nation (and such a nation!) prostrate at the footstool of his illegal, and yet miscalled divine sovereignty-did the incipient Protector retire to the privacy of his family and native town, with a mind as deeply conscious of its powers," as his spirit, constitutionally irritable, was imbued with a sort of instinctive aversion to every act of authority, the product of its own misguided heat, or self-sufficient wantonness? Probably not yet he could not but have perceived, in a degree, the mental fire yet smothering within him. Certainly, however, the most exuberant imagination, though by possibility it might have pictured to itself the impending fall of a monarchy, at once so arbitrarily and illadvisedly supported by the sovereign head, could never have pourtrayed its owner, moving in such a sphere as Cromwell then did, as one day occupying the seat, from which the erratic, misled monarch was to be precipitated. It is more consistent with probability to suppose, that he partook, in a measure, of that dejected hopelessness of witnessing any future parliament, which now began to pervade the entire kingdom; as well as in the sad conviction, that no very apparent line of conduct had been provided for the wisest representative assembly by the constitution, as it then stood, by which to bar the subject from the tyranny of a king, who had evinced that he would acknowledge

the rightful liberties of the people only to obtain relief from his immediate necessities, and would afterward most unfeignedly, as it seemed, believe, that his kingly office itself placed him above every obligation to fulfil the engagements by circumstances extorted from him. His aspirations after freedom thus pent within him, it may be thought too much to infer with Milton, in a passage already quoted, that he 'had enlarged his hopes (relying upon God and a great soul) in a quiet bosom, for any the most exalted times :' it is perhaps rather likely, that his fervors, restrained from flowing in their newly-opened political channel, recurred with increased violence to that of enthusiastic piety; and there exists not the slightest evidence to prove, that this piety was as yet otherwise than unaffectedly sincere.

It appears possible too, from the causes just mentioned, though the facts themselves may have been greatly exaggerated, that he now became, as Dr. Simcott, his physician, assured Sir Philip Warwick, 'a splenetic,' having fancies about the cross in the town;' and, the Doctor adds, he had been called up to him at midnight, and at such unseasonable hours, many times, upon a strange phantasy, which made him believe he was dying.' Such stories, particularly when they relate to remarkable personages, seldom lose by their repetition; and

both the worthy Doctor might enlarge a little, in pouring them into the ears of so staunch a loyalist, and Sir Philip increase the sum of the marvellous, in retailing them for the Cromwellhating times of Charles II. Relative to this period also, if it be founded in truth, must be the assertion, that his house at Huntingdon 'became the retreat of the persecuted non-conformist teachers:' the inhabitants, as Noble affirms, shewing a building behind it, which, they say, he erected for a chapel, where many of the disaffected had their religious rites performed, and in which he himself sometimes gave them edifying sermons.' Nothing can be more likely, than that his sensitive spirit, equally affected by tyranny in every form, should tempt him to afford all the protection within the scope of his ability to a religious sect, then dreadfully abused and persecuted by the higher powers; and his doing so must be allowed to possess the greater merit, inasmuch as it is made clear by subsequent occurrences, that he had not as yet become a partaker of their communion. For the reason last-mentioned, however, it becomes improbable that he should allow himself to lead their pious exercises; and his edifying sermons' at Huntingdon, there can be little doubt, had no existence but in the inventions of a period posterior to the date of his own.

From a letter of Cromwell's, dated St. Ives,

Jan. 11, 1635, (g) he appears to have been resident there in that year, and that in the capacity of a Farmer; having, with consent of his mother, and his uncle, Sir Oliver, sold his paternal estates at Huntingdon for £1800, and stocked his farm with the produce.* In his asserted activity in the parochial affairs of this place may, perhaps, be traced the germ of that talent for public business he afterward so eminently displayed. But, clearly, the accounts given by some writers, of his turning his new vocation to loss rather than profit, owing to an over mixture of religious with his secular affairs, are in themselves ridiculous and inconsistent. Cromwell ever appeared too sensible of the value of that precept, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' to give to such tales the slightest semblance to

* When the author of the "Memoirs of the Protectorate House" wrote, a barn which Cromwell built at St. Ives was still standing; and the farmer then in possession also used his identical marking-irons, inscribed "O. C.", for marking his own sheep.

+ Heath, the before-mentioned author of the Flagellum,' "pretends that the servants were not sent into the field till nine o'clock in the morning, and detained after dinner very late to hear a market lecture retailed; and that these religious servants, to make up for the lost time, played at cards instead of ploughing, and other businesses they were to have been employed in: -card-playing and praying do not seem to accord."--Noble.

probability. Yet the letter just alluded to sufficiently evidences the fact, that his religious feelings at this time were as real as they were outwardly fervent; since they are found to have rendered him most earnest in a matter connected with them, but in which he could have no personal nor interested concern. The object of his desires in this epistle, was the continuance of a Dr. Welles, a man of goodnesse, and industrie, and abilitie every way,' in a lectureship which the person to whom it was addressed had instituted; and all the circumstances point to the conclusion, that this lectureship was within the pale of the establishment; for at St. Ives, he is known to have regularly attended the public worship of the church; and, indeed, such was the intolerant bigotry of prelacy at that era, he might have vainly sought the land, had he been so disposed, for a public conventicle. But, there is good reason to believe, he had long conceived a very natural disgust at the almost exclusive regard to temporalities, but too generally manifested by the clergy. His religious scruples, at the same period, were carried to such a height, that he returned several sums of money, (in one instance £30, in another so much as £120,) which he had formerly won by gambling, to the losers. Of the truth of this account, since his enemies join in its relation, there cannot be