Cut Grass are grown somewhat strange to us! Read; and having sneered duly, - consider: For my worthy Friend Oliver St. John, Esquire, SolicitorGeneral: These, at Lincoln's Inn. DEAR SIR, Knaresborough, 1st Sept. '1648.' I can say nothing; but surely the Lord our God is a great and glorious God. He only is worthy to be feared and trusted, and His appearances particularly to be waited for. He will not fail His People. Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord! I Remember my love to my dear brother H. Vane: pray he make not too little, nor I too much, of outward dispensations: God preserve us all, that we, in simplicity of our spirits, may patiently attend upon them. Let us all be not careful what men will make of these actings. They, will they, nill they, shall fulfil the good pleasure of God; and we shall serve our generations. Our rest we expect elsewhere: that will be durable. Care we not for tomorrow, nor for anything. This Scripture has been of great stay to me: read Isaiah Eighth, 10, 11, 14; read all the Chapter. * I am informed from good hands, that a poor godly man died in Preston, the day before the Fight; and being sick, near the hour of his death, he desired the woman that cooked to him, To fetch him a handful of *Yes, the indignant symbolic "Chapter," about Mahershalal-hashbaz, and the vain desires of the wicked, is all worth reading; here are the Three Verses referred to, more especially: "Take counsel together," ye unjust, "and it shall come to naught; speak the word, and it shall not stand. For "God is with us - Sanctify the Lord of Hosts; and let Him be your fear, "and let Him be your dread. And He shall be for a sanctuary: but for 66 a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the Houses of Israel; "for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem! And many among them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be "taken." This last verse, we find, is often in the thoughts of Oliver. Grass. She did so; and when he received it, he asked Whether it would wither or not, now it was cut? The woman said, "Yea." He replied, "So should this Army of the Scots do, and come to nothing, so soon as ours did but appear," or words to this effect; and so immediately died. My service to Mr. W. P., Sir J. E., and the rest of our good friends. I hope I do often remember you. Yours, OLIVER CROMWELL. My service to Frank Russel and Sir Gilbert Pickering. § "Sir J. E," when he received this salutation, was palpable enough; but has now melted away to the Outline of a Shadow! I guess him to be Sir John Evelyn of Wilts; and, with greater confidence, "Mr. W. P.” to be William Pierpoint, Earl of Kingston's Son, a man of superior faculty, of various destiny and business, "called in the Family traditions, Wise William; Ancestor of the Dukes of Kingston (Great-grandfather of that Lady Mary, whom as Wortley Montagu all readers still know); and much a friend of Oliver, as we shall transiently see. LETTER LXVIII. 19 ANOTHER private Letter: to my Lord Wharton; to congratulate him on some "particular mercy," seemingly the birth of an heir, and to pour out his sense of these great general mercies. This Philip Lord Wharton is also of the Committee of Derby House, the Executive in those months; it is probable* Cromwell had been sending despatches to them, and had hastily enclosed these private Letters in the Packet. Philip Lord Wharton seems to have been a zealous Puritan, much concerned with Preachers, Chaplains &c. in his domestic § Ayscough мss. 4107, f. 94; a Copy by Birch. *Commons Journals, vi. 6, 5th September., establishment; and full of Parliamentary and Politico-religious business in public. He had a regiment of his own raising at Edgehill Fight; but it was one of those that ran away; whereupon the unhappy Colonel took refuge "in a sawpit, says Royalism confidently, crowing over it without end.* A quarrel between him and Sir Henry Mildmay, Member for Malden, about Sir Henry's saying, 'He Wharton had made his peace at Oxford' in November 1643, is noted in the Commons Journals, iii. 300. It was to him, about the time of this Cromwell Letter, that one Osborne, a distracted King's flunkey, had written, accusing Major Rolf, a soldier under Hammond, of attempting to poison Charles in the Isle of Wight. ** This Philip's patrimonial estate, Wharton, still a Manorhouse of somebody, lies among the Hills on the southwest side of Westmoreland; near the sources of the Eden, the Swale rising on the other watershed not far off. He seems, however, to have dwelt at Upper Winchington, Bucks, "a seat near Great Wycomb." He lived to be a Privy Councillor to William of Orange.*** He died in 1696. Take this other anecdote, once a very famous one: "James Stewart of Blantyre in Scotland, son of a Treasurer Stewart, and himself a great favourite of King James, was a "gallant youth; came up to London with great hopes: but a "discord falling out between him and the young Lord Whar"ton, they went out to single combat each against the other; "and at the first thrust each of them killed the other, and they "fell dead in one another's arms on the place.”† The "place" was Islington fields; the date 8th November 1609. The tragedy gave rise to much balladsinging and other rumour. + Our Philip is that slain Wharton's Nephew. This Letter has been preserved by Thurloe; four blank spaces ornamented with due asterisks occur in it, - Editor Birch does not inform us whether from tearing off the Seal, or * Wood's Athenæ, iii. 177, and in all manner of Pamphlets elsewhere. ** Wood, iii. 501; Pamphlets; Commons Journals, &c. *** Wood, iv. 407, 542; Fasti, i. 335; Nicolas's Synopsis of the Peerage. + Scotstarvet's Staggering State (Edinburgh, 1754, a very curious little Book), p. 32. ++Bibliotheca Topographica, no. xlix. why. In these blank spaces the conjectural sense, which I distinguish here as usual by commas, is occasionally somewhat questionable. For the Right Honourable the Lord Wharton: These. 'Knaresborough,' 2d Sept. 1648. * MY LORD, You know how untoward I am at this business of writing; yet a word. I beseech the Lord make us sensible of this great mercy here, which surely was much more than 'the sense of it' the House expresseth. I trust to have, through' the goodness of our God, time and opportunity to speak of it to you face to face. When we think of our God, what are we! Oh, His mercy to the whole society of saints, despised, jeered saints! Let them mock on. Would we were all saints! The best of us are, God knows, poor weak saints; yet saints; if not sheep, yet lambs; and must be fed. We have daily bread, ** and shall have it, in despite of all enemies. There's enough in our Father's house, and He dispenseth it.*** I think, through these outward mercies, as we call them, Faith, Patience, Love Hope are exercised and perfected,-yea, Christ formed, and grows to a perfect man within us. I know not well how to distinguish: the difference is only in the subject, 'not in the object;' to a worldly man they are outward, to a saint Christian; — but I dispute not. The House calls it "a wonderful great mercy and success," this Preston victory (Commons Journals, v. 680); and then passes on to other matters, not quite adequately conscious that its life had been saved hereby! What fire was blazing, and how high, in Wales, and then in Lancashire, is known only in perfection to those that trampled it out. ** Spiritual food, encouragement of merciful Providence, from day to day. ***There follows here in the Birch edition: "As our eyes" [seven stars] "behinde, then wee can" [seven stars] "we for him:" words totally unintelligible; and not worth guessing at, the original not being here, but only Birch's questionable reading of it. My Lord, I rejoice in your particular mercy. I hope that it is so to you. If so, it shall not hurt you; not make you plot or shift for the young Baron to make him great. You will say, "He is God's to dispose of, and guide for;" and there you will leave him. My love to the dear little Lady, better 'to me' than the child. The Lord bless you both. My love and service to all Friends high and low; if you will, to my Lord and Lady Mulgrave and Will Hill. I am truly, Your faithful friend and humblest servant, - During these very days, perhaps it was exactly two days after, "on Monday last," if that mean 4th September,* Monro, lying about Appleby, has a party of horse "sent into the Bishopric;" firing "divers houses" thereabouts, and not forgetting to plunder "the Lord Wharton's tenants" by the road: Cromwell penetrating towards Berwick, yet still at a good distance, scatters this and other predatory parties rapidly enough to Appleby, as it were by the very wind of him; like a coming mastiff smelt in the gale by vermin. They are swifter than he, and get to Scotland, by their dexterity and quick scent, unscathed. "Across to Kelso" about September 8th.** Mulgrave in those years is a young Edmund Sheffield, of whom, except that he came afterwards to sit in the Council of State, and died a few days before the Protector, History knows not much. "Will Hill" is perhaps Will Hill, a Puritan Merchant in London, ruined out of "a large estate" by lending for the public service; who, this Summer, and still in this very month, is dunning the Lords and Commons, the Lords with rather more effect, to try if they cannot give him some kind of payment, or shadow of an attempt at payment, § Thurloe, i. 99. * Cromwelliana, p. 45. ** Rushworth, vii. 1250, 3, 9, 60. |