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much pains to raise among them, made them very intractable many of the chief officers were broken, and imprisoned by him: and he flattered the rest the best he could. He went on in his old way of long and dark discourses, sermons, and prayers. As to the cavalier party, he was afraid both of assassination and other plottings from them. As to the former of these, he took a method that proved very effectual: he said often and openly, that in a war it was necessary to return upon any side all the violent things that any of the one side did to the other. This was done for preventing greater mischief, and for bringing men to fair war: therefore, he said, assassinations were such detestable things, that he would never begin them: but if any of the king's party should endeavour to assassinate him, and fail in it, he would make an assassinating war of it, and destroy the whole family: and he pretended he had instruments to execute it, whensoever he should give order for it. The terror of this was a better security to him than his guards.

The other, as to their plottings, was the more dangerous. But he understood that one sir Richard Willis was chancellor Hide's chief confidant, to whom he wrote often, and to whom all the party submitted, looking on him as an able and wise man, 66 in whom they confided absolutely. So he found a way to talk with him: he said, he did not intend to hurt any of the party: his design was rather to save them from ruin: they were apt, after their cups, to run into foolish and ill concerted plots, which signified nothing but to ruin those who engaged in them: he knew they consulted him in every thing: all he desired of him was to know all

their plots, that he might so disconcert them, that none might ever suffer for them: if he clapt any of them up in prison, it should only be for a little time and they should be interrogated only about some trifling discourse, but never about the business they had been engaged in. He offered Willis whatever he would accept of, and to give it when or as he pleased. He durst not ask or take above two hundred pounds a year. None was trusted with this but his secretary Thurlo, who was a very dexterous man at getting intelligence.

Thus Cromwell had all the king's party in a net. He let them dance in it at pleasure: and upon occasions clapt them up for a short while: but nothing was ever discovered that hurt any of them. In conclusion, after Cromwell's death, Willis continued to give notice of every thing to Thurlo. At last, when the plot was laid among the cavaliers for a general insurrection, the king was desired to come over to that which was to be raised in Sussex: he was to have landed near Chichester, all by Willis's management: and a snare was laid for him, in which he would probably have been caught, if Morland, Thurlo's under secretary, who was a prying man, had not discovered the correspondence between his master and Willis, and warned the king of his danger. Yet it was not easy to persuade those who had trusted Willis so much, and who thought him faithful in all respects, to believe that he could be guilty of so black a treachery: so Morland's advertisement was looked on as an artifice to create jealousy. But he, to give a full conviction,

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observed where the secretary laid some letters of advice, on which he saw he relied most, and getting the key of that cabinet in his hand to seal a letter with a seal that hung to it, he took the impression of it in wax, and got a key to be made from it, by which he opened the cabinet, and sent over some of the most important of those letters. The hand was known, and this artful but black treachery was discovered: so the design of the rising was laid aside. Sir George Booth having engaged at the same time to raise a body in Cheshire, two several messengers were sent to him, to let him know the design could not be executed at the time appointed: but both these persons were suspected by some garrisons through which they must pass, as giving no good 67 account of themselves in a time of jealousy, and were so long stopt, that they could not give him notice in time: so he very gallantly performed his part but not being seconded, he was soon crushed by Lamberth. Thus Willis lost the merit of great and long services. This was one of Cromwell's masterpieces.

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As for the presbyterians, they were so apprehensive of the fury of the commonwealth party, that they thought it a deliverance to be rescued out of their hands many of the republicans begun to profess deism and almost all of them were for destroying all clergymen, and for breaking every thing that looked like the union of a national church. They were for pulling down the churches, for discharging the tithes, and for leaving religion free, as they called it, without either encouragement or restraint.

h See Echard's History of England, p. 729. O.

Cromwell assured the presbyterians, he would maintain a public ministry with all due encouragement; and he joined them in a commission with some independents, to be the triers of all those who were to be admitted to benefices. These disposed also of all the churches that were in the gift of the crown, of the bishops, and of the cathedral churches: so this softened them.

He studied to divide the commonwealth party ..among themselves, and to set the fifth-monarchy men and the enthusiasts against those who pretended to little or no religion, and acted only upon the principles of civil liberty; such as Algernoon Sidney, Henry Nevill, Martin, Wildman, and Harrington. The fifth-monarchy men seemed to be really in expectation every day when Christ should appear: John Goodwin headed these, who first brought in Arminianism among the sectaries, for he was for liberty of all sorts. Cromwell hated that doctrine for his beloved notion was, that once a child of God was always a child of God: now he had led a very strict life for above eight years together before the war: so he comforted himself much with his reflections on that time, and on the certainty of perseverance. But none of the preachers were so thoroughpaced for him, as to temporal matters, as Goodwin was; for he not only justified the putting the king to death, but magnified it as the gloriousest action men were capable of. He filled

i Archbishop Tillotson, who had married his niece, used to say, "that at last Cromwell's "enthusiasm had got the better "of his hypocrisy, and that he

"believed himself to be the in"strument of God, in the great "actions of his power, for the

"reformation of the world." O.

His design for the

all people with such expectation of a glorious thousand years speedily to begin, that it looked like a madness possessing them.

It was no easy thing for Cromwell to satisfy kingship. those, when he took the power into his own hands; since that looked like a step to kingship, which Goodwin had long represented as the great Antichrist, that hindered Christ's being set on his throne. To these he said, and as some have told me, with 68 many tears, that he would rather have taken a

shepherd's staff than the protectorship, since nothing was more contrary to his genius than a shew of greatness: but he saw it was necessary at that time to keep the nation from falling into extreme disorder, and from becoming open to the common enemy and therefore he only stept in between the living and the dead, as he phrased it, in that interval, till God should direct them on what bottom they ought to settle: and he assured them, that then he would surrender the heavy load lying upon him, with a joy equal to the sorrow with which he was affected while under that shew of dignity. To men of this stamp he would enter into the terms of their old equality, shutting the door, and making them sit down covered by him, to let them see how little he valued those distances that, for form's sake, he was bound to keep up with others. These discourses commonly ended in a long prayer. Thus with much ado he managed the republican enthusiasts. The other republicans he called the heathens, and professed he could not so easily work upon them. He had some chaplains of all sorts: and he begun in his latter years to be gentler towards those of the church of England. They had

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