secluded, atrabiliar, and perhaps shrill-voiced and spasmodic,what can you do but get away from it, with a prayer, "The Lord deliver me from thee !" I cannot do with thee. I want twisted cordage, steady pulling and a peaceable bass tone of voice; not split hairs, hysterical spasmodics, and treble! Thou amiable, subtle, elevated individual, the Lord deliver me from thee!

These men cannot continue Kings for ever; nor in fact did they in the least design such a thing: only they find a terrible difficulty in getting abdicated. Difficulty very conceivable to us. Some weeks after Pride's Purge, which may be called the constituting of this remnant of Members into a Parliament and Authority, there had been presented to it, by Fairfax and the Army, what we should now call a Bentham-Sieyes Constitution, what was then called an Agreement of the People,* which might well be imperative on honorable members sitting there; whereby it was stipulated for one thing, That this present Parliament should dissolve itself, and give place to another 'equal Representative of the People,'-in some three months hence; on the 30th of April, namely. The last day of April, 1649: this Parliament was then to have its work finished, and go its ways, giving place to another. Such was our hope.

They did accordingly pass a vote to that effect; fully intending to fulfil the same: but, alas, it was found impossible. How summon a new Parliament, while the Commonwealth is still fighting for its existence ? All we can do is to resolve ourselves into Grand Committee, and consider about it. After much consideration, all we can decide is, That we shall go weekly into Grand Committee, and consider farther. Duly every Wednesday we consider, for the space of eleven months and odd: find, more and more, that it is a thing of some considerableness! In brief, when my Lord General returns to us from Worcester, on the 16th of September, 1651, no advance whatever towards a dissolution of ourselves has yet been made. The Wednesday Grand Committees had become a thing like the meeting of Roman augurs, difficult to go through with complete gravity; and so, after the eleventh month, have silently fallen into desuetude. We sit

* Commons Journals, 20 January, 1648-9; some six weeks after the Purge; ten days before the King's Death.

here very immovable.

We are scornfully called the Rump

of a Parliament by certain people: but we have an invincible Oliver to fight for us: we can afford to wait here, and consider to all lengths; and by one name we shall smell as sweet as by another.

I have only to add at present, that on the morrow of my Lord General's reappearance in Parliament, this sleeping question was resuscitated ;* new activity infused into it; some show of progress made; nay, at the end of three months, after much labor and struggle, it was got decided, by a neck-and-neck division,† That the present is a fit time for fixing a limit beyond which this Parliament shall not sit. Fix a limit therefore; give us the nonplus-ultra of you. Next Parliament-day we do fix a limit, Three years hence, 3d November, 1654; three years of rope still left us: a somewhat wide limit; which, under conceivable` contingencies, may perhaps be tightened a little. My honorable friends, you ought really to get on with despatch of this business; and know of a surety that not being, any of you, Kings by birth, nor very indubitably by attainment, you will actually have to go, and even in case of extremity to be shoved and sent!

LETTER CXXV.

At this point the law of dates requires that we introduce Letter Hundred-and-twenty-fifth; though it is as a mere mathematical point, marking its own whereabouts in Oliver's History; and imparts little or nothing that is new to us.

Reverend John Cotton is a man still held in some remembrance among our New England Friends. A painful Preacher, oracular of high Gospels to New England; who in his day was well seen to be connected with the Supreme Powers of this Universe, the word of him being as a live-coal to the hearts of many. He died some years afterwards;—was thought, especially on his deathbed,

* Commons Journals, 17 September, 1651.

†49 to 47; Commons Journals, 14 November, 1651: Lord General and Lord Chief Justice,' Cromwell and St. John, are Tellers for the Yea

to have manifested gifts even of Prophecy,* *—a thing not inconceivable to the human mind that well considers Prophecy and John Cotton. We should say farther, that the Parliament, that Oliver among and before them, had taken solemn anxious thought concerning Propagating of the Gospel in New England; and, among other measures, passed an Act to that end;† not unworthy of attention, were our hurry less. It is probably in special reference to this that Cotton has been addressing Oliver,-founding too on their general relationship as Soldier of the Gospel and Priest of the Gospel, high brother and humble one; appointed, both of them, to fight for it to the death, each with such weapons as were given him.

For my esteemed Friend, Mr. Cotton, Pastor of the Church at Boston, in New England: These.

'London,' 2d October, 1651.

WORTHY SIR, AND MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND,

I received yours a few days since. It was welcome to me because signed by you, whom I love and honor in the Lord: but more 'so' to see some of the same grounds of our Actings stirring in you that are in us, to quiet us in our work, and support us therein. Which hath had great difficulty in Scotland; by reason we have had to do with some who were, I very think, Godly, but through weakness and the subtlety of Satan, were' involved against the Interests of the Lord and His People.

With what tenderness we have proceeded with such, and that in sincerity, our Papers (which I suppose you have seen) will in part manifest; and I give you some comfortable assurance of the same.' The Lord hath marvellously appeared even against them. And now again when all the power was devolved into the Scottish King and the Malignant Party, they invading England, the Lord rained upon them such snares as the Enclosed will show. Only the Narrative is short in this, That of their whole Army, when the Narrative was framed, not five men were returned.

Surely, Sir, the Lord is greatly to be feared and to be praised! We

* Thurloe, i., 565;-in 1653. From Preston downward.

† Scobell (27 July, 1649), ii., 66.

§ Probably the Official Narrative of Worcester Battle; published abou a week ago, as Preamble to the Act appointing a Day of Thanksgiving; 26t: September, 1651; reprinted in Parliamentary History, xx, 59-65.

need your prayers in this as much as ever. How shall we behave our selves after such mercies? What is the Lord a-doing? What Prophecies are now fulfilling ?* Who is a God like ours? To know His will, to do His will are both of Him.

I took this liberty from business, to salute you thus in a word. Truly I am ready to serve you and the rest of your Brethren and Churches with you. I am a poor weak creature, and not worthy the name of a worm; yet accepted to serve the Lord and His People. Indeed, my dear Friend, between you and me, you know not me,-my weakness, my inordinate passions, my unskilfulness, and every-way unfitness to my work. Yet, yet the Lord, who will have mercy on whom He will, does as you see! Pray for me. Salute all Christian friends though unknown. I rest,

Your affectionate friend to serve you,

OLIVER CROMWELL.†

About this time, for there is no date to it but an evidently vague and erroneous one, was held the famous Conference of Grandees, called by request of Cromwell; of which Bulstrode has given record. Conference held 'one day' at Speaker Lenthall's house in Chancery Lane, to decide among the leading Grandees of the Parliament and Army, How this Nation is to be settled, the Long Parliament having now resolved on actually dismissing itself by and by. The question is really complex: one would gladly know what the leading Grandees did think of it; even what they found good to say upon it! Unhappily, our learned Bulstrode's report of this Conference is very dim, very languid: nay Bulstrode, as we have found elsewhere, has a kind of dramaturgic turn in him, indeed an occasional poetic friskiness; most unexpected, as if the hippopotamus should show a tendency to dance ;-which painfully deducts from one's confidence in Bul. strode's entire accuracy on such occasions! Here and there the multitudinous Paper Masses of learned Bulstrode do seem to smack a little of the date when he redacted them,-posterior to the Ever. blessed Restoration, not prior to it. We shall, nevertheless, excerpt this dramaturgic Report of Conference: the reader will be willing to examine, with his own eyes, even as in a glass darkly

* See Psalm Hundreth-and-tenth.

† From the New York Evangelist, of February, 1845

any feature of that time; and he can remember always that a learned Bulstrode's fat terrene mind, imaging a heroic Cromwell and his affairs, is a very dark glass indeed!

The Speakers in this Conference,-Desborow, Oliver's Brotherin-law; Whalley, Oliver's Cousin; fanatical Harrison, tough St. John, my learned Lord Keeper or Commissioner Whitlocke him. self, are mostly known to us. Learned Widdrington, the mellifluous orator, once Lord Commissioner too, and like to be again, nough at present 'excused from it owing to scruples,' will by and by become better known to us. A mellifluous, unhealthy, seem. ingly somewhat scrupulous and timorous man.* He is of the race of that Widdrington whom we still lament in doleful dumps,—but does not fight upon the stumps like him. There were 'many other Gentlemen' who merely listened.

'Upon the defeat at Worcester,' says Bulstrode vaguely,† Cromwell desired a Meeting with divers Members of Parliament,and some chief Officers of the Army, at the Speaker's house. And a great many being there, he proposed to them, 'that now the old King being dead, and his Son being defeated, he held it necessary to come to a Settlement of the Nation. And in order thereunto, had requested this meeting; that they together might consider and advise, what was fit to be done, and to be presented to the Parliament.

'SPEAKER. My Lord, this Company were very ready to attend your Excellence, and the business you are pleased to propound to us is very necessary to be considered. God hath given marvellous success to our Forces under your command; and if we do not improve those mercies to some Settlement, such as may be to God's honor, and the good of this Commonwealth, we shall be very much blameworthy.

'HARRISON, I think that which my Lord General hath propounded, is, to advise as to a Settlement both of our Civil and Spiritual Liberties; and so, that the mercies which the Lord hath given-in to us may not be cast away. How this may be done is the great question..

* Wood, in voce.

↑ Whitlocke, p. 491; the date, 10 December, 1651, is that of the Paper merely, and as applied to the Conference itself cannot be correct