flective reader may make a great deal. Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have, and to be in thick darkness generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding-stars disclose themselves, and the vague Abyss of Life knit itself up into Firmaments for them. Temptations in the wilderness, Choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a soul in himself and be a man. Let Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, the quantity of faculty and victory he shall yet have? 'Our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobleness.' The depth of our despair measures what capability, and height of claim we have, to hope. Black smoke as of Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become flame, and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage!

It is therefore in these years, undated by History, that we must place Oliver's clear recognition of Calvinistic Christianity; what he, with unspeakable joy, would name his Conversion; his deliverance from the jaws of Eternal Death. Certainly a grand epoch for a man properly the one epoch; the turning-point which guides upwards, or guides downwards, him and his activity forevermore. Wilt thou join with the Dragons; wilt thou join with the Gods? Of thee too the question is asked ;—whether by a man in Geneva gown, by a man in 'Four surplices at Allhallow. tide,' with words very imperfect; or by no man and no words, but only by the Silences, by the Eternities, by the Life everlasting and the Death everlasting. That the 'Sense of difference between Right and Wrong' had filled all Time and all Space for man, and bodied itself forth into a Heaven and Hell for him: this constitutes the grand feature of those Puritan, Old-Christian Ages; this is the element which stamps them as Heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all generations. It is by far the memorablest achievement of our Species; without that element, in some form or other, nothing of Heroic had ever been among us.

For many centuries, Catholic Christianity, a fit embodiment of that divine Sense, had been current more or less, making the

generations noble: and here in England, in the Century called the Seventeenth, we see the last aspect of it hitherto,—not the last of all, it is to be hoped. Oliver was henceforth a Christian man; believed in God, not on Sundays only, but on all days, in all places, and in all cases. J

1624.

The grievance of Lay Impropriations, complained of in the Hampton-Court Conference twenty years ago, having never been abated, and many parts of the country being still thought insufficiently supplied with Preachers, a plan was this year fallen upon to raise by subscription, among persons grieved at that state of matters, a Fund for buying-in such Impropriations as might offer themselves; for supporting good ministers therewith, in destitute places; and for otherwise encouraging the ministerial work. The originator of this scheme was 'the famous Dr. Preston,' * a Puritan College Doctor of immense 'fame' in those and in prior years; courted even by the Duke of Buckingham, and tempted with the gleam of bishopricks; but mouldering now in great oblivion, not famous to any man. His scheme, however, was found good. The wealthy London Merchants, almost all of them Puritans, took it up; and by degrees the wealthier Puritans over England at large. Considerable ever-increasing funds were subscribed for this pious object; were vested in 'Feoffees,'— who afterwards made some noise in the world under that name. They gradually purchased some Advowsons or Impropriations, such as came to market; and hired, or assisted in hiring, a great many 'Lecturers,' persons not generally in full Priest's-orders' (having scruples about the ceremonies), but in Deacon's' or some other orders, with permission to preach, to 'lecture,' as i: was called whom accordingly we find lecturing' in various places, under various conditions, in the subsequent years;often in some market-town, 'on market-day;' on 'Sunday-afternoon,' as supplemental to the regular Priest when he might happen to be idle, or given to black and white surplices; or as 'running Lecturers,' now here, now there, over a certain dis

* Heylin's Life of Laud.

trict. They were greatly followed by the serious part of the community; and gave proportional offence in other quarters. In some years hence, they had risen to such a height, these Lecturers, that Dr. Laud, now come into authority, took them seriously in hand, and with patient detail hunted them mostly out; nay, brought the Feoffees themselves and their whole Enterprise into the Starchamber, and there, with emphasis enough, and heavy damages, amid huge rumor from the public, suppressed them. This was in 1633; a somewhat strong measure. How would the Public take it now, if,-we say not the gate of Heaven, but the gate of the Opposition Hustings were suddenly shut against mankind,-if our Opposition Newspapers, and their morning Prophesyings, were suppressed!-That Cromwell was a contributor to this Feoffee Fund, and a zealous forwarder of it according to his opportunities, we might already guess; and by and by there will occur some vestige of direct evidence to that effect.

Oliver naturally consorted henceforth with the Puritan Clergy in preference to the other kind; zealously attended their ministry, when possible ;-consorted with Puritans in general, many of whom were Gentry of his own rank, some of them Nobility of much higher rank. A modest devout man, solemnly intent to make his calling and his election sure,'—to whom, in credible dialect, the Voice of the Highest had spoken. Whose earnestness, sagacity and manful worth gradually made him conspicuous in his circle among such.-The Puritans were already numerous. John Hampden, Oliver's Cousin, was a devout Puritan, John Pym the like; Lord Brook, Lord Say, Lord Montague,-Puritans in the better ranks, and in every rank, abounded. Already either in conscious act, or in clear tendency, the far greater part of the serious Thought and Manhood of England had declared itself Puritan.

1625.

Mark Noble citing Willis's Notitia, reports that Oliver appeared this year as Member for Huntingdon ' in King Charles's first Parliament.* It is a mistake; grounded on mere blunders

* Noble, i., 100.

and clerical errors. Browne Willis, in his Notitia Parliamentaria, does indeed specify as Member for Huntingdonshire an 'Oliver Cromwell, Esq.,' who might be our Oliver. But the usual mem. ber in former Parliaments is Sir Oliver, our Oliver's Uncle. Browne Willis must have made, or have copied, some slip of the pen. Suppose him to have found in some of his multitudinous parchments, an 'Oliver Cromwell, Knight of the Shire,' and in place of putting in the 'Sir,' to have put in ‘Esq.;' it will solve the whole difficulty. Our Oliver, when he indisputably did afterwards enter Parliament, came in for Huntingdon Town; so that, on this hypothesis, he must have first been Knight of the Shire, and then have sunk (an immense fall in those days) to be a Burgh Member; which cannot without other ground be credited. What the original Chancery Parchments say of the business, whether the error is theirs or Browne Willis's, I cannot decide; on inquiry at the Rolls' Office, it turns out that the Records, for some fifty years about this period, have vanished "a good while ago." Whose error it may be, we know not; but an error we may safely conclude it is. Sir Oliver was then still living at Hinchinbrook, in the vigor of his years, no reason whatever why he should not serve as formerly; nay, if he had withdrawn, his young Nephew, of no fortune for a Knight of the Shire, was not the man to replace him. The Members for Huntingdon Town in this Parliament, as in the preceding one, are a Mr. Mainwaring, and a Mr. St. John. The County Members in the preceding Parliament, and in this too with the correction of the concluding syllable in this, are 'Edward Montague, Esquire,' and Oliver Cromwell, Knight.'

1626.

in the Ashmole Museum at Oxford stands catalogued a 'Letter from Oliver Cromwell to Mr. Henry Downhall, at St. John's College, Cambridge; dated Huntingdon, 14 October, 1626 :** which might perhaps, in some very faint way, have elucidated Dr. Simcott and the hypochondrias for us. On applying to kind friends at Oxford for a copy of this Letter, I learn that there is

* Bodleian Library: Codices MSS. Ashmoleani, No. 8398.

now no Letter, only a mere selvage of paper, and a leaf wanting between two leaves. It was stolen, none knows when; but stolen it is ;--which forces me to continue my Introduction some nine years farther, instead of ending it at this point. Did some zealous Oxford Doctor cut the Letter out, as one weeds a hem lock from a parsley-bed; that so the Ashmole Museum might be cleansed, and yield only pure nutriment to mankind? Or was it some collector of autographs zealous beyond law? Whoever the thief may be, he is probably dead long since; and has answered for this,—and also, we may fancy for heavier thefts, which were likely to be charged upon him. If any humane individual ever henceforth get his eye upon the Letter, let him be so kind as to send a copy of it to the Publishers of this Book, and no questions will be asked.

1627.

A Deed of Sale, dated 20 June, 1627, still testifies that Hinchinbrook this year passed out of the hands of the Cromwells into those of the Montagues.* The price was 30007.; curiously divided into two parcels, down to shillings and pence,- -one of the parcels being already a creditor's. The Purchaser is Sir Sidney Montague, Knight of Barnwell, one of his Majesty's Masters of the Requests.' Sir Oliver Cromwell, son of the Golden Knight, having now burnt out his splendor, disappeared in this way from Hinchinbrook; retired deeper into the Fens, to a place of his near Ramsey Mere, where he continued still thirty years longer to reside, in an eclipsed manner. It was to this house at Ramsey, that Oliver, our Oliver, then Captain Cromwell in the Parliament's service, paid the domiciliary visit much talked of in the old Books. The reduced Knight, his Uncle, was a Royalist or Malignant; and his house had to be searched for arms, for munitions, for furnishings of any sort, which he might be minded to send off to the King, now at York, and evidently intending war. Oliver's dragoons searched with due rigor for the arms; while the Captain respectfully conversed with his Uncle; and even 'insisted' through the interview, say the old Books, on standing

* Noble, i., 43