Death of lady Claypole.-Declining health of the protector. Government of Cromwel considered.-Character of the na- tion over which he presided.-Majority of the nation hos- tile. The people in general favourable to the ancient line of their kings.Spirit of liberty that had sprung up.-Sen- timents extensively prevailing in behalf of a government according to law.Religious character of the nation.-The people divided into the humorous and the demure.-The noble and rich unfriendly to Cromwel.-Religious and moral character of the protector.-He aims at the reform- ation of the law.-His clemency and humane disposition. -His patronage of letters and learned men.-A free par- liament would have restored the Stuarts.--Arbitrary impri- sonments resorted to by Cromwel.-Unpalatable measures to which he had recourse.-Some of them unavoidable.— Others of a doubtful character.-Dissatisfaction they pro- duced. High reputation of his lawyers.-Violent charac- ter of his administration.-Its apparent versatility.-Se- quel of his government, if he had lived longer, considered. 597 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. BOOK THE FOURTH. OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR. CHAPTER I. PARENTAGE AND ALLIANCES OF CROMWEL. HIS EARLY LIFE. REFUSES THE TITLE OF SCRIBED. DISPOSITION DE I. of Crom OLIVER Cromwel, lord protector of England, was CHAP. lineally descended from the family of Thomas Cromwel, earl of Essex, vicar general of En- Ancestors gland, and prime minister in the reign of Henry wel. the Eighth. The sister of Essex became the wife of Morgan Williams of Llanishen in the county of Glamorgan. Sir Richard Williams, the issue of this marriage, obtained many extensive grants of nunneries and monasteries, at that time dissolved, and, among the rest, of the nunnery of IV. BOOK Hinchinbrook and the abbey of Ramsey, both in the county of Huntingdon. He also, in honour of his maternal uncle, assumed the name of Cromwel. Sir Henry, eldest son of sir Richard, was once member of parliament for the county of Huntingdon, and four times sheriff of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, in the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Oliver, the son of sir Henry, was also several times member of parliament for his native county, and repeatedly entertained king James the First in his mansion of Hinchinbrook. Robert, the father of the lord protector, was next brother to sir Oliver. He chiefly resided in the town of Huntingdon where the protector was born, and once represented that borough in parliament a. His alliances. To men of a liberal mind it will however appear more honourable to Cromwel that he was nearly allied to John Hampden, the distinguished founder of the commonwealth, and to Waller, the poet; persons, who added these intrinsic merits, to the accidental one of being, each of them respectively, the head of a considerable and opulent family in the county of Buckingham. The mother of Hampden was the sister of the father of Cromwel. Waller, in the heraldic sense, was no relation to the protector, the alliance merely con a Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwel, Vol. I, Part I and II. .I. sisting in the circumstance, that Waller stood in CHAP. the same degree of affinity to Hampden, that Hampden stood in to Cromwel b. member of versity of marriage. The protector himself was entered a gentle- Entered a man-commoner of Sidney-Sussex college in the the uniuniversity of Cambridge in April 1616, two days Cambridge. before he had completed the seventeenth year of his age. He married, four years after, Elizabeth, His daughter of sir James Bourchier, knight, who was probably in some way related to sir John Bourchier, member in the Long Parliament of 1640 for the borough of Rippon in the county of York. Sir John Bourchier sat on the trial of the king, and was one of the council of state in the third year of the commonwealth e. at Hun From the period of his marriage Cromwel ap- Residence pears to have resided at Huntingdon, where all tingdon. his children, except the youngest, eight in number, were baptized. He represented this borough Member of in the third parliament of Charles the First, which met in 1628f. Parliament. at St. Ives. About the year 1633 he removed from Hun- Residence tingdon to St. Ives, where he is understood to have devoted his attention to agriculture. In 1636 he changed his residence once more to the Ibid. Vol. II, Art. vii. c Cromwel, Memoirs of Cromwel, p. 210, 212. * See above, Vol. III, p. 234. IV. at Ely. BOOK city of Ely, in consequence of having inherited the estates of his maternal uncle, sir Thomas Steward of that place, who is said to have been allied to the royal house of Stuarts. In the Long Parliament in 1640 he was chosen to represent the borough of Cambridge. His station in society. It is recorded in the Journals, that in February 1642 he offered a loan of three hundred pounds for the service of the commonwealth"; and, when, a very short time after, it was voted that two millions and a half of acres in Ireland should be appropriated for the satisfaction of persons who advanced money for reducing the rebellion in that country, Cromwel is said to have been a subscriber of five hundred pounds. He was also one of seventy-five persons, who in the ensuing summer raised, each of them, a troop of sixty horse, to His domes- serve in the approaching wark. His conduct in his own family appears to have been most affectionate and exemplary1; and the stories of his dissolute and disorderly demeanour in early life are palpable forgeries of the royalist writers. tic charac ter. With respect to his literary acquirements, we are told on the authority of Waller, that he was Cromwel, Memoirs, p. 225, 226. h Journals, Feb. 1. 1 Cromwel, Memoirs of Cromwel, p. 231. * See above, Vol. I, p. 22. 'Milton, State Papers, p. 40. Noble, Vol. I, Proofs, QQ, RR. Cromwel, Memoirs, p. 222, et seqq. |