sit there, till it please the House to rise!" The House in a decisive though almost distracted manner, with their Speaker thus held down for them, locked their doors; redacted Three emphatic Resolutions, their Protest against Arminianism, Papistry, and illegal Tonnage and Poundage; and passed the same by acclamation; letting no man out, refusing to let even the King's Usher in; then swiftly vanishing so soon as the resolutions were passed, for they understood the Soldiery was coming.* For which surprising procedure, vindicated by Necessity the mother of Invention, and supreme of Lawgivers, certain honorable gentlemen, Denzil Holles, Sir John Eliot, William Strode, John Selden, and others less known to us, suffered fine, imprisonment, and much legal tribulation: nay Sir John Eliot, refusing to submit, was kept in the Tower till he died.

This scene fell out on Monday, 2d of March, 1629. Directly on the back of which, we conclude, Mr. Cromwell quitted Town for Huntingdon again;-told Dr. Beard also that he was not wanted now. His Majesty dissolved the Parliament by Proclamation; saying something about 'vipers' that had been there. It was the last Parliament in England for above eleven years. The King had taken his course. The King went on raising supplies without Parliamentary law, by all conceivable devices,—of which Ship-money may be considered the most original, and sale of Monopolies the most universal. The monopoly of soap' itself was very grievous to men.† Your soap was dear, and it would not wash, but only blister. The ceremonial Bishops, Bishop or Archbishop Laud now chief of them,-they, on their side, went on diligently hunting out 'Lecturers,' erecting 'altars in the east end of churches;' charging all clergymen to have, in good repair and order, 'Four surplices at All-hallowtide.' Vexations spiritual and fiscal, beyond what we can well fancy now, afflicted the souls of men. The English Nation was patient; it endured in silence, with prayer that God in justice and mercy would look upon it. The King of England with his chief-priests was going one way; the Nation of England by eternal laws was going

Rushworth, i., 667-9.

Laud's Diary, in Wharton's Laud.

† See many old Pamphlets.

another the split became too wide for healing. Oliver and others seemed now to have done with Parliaments; a royal Proclamation forbade them so much as to speak of such a thing.

1630.

In the new charter' granted to the Corporation of Huntingdon, and dated 8th July, 1630, Oliver Cromwell, Esquire, Thomas Beard, D.D., his old schoolmaster, and Robert Barnard, Esquire, of whom also we may hear again, are named Justices of the Peace for that Borough.* I suppose there was nothing new in this nomination; a mere confirming and continuing of what had already been. But the smallest authentic fact, any undoubted date or circumstance regarding Oliver and his affairs, is to be eagerly laid hold of.

1631.

In or soon after 1631, as we laboriously infer from the imbroglio records of poor Noble, Oliver decided on an enlarged sphere of action as a Farmer; sold his properties in Huntingdon, all or some of them; rented certain grazing-lands at St. Ives, five miles down the River, eastward of his native place, and removed thither. The Deed of Sale is dated 7th May, 1631;† the properties are specified as in the possession of himself or his Mother; the sum they yielded was 1,8007. With this sum Oliver stocked his Grazing-Farm at St. Ives. The Mother, we infer, continued to reside at Huntingdon, but withdrawn now from active occupation, into the retirement befitting a widow up in years. There is even some gleam of evidence to that effect: her properties are sold; but Oliver's children born to him at St. Ives are still christened at Huntingdon, in the church he was used to; which may mean also that their good Grandmother was still there.

Properly this was no change in Oliver's old activities; it was an enlargement of the sphere of them. His Mother still at Huntingdon, within few miles of him, he could still superintend and protect her existence there, while managing his new operations at St. Ives He continued here till the summer or spring of

1636.* A studious imagination may sufficiently construct the figure of his equable life in those years. Diligent grass-farming; mowing, milking, cattle-marketing: add hypochondria,' fits of the blackness of darkness, with glances of the brightness of very Heaven; prayer, religious reading and meditation; household epochs, joys and cares :—we have a solid, substantial, inoffensive Farmer of St. Ives, hoping to walk with integrity, and humble, devout diligence through this world; and, by his Maker's infinite mercy, to escape destruction, and find eternal salvation, in wider ́Divine Worlds. This latter, this is the grand clause in his Life, which dwarfs all other clauses. Much wider destinies than he anticipated were appointed him on Earth; but that, in comparison to the alternative of Heaven or Hell to all Eternity, was a mighty small matter.

The lands he rented are still there, recognizable to the tourist ; gross boggy lands, fringed with willow-trees, at the east end of the small Town of St. Ives, which is still noted as a cattle-market in those parts. The 'Cromwell Barn,' the pretended 'House of Cromwell,' the &c., &c., are, as is usual in these cases, when you come to try them by the documents, a mere jumble of incredibilities, and oblivious human platitudes, distressing to the mind.

But a Letter, one Letter signed Oliver Cromwell and dated St. Ives, does remain, still legible and indubitable to us. What more is to be said on St. Ives and the range itself round that Document. we arrive at that, and bring these cles to a close.

adjacent matters, will best arOne or two entries here, and imperfect Introductory Chroni

1632.

In January of this year Oliver's seventh child was born to him; a boy, James; who died the day after baptism. There remained six children, of whom one other died young; it is not known at what date. Here subjoined is the List of them, and of those subsequently born; in a Note, elaborated, as before, from the imbroglios of Noble.†

*Noble, i., 106.

OLIVER CROMWELL'S CHILDREN.

(Married to Elizabeth Bourchier, 22d August, 1620.)

This same year, William Prynne first began to make a noise in England. A learned young gentleman from Painswick near Bath,' graduate of Oxford, now 'an Outer Barrister of Lincoln's

1. Robert; baptized 13th October, 1621. Named for his Grandfather. No farther account of him; he died before ripe years.

2. Oliver; baptized 6th February, 1622-3; went to Felsted School 'Captain in Harrison's Regiment,— -no. At Peterborough in 1643 (Noble, i., 133-4). He died, or was killed during the war; date and place not ye discoverable. Noble says it was at Appleby; referring to Whitlocke. Whitlocke (p. 318 of 1st edition, 322 of 2d), on ransacking the old Pamphlets, turns out to be indisputably in error. The Protector on his deathbed alludes to this Oliver's death: "It went to my heart like a dagger, indeed it did."

3. Bridget; baptized 4th August, 1624. Married to Ireton, 15th January, 1646-7 (Noble, i., 134); widow, 26 November, 1651. Married to Fleetwood (exact date, after long search, remains undiscovered; Noble, ii., 355, says 'before' June, 1652, which is impossible). Died at Stoke Newington, near London, September, 1681.

4. Richard; born 4th October, 1626. At Felsted School. In Lincoln's Inn, 27th May, 1647' an error? Married in 1648, Richard Mayor's daughter, of Hursley, Hants. First in Parliament, 1654. Protector, 1658. Dies, poor idle Triviality, at Cheshunt, 12th July, 1712.

5. Henry; baptized at All-Saints (the rest are at St. John's), Huntingdon, 20th January, 1627-8. Felsted School. In the army at sixteen. Captain in Fairfax's Lifeguard in 1647. Colonel, in 1649, and in Ireland with his Father. Lord Deputy there in 1657. In 1660, retired to Spinney Abbey, near Soham,' nearer Wicken, in Cambridgeshire. Foolish story of Charles II. and the 'stable-fork' there (Noble, i., 212). Died 23d March, 1673-4; buried in Wicken Church. A brave man and true: had he been named Protector, there had, most likely, been quite another History of England to write, at present!

6. Elizabeth; baptized 2d July, 1629. Mrs. Claypole, 1645-6. Died at 3 in the morning, Hampton-court, 6th August, 1658,-4 weeks before her Father. A graceful, brave, and amiable woman. The lamentation about Dr. Hewit and bloodshed (in Clarendon and others) is fudge.

At St. Ives and Ely:

7. James; baptized 8th January, 1631-2; died next day.

8. Mary; baptized (at Huntingdon still) 9th February, 1636-7. Lady Fauconberg, 18th November, 1657. Dean Swift knew her handsome and like her Father.' Died 14th March, 1712 (1712-3? is not decided in Noble). Richard died within a few months of her.

9. Frances: baptized (at Ely now), 6th December, 1638. • Charles II. was for marrying her:' not improbable. Married Mr. Rich, Earl of Warwick's grandson, 11th November, 1657: he died in three months, 16th

Inn;' well read in English Law, and full of zeal for Gospel Doctrine and Morality. He, struck by certain flagrant scandals of the time, especially by that of Play-acting and Masking, saw good this year to set forth his Histriomastix, or Player's Scourge; a Book still extant, but never more to be read by mortal. For which Mr. William Prynne himself, before long, paid rather dear. The Book was licensed by old Archbishop Abbot, a man of Puritan tendencies, but now verging towards his end. Peter Heylin, 'lying Peter,' as men sometimes call him, was already with hawk's eye and the intensest interest reading this now unreadable Book, and, by Laud's direction, taking excerpts from the same.

It carries our thought to extensive world-transactions over sea, to reflect that in the end of this same year, '6 November, 1632,' the great Gustavus died on the field of Lützen; fighting against Wallenstein; victorious for the last time. While Oliver Cromwell walked peacefully intent on cattle husbandry, that winter-day, on the grassy banks of the Ouse at St. Ives, Gustavus Adolphus, shot through the back, was sinking from his horse in the battle-storm far off, with these words: Ich habe genug,

Bruder; rette Dich. Brother, I have got enough; save thyself!"* On the 19th of the same month, November, 1632, died likewise Frederick Elector Palatine, titular King of Bohemia, husband of King Charles's sister, and father of certain Princes, Rupert and others, who came to be well known in our History. Elizabeth, the Widow, was left with a large family of them in Holland, very bare of money, of resource, or immediate hope; but conducted herself, as she had all along done, in a way that gained much respect. Alles für Ruhm und Ihr, All for Glory and Her,' were the words Duke Bernhard of Weimar carried on his Flag, through many battles in that Thirty-Years War. She was

February, 1657-8. No child by Rich. Married Sir John Russel,-the Checquers Russels. Died 27th January, 1720-1.

In all 5 sons and four daughters; of whom 3 sons and all the daughters came to maturity.

The Protector's Widow died at Norborough, her son-in-law Claypole's place (now ruined, patched into a farm-house; near Market Deeping; it is itself in Northamptonshire), 8th October, 1672.

* Schiller: Geschichte des 30jährigen Krieges.