for ever, the collec 
 tive eloquence of ages had shed even then a halo 
 of more than mortal glory. 
 
 The House had been some time in session, 
 when he entered, and, to his almost irrepressible 
 surprise, in passing to his seat the object that 
 first met his eye was the ungainly figure of the 
 stranger, who had succoured him near Royston, 
 habited as heretofore described in garments 
 coarse, unseemly, and ill-made, standing beside 
 the table which, at times, he violently struck 
 with his clenched hand, and speaking in a sharp 
 croaking voice against delay in the discussion of 
 some motion then before the House. 
 
 It did not seem to Edgar, as he looked hastily 
 around him, that the members listened with 
 much attention to the fiery but somewhat in- 
 
CROMWELL. 225 
 
 volved declamations of this worthy ; but after 
 a few moments survey, his notice was attracted 
 by the bent brows and compressed lips of a con 
 siderable number gravely attired and stern- 
 looking men, who sat apart even from those who 
 were completely recognised as favourers of sweep 
 ing measures of reform, and ever and anon re 
 sponded to the sentiments expressed by the 
 speaker with a deep hum or sullen cheer of ap 
 probation. He could see too, that Hampden, 
 with whom he had advanced already beyond 
 the earliest steps of friendly intercourse, was 
 not inattentive to the words of this strange- 
 looking personage; although at times a smile 
 would flit across his comely features at some 
 wild undigested thoughts, or strong denuncia 
 tion fiercely disproportionate to that against 
 which it was levelled. 
 
 He had not, however, much space for obser 
 vation, since the orator, who, it seemed, had 
 L 3 
 
226 CROMWELL. 
 
 wellnigh finished his harangue ere he came 
 into the assembly, now resumed his seat, and 
 was at once succeeded by a youthful gentleman, 
 whom Edgar recognised for Lucius Carey, 
 Viscount Falkland, of an exterior so prepossess 
 ing, that in another man it would have been the 
 principal attraction, though in this instance it 
 was but the goodly shrine of a surpassing soul. 
 His form was slight, but elegantly framed his 
 countenance, of singular and softened beauty, 
 had for its most obvious traits, a low fair fore 
 head, from which the waves of his light-brown 
 or almost flaxen hair hung down in natural curls 
 below his cheeks a full blue eye, well-opened 
 and expressive a bright complexion and a lip, 
 rich, ripe, and wooing as a woman s. He was 
 clad handsomely in doublet, short trunk hose, 
 and cloak of dark blue velvet, slashed and lined 
 with rich white taffeta, and was in all respects 
 a person whose appearance would denote a man 
 
CROMWELL. 227 
 
 of birth and bearing. His voice, as he began to 
 speak, was sweet and tunable, and although 
 weak at first, increased in energy and power as 
 he proceeded, till Ardenne felt that he had 
 never listened heretofore to any one combining, 
 in so eminent a degree, persuasiveness and 
 strength of language. 
 
 From the Lord Falkland s words, Edgar 
 quickly gathered, that the measure under consi 
 deration was no other, than the famous and 
 much-contested bill of general remonstrance, 
 which it appeared had been at this late hour 
 brought forward by the opposition party, when 
 the morning had been wasted in minor and un 
 profitable questions, with the hope of smuggling 
 it, as it were, through the House during the ab 
 sence of many, its most known opponents. The 
 speech of the young nobleman was luminous, 
 though brief, and touching in no respect on the 
 principles or object of the bill, went clearly and 
 
228 CROMWELL. 
 
 directly to the point, asserting that it should not, 
 at that irregular and most indecent hour, be 
 forced upon the assembly unprepared at least, 
 if not reluctant to consider it. 
 
 Loudly applauded by the moderate party, as 
 well as by the open antagonists of the measure, 
 throughout the whole of his speech, and not less 
 warmly, though more sparingly, at times by its 
 impartial and sincere espo users Hampden, and 
 Pym, and Hollis he concluded with a motion 
 that the House should presently adjourn, and 
 that this question should be entered upon the 
 next morning at nine of the clock, and every 
 clause debated, the speaker in the chair. 
 
 As he sat down, a dozen members rose at 
 once on opposite sides, and for some minutes 
 all was clamour and confusion trampling of 
 feet, loud cries of " Question !" " Order!" 
 and " Go on !" mixed with vociferated names 
 of favourite orators, called on to utter their opi- 
 
CROMWELL. 229 
 
 nions at length, Lenthal, the Speaker of the 
 House, with his clear sonorous voice, enforced 
 obedience to the chair, and quiet was again re 
 stored. 
 
 Lord Falkland s motion instantly was se 
 conded by Harnpden, in a few words, forcibly 
 but simply urging the necessity, that this great 
 question must be freely discussed and openly 
 by all who shall decide to take a part therein. 
 The House was cleared for question, and the ad 
 journment carried with few dissenting voices. 
 
 There was but little tarrying within the body 
 of the house, but as they passed into the lobby 
 and down the parliament stairs, men fell into 
 small knots of two or three, discoursing, some 
 on the occurrences of the discussion just con 
 cluded, and some on matters of more general 
 and varied interest. 
 
 It was at this moment, just as Edgar fell into 
 a group, in which he had observed the figures of 
 
230 CROMWELL. 
 
 Hyde (in afterdays more celebrated as Lord 
 Clarendon and Chancellor of England), St. John, 
 Lord Digby, Colepepper, and Hampden all spi 
 rits in some sort congenial to each other, all 
 being favourers, ostensibly at least, though dif 
 fering in mode and measure, of reform both in 
 church and state that the orator, whom he had 
 judged at the first sight to be Lord Falkland, 
 passed by so closely as almost to brush his per 
 son with his cloak, deeply engaged in conversa 
 tion with his mysterious fellow-traveller. This 
 latter cast a glance of recognition toward him, 
 accompanied by a short unceremonious nod, 
 though without making any pause, or breaking 
 off in his discourse, which he continued in such 
 tones as reached the ears of Ardenne. " But, 
 verily," he said, " 1 see not wherefore you would 
 have it thus put off, for this day would right 
 quickly have decided it." 
 
 " There would not have been time enough," 
 
CROMWELL. 231 
 
 replied the other shortly " for it would sure 
 take some debate/ 5 
 
 u A jvery sorry one ! my lord, if any/ 3 an 
 swered the puritan, who was already passing 
 out of sight, when Edgar touched the shoulder 
 of John Hampden, whom he had previously 
 addressed. 
 
 " I pray you, of your courtesy," he whis 
 pered, u Master Hampden, tell me, who is 
 yon slovenly and clownish-looking man in con 
 verse with my Lord of Falkland, for I do see 
 he is on your side, by his warm speech to-day." 
 
 " That sloven,"* answered Hampden and 
 in afterdays, when the undaunted breast of 
 him who spake was mouldering in its bloody 
 cerements, not the least noble victim of that 
 
 * This very remarkable and prophetic speech was actually 
 uttered by Hampden in reply to the question as given above 
 of Lord Digby ; in the first year of the Long Parliament ; i. t. 
 at a date a little earlier than that assigned to it in the text. 
 
232 CROMWELL. 
 
 lamentable strife, his auditor remembered those 
 prophetic words " whom you see before you, 
 hath no ornament in his speech. That sloven, 
 I say, if we should ever come to a breach with 
 the King, which God forbid ! in such a case I 
 say, that sloven will be the greatest man in 
 England/ 
 
 " Indeed !" said Ardenne, thoughtfully " in 
 deed ! I had not thought of him so highly, 
 and yet I do believe, nay I am well assured, 
 I have encountered him before. His name ?" 
 
 " His name is Cromwell," replied the patriot 
 " Oliver Cromwell member now for the 
 good town of Cambridge, and little known as 
 yet, or listened to, save by a few austere 
 religionists yet of great parts ! unwearied dili 
 gence undaunted courage penetration, that 
 intuitively reads the wariest hearts and per 
 severance that will yield to nothing human ! 
 That you have met him I can well believe at 
 
CROMWELL. 233 
 
 leastwise he doth know, and reckons of you 
 highly ! You will be here to-morrow, Master 
 Ardenne," he continued after a momentary 
 pause, " and with us, I trust ! If we should 
 lose this bill, it will, I fear me much, go hard 
 with England s liberties." 
 
 " Here I shall be, past question," answered 
 Edgar. " I scarce should hold myself an honest 
 man, were I to quit my station in the crisis of 
 the storm ; although," he continued with a 
 smile, " although that station be a new one, 
 and its occupant but strange and inexperienced. 
 Here shall I be, but more you must not ask of 
 me. How I shall vote, or if indeed at all, till 
 I have heard both reasons and objections I may 
 not easily decide. Wherefore, good Master 
 Hampden, if you do care in truth for the assist 
 ance of my vote, you were best call to aid that 
 eloquence and depth of reasoning, whereof I 
 hear men bear such testimony ; and so convince 
 
234 CROMWELL. 
 
 me that my country s weal requires it of my 
 hand ! Give you good night, fair gentlemen," 
 he added with a courteous motion toward the 
 company. " We meet again to-morrow." 
 
 " If you be not in more than common haste," 
 said Hampden, laying a slight detention on 
 his arm, as he turned round to leave the lobby, 
 " I will entreat you tarry, while I speak ten 
 words with my Lord Digby. Your lodging 
 lies, if I mistake not, this side Charing, and 
 my road is the same. If you can wait on me 
 five minutes at the farthest, I will rejoice to 
 have your homeward company ; and will upon 
 the way, I do assure you, exert what reasons I 
 possess to win you to conviction." 
 
 Ardenne assented; nor did the minutes 
 which elapsed while that high-minded patriot 
 remonstrated, as it would seem by his quick 
 energetic whispers, with the tergiversating noble, 
 pass heavily ; as he conversed with the distin- 
 
CROMWELL. 235 
 
 guished men who seemed to give desirous 
 each, perhaps, of winning to his respective fac 
 tion a partisan so like to prove of weight, in the 
 equally poised state of parties that eager and 
 respectful heed to every word he uttered, which 
 cannot fail to please the minds even of those the 
 least accessible to ordinary adulation. With a 
 glance pregnant of meaning, and an admonition 
 strongly urged, although its import could not be 
 distinguished by the bystanders, Hampden 
 turned from Lord Digby, and announced his 
 readiness to walk, flinging his cloak in several 
 folds over his left arm, and bringing round his 
 rapier s hilt to meet his grasp if needed pre 
 cautions not uncalled for in those times of fierce 
 and virulent commotion. 
 
 As they passed down the stairs the men in 
 waiting recognised their masters, and fell at 
 once into their places ; two moving on in front 
 with lighted links or flambeaux, necessary in 
 
236 CROMWELL. 
 
 those days when the most frequented thorough 
 fares of the metropolis could boast few lamps 
 but those which graced the residence of some 
 great noble and two stepping along three paces 
 in the rear, their eyes warily moving to and fro 
 and watching with keen scrutiny the air of every 
 passenger who met or overtook them, and their 
 hands in frequent contact with the pommels of 
 their swords. For, notwithstanding the eulogium 
 passed some years before by a French resident 
 of high distinction on the orderly and peaceful 
 regulation of the English capital, in honourable 
 contrast to the debauched and dangerous turbu 
 lence of Paris, party spirit at this time ran to 
 such height, and tumults were so frequent be 
 tween the factions recently accommodated with 
 distinctive titles of cavaliers and roundheads 
 tumults in which much blood was spilt and even 
 some lives lost ; the sturdy citizens resisting with 
 their bats and cudgels the rapiers of the dis- 
 
CROMWELL. 237 
 
 banded officers and other desperadoes ever to 
 be found about the palace of Whitehall that 
 few, whose purses could maintain such fol 
 lowers, esteemed it safe to walk the streets by 
 night without their armed attendance, particu 
 larly such as were obnoxious to assault, or insult 
 at the least, in consequence of party eminence 
 or of political renown. 
 
 At a few steps distance from the House they 
 encountered a stout body of the train-bands, 
 well-equipped with muskets, swords, and ban 
 doleers, forming a portion of the guards, which, 
 on the news of the attempt against Argyle and 
 Hamilton, the Commons had required to be 
 detached for their protection by the Earl of 
 Essex, at that time General-in-chief on this side 
 Trent; and to this it might, perhaps, in some 
 degree be owing that during their walk home 
 ward no circumstance of annoyance or attack 
 occurred, to interrupt the converse of these high- 
 
238 CROMWELL. 
 
 minded men, who though but newly and im 
 perfectly acquainted, already felt, each for the 
 other, that reverential admiration, which is often 
 the precursor to familiar friendship. 
 
 At the door of Ardenne s lodging, with feel 
 ings of increased respect and with renewed pro 
 mises of a meeting on the morrow, they then 
 parted the one hastening to some nightly con 
 clave, there to deliberate with his associate 
 patriots on measures rife with England s weal 
 the other to stretch his limbs upon a sleepless 
 couch, and ponder the effects of his accession to 
 the popular party on his own fate and fortunes. 
 Kind sleep, however, came at last, to seal up 
 for a little space the sources of his deep dis 
 quietude, and to allay, until another sun should 
 wake him to fresh struggles fresh anxieties, 
 the feverish tumults of his bosom. 
 
 Still, so engrossing was the subject, which 
 last had occupied Edgar s rnind before he sunk 
 
CROMWELL. 239 
 
 into slumber, and so powerful the operation of 
 his spirit even while the body was buried in 
 what seemed absolute oblivion, that scarcely 
 had the earliest indications of the wintry twi 
 light crept through the fogs of the near river, 
 ere he awoke, and starting instantly from his 
 bed, began to do his garments on, summoning 
 the while his sluggard followers to prepare his 
 morning meal. But notwithstanding all his 
 haste, so gloomy was the dawning, and so late, 
 at that drear season, the uprising of the sun, 
 that he had scarce the time to snatch a hasty 
 morsel, before his horses were announced to 
 bear him to St. Stephen s ; and almost at the 
 selfsame instant two gentlemen to speak with 
 Master Ardenne ; and, with the word, John 
 Hampden entered the apartment, accompanied 
 by a person of most " unusual " and forbidding 
 aspect. Austere, fanatical, and gloomy, he 
 might have been pronounced at the first sight 
 
240 CROMWELL. 
 
 by any person moderately skilful at deciphering 
 men s characters from the expression of their 
 features ; his dress would not perhaps entirely 
 bear out the charge (for such, and a most grave 
 one, was it deemed by the wild cavaliers) of 
 puritanism ; for, although uniform and rather 
 grave in colour, it yet was cut with attention to 
 the prevailing mode, as well as to the setting off 
 a person infinitely less ungainly than his coun 
 tenance was harsh and extraordinary. His 
 hat, too, which he carried in his hand, was 
 decorated with a feather ; and his sword hung 
 from a shoulder-knot adorned with fringe and 
 tassels. 
 
 Before Edgar had well surveyed the stranger, 
 he was addressed by his companion of the 
 previous evening. 
 
 " We have, I fear, intruded somewhat on 
 your privacy," he said, " at this unwonted 
 hour I and my friend, Sir Harry, Vane the 
 
CROMWELL. 241 
 
 younger; whom I beseech you, Master Ar- 
 denne, know as such ; right soon J trust to 
 stand in similar relation to yourself; but we 
 were both desirous of your company this morn 
 ing to the House; and I would fain propose 
 that you shall for the present occupy a seat 
 nigh mine. Till you shall be in some degree 
 accustomed to the usages and method of the 
 House, it may be my experience shall in some 
 what profit you ; and I fear not to make this 
 offer, seeing that, should you find hereafter that 
 your conscience may not justify your being one 
 of us, I shall provide that none may look on 
 you as a defaulter from our party ; and I have 
 heard and seen enough, methinks, already of 
 your character and bearing, to know that, even 
 should you differ from us as to the quality or 
 manner, you are not like to be against us as to 
 the needfulness of some reform ; so that to be 
 seen companying one so hateful to the courtly 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
242 CROMWELL. 
 
 faction as John Hampden shall in no sort pre 
 vent you of advancement." 
 
 " Most thankfully/ said Edgar, after ex 
 changing courtesies with Vane, " do I accept 
 your offer ; the rather, that as yet I know not, 
 though I fain would learn, the persons of many 
 among your famous orators ; and for the rest, 
 my vote will not, nor my opinion either, be 
 affected anywise by sitting in this place or that. 
 But now, if I mistake not, time is urgent, and 
 we should be on our way. Ride you, fair 
 gentlemen ? My horses wait even now ; but if 
 you walked thus far, I shall dismiss them." 
 
 " We came on horseback ; and it is, indeed, 
 full time we were at the House ; the bells rang 
 nine some time ere we arrived," replied Sir 
 Harry ; " we will, if it so please you, get us at 
 once to horse." 
 
 The pace at which they rode, when they had 
 mounted, prevented the possibility of any 
 
CROMWELL. 243 
 
 serious or connected conversation, and but few 
 minutes were consumed in the brief gallop that 
 brought them to the low-browed portal of St. 
 Stephen^. The privates of the civic guard, on 
 duty at the door, presented arms, as if to some 
 high officer, as the patriot leaders passed them ; 
 and it was not long ere they were seated 
 altogether in the body of the House, at no 
 great distance from the Speaker s chair. 
 
 The galleries were crowded, as it seemed, 
 wellnigh to suffocation, not with the ordinary 
 idlers who resorted thither only to dissipate the 
 tedium of an hour not otherwise employed, but 
 with men whose anxious faces, and limbs that 
 almost trembled with excitement, announced 
 the deep and painful interest they took in the 
 debate, which had commenced already, and 
 with a spirit so unusual at the opening of a 
 measure, as might be held a sure prognostic 
 
 of the fiery and determined ardour with which 
 M 2 
 
244 CROMWELL. 
 
 it would be carried on ere it might come to 
 question. 
 
 At the moment when they entered, Hollis 
 was on his legs, urging with logical and beau 
 tiful precision the absolute necessity of fixing, 
 and on grounds so sure that they should never 
 more be moved, the limits between right con 
 stitutional prerogative and absolute despotic 
 power ; pointing out the gradual and successive 
 innovations by which the ruling monarch had 
 encroached on all the liberties, both civil and 
 religious of the English people ; the tampering 
 with Jesuited papists ; the evident dislike to 
 parliaments ; the most illegal levyings of money 
 by violent and arbitrary contribution ; the billet- 
 ingof irresponsible and lawless soldiery on private 
 householders; the imprisoning of members, 
 contrary to privilege of parliament for words or 
 sentiments expressed therein. 
 
 " One of whom/ 5 he proceeded, " one, noble 
 
CROMWELL. 245 
 
 and eloquent, and wise and loyal ; than whom 
 no better subject breathed the breath of life 
 within the girt of the four seas that compass 
 Britain, DIED, miserably died for want of natu 
 ral refreshment ! Whose blood," he added, in 
 loud and pealing tones that woke an echo in 
 the breast of every free-souled man, " whose 
 blood of life, untimely and unrighteously dried 
 up, still cries, cries even from the dungeon 
 walls wherein yet lies the mouldering tenement 
 whence persecution drove the free and fearless 
 spirit still cries, I say, to every English heart 
 cries, trumpet-tongued, for vengeance !" 
 
 Wildly and fiercely rose the mingled shout, 
 for it was nothing less, of approbation and 
 disgust. 
 
 " Eliot \" exclaimed one bolder than the 
 rest, making aloud the application which all 
 had tacitly perceived ; " Eliot ! the murdered 
 Eliot!" 
 
246 CROMWELL. 
 
 Meanwhile, the hall rang with diverse cries 
 of "Treason!" "Vengeance!" "Order!" the 
 latter word prevailing gradually even as the 
 rest subsided, till the orator again obtained 
 a clear field for his manly elocution. 
 
 With a lower voice, and less impassioned 
 manner, he proceeded to recount a train of griev 
 ances that seemed to defy enumeration: the 
 new and unfair tax of ship-money the seas 
 ill-guarded, and the mariners left naked to the 
 violence of Turkish pirates ; the depopulating 
 of the city, so as to raise enormous fines ; the 
 seizing of the merchants 5 money in the mint 1 
 the shameless project of brass money the bar 
 barous and reckless censures of self-constituted 
 courts " with their imprisoning and banishing 
 their stigmatizing, gagging, scourging, and 
 mutilating ay ! I said mutilating!" he went 
 on, with energy befitting well his subject 
 " mutilating the free limbs of uncondemned and 
 
CROMWELL 247 
 
 unoffending Britons ! and I say this/ 5 he cried, 
 louder and clearer yet, " I say this, not of an 
 Ottoman divan not of a Spanish inquisition 
 but of an English chamber ! of a Star Cham 
 ber HERE ! Here, in the land of Magna 
 Charta ! here, where the code of Alfred is not 
 as yet forgotten or extinct! a chamber judg 
 ing, not by law, and trying, not by jury ! a 
 chamber, forcing men to yield their substance 
 to be wasted in the raising armies and equip- 
 ing fleets for what? What, but to compel 
 their fellows, their Protestant and pious bre 
 thren, to worship HIM who made them, accord 
 ing not to conscience nor to faith, but to the 
 will of painted potsherds ! scarlet iniquities ! 
 hoary and venerable sins ! wolves in sheep s 
 clothing ! faithless and hireling shepherds, 
 hounding the dogs upon the flock, which they 
 should guard and cherish !" 
 
 Amid a tumult of applause the popular and 
 
248 CROMWELL. 
 
 weighty orator resumed his seat ; while Hyde 
 uprose not, as it seemed, to answer, but to 
 palliate, to palter, to procrastinate. For not 
 once did he summon courage to question, or 
 deny, that which no earthly wit or wisdom 
 could disprove. And fiercely as the measure 
 was discussed, it was yet most remarkable that 
 not one of the royal partisans, maintaining, as 
 they did most resolutely, the debate from morn 
 ing till past midnight, spoke so much as a 
 word to the denial of these charges urging 
 alone the wantonness of representing with such 
 sharp reflections things, some of which already 
 were amended, and others in fair state of pro 
 mise toward adjustment. The impolicy of 
 alienating more the goodwill of the King, now 
 well disposed to gracious reformation or, above 
 all, the wickedness of thus infusing jealousies, 
 and strife, and discord, into the bosom of a 
 state at this time flourishing, as some had the 
 
CROMWELL. 249 
 
 audacity to add, beyond all previous precedent 
 in the fair growth of freedom. 
 
 All this made forcible Impression on the clear 
 mind of Ardenne, as he listened with enthusias 
 tic feelings, it is true, but still with calm dis 
 crimination, to the successive bursts some 
 times of eloquence, thrilling, sublime, and 
 almost superhuman in its majesty, sometimes 
 of coarse, fanatical and phrensied ravings as 
 Glyn and Maynard, Cromwell and Pym, and 
 lastly the unrivalled Hampden, advocated this 
 great measure equals all, if not in perspicuity 
 of argument, or vividness of torrent elocution, 
 if not in talent or ability, at least in truth and 
 fervour, and in that single-minded earnestness 
 which proved, past doubt, their genuine and 
 deep sincerity. At first he waited with strong 
 interest the rising of some champion who 
 should turn, or at the least dispute, the triumph 
 with the speakers of the liberal party. Then, 
 
 M3 
 
250 CROMWELL. 
 
 as one after one, they took their places at the 
 table, and spoke their speeches, varied in vigour 
 and in brilliance, but monotonous in argument, 
 or rather in the want of it, a sense of disap 
 pointment overcame him ; and by slow degrees 
 the strong conviction gained, that the cause 
 must be indeed vicious and feeble, for which 
 its most devoted favourers, wise, eloquent, and 
 witty, as confessedly they were, had nothing to 
 advance beyond what he had that day heard 
 with mingled feelings of contempt and wonder. 
 Hours flew past like moments ; and before 
 Edgar knew that it was noon, evening fell dark 
 on the discussion; and, neither party willing to 
 adjourn, candles were called for, and the strife 
 of words went on waxing more wild and fierce^ 
 as each successive speaker added his mite of 
 fuel to the fast-kindling blaze. Meantime the 
 House grew thinner, as the weary and the weak, 
 the delicate in health, or frail in years, reluc- 
 
CROMWELL. 251 
 
 tantly departed, actually worn out by the 
 lassitude that succeeds ever to unnatural ex 
 citement ; and the arena of the mental gladiators 
 became more open to their virulent contention. 
 And still at each succeeding pause the liberal 
 party seemed to gain in strength the mighty 
 hum of approbation rose more audibly at every 
 bold and popular sentiment ; while the cheers 
 of the diminished royalists now failed to rouse 
 their flagging and disheartened orators. 
 
 So wondrous was the prevalent excitement, 
 that it drove even the calm dispassioned blood 
 of Ardenne dancing through all his veins like 
 streams of liquid fire ; and he found himself ere 
 long lending his breath to swell the shout of 
 admiration that followed every sentence uttered 
 by the latter speakers. At length the House 
 divided on the passing of the bill; and, howso 
 ever certain the result had seemed, while distant, 
 so thickly mustered the opponents of the mea- 
 
252 CROMWELL. 
 
 sure, that many an honest heart fluttered in 
 doubt, and many a face of England s noblest 
 sons was dark as midnight with despondency. 
 
 During the moment of confusion, which 
 always must occur at such a crisis, a whisper 
 fell upon the ear of Edgar a low, stern 
 whisper, not addressed to him, nor at that in 
 stant comprehended uttered, as he fancied, in 
 the sneering tones of St. John " Look now," 
 it said, " look now, friend Oliver, to your most 
 promising recruit !" 
 
 The answer came, though he saw not the 
 speaker, in the harsh voice of Cromwell: 
 
 " Nay, verily ! but do thou look and thine 
 eyes shall see the truth of that I told thee !" 
 
 All, at the time, passed with the speed, and 
 nearly with the tumult of a whirlwind ; nor, 
 although afterwards he sometimes deemed 
 the words had reference to himself, did they 
 then penetrate beyond his outward ear. With- 
 
CROMWELL. 253 
 
 out a momentary doubt, a thought of hesitation, 
 Edgar stepped forth, and sealed the downfall of 
 his private fortunes by the vote which he re 
 corded in the cause of England s liberty. A 
 small majority, of but eleven voices, passed that 
 eventful bill, the loss of which would have 
 exiled hundreds the best and wisest of the 
 land driving them forth to seek amid the snow- 
 clad wilds of the New England shore, what 
 they had then despaired of at home, " freedom 
 to worship God." 
 
 Scarce had the hearty cheering, which fol 
 lowed this announcement, ended, ere Hanfpden 
 rose again to move " that there might be an or 
 der entered, for the present printing of it :" 
 and straightway, as if all that had preceded it 
 were but the prelude and slight skirmish which 
 so generally leads to a pitched battle, a debate 
 if that, which was all animosity and virulence 
 and fury, can be called debate ensued, which 
 
254 CROMWELL. 
 
 speedily effaced all recollection of the pre 
 vious struggle, and had wellnigh steeped 
 the hands of the contending factions in each 
 other s gore. 
 
 Hyde started to his feet the first, praying that 
 he might have permission to enter his protest 
 believing, as he said, such printing of the bill, 
 without concurrence of the Lords, to be alike 
 unprecedented and illegal. 
 
 Ere he had well ended up sprang Jeffry 
 Palmer, a member of high standing in the House 
 for wisdom and experience no less than for dis 
 tinguished talent, with flashing features and a 
 voice that quivered with hot passion, and moved 
 " that he likewise might protest !" 
 
 The mildest and most stately of demeanour 
 among the assembled councillors might be seen 
 with bloodshot eyes, and tones husky and cracked 
 with clamouring and the more sullen and fanati 
 cal, sitting with teeth hard-set and hands upon 
 
CROMWELL. 255 
 
 their hilts, as if but waiting for a voice to cry "The 
 sword of the Lord and Gideon/ 5 or some other 
 text of warlike or bloodthirsty import, before 
 they should betake them, in their own language, 
 to the carnal weapon. 
 
 So critical, indeed, was the conjuncture of 
 affairs, and to such lengths had private pique 
 and public animosity been carried among men 
 all armed, in token of their gentle birth, that 
 writing coolly in his journal, after the heat and 
 passion of the contest had gone by, Sir Philip 
 Warwick has recorded, (( that when they voted 
 it, I thought we had all sat in the valley of the 
 shadow of death ; for we, like Joab and Abner s 
 young men, had catched at each other s locks, 
 and sheathed our swords in each other s bowels, 
 had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. 
 Hampden by a short speech prevented us, and 
 led us to defer our angry debate until next 
 morning/ 
 
256 CROMWELL. 
 
 And so in truth it was; for at two of the 
 clock past midnight, when he saw that nothing 
 could be hoped in the then temper of the House, 
 that wise and upright statesman moved an ad 
 journment until two of the next afternoon, pre 
 scribing motives so replete with good sense and 
 good feeling, that none so stubborn as could 
 with any show of right gainsay him. 
 
 Worn out and wearied, body and mind alike, 
 with the protracted contest, men of both parties 
 mingled hurriedly as they flocked homeward ; 
 and again it was the chance of Ardenne, strangely 
 enough to be ear-witness to a second conversa 
 tion between Cromwell and Lord Falkland. 
 The former he had joined, hard by the foot of 
 the great staircase, desiring in some degree to 
 cultivate relations with a man, whose words and 
 aspect had imbued him with a feeling which he 
 could not well account for, or define but which 
 in afterdays he mentioned as a prophetic awe, 
 
CROMWELL. 257 
 
 for that he was in presence of a spirit mightier 
 than his own. The latter overtook them sud 
 denly, and was passing onward at the first with 
 out addressing either till he caught the eye of 
 Cromwell " Ha !" he said, with a quiet smile 
 not wholly free from irony " Ha ! Master 
 Cromwell, think you there hath been a debate 
 to-day ?" 
 
 " Another time," replied the puritan, " ano 
 ther time, and I will take thy word but verily, 
 I say to you verily, as the Lord Jehovah 
 liveth, had this remonstrance been rejected, then 
 had I sold mine all of worldly substance on the 
 morrow ay ! and had taken up my staff, and 
 girt me with my sword upon my thigh, and 
 never had seen England any more !" 
 
 " Nor you alone, perchance I" answered the 
 youthful noble, after a moment of reflection, 
 " methinks, I have heard others named for 
 alike resolution !" 
 
258 CROMWELL. 
 
 " Perchance me no perchance \" cried Oliver? 
 with a triumphant smile " Had the malignants 
 carried it, I tell you that their victory had rob 
 bed old England of her trustiest spirits ! But 
 now, my lord, mark well my words ! and you 
 too, friend if that you be as I do partly think 
 you are and if you be not, and I be in error? 
 then may the Lord enlighten and amend you 
 a friend to liberty, mark well my words! 
 There shall be no stint more, nor let, nor hin 
 drance ! Papists and tyrants in this soon-to-be- 
 regenerated land shall no more hold dominion ! 
 The name of Englishman, now scorned and 
 scoffed at throughout Europe you, Edgar Ar- 
 denne, you do know the truth of that which 
 I aver shall be as far and wide revered, as ever 
 was the name of antique Roman ! For verily 
 I tell ye and I tell ye truth that now the 
 Lord s good time hath come, when he shall 
 choose him out a MAN ! I say not whom nor 
 
CROMWELL. 259 
 
 were it meet that I, the vilest and most worth 
 less of his instruments, should judge whom the 
 Lord listeth to appoint but verily I say a MAN, 
 who shall bring mighty things to pass in 
 Israel !" 
 
260 CROMWELL. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Lo ! bow tis ever on the stillest day 
 When the breeze stirs not in the topmost bough 
 The aspen s quivering leaf when peaceful clouds 
 Hang balanced in the dull and moveless air 
 When earth and ocean bask in deep repose 
 Securely tranquil that the thundrous storm 
 Rends the calm sky which bred it. 
 
 AFTER that mighty trial of the strength of 
 parties^ the bill of general remonstrance had 
 passed through the House, there followed a 
 short pause a lull as it were, in the loud 
 tempest of commotion a breathing-space 
 snatched from the midst of battle. With 
 
CROMWELL. 261 
 
 the exception of a short and somewhat tur 
 bulent debate, on the day following that of 
 the main question, originating in a wish on 
 the part of the puritanic leaders to punish those 
 who had protested on the previous night, but 
 resulting merely in a penalty of form inflicted 
 on one person Jeffry Palmer the Commons 
 seemed to relax in the vigour of their defen 
 sive warfare against the crown. The bill for re 
 gulation of the militia and prevention of forcible 
 impressment, unless in case of actual invasion, 
 was, it is true, brought forward, but without 
 any of that inveterate and rancorous spirit 
 which had signalized their earlier measures. 
 
 The King on his return from Scotland, was 
 received chiefly in consequence of the exer 
 tions of Sir Richard Gourney the Lord Mayor 
 of London, an active and uncompromising- 
 loyalist with loud if not sincere manifesta 
 tions of welcome and affection ; was feasted 
 
262 CROMWELL. 
 
 at the Guildhall with more than ordinary 
 splendour, and hailed, as he passed to and 
 fro the city, with thundering acclamations by 
 the wavering and worthless populace. A 
 further triumph still awaited him in the address 
 presented at his residence of Hampton Court, 
 by aldermen deputed from the city, request 
 ing him to take up his abode among them, 
 and to hold his court as heretofore in his 
 palace at Whitehall. 
 
 This loyal and well-timed address reputed, 
 as it was, to be distasteful in no small degree 
 to parliament was graciously accepted, the 
 deputies all knighted, and the request granted 
 joyfully. The bills, moreover, most obnoxious 
 to the King that principally which would 
 exclude the Bishops votes made but slow 
 progress, and even should it pass the Commons, 
 was not expected to receive the sanction of 
 the Lords. Falkland and Colepepper, hereto- 
 
CROMWELL. 263 
 
 fore active members of the reforming party, 
 although moderate and wary, now having 
 taken office openly the former being Secre 
 tary of State in the lieu of Vane, the latter 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer held nightly 
 conferences at the house of Hyde, for the 
 well and wisely ordering the shaken and 
 disordered principles of government ; and 
 would, as it seems probable, have met with 
 eminent success in their beneficent and 
 patriotic measures, had it not been for secret 
 influences and the prevalence of councillors 
 behind the throne, unseen and unsuspected 
 but exercising and for ends most imfamous 
 and selfish a power, to which, unhappily for 
 him and for his kingdom, the mind of Charles, 
 easily led and prone to arbitrary counsels, 
 though obstinate and inaccessible to aught of 
 argument unsuited to his own opinions, 
 yielded complete obedience. 
 
264 CROMWELL. 
 
 Such was the state of matters things 
 gradually looking brighter and more bright 
 for the royal party ; and the remonstrant 
 leaders, Hampden especially, becoming not only 
 less violent in their opposition, but beginning 
 to judge more favourably of the King s motives 
 and intent, when the insane and childish 
 protest of the Bishops was sent forth, instigated 
 by the proud and angry Williams, declaring 
 " all laws, orders, votes, resolutions, and deter 
 minations, already passed, or such as should 
 hereafter pass, during their absence from that 
 most honourable House" compulsory as they 
 affirmed it " null and of none effect." 
 
 The consequence was an immediate and 
 almost unanimous vote, both of the Lords and 
 Commons, for the committal of the prelates 
 to the Tower, one solitary member only so 
 far opposing it, as to declare that he believed 
 them utterly insane, and therefore recommended 
 
CROMWELL. 265 
 
 Bedlam, rather than the Tower, as a fit place 
 for their detention. 
 
 Then came reports of plots rumours of 
 aggressions meditated on the lower House 
 doubts and despondencies, and wrath and 
 panics ! It was believed on all sides that, 
 without confident assurance of support the 
 Bishops had not dared to rush to such ex 
 tremities. Petitions were poured in from 
 every quarter ! one from the city, setting forth 
 that, since their loyal gratulations on His Ma 
 jesty s return had been misconstrued as though 
 they would disown the doings of the parlia 
 ment, they now declared their full resolve to 
 live and die with them for the good of the 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Addresses multiplied, and were accompanied 
 even to the palace by such crowds, that in a 
 message to the common council the King com- 
 
 VOL, I. N 
 
266 CROMWELL. 
 
 plained of the tumultuous assemblages daily 
 increasing, to the disturbance of his palace 
 of Whitehall. On the same day the parliament 
 petitioned him, to grant to them a guard com 
 manded by the Earl of Essex that appointed 
 for their protection during his absence in the 
 north, having been instantly disbanded on his 
 late return on account of a malignant party 
 now daring openly to threaten them with 
 violence. 
 
 To this request, reasonable as after events 
 proved it to have been, the self-willed monarch 
 returned a negative, though offering that such 
 a guard should wait on them under a leader 
 of his own choice, utterly subservient to his 
 will "as he would be answerable for to Al 
 mighty God \" 
 
 This proposition they of course declined, 
 perceiving, doubtless that the guard so ordered 
 
CROMWELL. 267 
 
 would be more like to militate against their 
 liberties, if not their persons, than to defend 
 them from external outrage. 
 
 It was upon the very day that followed this 
 insidious offer for such it must be deemed 
 that, urged by his worst counsellor, the false 
 and faithless Henrietta, to that most rash and 
 headlong step which rendered his affairs for 
 ever irretrievable, and reconciliation with his 
 subjects hopeless elated still by his reception 
 in the city, and heedless of the daily proofs 
 of public feeling and opinion, he went on to 
 commit his last and desperate aggression on the 
 privilege of parliament an aggression which 
 had they tamely borne, his throne would have 
 been fixed for ever on the firm basis of despotic 
 rule, and England would have lain a fettered 
 captive at his tyrannous footstool. It was on 
 the next day, while the protestation that he 
 would be answerable to Almighty God for the 
 N 2 
 
268 CROMWELL. 
 
 safe-guarding of their liberties and persons 
 was yet fresh upon his lips, that Charles struck 
 that blow at the very existence of parliaments, 
 which, had it fallen as intended, must have 
 destroyed them root and branch. For on the 
 afternoon of that eventful day, Herbert, the 
 King s attorney-general, entered the House of 
 Peers then sitting, and drawing out a paper 
 in the King s own writing, read it aloud, by 
 which the Lord Kimbolton, present there and 
 then and of the Commons, Denzil, Hollis, and 
 Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Pym, Strode, and Hamp- 
 den stood each and all accused of treason, as 
 conspirators against the King and constitution. 
 The Peers sat actually panic-stricken, and 
 aghast, at this tremendous stroke of folly and 
 misgovernment, hearing in sullen silence the 
 #rave accusation, while Kimbolton springing to 
 his feet, with eloquent and strenuous indigna 
 tion professed his total innocence ; nor was 
 
CROMWELL. 269 
 
 there any lord so hardy as to move for his com 
 mittal on His Majesty s behalf. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Commons House was entered 
 by the King s sergeant, demanding that the 
 Speaker should deliver up the bodies of the 
 members named above, to answer to a charge of 
 treason bearing no warrant or authority from 
 magistrate or counsellor, but acting solely at 
 the King s behest, and without intervention of 
 the law. News came, at the same instant, that 
 the private lodgings of these members had been 
 visited by royal messengers their trunks and 
 studies sealed up, and their papers violently 
 seized. 
 
 With bold and masculine resolve, well-suited 
 to the peril of the crisis, did the House meet this 
 haughty and high-minded insolence. The ser 
 geant, having gone through his message, was 
 desired to avoid the chamber; but word was 
 sent the monarch, by a deputation, assuring him 
 
270 CROMWELL. 
 
 those members should be instantly forthcoming, 
 so soon as any legal charge should be preferred 
 against them ; the House declaring, by a power 
 ful vote, those violent acts of seizure breaches 
 of privilege, audacious and illegal ! empower 
 ing their members to resist; calling on all men 
 to abet and aid them in resisting such attempts 
 upon their liberties, as free-born Britons; and 
 instantly adjourning for the night, until the 
 wonted hour on the morrow. 
 
 It was at a late hour in the evening of this 
 fatal day that several ladies of the court, richly 
 and splendidly attired, might have been seen, 
 collected in a proud saloon, decked with the 
 masterpieces of Vandyck and Rubens, with 
 tapestries of Gobelins, and arras hangings, with 
 cabinets of buhl and marquetry, buffets of 
 antique golden plate, and yet more costly por 
 celain, and all those priceless luxuries which 
 mark a royal dwelling. Among this glittering 
 
CROMWELL. 27 1 
 
 group, and seemingly its principal, was one a 
 lady of low, slender stature, and a shape 
 slightly awry, though by skill of her tirewoman 
 this defect was so disguised, as to be scarce 
 perceptible. Her hands were delicate, and 
 gemmed, as were her ears, her neck, the bosom 
 of her robe, and the rich volumes of her jet 
 black hair, with Indian brilliants. Her features 
 were agreeable and sprightly, yet such as could 
 not properly be praised as regular, or beautiful ; 
 a pair of bright black eyes, and a coquettish 
 smile, forming their chief attraction. Her con 
 versation, lively, and perhaps even brilliant, 
 though flippant and unguarded, was listened to 
 by her attendant ladies, and by the only cavalier 
 admitted to the presence a man of noble 
 bearing, easy yet dignified, and withal in person 
 
 eminently handsome with an attention so pro- 
 
 * 
 
 found, that it denoted even without the bended 
 
272 CROMWELL. 
 
 knee, and the averted back the speaker to be 
 one of royal rank. 
 
 Music and cards were in the chamber, and a 
 most lovely girl, of some seventeen or eighteen 
 years, was dancing to the amatory strains of a 
 concealed musician, in a style which would now 
 be esteemed far too voluptuous, if not absolutely 
 meretricious, to be performed by the chaste 
 limbs of ladies, or looked upon by modest 
 eyes. 
 
 Yet neither lansquenet, nor the soft melody, 
 nor the exciting graces of the beautiful danseuse 
 appeared sufficient to banish some uneasiness 
 which lowered over that fair company. The 
 brow of Henrietta, for she it was, was dark and 
 gloomy, much against its wont, and her ill- 
 humour had been so far contagious as to affect 
 her bright companions with all the outward signs 
 of discontent and sorrow. 
 
CROMWELL. 273 
 
 While she was talking earnestly to the Lord 
 Digby, now since the flight of Jermyn, her 
 adulterous paramour her most beloved and 
 trusty councillor, a short and hasty step was 
 heard without, accompanied by a slight bustle, as 
 if some more distinguished personage had sud 
 denly, and by surprise, come on the unexpectant 
 chamberlains and pages, sole inmates of the 
 antechamber. The door of polished oak flew 
 open,, and bearing evident marks of discompo 
 sure in his depressed lip and overshadowed brow, 
 a gentleman of graceful presence entered the 
 apartment. Of that time of life, when the 
 rashness and the fire of youth are tempered by 
 the sedateness of increasing years, although the 
 face has lost no trait of its attraction, nor the 
 limbs of their alert and agile motion, Charles 
 Stuart (for the new comer was no other), was of a 
 middle height, but strong and well-proportioned, 
 excepting that his legs were triflingly bowed 
 N 3 
 
274 CROMWELL. 
 
 outward, a circumstance which, while detracting 
 somewhat from the grace and symmetry of his 
 appearance, was favourable more than other 
 wise to his accustomed exercise of horseman 
 ship, to which indeed it might have been in 
 some sort owing. His visage, of a just and 
 oval form, was pleasing, although dark-com 
 plexioned ; his features regular and comely, 
 with a full dark eye, gentle and somewhat dull 
 in its expression, unless its owner was aroused 
 to sudden anger, when it could kindle up and 
 flash as brightly as the keenest he wore mus 
 taches somewhat unusually large and curling 
 upward, with a small pointed beard, of that 
 precise and formal cut, which is so often met 
 with in the portraits of Vandyck. The most 
 remarkable trait, however, of his whole appear 
 ance, was that continual cloud of mild and 
 softened melancholy, from which his dignified 
 and stately aspect rarely or never brightened ; 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 275 
 
 for even when he smiled, it was a faint and 
 transient flash, scarce clearing up the gloom 
 of that accustomed sadness, which brooded 
 over his countenance ; although his disposition 
 was cheerful more than otherwise, and if not 
 buoyant, certainly neither mournful nor despon 
 dent; and which, as fanciful and superstitious 
 men have oftentimes imagined, is ominous 
 of an untimely end. His dress, of plain 
 black velvet, slashed and lined with satin, 
 differed in nothing (save that upon the left side 
 of his cloak glittered the diamond star belong 
 ing to the order of the Garter) from the garb of 
 any private gentleman. He wore his hat above 
 his sable hair long-curled and flowing, and in 
 his hand he carried a strong cane, or ferrule, 
 with a crutch-head of gold, which he struck 
 passionately upon the carpet as he entered. 
 
 " The undutiful disloyal varlets !" he ex 
 claimed in tones of strong excitement, " the false, 
 
276 CROMWELL. 
 
 rebellious knaves ! to deal thus with their 
 sovereign I" and for several moments he paced 
 to and fro the room, regardless of the eager 
 entreaties of his affrighted wife to speak the 
 cause of his distemperature. 
 
 "A message !" he burst forth at length, but 
 in a voice broken and faltering with passion 
 " To me ! to me a message ! I tell you, Marie, 
 an they have their will, I may indeed be called 
 your majesty be served upon the knee be 
 waited on bareheaded but I shall be no more a 
 k ing nay ten times less the master even of myself 
 than the most lowly gentleman in all my wide 
 dominions. But so shall it not be ! No ! By 
 God never!" and in a few disjointed sentences 
 he told her how he had demanded of the parlia 
 ment the bodies of six members, on a charge of 
 treason against himself and them and had re 
 ceived, not prompt obedience to his orders, but 
 a message ! 
 
CROMWELL. 277 
 
 " And is it possible," she cried, artful and 
 evil woman that she was, in feigned astonish 
 ment and indignation, " that you, my lord, 
 you, heir to such a line of mighty sovereigns 
 you, monarch of Great Britain, will be thus 
 braved and thwarted will be controlled, de 
 fied, and trampled on by such a scum of low 
 and scurvy fellows as this parliament ? that 
 you will brook to have your crown robbed of 
 its brightest jewels of prerogative your sceptre 
 wrested from your hands without one struggle ? 
 Would wretched princess that I am ! oh ! 
 would to God, that I had tarried in my own 
 glorious France, or that I had been wedded to 
 a MAN !" 
 
 " Madam, go to !" The King retorted sharply 
 for, all uxorious as he was, and prone to hold 
 her slightest words as mandates to his will, 
 his temper naturally hasty and impatient, was 
 now unusually aggravated by the commingled 
 
278 CROMWELL. 
 
 influence of anger and irresolution. " Be silent 
 and dare not impugn our energy and courage ! 
 England and you shall know, and that right 
 speedily, that Charles Stuart brooks neither 
 insolence at home, nor usurpation of his rights 
 abroad ! and for these rash and reckless rogues 
 they, too, shall learn that I am yet a king \" 
 
 " Well said ! well said, my gracious sove 
 reign I" exclaimed Digby, with an exulting 
 voice, and an elated eye. t( Better to crush at 
 once this spawn of venomous and vicious ser 
 pents, in the dark den wherein they have en 
 gendered, than one by one to scotch them, 
 when they shall have crawled forth to pollute 
 the blessed daylight, and swelled from grovel 
 ling reptiles to the full growth of rampant 
 dragons." 
 
 " In this most noble wrath/ 5 cried Henrietta, 
 " again I recognise the worthiest, the most high- 
 souled of men! To-morrow shalt thou pull 
 
CROMWELL. 279 
 
 these vile rogues by the ears from out their 
 infamous cabal, else never look me in the face 
 again !" 
 
 " Brave girl !" replied the facile King, rueing 
 already his late burst of anger. " Brave, brave, 
 Marie, and beautiful as brave!" and, throwing 
 one arm round her waist, he led her to a sofa at 
 the farthest end of the saloon, where, seating 
 himself at her side, he hung with all the manifest 
 and ardent passion of a boy-lover over the wily 
 Delilah, who prodigal in secret to another than 
 himself of her voluptuous charms had yet the 
 perfidy, and with it too the power, to woo him, 
 by a scanty and reluctant show of public fond 
 ness, to measures, her only interest in which was 
 to bring back a banished lover to her guilty 
 arms, how ruinous soever they might be, she 
 recked not, to her too trusting husband. 
 
280 CROMWELL, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A King ? a Tyrant ! 
 It is a King s to hold a sceptre firm 
 By love, not terror his assured throne, 
 A people s confidence his sword, the law 
 Tempered with mercy and to guard the right, 
 The sole condition that affears his crown ! 
 A Tyrant s by enforcement stern to reign, 
 And slavish fear no charter to admit 
 Beyond his present pleasure nor no rule 
 His absolute yea beside. 
 
 DURING the first part of the night which 
 followed this aggression of the monarch, the 
 city was all tumult and confusion men running 
 
CROMWELL. 281 
 
 to and fro, in crowds or singly, conversing 
 eagerly with white and panic-stricken visages 
 women, increasing with their shrill and anxious 
 voices the wild din and children, long hours 
 past the accustomed time when they should 
 have been sleeping peacefully in their warm 
 chambers, wandering to and fro with looks of 
 frightened and inquiring wonderment cast up 
 ward toward the agitated features of their 
 parents. But the necessity of rest will conquer 
 even the quickest and most moving causes of 
 excitement, and ere the stars began to pall in 
 the cold frosty sky, the thoroughfares of the 
 metropolis were quite deserted, as if no turbu 
 lence of party strife had ever interrupted their 
 security and silence. 
 
 The morning broke in its due season, and the 
 only thing observable in the demeanour of the 
 groups who gradually filled the streets, passing 
 this way or that as men engaged in their ac- 
 
282 CROMWELL. 
 
 customed avocations in their pursuits of profit 
 or of pleasure was an air of general and per 
 vading sternness not merely gloom, but reso 
 lute and dark determination. There was no 
 light or trifling conversation ! no jests ! no 
 laughter ! whatever of discourse seemed abso 
 lutely needful was couched in brief and pithy 
 sentences, and uttered in a tone not puritanic 
 nor morose, but sad, and at the same time full 
 of energy, grave, and severe, and wellnigh 
 awful in its character. 
 
 As the day advanced, the members of the 
 lower House might be seen hurrying toward St. 
 Stephen s, some mounted, some on foot, but all 
 accompanied by at least one armed retainer; 
 and these were greeted severally by the multi 
 tude with shouts of approbation, or with groans 
 of censure and reviling, accordingly as they 
 were known for men of popular or loyal prin 
 ciples. 
 
CROMWELL. 283 
 
 Meanwhile, in a small chamber of the palace 
 at Whitehall, richly adorned with painted walls 
 and splendid oaken carvings, and overlooking 
 from its lofty casements the streets through 
 which the crowds were flowing toward the 
 parliament, sat Henrietta with a single lady, 
 a page awaiting, near the door of the apartment, 
 the pleasure of his royal mistress. A frame 
 filled with embroidery stood before her, at which 
 it seemed she had but recently been occupied, 
 though now she held a volume of some French 
 romance, from which, however, her eyes glanced 
 so often toward the windows, attracted by the 
 mingled clamours of applause and hatred, rising 
 at times even until they penetrated her re 
 luctant ears, as to denote that little of her mind 
 was given to the wild witty author, who appa 
 rently engaged her. Her eyes were full of 
 bright and keen excitement; a hectic flush 
 glowed in a spot of vivid crimson high upon 
 
284 CROMWELL. 
 
 either cheek, and her hands trembled with a 
 visible and nervous agitation. Her conversation 
 also, if the light and frivolous sentences that fell 
 from her lips at intervals merited such a title, 
 was broken, interrupted, and evidently em 
 barrassed by some internal conflict which she 
 hesitated to disclose. 
 
 For a considerable time she struggled to 
 maintain a semblance of composure ; but, as 
 the hours passed onward, her trepidation became 
 more and more apparent. At every step that 
 sounded in the long corridors, at every closing 
 of a distant door, she started and once or 
 twice, when the rattle of a carnage or the clatter 
 of a horse s hoofs appeared to cease before the 
 gates, she actually hurried to the balcony and 
 gazed abroad into the town, exposing herself as 
 if unwittingly to the rude stare of the transient 
 multitudes who failed to greet her with the 
 smallest tokens of affection or respect. 
 
CROMWELL. 285 
 
 Twice or thrice, ere the bells chimed ten, the 
 page in waiting was despatched to learn 
 whether no tidings had arrived from parlia 
 ment; and each time that he returned the 
 bearer of a negative, a peevish exclamation of 
 disgust escaped her, not unnoticed by the lady 
 who attended on her privacy. At length, peal 
 after peal, the steeples rang forth ten, and then, 
 with an exulting smile, as though she could 
 contain herself no longer " Rejoice !" she 
 cried in high triumphant tones, "rejoice! my 
 Carlisle for ere now the King is master in his 
 states ay ! and his enemies are all in 
 custody I" 
 
 " His enemies your grace," exclaimed the 
 patriotic lady, to whom, with indiscretion 
 equalled only by that of the rash doting hus 
 band whom she thus betrayed, she had di 
 vulged the secret " his enemies 1" 
 
 " His enemies, said I?" returned the Queen, 
 
286 CROMWELL. 
 
 in accents sharper than before " in truth, then, 
 I spake wrongly ! His traitors, rather ! His 
 false, rebellious, and bloodthirsty traitors ! By 
 God s help, now his captives Hampden and 
 Pym and all their rabble rout !" 
 
 And as she spoke, sweeping across the room 
 with such a port as would have well beseemed 
 a Britomart striding upon the prostrate necks 
 of Romans, in their turn subdued and humbled, 
 and, entering again the balcony, she cast a 
 wistful glance down the long avenue. But 
 scarcely had she turned her back, before the 
 highborn lady whom she had addressed hastily 
 tore a leaf from out her tablets, traced on it 
 some half-dozen words, and pleading on the 
 Queen s return, casual indisposition, quietly left 
 the chamber. 
 
 Ten minutes had not well elapsed ere she 
 re-entered it nor would the change in her 
 demeanour have escaped the close and subtile 
 
CROMWELL. 287 
 
 watchfulness of her imperial mistress, had not 
 that royal lady been herself perturbed too 
 deeply to investigate the mood of others. The 
 Countess of Carlisle s features, cast in the 
 purest and the calmest mould of conscious 
 aristocracy, had worn throughout the morning 
 an expression of grave feminine anxiety, and 
 her broad placid eye had followed with a quiet 
 yet observing scrutiny every unwonted move 
 ment, every nervous start, and every change of 
 colour that had resulted from the Queen s ex 
 citement ; nor had she tardily discovered that 
 some dread crisis was at hand though what 
 that crisis was, not having been a party to th e 
 councils of the regal circle on the previous 
 night, she might not even guess. The thought 
 less words, however, of the fickle-minded 
 Henrietta had given her at once the clue which 
 her quick apprehension followed, as it were in 
 tuitively, through all its labyrinth ; and she at 
 
288 CROMWELL. 
 
 once availed herself of the discovery she had 
 made with a degree of cool and present courage, 
 that, even in that age of prompt and daring 
 action, failed not to wake the admiration which 
 it merited. 
 
 Now, however, when the hardening excite 
 ment had passed over when the nerves, which 
 had been strung so tensely to the performance 
 of her duty, were no longer kept in play when 
 she knew that her trusty messenger was on his 
 way, and past the palace-gates already, bearing 
 the tidings of approaching insult, outrage, and 
 peril to the liberties of England s parliament, 
 the majesty of England s laws, she for the first 
 time trembled, not for herself, but for her 
 country. She for the first time began to fear 
 that she might be too late, and that the blow 
 might have already fallen, ere her warning 
 should arouse the destined victims to perception 
 of their danger. Her face was paler than its 
 

 CROMWELL. 289 
 
 wont ; and her blue eye, so tranquil in its usual 
 expression, was slightly anxious. 
 
 It was but a little while that her uncertainty 
 continued for, ere an hour had elapsed, the 
 Queen, whose passions became more and more 
 enkindled with every moment of suspense, 
 sending another messenger to learn whether the 
 Houses were in session still, received for answer, 
 that they had just adjourned until one of the 
 clock, and that the members even now were 
 passing to their lodgings. 
 
 " Heavens I" cried Henrietta, almost in despair 
 at this unpleasing and most unexpected news. 
 "Just Heavens ! can it be that he hath failed 
 me !" And casting herself down at length upon a 
 couch, she covered her head with a thick veil, 
 and waited in an agonized and speechless fit of 
 mingled hope and terror, the result of her in 
 triguing machinations. 
 
 In the mean time the House, which had assem- 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
290 CROMWELL. 
 
 bled at the usual hour, not altogether unexpect- 
 ant of some further outrage on their privileges, 
 had indeed, on receiving the well-timed an 
 nouncement from the Countess of Carlisle, 
 upon the instant voted an adjournment, that 
 they might better so concert plans] of resist 
 ance to that lawless violence which they were 
 now too well assured their sovereign had 
 resolved to perpetrate. 
 
 It was at this moment, when all were hasten 
 ing homeward, that Ardenne observed Cromwell 
 hurrying to and fro among the leading favourers 
 both of the popular and puritanic principles, 
 and whispering to one a word or two, then 
 passing to another ; and, as he gazed upon his 
 compressed lip and eye flashing with almost 
 savage pleasure, he felt even more strongly than 
 at any prior moment, the conviction that this 
 wily person was indeed engaged more intimately 
 in directing the important springs of party ac- 
 
CROMWELL. 291 
 
 tion, than could have been supposed from the 
 inferior part which he was wont to play in its 
 ostensible and open movements. He knew not 
 at the time, any more than four-fifths of the 
 House, what were the secret news which had so 
 suddenly produced adjournment; and had in 
 deed himself voted against a measure which he 
 could not comprehend, although the private 
 hints of Oliver and Hampden had not escaped his 
 notice ; nor could he now conceive the meaning 
 of the strong excitement which kindled all who 
 listened to the words of Cromwell as it were 
 with an electric spark. Not long, however, was 
 he destined to remain in ignorance, for with his 
 harsh features even more than commonly in 
 flamed and ruddy, the puritan approached 
 him. 
 
 " Ha \" he said, in a loud coarse whisper, 
 " Ha ! Master Ardenne how is this, that you, 
 to whom we confidently looked for succour, 
 o2 
 
292 CROMWELL. 
 
 should, in this strait and peril have turned against 
 us, consorting with the men of Belial ?" 
 
 " I know not, Master Cromwell," Ardenne 
 replied, "to what you do allude; nor have I 
 heard of any strait or peril. I saw indeed that 
 you and Master Hampden were desirous I 
 should vote for this adjournment, but seeing no 
 cause wherefore nor being, so far as I know it, 
 your follower or pledged supporter, assuredly I 
 deemed it best for mine own honour to abide by 
 the poor dictates of mine own opinion." 
 
 "Call it you then no strait," asked Oliver, 
 with a dark sneer upon his lip, "no strait nor 
 peril that Charles Stuart should dare come 
 hither with his accursed cavaliers with his 
 lewd yeomen and rakehelly pensioners seeking 
 out whom they may devour having their 
 swords new whetted, and their hearts afire, to 
 shed the blood of the saints ? should dare come 
 hither hither within these privileged, time- 
 
CROMWELL. 293 
 
 honoured walls to lay his violent tyrannic 
 hands on those, with whose salt only we are 
 savoured ?" 
 
 " What mean you, sir ? speak out I" cried 
 Ardenne. " Will he indeed do this ? Can he be 
 so infatuated so insane ?" 
 
 " Will Charles Stuart dare it ?" said the 
 other, " say, rather, what he will not dare, if we 
 the watchers and the guardians sitting on the 
 tower, yea ! on the housetop, to give note of 
 coming wo, blow not the trumpet through the 
 land. Yea ! will he come, and that right shortly 
 Yea ! will he come, and if our hearts be 
 not the stronger, and our arms too, if need 
 there be will trample down the liberties of 
 England unto everlasting !" 
 
 " Never !" exclaimed Edgar, vehemently 
 moved, "no, never shall he do so! never 
 while I if none beside have sword to wield 
 and hand with which to wield it." 
 
294 CROMWELL. 
 
 "Ay! is it so?" returned the other, his 
 whole face blazing out with a triumphant 
 ecstasy. " Is it so ? And would you draw the 
 carnal sword if it were needed ?" 
 
 "Would I," cried Ardenne, "would I un- 
 sheath the sword to guard these holy walls from 
 desecration ? would I uplift my arm against 
 the hireling ministers of lawless and despotic 
 violence? Ay, were those ministers ten thou 
 sand s worded angels !" 
 
 "Then fare thee well," cried Oliver, "then 
 fare thee well, and hold fast to thy good resolve, 
 while I go wake the rest to a like spirit. Above 
 
 i 
 
 all be thou in thy place when we again assemble, 
 and then call thou me fool and liar, an thou see 
 not great things !" 
 
 The interval passed speedily away, consumed 
 in wise and seemly preparations; notice was 
 straight despatched to the Lord Mayor and 
 corporation, of the threatened danger; the 
 
CROMWELL. 295 
 
 citizens were admonished to stand upon their 
 guard; and members were sent down to the 
 Temple, and the Inns of court, to warn the 
 students that the House was well aware how 
 they had been already tampered with, and to 
 command they should not come, on any plea, to 
 Westminster. 
 
 Ere the time appointed the house was crowded. 
 Edgar was in his place among the first ; and as 
 he saw the five obnoxious members calmly re 
 sume their seats, as though no peril threatened 
 them, a mingled sentiment of admiration and re 
 gret thrilled to his heart, at the idea that if in 
 deed the King, with his wild dissolute attendants, 
 should forcibly attempt to seize them, they 
 surely would resist, and but too probably be 
 slaughtered on the very spot which they had 
 made to ring so often with their proud patriotic 
 eloquence. 
 
 As he thus thought, a new impression shot 
 
296 CROMWELL. 
 
 with the speed of light into his mind " If they 
 be absent if they be absent when he comes, 
 the fearful consequences may be, perchance* 
 averted, which otherwise must beyond doubt re 
 sult from letting loose a band of reckless sol 
 diery to rush in sword-in-hand on gentlemen 
 armed likewise, and almost unanimous to guard 
 their liberties with life/ 5 
 
 And on the instant he arose, and in a few 
 words, powerful and manly, moved that the 
 House should grant permission to those members 
 to withdraw themselves, lest tumult, and per 
 haps even worse than tumult, fall of it. 
 
 " I second it," cried Cromwell, starting to his 
 feet. " I second the most honourable member s 
 motion. Let them withdraw them straight 
 way to the city, until this tyranny be over 
 past." 
 
 Without a single voice or vote dissentient the 
 question then was carried ; the House gave per- 
 
CROMWELL. 297 
 
 mission that they might retire ; and at solicita 
 tion from their friends they instantly departed. 
 
 Scarce had the hurry and confusion conse 
 quent on their withdrawal ceased, ere a dull 
 trampling noise was heard without, as of a pow 
 erful band of men. The word to halt was given, 
 and for a while the sound was hushed, the mem 
 bers sitting stern and silent in their places, dis 
 daining to show any sign either of wrath or ter 
 ror. Again the sounds were heard, ascending 
 the great staircase ; and now the clink of steel, 
 as broad blades of partisan or halberd clashed 
 together and now a shout, " Fall on ! Fall on !" 
 mixed with the shuffling tramp of feet, the 
 jingling of scabbards, and all Jhe bustle that 
 accompanies a sudden and disordered march. 
 Nearer and nearer came the tumult. The. lobby 
 was already filled, to judge from the increasing 
 clatter, with armed intruders; and now the din 
 o3 
 
298 CROMWELL. 
 
 of grounded arms rang audibly upon the ears of 
 the undaunted councillors. 
 
 Then, for the first time, was a show of passion 
 manifested among the younger gentlemen. A 
 dozen, at the least, impetuously started to their 
 feet, and not a few grasped, with an energy that 
 proved how fearlessly they would have used 
 them, the hilts of the long rapiers which all of 
 gentle birth at that time carried. A single 
 word, however, from the Speaker of the House 
 a single cry of order, sufficed to bring them peace 
 fully into their places. But there they sat with 
 eyes that actually flashed with strong indigna 
 tion, and with that fiery aspect of the gladiator, 
 which marked how rapturously they would have 
 plunged into the fiercest conflict. 
 
 At this instant was the door thrown open, and 
 a messenger sent in, who reverentially enough 
 informed the House, that the King was at the 
 
CROMWELL. 299 
 
 door and that the Speaker was commanded to 
 sit still, with the mace lying on the board before 
 him. 
 
 Still not one word was spoken not a whisper 
 not a breath, nor murmur, through that spa 
 cious hall and every man sat fast, with head un 
 moved, and eyes fixed sternly straight before him ; 
 as if they did not so much as vouchsafe to cast 
 a glance, still less a thought, toward the violator 
 of their rights. Had there been aught of riot or 
 confusion, had there been aught of armed and 
 passionate resistance nay had there been any 
 fear, or doubt, or wavering, it then had been an 
 easier task for the misguided King to carry out 
 his frantic and destructive purpose. But hard 
 it is, and most revolting to all human feelings, to 
 outrage and assault where there is neither terror 
 nor resistance. 
 
 It was perhaps a minute, after the messen 
 ger retired, before aught new disturbed the 
 
300 CROMWELL. 
 
 silence that prevailed unbroken beneath the 
 vaulted roof a minute fraught with the thronged 
 sensations of unnumbered years a minute that 
 seemed longer than a life to every patriot seated 
 there as gravely stead fast, as those senators 
 of early Rome, who waited in their robes of 
 dignity, and on their curule chairs, the moment 
 when the Gallic horde should pour out on their 
 white unshrinking heads the cups of massacre 
 and vengeance. 
 
 Then came a quick irregular tread, that readily 
 betokened, by its uncertain time, the irresolution 
 and anxiety that were at work within the breast 
 of him who was approaching. 
 
 " Enter not, any of ye, on your lives !" was 
 uttered in the harsh voice of the King, before his 
 person came in view ; an order understood by all 
 who heard, as it was doubtless meant by him 
 who uttered it, to be words, empty words, and 
 spoken for effect. 
 
CROMWELL. . 301 
 
 Then, leaning on the shoulder of the Pals 
 grave, Charles Stuart advanced ! Those who 
 stood nearest to his person might have seen 
 a momentary pause a brief involuntary hesita 
 tion a reluctance, hardly perhaps acknowledged 
 to himself, to cross what was to be the Rubicon 
 of all his future fortunes. But so short was the 
 pause, so small the effort it required to conquer 
 that reluctance, that it would seem indeed as if, 
 according to the classic proverb, destined already 
 to destruction he were deserted by his sanity of 
 intellect. Perhaps he had expected fear abject 
 and tame submission had supposed that he 
 should stride in triumph, unopposed and sued to 
 on the bended knee, through that magnificent 
 assemblage ! Perhaps he had expected anger, 
 indignation, and defiance ! But now as he looked 
 up those lines of crowded benches, and met no 
 glance of recognition, encountered no full front 
 even of wrath or scorn ; but caught alone, row 
 
302 CROMWELL. 
 
 behind row, those stern and masculine profiles, 
 composed, severe, and passionless profiles, 
 averted less in resentment than in proud con 
 temptuous sorrow his wayward spirit for a mo 
 ment s space recoiled, and he half wished the 
 perilous step untaken. 
 
 It was but for the twinkling of an eye, 
 however, that his rash mood of obstinacy 
 failed him; for without a quiver of his nerves, 
 a change of his dark visage, he strode across 
 the threshold, about a pace before his foreign 
 kinsman. The Earl of Roxborough, a tall and 
 powerful man, armed, somewhat more than 
 commonly, with a long military sword and heavy 
 poniard at his belt, had followed close upon 
 his master s footsteps, until he also stood upon 
 the threshold ; he crossed it not, however ; but 
 stood there, leaning with his whole weight 
 against the door which opened outwardly, so 
 that it would have been impossible for any. 
 
CROMWELL. 303 
 
 from within the house, to close it. His right 
 hand rested, as if carelessly, upon the pommel 
 of his war-sword, and his left twirled with a 
 gesture of unbridled insolence, his long mus 
 taches ; while many a fierce licentious coun 
 tenance might be seen glaring from behind 
 him on the conservators of their country s 
 freedom with a wild and wolfish aspect of 
 malignant hatred. 
 
 The King himself, attired as usual in a plain 
 garb of sable velvet, wearing no weapon but 
 an ordinary walking-sword, and carrying in 
 his right hand together with his staff, the dark 
 plumed beaver which he had doffed on entering, 
 stalked coolly up the House the Palsgrave 
 following slowly, and as it seemed with a half 
 timid and reluctant step. Still all was silence ! 
 silence so profound, that, save the heavy 
 footsteps of the monarch, not a sound could 
 be perceived unless it were when from without 
 
304 CROMWELL. 
 
 some weapon-clang was heard, or some rude 
 threat or imprecation was muttered in the ante 
 chamber, by the desperate attendants of a 
 Lansford or a Digby. 
 
 The face of Charles, grave and even sorrowful 
 by nature, was something paler than usual ; but 
 with that sort of paleness which conveys no 
 thought of cowardice or trembling, but of im 
 movable resolve. His mouth was firmly closed 
 but not compressed, nor showing aught of 
 effort ! His eye, calm, searching, cold, but 
 keen and hard as iron ! His nostril only of 
 his features gave token of emotion, or of any 
 feeling hotter than determination ; for it was 
 dilated wide, and slightly quivering ! Yet was 
 his hand steady, as the columns which upheld 
 the roof above him, and his stride, now that he 
 stood among his lieges however it had been 
 irregular and hasty ere he entered was mea 
 sured, long, and equal. 
 
CROMWELL. 305 
 
 As the King advanced along the floor he 
 turned his head from side to side, perusing 
 with deliberate and steady glance, the linea 
 ments of every member whom he passed ; and 
 if when at a distance not one eye had sought 
 him, so when he now stood close beside them 
 not one eye avoided him. Each, as Charles 
 came into his line of direct vision, met his 
 hard gaze with an unblenching and unloosing 
 brow ; for not one man even of those the 
 most devoted to his will, of those who would 
 have served him at that moment, who after 
 wards did serve him, with their whole hearts 
 and lives but was disgusted, angered, full of 
 deep sorrow, almost to despair. 
 
 Little there was, however, of the stronger 
 and more stormy passions painted upon the 
 brows of those who sat thus fearlessly, braving 
 the temper of a king whose wrath was no less 
 lasting and vindictive, than it was hot and 
 
306 CROMWELL. 
 
 sudden. The expression that prevailed most 
 largely, was of mingled aspect, half pity, half 
 defiance. But when the tyrant for that action, 
 if that only, justified the title approached the 
 seat of Cromwell (who was, perhaps, at that 
 day scarcely known by name to the proud 
 sovereign) and his glance fell upon those grim 
 ungainly features, then Ardenne witnessed 
 for his eye was still attracted, why he knew not, 
 with a strange sense of fascination toward the 
 puritan then Ardenne witnessed that which in 
 aftertimes he often called to mind, and never 
 without awe and wonder a dark conflict a 
 conflict of eye, countenance, and bearing, 
 between those men so eminently thrown toge 
 ther, and blended in their spheres of good or 
 evil action. 
 
 The glance of Charles, when first it fell upon 
 the coarse and most unpleasing lineaments of 
 Oliver, was instantly averted, but averted merely 
 
CROMWELL. 307 
 
 as men ever turn the eye away from objects 
 naturally hateful or unseemly. At that point of 
 time the face of Cromwell was as tranquil, as 
 immovable, as that of his great future rival ; 
 but the tranquillity was no less different, than 
 is the stillness of a hushed volcano and the 
 peaceful calm of heaven. The swollen and 
 corded veins upon the temple, the eyebrows 
 lowered and contorted, the balls gleaming 
 beneath them with a fixed and baleful light, 
 the nostril rigidly distended, and the lips pressed 
 so tightly that they alone of his whole aspect 
 were of a livid whiteness. 
 
 Ere Edgar had the time to think, had there 
 been any matter yet for thought, the eye of 
 Charles stole back, half timidly as it appeared, 
 toward that tigerlike and glaring face. Then, 
 as it met the sinister and ominous stare of 
 fierce defiance, it brightened also vivid, and 
 
308 CROMWELL. 
 
 keen, and with a falconlike and noble splen 
 dour. 
 
 For some short space they gazed those 
 two undisciplined and haughty spirits into each 
 other s very souls mutually, as it seemed, 
 conscious at a glance of irremediable and des 
 perate hostility. The King s look, quiet, 
 although high and angry, and most unutterably 
 proud Cromwell s, sarcastic, bitter, furious 
 and determined, and withal so savagely trium 
 phant, so mirthful in its dire malignity, that 
 Ardenne thought he never had beheld a coun 
 tenance so fiendishly expressive ! And Charles 
 Stuart s aspect after a fixed encounter of ten 
 seconds space Charles Stuart s haught aspect 
 quailed beneath it ; and as he passed along 
 for the whole occurred in less time than were 
 needful to recite it he gazed no more around 
 him, but went directly onward, looking (and 
 
CROMWELL. 309 
 
 that, too, gloomily) upon the ground, toward 
 the Speaker s chair. 
 
 But the stern democrat, as if conscious that 
 his genius had prevailed, cast his eyes round 
 him with an air of loftier feeling than Edgar 
 had as yet observed him wear. It was a trifle, 
 at the period when it passed ; and none but he 
 noticed it ; but after-times and after-deeds, 
 stamped it, no more to be erased, upon the 
 tablets of his inmost soul. 
 
 Meanwhile the King had reached the chair ; 
 and Lenthall, the bold Speaker, who had hitherto 
 sat still, as proud, and far more placid, than his 
 visiter, arose and stepped out stately and cold 
 to meet him. Then the King mounted to his 
 place, stood upon the step but spoke not, nor sat 
 down; and there he stood, gloomily gazing on 
 the House, with a dark look of sullen ano;er, for 
 
 7 O 7 
 
 many minutes. 
 
 At length he spoke. " Gentlemen," he said, 
 
310 CROMWELL. 
 
 in a high voice, clearly audible to the most dis 
 tant corner, though neither musical nor pleasing, 
 "Gentlemen of the Commons, I am sorry 
 for this my cause of coming to you. Yesterday 
 I did send a sergeant, to demand some, who by 
 my order were accused of treason. Instead of 
 prompt obedience, I received a message !" 
 and he uttered the last word with the most con 
 centrated scorn and insolence. " I must, then, 
 here declare to you, that though no king that 
 ever was in England could be more careful of 
 your privileges than I have been, and shall be^ 
 yet, I can tell you, treason hath no privilege ! 
 and, therefore, am I come to tell you that I 
 must have these men and will, wherever I may 
 find them!" 
 
 As he spoke, he looked around the hall with 
 a deliberate air, scanning the faces of all pre 
 sent, if he might find his men ; then, raising his 
 voice higher yet, he called aloud, till the roof 
 
CROMWELL. 311 
 
 rang again. " Ho ! I say, Master Hollis ! 
 Master Pym \" 
 
 No answer was returned, nor any sound, save 
 an increased and angry tumult in the lobby, 
 with a brandishing of partisans, and a producing 
 of concealed but ready pistols, so that some 
 members thought to see the soldiers instantly 
 rush into the chamber. 
 
 After a little pause, finding he got no answer, 
 he turned to the Speaker. " Say," he exclaimed, 
 " say, Mr. Speaker, be any of these men here 
 present ?" 
 
 For a moment Lenthall paused, as doubting 
 whether to hurl his own defiance, and that of 
 the assembled Commons, into his very teeth ; 
 but ere the echoes of the monarch s voice had 
 ceased, he had resolved upon the wiser and more 
 prudent part, and bending with most deferential 
 courtesy his knee, " I have, sir," he replied, 
 " nor eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this 
 
312 CROMWELL. 
 
 place, save as this House, whose servant I am 
 sworn, shall order me. And, therefore, must I 
 pray your Majesty to pardon me that I return 
 no further answer !" 
 
 " Ha ! sir," returned Charles sharply, and 
 with incipient fury, but a moment s thought 
 convinced him that the humble answer of the 
 Speaker defied at once, and rendered hopeless, 
 any charge of violence against him. " Ha ! 
 sir," again he said, but in a milder tone, " I do 
 believe my eyes are to the full as good as yours, 
 and I do see my birds are flown ; but this I tell 
 you, and so look ye to it I hold this House to 
 send them to me ! Failing of which, I shall 
 myself go seek them ! For, sir, their treason 
 is most foul, and such as you shall thank me, 
 all of you, now to discover. And I assure you, 
 on a king s word I assure you, I never did mean 
 any violence, and they shall have fair trial I 
 meant not any other \" 
 
CROMWELL. 313 
 
 He waited not for further words ; perchance 
 he doubted what reply he might receive to this 
 last false asseveration palpably, unquestionable 
 false for wherefore brought he his disbanded 
 soldiery, his rude and ruffian bravoes, with 
 rapier, partisan, and pistol, into the very pre 
 cincts of the House? Wherefore, unless he 
 had designed to hale the accused members vio 
 lently forth by the strong arm of tyrannous 
 authority? 
 
 Stepping down from the chair, he walked, 
 uncovered still, but at a quicker pace than that 
 with which he entered, toward the lobby ; but 
 now as he departed, his looks were not turned 
 haughtily from side to side, but sadly bent upon 
 the floor ; nor was his passage silent as before 
 for member after member started up as Charles 
 went past him, with bent brow and clenched 
 hand ; and groans both loud and deep saluted 
 him. 
 
 VOL. i. p 
 
314 CROMWELL. 
 
 As he came nigh the seat of Cromwell, the 
 King raised his visage, haggard now and pale, 
 as with an anxious curiosity to look upon the 
 man before whose eye he felt himself to have 
 recoiled ; and, as he met it, Oliver sprang upon 
 his feet, his long tuck rattling in the scabbard 
 as he rose, and stamping on the floor with fury, 
 shouted aloud, in tones not mild nor measured, 
 the word " Privilege !" A dozen voices took it 
 up, though not so loudly, nor with so marked 
 defiance as the first daring speaker, and the 
 whole House was in the wildest and most uncon 
 trolled confusion. 
 
 Delightedly would the despotic prince, had 
 he but dared it, at that moment have cried 
 ON ! have given the ivord, expected by his 
 myrmidons, for massacre and havoc have 
 bid the swords, which were already thirsting in 
 their scabbards, leap forth and drink their fill 
 of that most noble blood of England. But, 
 
CROMWELL. 315 
 
 thanks to Heaven, he dared not ! There would 
 have been no object worthy of the risk no 
 gain to j ustify the detestation he would have so 
 heaped upon his head ! He did not dare , and, 
 therefore, smothering for the time his virulent 
 and vengeful fury, he departed the door 
 swung heavily behind him; and with no mut 
 tered curses on the head of him who lacked the 
 spirit to perform what he and they yearned 
 equally to execute, frustrate of their desired 
 vengeance, unsatisfied, and balked, his hireling 
 desperadoes filed out from the venerable walls 
 their presence had so shamefully polluted. 
 
 p 2 
 
316 CROMWELL. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 He hath gone forth ! 
 Not with the gorgeous majesty sublime 
 Of marshall d hosts not with the brazen din 
 Of trumps sonorous but heartsick, and sad, 
 Despairing, and dishonour d! He hath gone 
 Gone that his place shall never know him more 
 Cursed of his people outcast from his throne 
 A dim, discrowned king ! 
 
 THE night fell, dark and tempestuous withal. 
 The winds wailed mournfully at intervals, at 
 intervals shrieked out with savage fury, and as 
 the heavy clouds were driven reelingly across 
 the firmament, blotting the faint light of the 
 winking stars, fierce bursts of hail and rain came 
 dashing to the earth, and ceased as suddenly 
 as they commenced. And ever and anon the 
 
CROMWELL. 317 
 
 thunder growled remotely, but with a sullen 
 rolling that seemed almost continuous, such was 
 the length and frequency of the strong peals 
 and lightnings flashed on every side the heaven, 
 now in broad quivering sheets of ghastly light, 
 that transiently displayed the ragged edges of 
 each fleeting storm-cloud in distinct relief, and now 
 in wavy lines of most intense and life-like fire, 
 rushing athwart the rack from zenith to horizon. 
 Yet turbulent as the night was over the city, 
 and ominous as showed the gathering of the 
 elements, still more alarming was the turbu 
 lence that reigned in the full streets, and more 
 portentous was the concourse of the armed and 
 angry citizens. The train-bands had been mus 
 tered in the early evening with arquebuse and 
 pike, their lighted matches gleaming on all 
 sides through the murky darkness, and the 
 heavy trampling of their companies every where 
 audible, as they marched to and fro vainly 
 desirous to allay the tumult which had arisen 
 instantly on the arrival of the accused members 
 
318 CROMWELL. 
 
 seeking protection in the guarded precincts of 
 the city. 
 
 From sunset until dawn the mayor patrolled 
 the streets, with his assistant magistrates, vainly 
 endeavouring to quell the terrified and savage 
 populace, with whom all armed as chance had 
 ordered it, some with the perfect implements of 
 modern warfare, others with weapons obsolete 
 and strange, brown-bills, and glaives, and 
 maces each court and alley, from the purlieus 
 of Alsatia quite to the Tower, was blockaded 
 and beset. Chains were made fast athwart the 
 most frequented avenues ; and barricades of 
 stone and timber, heaped rudely but effectively 
 together, above which yawned the mouth of 
 many a ponderous cannon, would have pre 
 sented no small obstacles to any who should 
 dare invade the privileged limits. Huge bonfires 
 blazed in every quarter, torches and flambeaux 
 streamed and wavered in each gust of wind, 
 casting a singular and ruddy glare upon the 
 pallid faces and unusual weapons of the un- 
 
CROMWELL. 319 
 
 washed artisans, who formed the bulk of the 
 assemblage; though they were mingled hare 
 and there with grave and well-attired burghers, 
 their morions and gorgets at variance with their 
 civic garbs and golden chains with young and 
 ruffling templars, to whom aught savouring of 
 frolic or of fight was most congenial and with 
 sad-visaged and morose soldadoes, in suits of 
 buff tarnished and soiled by service, girded with 
 broadswords of unwieldy length, fresh from the 
 German wars, or the Low Countries (then, as in 
 every afterage, the battle-field of Europe) all 
 keeping up, throughout the livelong night, a 
 dissonance of tongues as loud and jarring as ever 
 rent the air around the heaven-defying Babel. 
 
 At times a sudden panic would run through 
 the crowd, none knowing whom to trust or 
 whom to flee a cry would ring above the 
 mingled din " The cavaliers ! The cavaliers ! 
 Flee ! Flee ! The King and his wild cavaliers 
 are up to fire the city !" and without waiting to 
 inquire, or to hear, the mob rushed they knew 
 
320 CROMWELL. 
 
 not whither, trampling the aged and the feeble 
 underfoot, and turning oftentimes the very wea 
 pons, they had belted on to guard their liberties, 
 against each other in the blind and reeling 
 rout. Meanwhile with words of fire and ges 
 tures of defiance, some bolder spirit would brave 
 the panic-stricken throng, and rally it, and lead 
 it back with brandished arms and inflamed fea 
 tures to meet the foemen who existed only in 
 their imaginations maddened with terror and 
 excitement. 
 
 Nor was the panic and confusion slighter 
 within the royal palace. Between the hapless 
 King and his perfidious consort, distrust recri 
 mination wrath followed by feigned repent 
 ance on the one hand uxorious pardon on the 
 other ! Among the councillors, dismay and 
 doubt high words, and mutual reproaches, and 
 all the vehement disorder that ensues on the 
 adoption and discomfiture of evil councils ! 
 Digby and Lunsford wearying Charles, faint 
 hearted now and dubious, for permission to 
 
CROMWELL. 321 
 
 assail the city-gates, and drag the impeached 
 traitors forth from their stronghold at point of 
 partisan and pike ! Others deploring the rash 
 steps already taken, and protesting against fur 
 ther violence ! and some, the nobler and more 
 upright spirits Falkland and Hyde, and their 
 associates holding themselves aloof in deep 
 resentful sorrow, that all their wisdom had been 
 wasted, and themselves distrusted, and deceived* 
 
 Never was a longer night followed by a sadder 
 morning; for although daylight calmed the terror 
 and the tumult, it allayed nothing of the concen 
 trated wrath, diminished nothing of the jealous 
 apprehensions entertained by either party. 
 
 After a short debate the parliament, both 
 Lords and Commons, adjourned for several days, 
 appointing a committee to sit constantly, morn 
 ings and afternoons, at Merchants Hall within 
 the town walls, where they might be secure from 
 further outrage, and free to devise means for 
 vindication of their members, and safeguard of 
 their violated rights. 
 
 p 3 
 
CROMWELL. 
 
 Edgar informed of the commotions, and anx 
 ious for the safety of the city, called for his 
 horse the moment after the adjournment, and, 
 with some six or seven followers well-mounted 
 and equipped, rode up the Strand a scattered 
 street at that day, occupied by the suburban 
 dwellings of the rich and noble with terraced 
 gardens sloping downwards to the Thames. He 
 was full of calm resolution, and intended in 
 stantly to volunteer his aid for putting down the 
 riots, and establishing some governance of law. 
 
 When he reached Temple-bar, the gates were 
 closed with bolt and chain, a powerful band of 
 musketeers with gun and bandoleers manning 
 its loops, and mustering at every window that 
 overlooked the area before it. But at the an 
 nouncement of his quality and name the bolts 
 were drawn, the heavy leaves unfolded, and 
 he entered amid presented arms and muttered 
 greetings of the sentinels. With a pleased eye 
 he saw at once that order was restored. Sus 
 picion still prevailed, and vigilance, but tumult 
 
CROMWELL. 323 
 
 and confusion had given way to wise and 
 watchful regulation. The shops were shut, and 
 business was suspended, it is true, and all men 
 who went forth wore weapons ; but the trained 
 bands patrolled the streets with magistrates at 
 the head of every company, no less to enforce 
 internal quiet, than to resist external force. 
 
 Scarce had he ridden twenty yards within 
 the gate, ere a fresh summons roused the 
 
 o y 
 
 wardens, and a king s messenger, after some 
 parley, was admitted and conducted by a file 
 of infantry to hearing of the aldermen then 
 sitting at the Guildhall. The business on which 
 Ardenne came directing him to the same quar 
 ter, and strong anxiety to learn the future 
 movements of the court still further prompting 
 him, he at once wheeled to the rear of this 
 small band, and passing onward with them was 
 ushered in without delay to the mayor s pre 
 sence, and in consideration of his place in par 
 liament accommodated with a seat whence he 
 might witness the proceedings of the day, and 
 
324 CROMWELL. 
 
 lend his council, if need were, to these the 
 magnates of the city. 
 
 To Edgar s astonishment, as to that indeed of 
 all, the messenger announced that His Majesty 
 was already entering his coach, to wait upon 
 the mayor, when he had left Whitehall; and 
 that he prayed that dignitary to call a common 
 council on the instant. 
 
 Sir Richard Gourney, the then holder of the 
 office of mayor, although inclined not slightly to 
 the principles of the decided royalists, disclaim 
 ing, as did all the wiser of the party, any par 
 ticipation in, or knowledge of, a course, which, 
 now that it had failed, they all professed to 
 disapprove, was careful to display no symptom 
 of subserviency. Perhaps, indeed, he truly felt 
 that wrong had been committed, and was sin 
 cere, in the determination to maintain inviolate 
 the privileges of which he was the guardian. 
 
 The council was at the time in session, and 
 scarcely had the messenger withdrawn before 
 the King arrived, not with the armed and dis- 
 
CROMWELL. 325 
 
 solute attendants who had Convoyed him to the 
 halls of parliament, but with some two or three 
 lords only, and those of the most moderate 
 among his partisans. The shouts, that ran like 
 wildfire along the crowded streets, mingled with 
 groans and yells the cries " Privilege ! Pri 
 vilege of Parliament !" announced his presence 
 at the doors of the Guildhall, before he had 
 alighted from his coach, and clearly proved 
 the temper of the now thoroughly-aroused and 
 fearless multitude ; while, as a token of the 
 perfect mastery of the law, even at that moment 
 of tremendous and wellnigh unparalleled ex. 
 citement, a daring pamphlet-writer, who had 
 thrown into the monarch s coach a paper bear 
 ing inscribed the scriptural watchword, " To 
 your tents, O Israel/ was instantly committed 
 for contempt. 
 
 The city dignitaries rose from their seats on 
 the King s entrance ; they tendered to him all 
 all to the. most minute particulars that was his 
 due, of reverence and ceremonial greeting; but 
 
326 CROMWELL. 
 
 there was no heart inspired applause no loyal 
 spirit-stirring cry " God save the King" no 
 smile no welcome ! Strange it may seem, yet 
 he had hoped indeed, infatuated man ! that he 
 should now succeed in gaining the authorities 
 to yield their honoured guests to his demand ; 
 and so commenced what he esteemed a mild 
 conciliatory harangue requiring their surrender. 
 His speech was full of false statements of his 
 veneration and regard in all past times for Eng 
 land s laws and liberties of his affection for 
 the Protestant religion of his enforcement of 
 the penal statutes against the dreaded Papists 
 and no less full of promises, unmeaning, insin 
 cere, and empty, concerning his intentions for 
 the future. 
 
 Little applause and no obedience followed ! 
 Baffled a second time, and yet more deeply 
 mortified., he left the Guildhall but desirous 
 still of pleasing, and imagining (short-sighted 
 and deluded prince !) that by a slender show of 
 condescension he could efface the recollection 
 
CROMWELL. 327 
 
 of so many arbitrary acts against the corporate 
 and individual interests of the city, he vouch 
 safed to one the worse affected toward his 
 person of the sheriffs, the honour of dining at 
 his house ; where he was served, together with 
 his retinue, with more than courtly luxury 
 with all respect and honour, paid not to himself 
 but to the station which he so ill occupied ; but 
 with no semblance of that glad alacrity, that 
 honest and ungrudging heart-service, which is 
 well worth a world of bended knees and hollow 
 ceremonial. 
 
 In the evening harassed in spirit, and fa 
 tigued in body, irritated by the reproachful 
 hootings of the multitude that jarred at every 
 instant of his homeward progress on his re 
 luctant ear, and hopeless now of compassing his 
 tyrannical ends the King retired to his palace, 
 there to give impotent and childish vent to his 
 indignant spleen, by publishing a proclamation 
 against all men who should presume to harbour 
 or conceal the persons whom he had previously 
 denounced as traitors. 
 
328 CROMWELL. 
 
 Days passed away; each marked by some 
 bold resolution of the Commons by increased 
 tokens of the deep respect and admiration en 
 tertained by the great bulk of the metropolis 
 toward the vindicators of its rights and by 
 some weak and useless aggravation of his former 
 measures on the part of the misguided and wife- 
 governed monarch. 
 
 A week had scarcely rolled over their heads 
 before the House, conscious of its own strength, 
 and knowing the entire impotence of the King s 
 party, determined to bring back their members 
 to Westminster, as men against whom no legiti 
 mate or constitutional charge was pending ; and 
 preparations of unwonted splendour and extent 
 were made for reconducting them in triumph to 
 their seats. 
 
 The news might not escape the ears of 
 Charles, bruited as it was all joyously abroad 
 through every class of persons, and pleasing to 
 nearly all for many, even of those who here 
 tofore had backed him with their voices and 
 opinions in all his troubles, and who in after- 
 
CROMWELL. 329 
 
 days as faithfully assisted him with life and 
 fortune, were not entirely sorry for the occur 
 rence of a marked reverse, which they fondly 
 hoped might avail to check him in his inordi 
 nate and reckless cravings (cravings which to 
 their own eyes they would not now disguise or 
 palliate) for power unconstitutional, at least, if 
 not tyrannical and absolute. 
 
 Bitter most bitter were the feelings of 
 Charles, as he went (ungreeted by one loyal 
 acclamation, his absence unlamented by one 
 loyal tear) forth from the palace of his fathers 
 almost alone in actual fact, but absolutely so 
 in sentiment the Queen, for whose sake mainly 
 he had embroiled himself with his true-hearted 
 subjects, ungratefully and spitefully upbraiding 
 him, not for the folly of his measures, but for 
 his failure in their execution his courtiers, who 
 had urged him on to every fresh aggression, 
 and lauded every new caprice, now silent and 
 dejected and the very guards who rode before 
 his coach dispirited and crestfallen. Bitter 
 most bitter were his feelings, but it was not 
 
330 CROMWELL. 
 
 with the bitterness of manly and upright repent 
 ance not with the bitterness upspringing from 
 the sense of wrong committed, and resulting in 
 a promise of amendment but with that of dis 
 content and disappointment, of unholy wishes 
 frustrated, and merited reverses sullenly re 
 membered. 
 
 Such were the feelings of that bad monarch 
 and unhappy man, as he drove forth, that so 
 he might avoid the triumph of his disaffected 
 subjects, after the shades of early evening had 
 already gathered dark and cold about the misty 
 streets, toward Hampton Court, as virtually ex 
 iled from the metropolis of his oppressed and 
 groaning country, and from the tottering and 
 dishonoured throne of his forefathers, as from 
 the hearts of his once loving subjects. 
 
 But the sun rose upon a nobler and more 
 glorious spectacle a spectacle rife with great 
 blessings for the present, and brilliant omens 
 for the future the spectacle of a vast people, 
 free and united ! victorious, not by the sword, 
 nor over slain and mutilated carcasses, but by 
 
CROMWELL. 331 
 
 the strength of popular opinion, founded on 
 the broad base of justice animated by the 
 deathless love of liberty and directed by such 
 a knot of patriots, as England in no other age 
 had witnessed. On came the fair procession, 
 marshalled by loud triumphant music, and the 
 yet louder shouts of honest and exulting my 
 riads, gay with a thousand flags and banners 
 flaunting to the wintry sun, which wore on that 
 proud morning its brightest and most gorgeous 
 aspect ; guarded by all the sober strength of civil 
 discipline, and all the orderly and bright array 
 of the well-trained militia of the city ; not 
 fluttering indeed with tasselled scarfs or many- 
 coloured plumes, but well equipped with morions 
 of steel, polished till they shone out like silver, 
 and stout buff coats all service-like and uni 
 form, with their puissant pikes thick as a grove 
 of pines, their broad heads flashing in the sun 
 beams and arquebuses clearly burnished, as 
 when they left the armoury. Fifty in front 
 they marched, in close and serried order, strid 
 ing along with regular and sturdy steps, rank 
 
332 CROMWELL. 
 
 after rank, each as a single man with that 
 erect undaunted bearing which belongs only to 
 the free, and with the tranquil eye and calm, 
 though proud expression which marks the dis 
 ciplined law-loving citizen, and not the fierce 
 unruly democrat. 
 
 The companies were all arrayed beneath the 
 civic banners of their respective wards, and 
 headed by their captains, mounted well on 
 strong and serviceable chargers, and gallantly 
 equipped in scarlet cassocks and steel corslets. 
 
 Behind this stately host, preceded by the 
 bearers of his mace and sword, and all the 
 glittering insignia of city pomp, Sir Richard 
 Gourney rode along, curbing to a slow proces 
 sion pace, sorely us it would seem against its 
 will, a splendid courser, whose footcloth, bla 
 zoned with rich armorial bearings, almost swept 
 the ground. 
 
 Two and two, in flowing robes of scarlet, 
 with chains of gold about their necks, and tall 
 white feathers floating above their velvet bon 
 nets, the sheriffs and the aldermen advanced. 
 
CROMWELL. 333 
 
 Then, received by acclamations, that were 
 heard for many a mile around, clad in their 
 ordinary garbs, and wearing in their grave 
 demeanour no tokens of undue importance or 
 unfitting exultation, the denounced patriots 
 rode steadily along, and, headed by^their Speaker, 
 the whole House of Commons followed. 
 
 No banners waved above them no gorgeous 
 dresses pointed them for public admiration 
 no high assumption called the eye to them yet 
 as they swept slowly forward, a band of gentle 
 men mostly of noble, all of reputable, birth 
 chosen for worth and wisdom, to be the dele 
 gates of a great people of a people, the most 
 manly and intelligent, and free of the wide 
 universe they could not but have attracted 
 the eye, and fixed the untaught admiration of 
 the most stolid or most slavish ; what then 
 must they have done, when they were passing 
 before those whose liberties they had asserted 
 at the risk of all that men hold dear ? 
 
 Close trooping in the rear of these, another 
 strong battalion of the train-bands marched. 
 
336 CROMWELL. 
 
 aggressions, and the triumphant testimony borne 
 by his indignant subjects to the untiring efforts 
 and undaunted resolution of those noble spirits, 
 whom his oppressive madness had converted, 
 step by step, from the most steady guardians, 
 to the most constant foemen, of his person and 
 his crown. 
 
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