University of Virginia Library

CROMWELL.
BOOK III.

Milton—from Senecs.

1. CHAPTER I.

Julius Cæsar.

Two full years had gone round since the defeat
of Naseby had paralyzed the efforts and destroyed
the hopes of Charles Stuart's party. During the
whole remainder of that fatal year—even when
winter had set in with its most keen severity—the
arms of Cromwell swept like a hurricane over the
western and the midland counties. No leader
could compete with him on terms of vantage or
equality—no forces stand against him in the field
—no town or garrison resist his prowess. Chief
after chief was beaten in detail; stronghold upon
stronghold surrendered, or was stormed sword in
hand; till, to conclude the whole, Winchester and
the long-disputed post of Baring House were
taken, and Astley, on the 21st of March—the sole
commander of the king's now at the head of any
power—suffered so total a defeat at Stow-on-the-Wold,
being himself made prisoner, with sixteen

hundred of his men, that he said frankly to his
captors, “My masters, you have done your work,
and may go play, unless you please now to fall out
among yourselves.”

His fortunes in the field being thus utterly disastrous,
after some fruitless efforts at negotiation
with the parliament and with the Independent
leaders—negotiation marked by all his usual chicane
and insincerity—on the fifth day of May
Charles threw himself into the quarters of the Earl
of Leven, then besieging Newark. How the Scots
dealt with their unhappy monarch—who, whatsoever
were his faults, undoubtedly confided in their
honour—the world knows, for it has become a brand
of national reproach. Treated, from the first moment
when they found he would not guarantee their
Covenant, and promise to establish Presbyterian
rule throughout the land, not as a prisoner merely,
but with indignity and insult—how, Judaslike, they
sold him to the parliament, and gave him up to
Skippon, like a mere thing of merchandise, on payment
of two hundred thousand pounds, is history.
But not so, that it was several times in the unfortunate
king's power to escape to France or Holland,
but that the menacing and angry letters of
his false queen, who had her own peculiar reasons
for dreading a reunion with her injured husband at
this moment, prevented him till it was all too late,
and, in effect, consigned him to the block. That
the uxorious and weak king was mainly prompted
to the war by the ill counsels of his adulterous
wife, is evident. Her pride—her education—
her hereditary prejudices—her selfwill—nay, her
very birth itself, made it but natural that she
should aim at arbitrary power, and urge her husband,
himself obstinate as weak, to that insane and
suicidal policy which ultimately proved his ruin.

But that, herself in safety, she should, with cool
determined infidelity, insist on his remaining among
his deadly enemies, when hope was itself at an
end, would seem incredible, were it not fixed beyond
a doubt by the existence of her threatening
letters and his heart-broken answers.

Immediately on his surrender to the parliament
he was removed to Holmby Castle, where he remained
in close though honourable custody, served
and attended as a king, and suffered to indulge in
all his favourite recreations, though strictly watched,
and vigilantly hindered from any secret correspondence
with his friends, and even interdicted
from communion with ministers of the Episcopalian
church. At this very time there was in progress
a desperate struggle between the Presbyterians
and the army. The former, having already
utterly suppressed Episcopacy through the realm,
proceeded with the sternest and most bigoted intolerance
of persecution against all sects, Papist or
Protestant, clearly demonstrating their resolution
to subject the whole kingdom to a system of
church governance, connected with the state, under
the Presbyterian form, as fully organized as that
which they had just put down, and ten times more
obnoxious to domestic freedom—ten times more
rigid, fierce, inquisitorial, and tyrannical. Against
these measures the Independents, who, although a
minority in both houses, were formidable from the
talents of the leaders, the enthusiasm of the mass,
the real justice of their cause, and, above all, from
the fact that they possessed the power of the sword,
the army being almost unanimously in their favour,
offered all constitutional opposition—but to no purpose.
Petition after petition was presented, only
to be contemned and disregarded. Just at this
moment it was rumoured, and, as was shortly

proved, most truly, that the parliament was now
preparing to disband the army without payment of
its long arrears, and then to re-enlist it, under Presbyterian
officers, for the conquest of rebellious Ireland—a
plot most cunningly devised, could it have
been effected, for wresting their ascendency from
Ireton and Cromwell, and rendering themselves
unquestioned masters of the state. This instantly
gave rise to mutinies the most alarming; the army
organized itself into political divisions—the privates,
under their adjutators, elected two from every regiment,
and the officers forming a superior council—
and treated with the parliament, as a species of
fourth estate, holding itself under arms, and ready
for offensive action. At the first of this crisis
Cromwell opposed the mutineers with such apparent
energy and zeal, that, for a time, he lost his
popularity with his own soldiery; and, shortly afterward,
having been accused, or, at the least, suspected,
in the house, of underhanded tampering
with the mutineers, he cleared himself to the full
satisfaction of all present by a most vehement and
overpowering burst of indignation, mingled with
tears, and prayers, and explanations, such as removed
from every mind all doubts of his integrity.
Shortly, however, fresh suspicions were excited
among the Presbyterian leaders, who, dark and
wily in their own secret machinations, naturally
feared the like manœuvres from their political opponents.
By some means it leaked out that a new
Presbyterian army was to be raised forthwith, the
veteran host compelled to disband at the sword's
point, and Cromwell, Ireton, and Harrison—the
champions of the Independents—committed to the
Tower. Thus forced, in self-defence, to concur in
those very movements which they had first opposed
as mutiny—unless they should prefer to submit
tamely to their own destruction, and to the overthrow
of all those principles of civil and religious
freedom for which they had so long and painfully
contended—the military chieftains acted with all
that rapid and decisive energy which had continually
signalized their conduct in the field. The instant
they had ascertained the truth of these reports,
one Joyce, a man of well-proved resolution,
though by rank only cornet in Whalley's regiment
of horse, was sent to Holmby to secure the person
of the king, who was conducted with all the speed
consistent with respect to the headquarters of the
army; and such was the considerate and honourable
bearing of the soldiery toward their captive
monarch, that, on Fairfax disavowing Joyce's enterprise
and offering to send him back to Holmby,
he at once replied that “naught but force should
urge him to it.” And, in good truth, the difference
of his situation was so great as well to justify his
preference; and could he even then have laid aside
dissimulation, and acted with straightforward singleness
of purpose, it is most certain he might
again have filled the throne of his fathers. Both
parties were, indeed, at this time willing, nay, desirous,
to reinstate the sovereign; for such a union
as that measure would have caused with the still
powerful, though beaten, faction of the cavaliers,
would have placed either permanently in the ascendant.
The Presbyterians proffered to replace
him on the throne, provided he would yield assent
to the substitution of a Presbytery for the established
Church of England, endowed with all its ancient
privileges, to the absolute suppression of all
other sects; and farther, to such cessions of prerogative
as would have left him but the shadow of
a sceptre. The Independents stipulated merely
for universal toleration—excepting only papistry,
which they insisted he should extirpate entirely,
root and branch—and for the full securing to all
men of every constitutional and civil privilege. In
either case his life and throne would have been
both secured to him; yet could he not refrain from
playing off the one against the other faction, till
both had learned that they could place no confidence
in his sincerity or truth.

While he continued with the army, all was, for
a long time, comparatively sunshine; at Cromwell's
intercession, his children—the young Dukes
of York and Gloucester, and the Princess Elizabeth—were
suffered constantly to visit him, and
to remain in his society. Two chaplains of his
own persuasion—an indulgence sternly refused
him by the parliament—were granted willingly by
the commanders of the soldiery, who, while they
asserted their own liberty to worship as they chose
—to preach and pray themselves, and listen to the
exhortations, not of licensed gospellers, but of their
own military saints—consistent at the least in this
—were willing to concede to others, unlike the bitterer
Presbyterians, the same rights which they
stickled for themselves. Fortified now by possessing,
not the person only, but the confidence and
favour of the king, the army moved toward London.
From Newmarket they marched to Royston,
Reading, and then Windsor; and at the latter place
Charles occupied his royal castle. Thence, after
some delay, advancing, they encamped on Hounslow,
their leaders holding constant although guarded
intercourse with their now trembling and half
discomfited opponents. Early in August the king
was reinstalled in Hampton Court, and all things
seemed to be once more his own. His yeomen
of the wardrobe and the guard attended him; he
was permitted to hold levees of all parties; all his

own favourite advisers were permitted to resort to
him, including several under the ban of parliament.
There was, as it were, a general amnesty and reconciliation.
Members of both the houses visited
him; Cromwell and Ireton held close and constant
intercourse with him; and so sincere were these
in their intention to befriend him, that they actually
commenced a correspondence with the queen's
emissaries, and suffered Berkeley, Legge, and Ashburnham
once more to take their places in his
council. The adjutators of the regiments elected
by the privates, and members from the council of
the officers, attended him with terms so advantageous,
that Sir John Berkeley openly declared, that
“a crown so near lost was never yet so easily recovered
as this would be, were things adjusted on
these terms.” Yet even then, hoping for something
more, he haughtily and scornfully rejected
and, plunging headlong into a fresh scheme with
Lauderdale, assented to the covenant, on the condition
that he should be brought at once to Westminster;
which he had the folly to believe would
place him where he was in power before the outbreak
of hostilities.

The citizens of London and the militia of that
city greedily entered on the scheme, and signed
the covenant by thousands! Both houses instantly
voted this an act of treason against England; but on
that very night their doors were forced by a tumultuous
and infuriate mob of Presbyterians, mingled
with concealed royalists—their persons were assailed
with violence and insult—their very lives endangered!
Compelled by imminent and sudden peril,
they passed a hasty vote sanctioning the return of
Charies, but the next instant voted an adjournment,
as unable to deliberate with liberty of conscience;
and straightway a large party of both houses, with

the speakers, Manchester and Lenthall, at their head,
withdrew from the disordered capital, and finally
repaired to seek protection in the camp at Hounslow.
In the mean time, the violent presumption
of the king, unduly elevated by his supposed success,
and instigated farther by the intriguing Ashburnham,
induced him actually to treat with contumely
the adjutators of the army, openly refusing
to concede the smallest jot of his prerogative, and
even intimating his intention again to force Episcopacy
on the Scots. Inflamed to madness by this
strange tergiversation, the soldiers flew to arms;
and a strong party forced their way into the chambers
of Lord Lauderdale, then in the palace, and
compelled him to return, having held no communication
with the king, direct to London. A few
days after this, with the most perfect shamelessness,
the king in public solemnly disavowed his
dealings with the Covenanters, and once more professed
entire confidence in the commanders of the
army, and feigned a vehement desire to come to
settled terms with them.

In London the remnant of the houses commenced
a weak and futile effort at resistance; they
called out the militia of the city, appointing Waller
and Massey to command their raw tumultuary
levies, repaired the fortifications, and, in short, had
every thing in readiness for action except energy
and courage. After a rendezvous on Hounslow
Heath, the parliamentary seceders were welcomed
by the excited soldiery with the loudest acclamations
and the sincerest tokens of affection. A convention,
held at Sion House, whereat Fairfax and
his superior officers assumed their seats in common
with the members of both houses, decided the
whole question; and on the sixth of August the
army entered London, without experiencing a

shadow of resistance, their colours flying and their
drums beating through the streets! That same
day the seceders were reinstated in their seats by
the strong hand of military power! the General
Fairfax was appointed Constable of the Tower,
and a thanksgiving voted with no dissentient voice
either of peers or commons! Thus was the triumph
of the Independents finally determined, and
themselves raised to power not soon again to fall.

It was the second day after the entrance of the
army that Sir Edgar Ardenne, elevated to the baronetcy
by his father's death—who, though becoming
gradually more and more doubtful of the purity
of Cromwell's motives, had played his part as gallantly
as heretofore throughout the long campaign
of '46 and '47, and even shared in the deliberations
and proceedings of the army as opposed to the yet
darker machinations of the parliament — walked
forth to seek for some solution of his apprehensions
in the deep wisdom of his friend John Milton.
His mind had, in truth, long been in a dubious and
unsettled state; the tyranny of Charles, against
which he had taken arms in the beginning, was
something palpable and obvious, as was his leaning
toward Romish doctrines, and his inclination
to fritter down as much as possible the broad distinction
between the Catholic and Episcopalian
churches. It was, however, rather against the
king's aggression upon civil freedom than against
the abuses of the church that he had warred, although
he saw the latter in so clear a light that he
felt no repugnance to make common cause with
those who viewed them as the greater evil. Now,
when the first oppressor was reduced, the first assailants
of religious freedom beaten and trampled
under foot, it seemed too probable that a new hydra-headed
tyranny would spring up from the down-fallen

despotism, and greater outrages on liberty
of conscience follow than those which had called
England into arms. Such was, indeed, the certain
course of things, if, in the present struggle, the parliament
should regain the ascendency—which body,
it was evident, under the strong plea of necessity,
had already most alarmingly extended their boasted
privilege, leaving all the assumptions of prerogative
immeasurably in the rear, and which, now
that the conflict was decided, showed little disposition
to lay down their dear-bought power. Himself
a follower of the Church of England, Sir Edgar
had seen little to find fault with in the old establishment,
except an over-rigour and a want of
toleration, which he would have extended to all
seets, except the Catholics, who were, in those
days, truly formidable, from their determined spirit
of conversion, their bigotry, and, above all, their
undissembled inclinatron toward arbitrary government.
He therefore looked upon the stern and
overstrained morality of the Presbytery with feelings
of so deep dislike, that he would almost have
surrendered all the gains of the late war to hinder
its establishment as a predominating state-religion,
although he would have gladly suffered it in common
with all other Protestant denominations.
With these views he had naturally joined the Independents
in their contest with the parliament;
but now that they had gained the day, he was yet
ill at ease. A fierce fanatical hoplocracy would
be, it was self-evident, the very worst of governments,
and utterly subversive of the English liberties
and coustitution. The wavering and dishonest
policy of Charles rendered his restoration all but
impossible; while, in the deep-laid and unfathomable
mysteries of Cromwell's course, Ardenne began
to foresee daily more and more cause for apprehension
and for caution. Still, such were the
rare talents of the man, such his inexplicable influence
over the minds of all whom he encountered,
that, while Sir Edgar doubted, he was compelled
to grant that he had no cause for doubt
which he could make clear to himself, much less
to others. At times he fancied his religious ecstasies
mere hypocritic jargon, adopted so to mystify
all eyes and veil his deep ambition; at others—
and that, too, most soberly and often—he believed
him a wild, self-deceiving hypochondriac—an erring,
though sincere enthusiast. Hitherto all that
Oliver had done had doubtless been of service to
the cause of veritable freedom; and it was certain
that his present opposition to the Presbyterians
might prove quite as unselfish, quite as beneficial
to the commonwealth as his preceding opposition
to the king. Still it was too apparent to escape
the foresight of a politican so clear-headed and
far-reaching as Sir Edgar, that, if the military faction
should gain firm foothold in the state, Cromwell
would not lack either talent, opportunity, or
power to mount even to the topmost summits of
ambition, if he should feel the inclination to attempt
them. And who, when all things most magnificently
tempting shall lie prone, subject to his
mere will, yea, courting him to grasp them—when
to dare almost seems a virtue—to refrain a despicable
weakness—who can, in such a situation, answer
for another—who even for himself?

Revolving such thoughts in his mind, and eager
to unbosom himself to some true friend, Sir Edgar
took his way, as has been said, the second evening
after the occupation of the city by the troops, toward
the dwelling of John Milton. The controversialist
had changed his domicil during this
troubled period, and now occupied a smaller house

in Holborn, opening backward upon Lincoln's Inn.
It was a lovely evening as ever smiled upon the
earth which Ardenne had selected for his visit to
the patriotic poet. The setting sun, that alchymist
of nature, shone out so brilliantly from an
unclouded sky, that even the great wilderness of
walls and chimneys, for once seen through a purer
medium than their accustomed canopy of fog and
smoke, looked cheerfully. The same grave-eyed
and sober-looking servitor who had admitted him
at his last visit six long years before, opened the
door; and, in reply to his inquiry, informed him
that Master Milton was within, but in his garden;
and, ushering him into a small parlour, decked with
the selfsame dark-green hangings, offered to call
his master; but, declining his civility, Sir Edgar
walked himself into the narrow stripe of garden,
planted with a few lilachs and laburnums, all besmirched
and dingy from the effects of the London
atmosphere. At first he saw not any thing of
him he sought; but, in a moment after, he distinguished
the full solemn voice, whose cadences,
once heard, could never be forgotten, proceeding
from a little arbour facing the western sun, and
covered by a mass of annual creepers such as
may easily be reared even upon the meanest plat
of soil. The sounds, however, were not as of one
engaged in conversation, but resembled rather the
accents of a person thinking aloud, or possibly
composing what might be afterward committed to
the safer guardianship of paper. The words
which reached his ear as he advanced were these,
at no long period subsequently published in the
poem styled II Penseroso.

That which was most peculiar in the manner
of the speaker, if, as Ardenne suspected, he were
pronouncing thoughts which for the first time now
were couched in language, was, that they flowed
in one melodious and uninterrupted stream, unbroken
by the slightest pause or hesitation, and
running, as it were, into spontaneous melody; as
unpremeditated as the music of a bird, the murmuring
of a rivulet, or any other natural sound that
soothes the ear of man with untaught harmony.
He had not, however, much time to drink in the
sweet and solemn verses, for the quick ear of the
poet—quicker, perhaps, as his sense of vision year
after year became less vigorous—detected an approaching
footstep on the gravel walk; and, ceasing
instantly from his employment, he stepped
forth to meet his visiter. The countenance of
Milton was but little altered, embalmed as it were
by his passionless and peaceful avocations, excepting
that perhaps the furrows on his expansive
forehead—furrows of thought, not age—were somewhat
deeper, and the whole expression of his lineaments
more subdued and even melancholy than
when they last met his friend's eye. The change,
if change there were, was slight indeed as compared
with the havoc which anxiety, grief, hardship,
and exposure, more than time, had wrought
on the fine features of Sir Edgar Ardenne. His
glance was, indeed, bright as ever—his carriage as
erect and dignified—his limbs as muscular, nay,
even as elastic. But the high manly beauty—the
triumphant energy—the soul out-flashing from the

face at every new emotion—the flush of youth—
the glorious radiancy of a fresh mind—were utterly
extinct for ever. The features were, indeed, the
same in their proud classic mould, save that the
nose was sharpened, and that the mouth so
firmly set, rarely or never now relaxed into that
playful smile that used to light up the whole countenance
like sudden sunshine. Deep lines were
visible, not on the forehead only, but hard and
sharply cut from either nostril downward. His
hair, still soft and waving, was streaked in many
places with premature and wintry gray; and, more
than all, a dull dead shadow had settled down
upon him with a gloom like that which an autumnal
cloud will cast upon a landscape that, scarce
a minute past, was laughing in its sunniest loveliness.
At first sight Milton scarcely recognised his
friend and pupil; and when at length he framed
a half apology, attributing the blame to his own
“great infirmity, becoming,” as he said, “as each
morn rose on its preceding night, but more and
more decided.”

“I thank you,” answered Ardenne, grasping the
soft hand of the scholar with warm affection, “I
thank you for your kindly artifice; but I well
know that hard seasons, and yet harder fortunes,
have so far changed me, that, were my mother living,
she scarce could recognise her son in the gray
weather-beaten soldier that alone remains of him.
But, after all, what matters it? what matters it that
our frail bodies should wear out and wither, when
even thus they outlive empires! But let us in—
if I may so far trespass on your leisure—my mind
is ill at ease, and I would fain cast off some of its
secret burdens into ears which I know friendly,
wise, and trustworthy.”

Milton assented with a kindly but grave gesture;

sympathizing more deeply than could have
been expected, from his unworldly habits and philosophic
style of thought, in the appalling change
which he was well aware could have been only
wrought by singular affliction on the aspect of a
man whom he knew by experience, to be calmer
and more disciplined of mind than the most chastened
of his austere contemporaries. They walked
in silence to the house, for too full were the hearts
of both to vent themselves in any converse of
small moment; but, when once seated in the
quiet parlour, Ardenue at once broke silence. “I
have,” he said, “methinks, more than a common
claim on you for that advice and information
which I believe no man can so well afford me;
seeing that it was owing mainly to your exhortations
that I determined on embarking actively
upon that stream of circumstances which has all
blindly swept me onward to this pass. Obedient
—or, I should rather say, convinced by those your
exhortations, I have been, as you know, a faithful
and unflinching, if unimportant, actor in the
events which have dethroned the king—abolished
the established church—and, to conclude, laid the
whole realm—laws, liberties, and lives of Englishmen—at
the precarious mercy of an armed and
zealot multitude. In thus pursuing the dictates of
your advice not less than of my conscience, I devoted
myself wholly to what I then believed my
country's good. I have lost—sacrificed—every
thing! I am alone among the ruins of my house
—a sole and thunder-stricken column left standing
when its temple hath for ever fallen. My father
died at Naseby—my only consolation, that he forgot
our differences, and blessed me ere he passed
away. My betrothed bride—you saw her once in
our young days of hope and promise, and know
her priceless worth—is perishing by inches of a
pined and broken heart. But this—ay! all this I
could bear, were it not that dark fears have grown
into my soul till I doubt every thing—almost my
own integrity and honour. A busy voice is whispering
at my heart that I have forfeited all that
makes life a blessing—nay, more, that I have
aided in destroying all those most dear to me, and
in the chase of a vain phantom! And more, yet
more than this—that in the very chase I have but
been the sport and mockery of a falsehood. I
feel, I see, that England has been deluged with
the blood of her free sons—her valleys fattened
with the corpses of her best and bravest—her
wise and pious prelates driven from out their
spheres of usefulness—her monarch, justly, I grant,
but fatally, held captive in the very palaces of his
forefathers—her constitution plunged into the wildest
jeopardy. All this I feel—I see. The havoc
and the misery, the desolation and the peril! But,
when I look forward, all is blank and hopeless.
The worst view, anarchy in the state, and persecution
in the church! For government—an army
of sectarians and schismatics—fanatical, and ignorant,
and savage! For council—a small knot of
officers; wild visionary madmen, like Harrison and
Lilburne—enthusiasts, like Ireton—or hypocrites
and mercenary knaves, like hundreds I could name,
but need not! and for church—an austere, intolerant,
morose, heart-chilling discipline—paralyzing
every noble aspiration—condemning every innocent
and lawful pleasure—hardening, and, at the
same time, lowering every heart—confounding
every real standard—narrowing all distinctions between
vice and virtue—converting men into mere
hypocrites, or, worse, into mere misanthropes and
brutes! This is the darker side of the picture;
turn it! and the best view—truly, the more I look
upon it, the more sure do I feel that it will come
to pass—the best view is the resurrection of a
stronger dynasty—stronger, because supported
by a standing army, founded upon a conquest,
erected on the ruins of all that did oppose its predecessor,
and cannot oppose it—a dynasty, with
for its founder and its head, mightier and more
dangerous a thousand fold than Charles, because
more wise, more valiant, and more virtuous—start
not, my friend, at what I am about to say—with
for its tyrant—Cromwell!”

“I have heard you without interruption,” answered
Milton, in his rich, persuasive tones, “but
with sorrow, with attention, and with wonder.
Sorrow—that you have lain beneath the burden of
affliction, such as no fainting pilgrim of us all could
bear and live, did we not know that such is but the
test which the Supreme Artificer applies to try the
temper and the metal of our souls—the purgative,
like fire under the rude ores of the mine, by which
he fits our corrupt bodies to put on incorruption.
Attention—for that, although I trust to show them
baseless as the morning vapours which disappear
before the all-pervading daylight, your prognostics
are fraught deeply with the world's wisdom, and
your views of the presbytery entirely sound and
solid. Wonder—that you should doubt, or anywise
distrust, the purest and sincerest patriot, the most
upright judge, the stoutest man-of-war, the trustiest
and most pains-taking Christian that the Lord
hath raised up, since the old days of Israel's glory,
to vindicate the liberties and wipe away the sorrows
of an oppressed and groaning people.”

“I rejoice much,” Edgar replied, “to hear that
much is your opinion. I cannot say, indeed, that I
so much distrust him as I do the tide of circumstances

which seem to flow on irresistibly toward
his elevation. Charles never can again sit on the
throne; no party can place confidence in him; myself
I would not see him there, for whensoever he
should fancy he had gained the power, so surely as
we two are here conversing now, would he renew
these struggles. He is in heart—by habit—by his
very blood, a despot. But let me profit by your
wisdom—to what end do you look, whether for
sorrow or rejoicing?”

“The lieutenant-general,” answered Milton,
“has gone hence but now—scarcely an hour before
you came. Indeed, he passed a great part of
the morning with me in grave disputation; for we
did not, nor do we yet, agree. He would replace
Charles Stuart in the high places of his fathers,
dreading the tyranny of the parliament more than
he dreads the despotism of the king—the persecutions
of the Presbyterians beyond the persecutions
of the Prelatists.”

“Indeed!” Sir Edgar answered, in great astonishment;
“indeed! Then have I much misjudged
him. Restore Charles Stuart! I should have
thought he would have stricken off his right hand
sooner!”

“He would do so, however,” Milton replied;
“beyond all doubt he would. He deems he has
devised a scheme to fetter him within the bounds
of lawful power. Besides, he trusts his gratitude
—mistaken trust, I fear me, on most unstable
grounds. He parted hence almost in anger, for
that I thwarted him and held his project naught.”

“And the terms?” asked Sir Edgar; “what be
the terms on which he would restore him?”

“Certain improvements in the freedom of elections,”
returned the other, “and in the rights of
parliament. The military power both by land and

sea, and the creation of all great officers of state,
to be for ten years vested solely in that body. No
person who has warred against the parliament to
sit for five years, whether as peer or commoner, or
to hold any office. No peers created since the removal
of the privy seal in '42 to sit without permission
of both houses. All grants made by the
king since that same date to be held void; all by
the lords and commons valid. The liturgy not to
be enjoined, nor yet the covenant enforced, but all
coercive power to be taken from the bishops and
the clergy. The king, queen, and the royal issue,
except in these points, to resume all their old powers
and prerogatives without restriction; and, lastly,
an indemnity, to all but five delinquents, to be
granted in behalf of those who have served for the
king, whether in camp or council.”

“And does the king consent?” Ardenne inquired
once more.

“Surely he does,” the poet answered; “he
were mad to refuse conditions which, fallen as he
is, he could have scarce even hoped for.”

“It would work well,” said Edgar, musing very
deeply. “It would work excellently well if the
king might be trusted. But—I fear still. At all
events, the zeal of Cromwell to promote this settlement
argues that I have been unjust in my suspicions.
Yes, I have greatly wronged him. But
you said that you differed from his views, and that
he went hence ireful and chafing. I pray you tell
me—what, then, are your opinions?”

“Mine?” replied Milton; “my opinions are but
the musings of a solitary bookman, unskilled in
court or council—neither a statesman nor a politician;
yet, such as they be, you shall have them.
I would see England free! free and unshackled, as
was Rome in her fresh days of glory, ere she had

bowed the knee to any Kaisar; as Greece, when
she spurned forth the countless myriads of the oriental
king from her unviolated shores, and reared
herself a bright example, pure and immortal, of
liberty unquenched, unquenchable! I would see
England subject to law, to reason, and to God—
bending the neck to none—`rousing herself, like a
strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible
locks!' I would `see her as an eagle, muing her
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at
the full midday beam!' yea, spreading forth to the
four winds of heaven her long-abused and fettered
pinions, superbly floating in her pride of place, unscathed
amid the lightnings of the empyrean! And
wherefore, I would ask you, not? Consider what
we are and have been—`a nation, not slow nor dull,
but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute
to invent, subtile and sinewy to discourse, not beneath
the reach of any point the highest that human
capacity can soar to!' A nation not luxurious nor
effeminate, but of a hardihood surpassing that, I
say not of the frivolous, light Frenchman, not of
the polished and effete Italian, not of the indolent
Castilian, but of the frugal Transylvanian, the winter-tempered
Russ, the mountain Switzer! A nation
boasting itself the freeborn offspring of the
free! a nation that rolled back the flood of Roman
war from its interior fastnesses, when Rome was
at the mightiest! a nation that shall yet—once
freed from the soul-galling yoke of monarchy—the
spirit-killing sway of Prelatists, and peers, and
papists—send forth her arms, her laws, her language,
and, above all, the lights of her religion, to
the remotest corners of the habitable earth, securely
throned on her sea-circled pinnacle of glory, o'er-shadowing
the lands with her dominion, sweeping
the ocean-waves with her renown!”

“Dreams—dreams!” replied Ardenne, shaking
his head mournfully; “beautiful—beautiful dreams,
but baseless! Methought that you had studied
history more narrowly. There never has been,
from the world's birth till now—there never shall
be, henceforth to the day when the great trump
shall sound—a true republic! Rome, when her
kings were banished, was an aristocracy—a wise,
poor, frugal, brave, paternal aristocracy; foot after
foot her nobles yielded to the flood of what her
demagogues styled freedom; the moment when
she became republican or democratic, which you
will, that moment held her up a prize to the successful
soldier. Her history was thenceforth—corruption,
anarchy, bloodshed, proscription, Cæsar!
And what was Athens? If for a little while she
stood cemented by external wars, which forced her
to be single and united, what was her government
but a succession of bright usurpations—of aggressions
on the people's rights—abuses of the people's
power, till, at the last, democracy prevailed; and
then — the thirty tyrants! Sparta, from first to
last, was the most close and austere oligarchy
the earth has ever witnessed—ay, oligarchy within
oligarchy—an irresponsible and highborn senate,
holding their sway for life over an oligarchy of
six thousand warrior Dorians; who in turn domineered
with a most iron sceptre over their myriads
of subordinate Laconians, myriads of scourged and
tortured Helots! These! these are your bright
examples—these the republics of the universe!
For you will hardly quote me Venice—Genoa—
Florence—wherein not all a Petrarch's or an Ariosto's
glory could veil the degradation of the slavish
mob—the tyrant insolence of the brute nobles.
Dreams, I say once again — beautiful, but still
dreams! Alas, for human nature! how can we

look to see republics stand, unless we hope for
wisdom and for virtue in the councils and the actions
of the mass—how hope for these when human
reason and Divine authority tell us alike, and
tell us truly, that the majority of men are ignorant
and prone to evil! But now, truce to discussion;
you have relieved my mind, at all events, from one
great dread—of having been, in truth, while I supposed
myself, in some degree, a champion of my
country's weal, the mere tool of one man's ambition.
This was the point on which I chiefly sought
your counsel, and I am satisfied. And now let us
to lighter and more pleasing matters. I heard your
voice, as I approached the arbour, composing, as I
fancied, some new poem.”

“A trifle—a mere trifle,” answered the other, as
if half reluctant to descant on such a subject; but
Ardenne's end was gained; the thread of their
original discourse was broken, and, turning thence
to poetry and the chief literary topics of the day,
a conversation followed, which, though of interest
enough to those who held it, was scarce of such
importance as to warrant its transmission to posterity.

2. CHAPTER II.

King Henry VI.—Part 3d.

It was a lovely summer morning, with a soft
west wind just ruffling the bosom of the silver
Thames, and wantoning among the graceful foliage
of the tall trees, and slenderer though not less beautiful
exotics, which still adorn in such profusion the
gardens of that palace built by the haughty Wolsey,
but destined soon to pass into the hands of his
bluff master, and to descend to his posterity as one
of the most fair abodes of England's royalty. In
a magnificent apartment overlooking those unrivalled
gardens, its ceiling gorgeously painted in
Italian frescoes with some of the most picturesque
creations of the Grecian fable, its walls draped with
brocaded damask bordered with arabesques of gold
two feet in width, and decorated with the master-pieces
of Vandyck and Lely, in all but power a
king, sat Charles, gazing out with a sad but quiet
eye upon the flowery parterres, adorned with many
an urn and statue—the trimly-shaven lawns—the
odorous thickets—and the alleys green, with the
broad monarch of his kingdom's rivers flashing out
brightly in the sunshine between the fluttering
leaves. His children were about him; the Duke
of York, the eldest, leaning upon his father's knee,

and looking up into his face as conscious of the
melancholy air, which had become almost habitual
to those unmarked but comely features, yet ignorant
of the dark causes which had there imprinted
it; the younger Duke of Gloucester, and Elizabeth,
his little sister—just at that happy age when
tears are but as April showers, succeeded instantly
by smiles, when sorrows pass away and leave no
sting behind—were busily employed imprisoning,
beneath a Venice goblet, a painted butterfly, which,
lured by a display of lovely summer flowers bloomin
a large crystal vase upon the table, had flitted
in through the tall casements but to be made a
prize by the admiring children. A louder laugh
than usual, joyously bursting from the lips of the
young girl, diverted the king's mind for a moment
from his sad reflections.

“My little girl,” he said, half sorrowfully smiling,
“you would not persecute the pretty butterfly;
see how it beats its painted wings against the walls
of its transparent prison, and rubs off all the downy
colours that you thought so beautiful. Know, my
Elizabeth, that poor imprisoned fly would now be
fluttering far away over the sunny gardens, in the
sweet morning air, sipping the dew from every
flower, happy and free; and you, by shutting it up
here, have made it very wretched; and it will pine
and die. See, it grows weak already; would not
my darling sorrow for the poor butterfly if she
should find it lying dead upon its prison floor tomorrow?”

The child stared wonderingly, with her great
blue eyes wide open, upon her father, for he spoke
with a degree of serious and simple pathos, caused,
perhaps, by a sense of sympathy with the slight
insect, caged like himself, though in a splendid
prison; but, as he ceased, a big tear swelled upon

the lashes of either bright orb, and slid slowly down
over her rosy cheeks. “I did not want,” she said,
“to make the butterfly unhappy. Will it die, papa,
now, if I let it fly away?”

“No, my sweet child,” he answered, “it will revive
directly; all that it wants is the fresh air, and
liberty to go where it pleases.”

“Then farewell, pretty butterfly,” she cried, half
weeping and half smiling, as she released the captive.
“I should not love to be a prisoner myself,
Go and be very happy. See! see! he is gone already!”

“Heaven, in its mercy, grant you never may,
my child,” Charles answered solemnly; “but, if it
should please God that evil men should shut you
up, you must be very patient, and not hate those
who hurt you, but forgive them, and say your
prayers for them to your great King and Father in
his holy heaven, that he may pardon them, and turn
their hearts.”

“Do you do so, papa,” she said—“do you do
so? For I heard you say one day that you were
a prisoner—though this pretty room can hardly
be a prison—for I thought a prison was a dark
place under ground, all barred with iron grates,
and very terrible. Do you forgive your enemies?”

“Surely I do, my little girl,” he answered, “else
would not God forgive me. But, now, go play—
for, see here, some one comes to speak with me;”
and, as he said the words, the door was opened,
and a gentleman usher with his black rod entered
the chamber, and informed the king that the Lieutenant-general
Cromwell was in the audience-chamber
waiting his pleasure.

“Admit him forthwith, Feilding; we will receive
him here,” replied the king; “and, hark you, pray

Mistress Drummond to come hither, and take
hence the children. We would be alone.”

The usher instantly retired; and taking up his
high-crowned hat which lay upon the table, without
any feather, but ornamented by a diamond
buckle in the band, he placed it on his head, and
seated himself before a writing cabinet of ebony
inlaid with ivory and silver. Scarce had he settled
himself, with perhaps some slight view to effect,
when the independent entered. He was uncovered,
bearing his beaver in his hand, and bowed
low to the fallen sovereign, though he bent not the
knee, nor offered any movement to kiss hands.
It was a singular and interesting meeting between
two men, pitted by fortune for long years against
each other, and now thrown peaceably into familiar
contact. The contrast—the marked difference
between the two—both great—but the one born to
greatness, the other having, by the energies of his
own mind, the actions of his own right hand,
achieved it. Their features spoke volumes as to
the distinction! The king's were, indeed, comely,
and full of a calm natural majesty, but bearing no
decisive marks of any ruling principle or passion—
no radiancy of intellect—no manifest impress of
character!—mild, though at the same time somewhat
stern, their chief expression was an air of
cold and melancholy resolution, not, perhaps, inconsistent
with the traits of mind for which he was
remarkable. When gazed upon, indeed, by one
who knew him as the king, he looked it every
inch; but, had he been met in a crowd, attired as
a private individual, he would have been observed
for nothing but the easy bearing natural to every
highborn gentleman. The countenance of Cromwell,
on the contrary, owed all its influence over
the mind of those who saw him—and powerful, indeed,

and universal was that influence—to the undoubted
stamp of genius—to the indomitable resolution—the
deeply-seated and unfathomable thought
—the quiet but intense enthusiasm, graven in living
characters upon his homely features—to the intelligence,
in short, and soul that flashed out palpably
from every line and lineament of his marked
face. Seen in the armour of the soldier—the
stateman's robe of peace—the plain garb of the
every-day staid citizen—or the vile tatters of the
mendicant, he could not for a second's space have
remained unnoted as a superior creature—as a
man of vast unquestionable powers. But if, in
this respect, the carver out of his own mighty fortunes
surpassed the owner of legitimate hereditary
sway, in bearing and demeanour there was no comparison.
Every position, every movement of the
king was redolent of ease and dignity combined;
and his repose—that hardest test of grace—carelessly
natural and unstudied, was as perfect in its
harmony and keeping as if it had been the result
of the most artful skill. The motions of the independent,
on the other hand, were sudden, rapid,
rough; his postures rigid and iron, when erect;
when seated, angular at any time and awkward,
but so more obviously when brought into relief by
contrast to the elegance of Charles. Both were
dressed simply for their station in society, the
king especially, who would have been outshone at
first sight by the poorest noble of his court. He
wore a plain suit of black taffeta, crossed by the
broad riband of the garter, silk stockings of the
same colour, with satin roses in his shoes, and a
short mantle of black velvet. His sword was a
plain mourning rapier, with a hilt of jet; but the
deep falling collar round his neck was of the
finest Brussel's point, and the star on the left
side of his cloak glittered with diamonds of the
purest water. His visiter, who, as he rose in dignity
and station, had discarded the slovenly and
coarse style of his garments, was attired handsomely
in a half uniform of marone coloured cloth,
faced with black velvet; a broad silk scarf of the
same hue was wound in many folds about his
waist, supporting his steel-hilted rapier. Military
boots, highly polished and equipped with silver
spurs, met his trunk hose, fashioned to match his
doublet, just below the knee; and a silk hatband,
with a silver clasp, relieved his dark gray beaver.

“I give you good day, sir,” said Charles, in answer
to the low reverence of Cromwell; “we are
well pleased to see you, the rather that we owe
you thanks, for that, as we have learned, by your
warm intercession with the parliament, our children
have been yielded to our prayers.”

“Verily,” answered Cromwell, “verily, if it
please your highness, I hold this matter no just
cause for thanks; seeing that—as myself a father,
whom the Lord hath vouchsafed to bless with a
fair progeny—and as a Christian man, who, having
learned that we should do to others as we would
have it done to us, strives still to put in practice
that which he has learned—I have but done my
duty. Permit me to hope, rather, that it may be
my fortune, in the time to come, in such degree to
minister unto your majesty's advancement and
well-being, as may deserve not your thanks only,
but those of this distracted realm.”

“Nevertheless, we thank you, sir,” returned
Charles, with a smile seemingly sincere and natural,
“both for the good which you have done to
us already, and that which you profess your will to
do hereafter. We will speak more at length when
we shall be alone; and, in good time, here comes

fair Mistress Drummond. Good Drummond”—he
addressed the lady who now entered—“we will,
if you be now at leisure, trespass so far upon your
time as pray you to bestow your care upon these
little ones. James,” he said, turning to the Duke
of York, “if Sir John Berkeley be at liberty to
wait on you, you have my license to ride forth;
but see you be not absent over-long. Farewell,
my little prattlers,” and he stooped down to kiss
the rosy lips of the young princess, laying his hand
softly on the sunny curls of Gloucester. “Drummond
will take ye to the gardens; and, in an hour
or two, ye may return to me. Farewell!—Who
waits without?” he added, in a louder voice, as the
lady left the chamber with the children.

“Feilding, your majesty,” replied the usher, a
cadet of the noble house of Denbigh.

“Feilding, we would be private. What pages
have ye there?”

“Mildmay and Henry Gage, so please you.”

“Send Mildmay to the head of the great stairs;
let Gage wait at the entrance of the painted gallery,
and you bestow yourself in the fourth window
hence. Suffer not any one to pass the stairs, nor
interrupt us upon any plea of pleasure or of business!
Business,” he added, now addressing Cromwell,
who had remained standing, hat in hand—
“we will to business, sir, for that, I trow, has gained
for me the pleasure of this visit. I pray you sit—
nearer the table, if it please you;” and, drawing
forth some papers from the cabinet before him, he
perused them rapidly, as if in search of some peculiar
passage.

“Has your grace found the leisure,” Cromwell
asked, “to overrun the schedule of conditions which
my son-in-law, Colonel Ireton, had the honour to
submit to your attention?”

[OMITTED] treat,” Cromwell replied. “I have—I do profess
it to your grace—I have laboured with my whole
soul and spirit, wrestling in your behalf and for
your friends' advantage; and, truly, I scruple not
to say it, I hold there is not one among the Presbyterian
faction that will consent to a firm peace
while there be any bishops in the land.”

“I do believe,” said Charles, “I do, indeed,
believe that you have stood my friend of late; and
I do thank you for it, and, well I hope, the time
shall come when I can compensate your good
deeds to the full.”

“Your majesty may say so, well,” Cromwell replied,
impressively; “I have stood forth somewhat
too boldly, so that I have—I grieve to say it, but,
verily, truth must be spoken always—so that I have
fallen into some suspicion even among my veteran
soldiery—so that they scoff, and point at me with
jeering fingers, and cry, `Lo! he, that puts his
trust in princes!' Also the adjutators of the regiments
have called into their counsel my son Ireton,
and wrathfully entreated him, enjoining it most
sternly on him that we shall hold no more communion
with your highness unless some terms be
settled, and that, too, right speedily.”

“Indeed,” answered the king, “I had hoped that
the army was disposed more loyally.”

“Of a truth,” Cromwell replied, “it was so;
greatly distrusting the rogue Presbyterians, and
striving often and sincerely with the Lord in spirit,
that it would please him to replace your majesty
in the dominion and upon the throne of your forefathers;
but, when you last gave audience to the
adjutators—surely it is a grievous thing to say—
but I profess to you, as the Lord liveth, it is true—
all their trust in your highness passed away; and
all the favour you had met with in their eyes, even

as morning clouds when that the south wind chaseth
them. Yea! and their hearts were hardened, and
their countenances changed against you, and against
all they deemed your friends. Moreover, secretly
have I—ay, even I myself—been now advised, by
letters from tried friends and otherwise, that threats
are rife against me in the camp; how they would
lay wait privily, and dig a pit, and set a snare before
me, and take and smite me with the sword,
and slay me under the cloud of night. But, as I
live, they know me not who do suppose that any
fear of that which man can do to me shall turn
me from performing that which I have tasked my
spirit to accomplish. Truly these terms, which
now lie here before your majesty, with much of
danger and yet more of difficulty have I prevailed
upon the host to offer you. If that it seem good to
you to accept them, I pledge myself right gladly
that the parliament shall, ere long, consent likewise.
For, lo, the army is the mightier! But if—
which I trust will not be the case—you shall determine
to reject them, then do I wash my hands
of it. If by mine own self-sacrifice I could secure
your majesty's and England's quiet, then might I,
Decius-like, devote myself; but, truly, I esteem it
mere insanity to rush upon mine own destruction
when naught is to be gained proportionate.”

“If it be so, sir,” answered Charles, after a
brief pause of deliberation, “and these be the best
terms your friendly aid may gain for me, I will
be frank with you, and candidly accept them.
Rather would I take harder terms from the blunt
honesty of your stout soldiers, than chaffer for
conditions, as for vile merchandise, with the cold
cozening Presbyterians; and, for your own part,
trust me when I say, that, next to the Almighty,
with reverence be it spoken, I hold you the instrument

that hath uplifted me from the abyss of sorrow,
and wrought for me deliverance and restoration!
And I assure you there shall be a time
when you will own me grateful.”

“This, then, is settled,” Cromwell replied; “I
may announce unto the host your majesty's unqualified
assent to these their propositions.”

“You are at liberty to do so,” returned Charles;
“for myself, from this hour, I hold me bound by
them.”

“Right joyful am I,” exclaimed Oliver; “all
thanks be to the Lord of Hosts—England shall
then have peace! Verily, ere ten days be passed,
your majesty shall sit in state at Westminster.”

“And my first deed, when there,” said Charles,
“in guerdon of your much esteemed and faithful
services, shall be to raise my well-beloved and
trusty Cromwell to the peerage, under the title,
now extinct, of Earl of Essex, and to grace him
with the garter of St. George, which never yet was
buckled round the knee of braver leader. The
parliament, I trow, will not object to honours thus
bestowed on their best general, nor to my commending
him to the command of England's armies!”

“Your majesty is gracious,” answered the independent,
in a tone half indignation and half irony;
“but, not to be made Prince of Wales, and heir to
England's crown, would I thus labour that you
should once more occupy the throne, did I not well
believe that England's peace demands it! It is
for England's laws and England's liberties—not
for my personal aggrandizement—not that I should
be known as lord, or earl, nor yet by any other
title, which is but earthly pomp and vanity before
the Lord—not that I should be the owner of
broad lands or the dispenser of preferments, wielding
the truncheon of the hosts of Britain—that I

have done so much, and suffered; and, did I not
believe your majesty resolved henceforth to hold
the liberties and weal of all your subjects nearest
your heart, and the fear of the Lord alway before
your eyes, verily, withered be my arm and my
tongue palsied if I would strike one blow or sylable
one word to save you from perdition! But,
now this matter is so happily arranged, may it
please your grace excuse me. My duties call me
hence to Windsor, where I should be by noon!”

“Duty, sir, needs no license,” Charles replied,
smiling most graciously, and rising from his seat,
and even taking three steps toward the door, as the
blunt soldier moved to leave the presence; “and, till
we meet at Westminster, rest in the full assurance
of possessing your liege sovereign's gratitude and
favour. Ha!” he continued, as the door closed,
and he found himself alone, “deep as he is, I have
out-generalled him. Now he suspects not any thing.
Ha! ha! the garter! and the Earl of Essex—a
precious clown, in faith, to grace an earldom! But
now for Lauderdale and Hollis!—the dull fools—
we will out with them all, and yet reign, as our
father did before us, a king in something more
than name!”

But the enthusiast strode forth, the tesselated
floor of the proud gallery ringing beneath his massive
stride, exulting and triumphant; and, as he
passed the vestibule, where there were none to
mark his actions, he clasped both hands above his
head, and cried out in a voice husky and stifled
with emotion, “My country—oh my country—have
I then—have I won for thee peace, happiness, and
freedom?”

3. CHAPTER III.

King Lear.

It was the third day only after Cromwell's interview
with Charles that Ardenne, who had purchased
a small house in the Strand, with pleasant
gardens sloping to the river, making it his continual
abode when not engaged in military duties, was
walking on the terrace close to the water's edge,
in one of those abstracted and half-melancholy
moods which had become almost habitual to him,
except when circumstances calling for sudden action
roused him at once to all his former energy.
The day had been one of storm, more like a winter's
tempest than a mere summer's shower—the
rain, driven along the river's course by a cold eastern
gale, had fallen constantly since daybreak; and,
though toward evening it had ceased, and the wind
sunk, a thick chilling mist crept up the stream, at
the first clinging only to the opposite shores and
curtaining the distant objects, but increasing gradually
in its volume, till the whole space from bank
to bank was filled with a gray mass of fog, so palpable
and dense that barge and wherry passed and
repassed unseen, although the near dash of their
oars and the loud voices of the rowers showed that
they could scarcely be at ten yards distance. A
transient gleam of sunshine had drawn forth Sir
Edgar from his solitary studies; and, once plunged

in his gloomy reveries, he continued to walk to and
fro, scarce conscious of the increasing badness of
the weather; but suddenly, as he paused near the
little wharf to which his barge was moored, a
stern voice, whose accents of command he recognised
at once, rose from the misty river above the
splashing of the oars which had for some time been
approaching.

“Ho! put in here, thou stupid knave; here, at
this private stair; 'tis here we would be landed.”

It was, he could not be mistaken, the voice of
Cromwell; and immediately the sharp beak of a
wherry ran upon the steps, pulled by two watermen,
with two more men, soldiers it seemed, reclining
in the stern. Oliver, for one was indeed
he, leaped out forthwith, and addressed Edgar hastily,
as if afraid that he should speak the first, and
in a tone so loud that it was evident he wished the
boatmen to hear what he said.

“Is not this, I beseech you, the dwelling of
brave Colonel Ardenne? We have come hither
from the army—two of the adjutators—to bear tidings
to him.”

“It is, sir,” Edgar replied, quickly comprehending
Cromwell's wish. “And I am Colonel Ardenne.
I pray you walk up to the house, you and
your comrade.”

“Surely, most surely,” Oliver replied, with well-feigned
bluntness; “we have come by the river up
from Brentford, and I profess that I am chilled,
and yearning for the creature comforts. How say
you, Fast and Pray, think'st thou a quartern of
strong waters would go down amiss? You, watermen,”
he added, “make fast your boat there to the
stairs, and follow us to the house; we cannot tarry
here in this foul mist to pay your fares.” They
were joined, while he was speaking, by the other

soldier, whom, despite his dress, Ardenne at first
sight discovered to be Ireton; and, although not a
little wondering at their visit, and the disguise they
had adopted, judging the garden no place for inquiry,
he led them in all haste toward the house.
Both wore coarse scarlet cassocks, with buff
breeches and immense jack-boots, the uniform of
privates in the ironsides off duty; long tucks, with
iron scabbards, hanging from their buff belts, and
clattering on the pavements as they strode along;
and broad-brimmed hats of felt, the flaps unlooped,
and covering their brows as if to guard against the
weather. They both were furnished with tobaccopipes—short,
dingy iron tubes—and smoked almost
incessantly, as well to cloud their features as to
afford a plausible excuse for silence; but, as a
farther safeguard against inquiring cyes, Cromwell
had cast about him a stained and weather-beaten
dragoon cloak of frieze, with its cape muffling
him wellnigh to the mouth. Ireton carried
in his hand a package of some size, wrapped in an
oilskin cover; and, on a casual meeting, even an
intimate acquaintance would have detected nothing
in their air or demeanour by which to judge them
different from what they seemed. The moment
they had entered—“Let your domestics instantly
take arms,” said Cromwell, “and lay these watermen
by the heels; they might blab else, although
I think they know us not; and let your trusty
steward alone attend us; and bid him see your
doors be locked, and that no one of your attendants,
on any pretext, this night cross the threshold.”
Leading his guests himself into a small library refired
from the street and looking out upon the garden,
Edgar went out to give his orders. Before
returning he had seen the boatmen, after a slight
struggle, secured in a remote chamber, with an
abundance of strong liquors, which he judged rightly
would at once console them and effectually close
their mouths, and two stout watchmen posted at
the door—had given his directions to old Anthony,
who, since Sir Henry's death, followed his fortunes
—and held the keys of every door and shutter in
his own possession.

“Rude greeting, this,” said Oliver, as he returned;
“but, of a truth, there is deep need of it.
In brief, I will acquaint you with the matter, for
time presses. Three days since Charles accepted
fully the conditions of the army, as I wrote you on
Monday! The adjutators are brought over! the
parliament must come to our terms! So far all's
well! But, with the dawn to-day, a letter came to
me at Windsor—from one who has conveyed us
much intelligence, and never has deceived us—a
friend in the king's bedchamber—verbum sat! He
writes us that Charles Stuart hath been all yesterday
in deep debate with Ashburnham, that firebrand
of the queen's—that their resolves are taken
—and a letter—of a surety in cipher, but, then,
we hold the key, the Lord be thankful for it—prepared
for Henrietta, to be conveyed right cunningly
this night to Dover by an unconscious messenger.
What the contents may be our friend might not
discover, though, as he writes, he left no stone unturned;
but of this he is certain, that it is all-important,
and decisive of the king's intention as to
the pending treaty. This letter we must intercept;
and, therefore, we rode straight in this disguise to
Brentford, and thence took boat, to baffle prying
eyes; and, so far, all goes rightly. Now attend—
the bearer of this letter will come at ten o'clock tonight,
carrying a saddle on his head, to the Blue
Boar in Holborn, thence to take horse for Dover.
The man will wear a green plush riding-coat, and

breeches of the same; the elbows of the doublet
and the seams of the trunk-hose guarded with neat-skin
leather; a stammel waistcoat, and a red riband
round his hat, which is of common straw. The
saddle will be old, and somewhat patched and ragged;
and, in the off-side lap, between the tree and
pannel, the letter is concealed. The man knows
not that it is there, deeming he goes to buy a famous
hunting-horse from one John Styles, a horse
courser. He is to put up at the Red Lion inn in
Dover; and there will be one, knowing his description,
who shall search the saddle and—find nothing!
for we must have the packet! How goes
the night, Sir Edgar?”

“Past seven, I am sure; nay,” after looking at
his watch, “but it lacks scant a quarter of an
hour to eight. I thought not that it was so late!”

“Nay, then, we are but just in time; you will
go with us, sir, and aid us. We must have three,
and know none else in whom we may so perfectly
rely. You are aware that Charles is on parole not
to hold secret interview with France—his parole
broken, there is no breach of honesty or honour in
seizing and perusing his despatches. That package—open
it quickly, Ireton—contains a dress like
these that we now wear—the uniform of one who
hath about your inches, borrowed for the nonce.
It savours somewhat of tobacco-smoke and stale
October, but we must not be nice. I pray you
don it speedily. Nay, Ireton, you forget; where
is the net to gather up his lovelocks, and the peruke?
quick! quick!” he cried, impatiently binding
up Edgar's flowing hair, and covering it with a
foxy wig, close-clipped, and cut into a hundred little
peaks, like those which Cleaveland mentions in
his Hue and Cry, deriding them as `Hair in characters
and luggs in text.' ”

Some pigment was laid on his eyebrows, whiskers,
and mustaches, suiting them to the colour of
his false hair. A kerchief of coarse cotton next
replaced his collar of fine lace, and a garb similar
to that of his companions his well-fancied habits.
A clumsy broadsword was produced, with a wide
leathern shoulder-belt, from under Cromwell's
cloak; and this, with an old pair of his own military
boots, carefully soiled for the occasion, and fitted
with rough iron spurs, and an unpolished headpiece,
completed his attire.

“Mind, now, your bearing,” Cromwell said, as
they left the house; “smoke without ceasing;
jostle a little those whom we meet with in the
streets, and quote the strongest texts you may remember.
When that we reach the inn, the great
gate will be closed, the wicket only open. We
will all enter in, and drink till half past nine of the
clock—then go forth you, as if upon some errand
—loiter about the gate until you see our man—follow
in after him, and, when he passeth up the yard
—for he will go directly to the stables—bar instantly
the wicket, and advise us! Now let us
move on somewhat smartly.”

Without more words, they took their way across
the town toward Holborn, through quarters which,
though now the very heart and the most populous
portion of the giant city, were then but sparsely
built upon, with frequent gardens intervening between
the scattered tenements, and miry lanes, unlighted
and ill paved, instead of regular streets.
The night continued dark, and so unpleasant that,
when they reached at length the mighty thoroughfare
of Holborn, the street was half deserted and
nearly silent. Smoking much as they passed
along, and speaking little, they reached the well-known
hostelry. Its gate, as Cromwell had foreseen,

was closed and locked; but a low wicket
door gave ingress to the yard, a long irregular space,
surrounded on three sides by the rambling buildings
of the inn, with three tiers, one above the other,
of open galleries, through which was the access
to the chambers, and bounded at the end by a long
range of granaries and pack-stables. The yard
was nearly dark—for but one lamp shone dimly
over the entrance of the public room, just at the left
hand of the gateway as they entered; and, except
the lanterns of the hostlers flitting about the farther
buildings, no other lights were visible within;
but, as if to make up for the deficiency, a large
glass lamp on either side the gateway rendered
the street in front of it as light as day. Abruptly
entering the taproom, in which some four or five
grave-looking citizens were comforting themselves,
after the business of the day, with poached eggs
and canary, buttered ale, burnt sack, and half a
dozen other drinks and dishes fashionable in those
days, but long ago forgotten—

“Ho! landlord!” shouted Cromwell, “bring us
three cans of your best double ale—good measure,
and be quick about it! Surely, my flesh doth
thirst for a cool drink, even as the faint spirit
thirsteth for a soul-searching exposition of the mysteries
that be essential to salvation.”

“Such as Lieutenant Profit-by-the-word poured
forth to our great edifying yester even,” Ireton answered;
“verily, good man, he was upheld most
marvellously—four hours did he hold forth steadily,
not waxing faint in flesh nor weary in well-doing,
but borne along in spirit with exceeding fervour,
and his voice ringing like a trumpet, louder at every
close. Truly, a second Boanerges.”

“Ay! and he touched with the true unction on
that hard rock that splits all weaker vessels, the full

justification of the soul by faith—the utter needlessness
of works to save, when that the soul is
filled—ay, as a tankard that doth overflow its
brim—and lo! my can is out. Ho! tapster, fill
us the good black gallon jack, and fetch us more
tobacco—or as a milldam that doth burst its banks
—with the true grace of God!”

“Yea!” answered Ireton, “yea! verily he did;
but I bethought me somewhat that he o'ershot the
mark when he did undertake to prove that those
who have been once in grace may never relapse
into sin, and that unto the pure all things are pure
and holy.”

“Why, you must be an infidel,” returned the
other; “what, know you not that vice and virtue
be but names—not of aught tangible or real—not
of things that exist without the body—but of mere
fantasies, abstractions whose seat is the mind.
Surely it is the spirit in which a thing is done, and
not the thing itself, that makes the virtue or the
vice. Lo! when you slay a man in hand to hand
encounter, fighting, it may be, in the deadly breach,
or riding on the cannon's mouth, truly it is imputed
not as an act of sin, but an heroical and manly deed
of glory—as when strong Samson killed his thousands—ay,
or, yet more to the point, when Heber's
wife the Kenite smote Sisera within the tent and
slew him, though a suppliant and guest; but had
she driven in that selfsame nail to satisfy vile lust
of gain or murtherous revenge, then had it been
guilt in her—shame while on earth and infamy—
and, though we should not judge—judgment hereafter
and perdition. Thus, in the soul is the distinction;
it maketh its own righteouness, it maketh
its own sin! All that is done for virtue becomes
virtue. To whom all things seem pure, verily, all
are pure! Yea, if a man have the grace given

[OMITTED] passed by him near a lighted shop; he suffered
him to get some dozen paces in advance, and then,
with a slow sauntering gait, pursued him. He saw
him stoop beneath the wicket, and, without looking
to the right or left, walk up the yard toward a
group of hostlers playing at odd or even on a
horseblock round a dingy lantern. Silently and
unseen he dropped the bar across the wicket, and
looked into the taproom.

“Tarry,” said Cromwell, “tarry yet a while—
the bird is ours!”

In a few minutes the sound of a horse's hoofs
were heard upon the pavement. “Now, then,”
cried Oliver, “now!” and, instantly unsheathing his
long tuck, he darted through the doorway, followed
immediately by Ireton and Sir Edgar, likewise
with drawn swords. Cromwell had reached the
man before they overtook him; but Ardenne heard
him say, “You ride forth late, my friend, but we
be placed here in the name and by the orders of
the parliament to search all goers out. But, verily,
thou lookest like an honest lad. Thou hast, I
warrant me, nothing that thou wouldst care to
hide!”

“Not I, i'faith,” replied the stranger, bluntly;
“search away, Master Soldier, if such be your orders,
but I pray you delay me not, because I am in
haste.”

“Lead the man's horse into the stable, Fast and
Pray,” said Cromwell, glancing his eyes toward
Ireton, “'twere shame to let the dumb beast stand
here in the pelting rain; and thou, good Win-the-fight,
come in with us. Verily, friend, we will not
long detain thee—but a horn of ale will not harm
thee this dark night, I trow.”

“Not it, not it!” replied the fellow; “what
would you have now?”

“Oh! turn thy pockets out. Surely we will not
be too hard with thee. Well! well! this is a
purse—good lack, a heavy one!—`to this a letter
—`to Master Styles, horse courser, Dover!' Look
sharp that he be not too deep for thee, this John
Styles — he played our Colonel Whalley a foul
trick with a spavened jade some two years past.
He is a keen blade. Well! this is a pipe—and
this a bacca-box—so! so!—in these there is no treason.
Truly, I said thou wert an honest fellow;
and I was not deceived. Another cup of ale?
Tush, never mince the matter, 'twill warm thee
more than thy plush jerkin. Upseys! So! down
with it like lamb's-wool. Well—thou mayst go
now, so thou wilt not tarry and have a rouse with
us. Ho! Fast and Pray, bring out the worthy fellow's
horse; he is not such as we be sent to look
for, and—now I think of it—our time of watch is
ended!” A quick glance interchanged with his
son-in-law assured the general that the letter was
secured; so, slapping the messenger upon the back,
he bade him mount, and God go with him; and
as he rode away, unconscious that his journey was
now useless, the three companions hurried to Ardenne's
house, where they might profit by their
prize in safety.

A short half hour's walk placed them before his
door—so quickly, goaded to their utmost speed by
anxious curiosity, did they retrace their steps.
Lights were set in the library, the curtains closely
drawn, the door locked, and then Ireton produced
the packet; it was a small despatch, and fastened
with a plain flaxen cord and ordinary seal, addressed
to “Master Ephraim Mackleworth”—evidently
a feigned name—“at the Red Lion, Dover.”
Within this was a small letter, simply directed to
H. M. R., bound with a skein of white floss silk,

and fastened with the impression of a finely-cut
antique upon green wax. Oliver caught it with an
impatient gesture from the hand of Ireton, broke
the seal, cast his eyes hastily upon it, and exclaiming,
“Nay, it is not in cipher,” read thus aloud:—

With a calm voice, though bitter in the extreme
and scornful, Cromwell read out this document.
Ireton's eye flashed fire, and, as his father-in-law
ended, he violently dashed his hand upon the table—

“Whose dogs are we,” he cried, in fierce and
ringing tones, “that we should be thus scandalously
dealt with? As the Lord liveth he shall
die the death!”

“But three days since,” said Cromwell, “hypocrite
that he is, base knave, and liar, he proclaimed,
through me, his full acceptance of the army's terms
—his last words were, `and for myself henceforth
I hold me bound by them!' and I, fool that I was,
I did rejoice, and triumphed in my heart that England
should have peace! and now—he will hang
both of us! ay, HANG! Can there be any trust in
such a man?”

“None!” answered Edgar, mournfully, “there
can indeed be none! It is long since I have even
dreamed there could! He is unstable as the sands
of the seashore, and false—as fortune!”

“Alas! alas! for England!” Oliver exclaimed,
in deep impressive tones. “If it be thy will,
mighty Lord, that this thy servant be a prey and
victim to this man of Belial, truly I am prepared.
But for this goodly and regenerate land, for this oppressed

and miserable people, in whose behalf already
many times thou hast displayed the wonders
of thy might—the miracles of thine invincible
right hand—not for myself—not for myself, oh
Lord, poor sinner that I am and leaky vessel, do
I presume now to remonstrate—to strive earnestly
—to wrestle, as did Jacob in the dark—against thy
great decrees—but for this lovely isle—this precious
England!”

“With Caiaphas I say,” returned the fiery Ireton,
“with Caiaphas! Jew though he was, unrighteous
judge, and murtherer of the Lord's
anointed! `Ye know not'—'tis to you I say it,
my friends and fellow-soldiers—`nor consider that
it is expedient for us that one man should die for
the people, and that the whole nation perish not!”'

This bold speech for that night ended the debate.
Cromwell was silent—though the remarkable
and resolute compression of his mouth, and
the deep frown that furrowed his high forehead,
and the determined gleam of his hard eye, showed
that his silence was produced by any thing rather
than doubt or fear—and Ardenne, at this last and
heaviest blow, was, for the moment, wholly overcome!
He saw the certain peril, the imminent
and overwhelming ruin, but he saw neither refuge
nor escape. He felt that, while Charles lived, England
could never be at rest; but he did not feel
that his death would give her that repose which
she desired now more almost than liberty.

In gloom that evening they had met—in deeper
gloom they parted—save Ireton alone, who seemed
elate and almost joyous; for, fraught with a sincere
unselfish patriotism that would not have disgraced
an ancient Roman—a wild and daring theorist—a
confident and bold believer in the perfectibility
of man and in the supreme excellence of

democratic forms—he fancied that he now foresaw
the advent of his dearest wishes—the overthrow of
monarchy and aristocracy for ever—the birth of a
seagirt republic—the creation of a British state,
unequalled in the annals of the world! more wise
and eloquent than the free Athens!—in morals
more severe than Sparta!—in grace more elegant
than Corinth!—in empire, arms, and glory more
magnificent than Rome!

4. CHAPTER IV.

King Henry VI.

Sadly and wearily the year wore onward; the
golden days of summer were already passed; the
leaves, which had so greenly flourished a few weeks
before, grew sere like human hopes, and were
whirled wildly from their hold by each succeeding
blast. Autumn had waned already into winter;
yet still the leaders of the army, after their seizure
of the fatal letter, which necessarily ruined the
king's cause, remained inactive, as it seemed, at
Windsor, but, in truth, hushed in grim repose, and
waiting the maturity of those events which they
foresaw distinctly, and expected with a stern and
vengeful pleasure. Meantime the privates became
every day more restless and ungovernable. Distrusting
their own officers while they held daily
Intercourse with the king's friends, now that they

had withdrawn themselves from all communication,
they imagined not that the correspondence was
indeed at an end, but that some scheme had been
determined to the exclusion and betrayal of their
interests, and raved accordingly in their religious
and political assemblies with equal fury against the
carnal-minded parliament and the grandees, as they
now termed their own superior officers. The regiment
of Ardenne was perhaps the only one of the
whole army which had entirely resisted this contagion;
for having taken arms—many from personal
attachment to their young leader, whose neighbours
or whose tenants a great portion of the soldiers
were—many from a sense of political oppression,
but none from any feeling of fanaticism or religious
fury—the most part being of the Episcopal persuasion—they
looked on unconcerned, while their companions
were indulging in the loudest tumults, and
reposed all their trust in the high talents and integrity
of their commander. Often times since the
memorable evening of the intercepted letter Cromwell
and Ardenne had debated on the next step to
be taken, and on the future prospects of their country;
and both had often and again grieved at
their inability to shape out any course by which
they might hope confidently to eschew the breakers
which they could see directly in their track. Both
clearly saw that the king's union with the Presbyterians
could but be the beginning of a worse tyranny,
both in the church and state, than that which
they had overthrown; and both saw likewise that
with these, rather than with the army, he would
assuredly at last make common cause. Cromwell,
in this dilemma, hinted, rather than openly declared,
his own opinion, founded in part upon the evident
determination of the army, that the king should be
brought to trial, and, if found guilty, suffered to reap
the harvest of his perjury, dissimulation, and oppression;
yet, while maintaining both the policy and
justice of the measure, he was still at a loss to say
what plan should be adopted for the future government
of England, thus to be left without a head.

Avowing himself favourable to a mixed form, composed,
as heretofore, of three estates, with the executive
department vested in one officer of ample
powers though limited, he yet could point out none
on whom the choice could fall with safety and propriety.
Sir Edgar, on the other hand--acknowledging
the perfect justice, doubted the policy of the
king's execution — thinking that wilder anarchy
would follow at the first, and ultimately either the
Presbyterian influence, which they now chiefly
feared, prevail, or one strong-handed military tyrant
rise from the chaos of licentious freedom.
Ireton, in the mean time, the leader of a powerful
faction, declared at all times his desire for a republic,
founded upon a general franchise of the whole
people; and Harrison, who represented a yet more
fanatical and phrensied party, calling themselves
fifth-monarchists, looked forward to the near approach
of the millennium, and, arrogating to themselves
an absolute perfection, claimed an equality
of rights, of power, and of property for all men;
but all alike agreed on the expedience of awaiting
the recurrence of some overt action on the part of
Charles or of the Presbyterians. For this they
had not, indeed, long to tarry; for, on the morning
of the twelfth day of November, the gentlemen
whose office was to wait upon his chamber found
that the king was not there, and his bed had not
been used that night. Three letters in his own
handwriting lay upon the table; two to the parliament,
one to the speaker of each house, and a
third to the General Fairfax. After the first excitement

had subsided, it was discovered that Sir John
Berkeley, Legg, and Ashburnham were missing;
and the hoof marks of four horses were traced
readily in the moist ground close to the postern
of the garden, into which there was a private passage
from the chamber of the king. In none of
the three letters was it stated whither he had fled,
but simply that he had found it needful to withdraw
himself, in consequence, as he was well assured, of
plots existing for his assassination, and that he
should hold himself concealed until some settlement
was made for the well-governance and quiet
of the kingdom. The news of this escape produced
the greatest tribulation in the houses. It
was believed, and generally dreaded, that the king
was in hiding somewhere within the city; that
the Presbyterian party and the royalists had privily
united, and that a sudden rising would ensue,
and massacre of all opposed to it. An act passed
instantly, prohibiting, on pain of death and confiscation,
any from harbouring the king without conveying
notice to the parliament. Expresses were
sent off to every seaport town, laying a strict embargo
on all vessels; and every person who had
fought on the king's side in the late wars was banished
from the city, and any other place within a
circuit of ten miles round London. Meanwhile the
hapless monarch, having ridden day and night toward
the southwestern coast, frustrated, by the
mismanagement, or, as some say, the treachery of
Ashburnham, in his desire of taking ship from the
New Forest, sought refuge for a space at Titchfield
House in Hampshire; and, finally, with an incomprehonsible
degree of folly, surrendered himself to
Hammond, a strict friend of Cromwell, governor
of the Isle of Wight.

It was the second day after the flight of Charles,

[OMITTED] his unalterable hatred and contempt of parliament
had led him peremptorily to refuse.

On the fifteenth of the same month, a statement
of the king's escape, his present secure situation,
and the propositions tendered to him by the parliament,
was sent down to the army, with a remonstrance
ably penned by Fairfax, refuting the strong
calumnies which had been cast against the principal
commanders, and setting forth the motives of
their conduct. Armed with this potent document,
Cromwell, as the most firm, and, at the same time,
best-beloved of all the officers, was selected to this
perilous but honourable duty; and, taking with
him Ardenne's well-disciplined and trusty regiment,
without delay or hesitation he repaired to
Ware—at that time the headquarters of some five
or six thousand soldiers at the least, who, stimulated
by their adjutators, and believing that the
flight of Charles was preconcerted and connived at
by the grandees of the host, were in state of turbulence
bordering closely upon actual mutiny. It
was about eleven of the clock on a bright frosty
morning that Cromwell, with his small lifeguard,
reached Ware. Causing his trumpets to sound
through the streets, he summoned all the regiments
to get themselves together orderly upon the green,
to hear a proclamation from the lord-general; and,
ere this summons had been well delivered, they
turned out, not, indeed, orderly or in good discipline,
but in loud and tumultuous disarray. They
were all under arms, although expressly contrary
to orders; two regiments especially of musketeers,
who had their caps adorned with ribands, inscribed,
as a motto of insubordination, with the words

were observed to be in full field order, with their
bandoleers slung round them, and the matches of
their arquebuses lighted. Among these, as Cromwell
advanced slowly toward them, accompanied
by Ardenne only, and followed at a little distance by
a dismounted captain's guard with drawn swords,
but no firearms—the remainder of the regiment
halting in line a little farther in the rear—a wild
disorganizing shout arose, “Equality of rights!
equality of rights! No king! no coalition! Down
with the false grandees!”

But when, with his long sturdy strides, and his
stern features perfectly calm, but resolute and hard
as if they had been cast in iron, he had closed with
them, the shouts ceased suddenly. Slowly he
walked along their front, looking each private full
and firmly in the eye; and few were there who
dared to meet with an unblenching brow his concentrated
glare of anger and defiance. Halting at
length directly opposite to the two regiments of
musketeers, he drew out the proclamation.

“I have a paper here,” he said, “to read to ye
from the lord-general. Not to mutineers, however,
but to soldiers was I sent! Extinguish instantly,”
he added, in a tone somewhat louder, yet so severe
and passionless that one battalion obeyed on
the moment, “those matches! How dare ye muster
thus? Out of your caps with those unsoldierly
and villain mottoes—out with them! Nay! but ye
shall trample them beneath your feet!” and, awed
by his immoveable determination, the same battalion
once again complied; while the great bulk of
that tumultuous assembly looked on in abashed
wonder, and, ordering as rapidly as possible their
unmilitary and ill-dressed front, assumed an air of
perfect discipline and a right soldierly demeanour.
Not so the second regiment; for, brandishing their
arms aloft, they raised a deep and scornful murmur,

increasing gradually into a shout of absolute
defiance. Nay, some brought down their arquebuses
to the ready movement, and even cocked
them; but not one man removed the motto of rebellion.
It was a moment of anxiety, if not of real
peril; for, though the great mass of the men were
quiet, they yet wore an air of sullen and almost
savage discontent, which clearly showed their temper,
and made it but too probable than any overt
action, of one troop even, would kindle the whole
body into a sudden blaze of fury.

“Heard ye not,” Oliver proceeded, in a voice
pitched several notes below his usual key, but so
full of intense resolve, of quiet but indomitable
spirit, that it thrilled to the hearts of all who heard
it, even of those who still resisted, “or do ye dare

to disobey me? You, sir,” he continued, stepping
close up to the ranks, which now began to waver
somewhat, and confronting a gigantic lance-pesade,
“ground your arms!” and the man, overawed by his
demeanour, slowly and sulkily obeyed. “Shame!
shame!” cried several voices from the rear; “thou
braggart, that wouldst do so much, to shrink at the
first word!”

“Silence there in the ranks!” Oliver cried, fiercely,
and at his word again the murmurs ceased; but,
brief and trivial as they were, these murmurs had
yet roused anew a spirit of resistance in the bosom
of the half-terrified ringleader. Silent he stood indeed,
but his mouth worked convulsively, a red
flush overspread his countenance, and his hand
quivered as it grasped the barrel of his musket.

“Soh! thou art then a soldier,” continued Cromwell,
once more confronting the delinquent. “Now,
then, pull forth that rascal riband from thy cap!
Cast it, I say, into the dust, and set thy foot upon it!”

The man spoke not, but bit his lip till the blood

spirted forth, moving, however, no limb or muscle
of his body, whether to execute or to resist his officer's
command.

“Do as I bid thee, dog!” and, with a flash of furious
and ungovernable ire lighting up every feature
of his face, Cromwell stamped his heel on the
turf as though he was in act of trampling down a
living foeman.

“No dog of thine, at least,” answered the fellow;
“though, if thou hadst the will, all Englishmen
would be as slaves and dogs beneath thee.”

“Ha! this to me!” and, seizing the gigantic
trooper by the throat, he shook him to and fro as
though he were an infant, and cast him, almost, as
it seemed, without an effort, to the earth behind
him. “Seize him, guards, ho! Ye answer for him
with your lives. He is a ringleader; and, as the
Lord of earth and heaven liveth, verily he shall die
the death!” and, as he spoke, his handful of assistants
dragged off the prisoner, struggling and shouting
for a rescue, and placed him in security among
their mounted comrades. But, quickly as they did
his bidding, yet quicker was the movement of the
captive's right-hand man to succour or avenge him,
who, at the very point of time when Cromwell
seized the lance-pesade, levelled his arquebuse
right at his head within six feet. Ardenne dashed
forward sword in hand followed by six or eight of
his most active men, while his lieutenant shouted
to the horsemen in the rear to charge! Yet, had
their aid been needed, the career of Oliver had
been concluded on that day in a poor paltry riot—
but it was needed not! for, in the very act of
capturing the one, that keen-eyed and quick-witted
leader observed the motion of the other mutineer!
Before the heavy din, with which the armour of
the first clanged as he fell, was ended, his broad

sword gleamed aloft in the bright sunshine—down
it came whistling through the air—down, like a
flash of lightning, and, with his scull cleft through
his headpiece to the chin, the second plunged head
foremost, a dead man ere he touched the earth, his
arquebuse discharged, though harmlessly, by the
convulsed and quivering fingers after the life had
left the body. He paused not for a second's space
to suffer them to rafly or recover from the consternation
which had fallen on them with all the chilling
influence of a panic terror, but, “Charge!” he
shouted, in a voice of thunder, “charge the rebellious
dogs. Kill! kill! spare none who dare resist!”
and, with the word, Ardenne rushed in, and
faithfully his gallant men requited the trust placed
in their allegiance. Firmly, as though they had
outnumbered their opponents, that little handful
dashed into the breach which Cromwell's energy
had made already in the rebellious ranks; and at
a full trot, with their rapiers levelled to the charge,
up swept the horsemen. But the fall of their ringleaders,
and the undaunted bearing of their officers,
were too much for their nerves; and, ere the
guard was on them, their musket-buts rang heavily
as they were grounded simultaneously, and the obnoxious
badges, torn with quick hands from every
headpiece, fluttered on all sides in the air, or
strewed the turf before their feet. “Halt! ho!
halt, Colonel Ardenne!” shouted Oliver, perceiving
instantly and profiting by his advantage; but
scarcely was his second cry in time; for, though
they curbed their chargers as the word reached
their ears, the cavalry stopped not until their horses
chests were close upon the wavering ranks, and
their long rapiers waving over their heads. “Draw
off your horse, Lieutcnant Winthrop,” he continued;
“advance six files dismounted—arrest each
[OMITTED] those, of whom one certainly was destined to be
sent from the fair face of the bright laughing earth,
unhouselled and unshriven, into the presence of his
Maker, with scarce a moment even to prepare the spirit
for endurance of the fearful shock which should
disjoin it from the body! The lottery of death
was ended! The soldier, whose hard fate had been
thus chance-decided, was a small, delicate, pale-looking
man; of a weak frame, and a countenance
effeminate and betokening any thing save energy
of mind or resolution. Yet was this frail and
nerveless being perfectly cool and self-collected;
while his companion — taken in the very fact—
limbed like a Hercules, with high bold features
and a brilliant eye—a man who would have ridden
fearlessly, although alone, upon a stand of levelled
pikes, or rushed upon a cannon's mouth just as the
linstock was applied—shook like an aspen leaf
through all his powerful frame; his brow, his
cheek, his lip, grew white as ashes—his eye was
dim and senseless—he sobbed, he wept aloud,
struggling violently with the troopers who conducted
him to his last stand on earth, and yelling phrensiedly
for mercy. With an air perfectly composed
and fearless, the other threw aside his cassock
and his vest, unbound the kerchief from his
neck, giving it as a token to a favourite fellow-soldier,
and having, in a clear, unfaltering voice,
confessed the justice of his sentence, and exhorted
his companions to take warning from his fate, he
bowed respectfully to those who had condemned
him, and stepped as lightly to the place of execution
as though it were his choice to die. There
they stood, side by side—full of strong health, and
intellect, and life, and passion, in one short moment
to be mere clods of soulless and unconscious
clay—and there, with their death-weapons levelled,
paler themselves and far more agitated than even
those on whom they were to do the work of blood,
the firing party, chosen from the ranks of the same
regiment—composed, perhaps, of messmates, of
familiar friends, of proved associates in many a
scene of peril and of glery—perhaps of comrades,
plotters, instigators to the very crime which they

were destined to avenge, their friends to expiate—
their partners, without doubt, in this last fatal deed
of guilt, and now their executioners! The regiments
were drawn up forming three sides of a
great hollow square, the criminals upon the fourth,
the executioners already facing them at scarce ten
paces distant. There was not a voice—a sigh—a
movement in that mighty concourse; not a weapon
clashed, not a foot rustled on the earth. But the
sun shone in glorious beauty upon the burnished
pike-heads and the waving standards; and the
whole earth looked gay and smiling—more gay,
more smiling, as it seemed to the poor criminals,
than ever it had been before. A short extemporaneous
prayer was uttered by the captain of their
own battalion; a sad and doleful hymn was chanted
by the now penitent and terrified assemblage, with a
sound inexpressibly and strangely mournful. The
fatal sign was given!—a bright flash, and a sharp
report as of a single piece!—and, when the smoke
cleared off, there lay the bodies on the sod, lifeless
and motionless, their sins and sorrows thus simultaneously
and suddenly concluded. There was no
need of more severity—and the quick eye of Cromwell
saw it. With the yet warm and palpitating
bodies in full view, he read aloud the general's
message, the soldiery listening to every word with
a respectful and sincere attention, that denoted all
the force of the example they had witnessed. As
he concluded, every regiment presented, and then
grounded arms; the adjutators humbly advanced
from the crestfallen ranks, and with a deferential
air expressed their complete satisfaction at the lord-general's
exposition, their sense of their own past
misconduct, and their gratitude to Cromwell for
the mercy he had shown them, in taking but
two lives where all so righteously were forfeit.
After a few more words of reprimand, blended
with commendations of their former services, and
exhortations never to offend in the like sort hereafter,
Oliver, whose point was amply gained, dismissed
the soldiers; and the bands striking up in
the impressive notes of a dead march, with colours
trailed and arms reversed, they filed off to their
several quarters, well convinced now that, howsoever
their commanders might connive at disobedience
to the parliament, they would in no sort tolerate
or wink at the most trivial mutiny against
their own authority. In fact, by his undaunted
resolution in suppressing, and his inflexible severity
in punishing the present disaffection, joined to
the partial lenity he had extended to his prisoners,
Cromwell had more than regained all that he had
temporarily lost in the opinions of the army. Never,
perhaps, at any previous time had he stood
higher in power, or possessed more fully the respect
and admiration, not unmixed with wholesome
fear, of those whom he commanded, than at the
present moment.

The next night, in the most magnificent of England's
palaces, in the great hall of Windsor Castle,
the officers of that victorious army, which had not
merely conquered but annihilated the high faction
of the cavaliers, defeated the intrigues of the Scotch
Presbyterians, seen through and cut asunder—if
they had not disentangled—the gordian knot of parliamentary
chicane, assembled in most solemn but

most secret council. There, actuated by a single
spirit, and speaking, as it were, all with one common
voice—which they asserted, and perhaps believed,
such is the force of the heart's self-deception,
to be a direct proof that HE, whom they had
sought so long in prayer, earnestly dealing with
him that he should let that cup pass from them,
had put the counsel by immediate inspiration into
their hearts—those stern religionists determined
that, as a traitor, murderer, and tyrant, Charles Stuart
should be arraigned, and brought to answer for
his deeds before the high court of the nation in
parliament assembled.

It was remarked even then, and deeply pondered
on in after days, as something singular and
strange, by Ardenne, who was not present at the
council, having remained in London on his return
from Ware, but who was instantly apprized of the
proceedings—that, neither before that assemblage,
nor publicly at any other time, did Oliver urge on
or advocate, with his accustomed fervour, the measure
which, as Sir Edgar knew full well, he had
long since determined on within his secret heart.
It seemed as though he did not choose himself to
stir at all in that which had been mooted by the
common soldiery in the first instance, and advanced
by insubordination verging on open mutiny; or,
perhaps, seeing that, without his personal co-operation
in the matter, all things were tending to the
result which he believed the best, he was content
to lend them the mere negative support afforded by
his presence at deliberations, which he did not oppose
or hinder, wisely reserving his great energies
for the accomplishment of those great ends which
could not be wrought to maturity without them;
and holding himself, like the gods of the Grecian
drama, aloof from matters which afforded no due

scope for his unconquerable powers—from plots
which could as well be disentangled and wound
smoothly cut by those who had, perhaps, imbibed
his own opinions, and were unconsciously—while
fancying themselves free and untrammelied agents
—the mere tools and instruments of his superior
intellect.

5. CHAPTER V.

Julius Cæsar.

The indignation of the parliament, who, after the
retreat of the eleven impeached members, had more
and more come into the strong measures of the
army, was fearfully inflamed by the king's absolute
refusal of the four acts; so much so that a bill
was passed forbidding all addresses for the future
to Charles Stuart, and all renewal of negotiations
with him for a settlement, though not till after two
or three debates, in which the military leaders, and,
above all, the lieutenant-general, took active part.
The last, indeed, on one occasion, ended a long and
strenuous harangue by raising his voice to its highest
pitch with these emphatic words, “Teach not
the army, by neglecting your own safety and that
of the kingdom, by which theirs also is involved, to

deem themselves betrayed, and their best interests
abandoned to the rage of an irreconcilable enemy,
whom, for your sake, they have dared to provoke.
Beware”—and, as he spoke, he laid his hand upon
his rapier's hilt—“beware, lest their despair cause
them to seek safety by some other means than by
adhering to you, who know not to consult for your
own safety.”

And now, although the peril from the army's insubordination
had subsided, not a day passed without
some riotous commotion indicative of the divided
state of public feeling. Continual tumults
between the London mob, now become once more
loyal to the king, and the detachments of the veterans
quartered in the metropolis, were not suppressed
without some bloodshed; and, in the early
spring, were followed by a general movement of
the royalists throughout the kingdom, which, had it
been planned with as much of concert and of wisdom
as it was executed with high bravery and
spirit, would have caused much perplexity to those
in power. As it was, however, so ill-timed and
unpremediated were the risings of the cavaliers,
that they were easily subdued in detail, although
their numbers, if united, would have been truly formidable,
and although they fought, as individual
bodies, with all the resolution of despair, and in no
case were vanquished without loss and difficulty by
the independent army. The men of Kent were
beaten, after a hard-fought and well-disputed battle,
at Maidstone, by the lord-general in person—
the royalists of Wales, under the gallant Colonel
Poyer, were defeated, and Pembroke, into which
they had retired, taken by Cromwell after a six
weeks' siege. This exploit over, that indefatigable
leader hurried northward with all his wonted energy
of movement, came on the Scottish army, now

united with the northern cavaliers of Langdale, at
Preston on the Ribbic; and, though with forces
vastly inferior, hesitated not to give them battle.
Having defeated them so utterly that their army
was, in truth, wholly disorganized and scattered, he
pursued them closely into Scotland, where he compelled
the citizens of Edinburgh, deeply averse and
hostile to his party, to put down the royalists, and
to replace the power of the state in Argyle's hands,
who had now joined the independent faction with
his whole heart and spirit. While there, the Earl
of Leven and Sir David Lesley so totally disclaimed
the covenant as to cannonade the royalist
troops from the castle, and to agree, at a convention
held in my Lady Home's house in the Cannongate,
with Oliver, that there was a necessity, now
fully obvious, for taking the king's life. Meanwhile
Lord Goring, who had advanced to Black-heath,
hoping that by his presence London would
be encouraged into action, being checked by Fairfax,
shut himself up in Colchester; but, after a
long and vigorous defence, was forced, when all
was over, to surrender at discretion; and had the
farther misery of seeing two of his bravest officers,
Sir George Liste and Sir Charles Lucas, shot by
the conquerors as rebels—a rigorous and cruel exercise
of power, for which the general did not escape
much obloquy, although it was alleged in his
defence, and probably with truth, that he was instigated
to such unwonted harshness solely by the
suggestions of the fierce and unrelenting Ireton.

This absolute suppression of the king's friends
by land was poorly compeusated by the defection
of the navy; Rainsborough, its commander for the
parliament, having been set on shore by his rebellious
crews, who bore away for Holland, and, casting
anchor at the Brill, after a short time took on

board the Prince of Wales, accompanied by Rupert,
as their admiral; not in compliance with the
wishes of the queen, who would have lavished that
high dignity on her unworthy paramour Lord Jermyn.
About the same time the young Duke of
York, afterward James the Second, by the assistance
and the skill of Colonel Bamfield, made
good his flight from London, and reached the Netherlands
in safety. And now, beyond all doubt,
was the atrocious infidelity and wickedness of Henrietta
proved, who—although the revolted fleet had
full and undisputed mastery of the channel, and
might, with ease and certainty, have forcibly delivered
Charles from the hard durance in which he
was now held, after an unsuccessful effort to break
forth at Carisbrook—prevailed upon the Prince of
Wales to waste his time in frivolous and uscless
enterprises up the Thames and on the coasts, until
the parliament had fitted out another fleet under
the Earl of Warwiek, when, after what a scaman
would term lubberly manœuvring, he sailed toward
Holland, closely pursued by Warwiek's navy,
and never performed any action serviceable to
his unhappy father's cause or creditable to his own
fame. During the progress of the futile struggle,
which had terminated in rendering obvious to all
the hopelessness of any effort at armed interposition
for the king, the parliament, while Cromwell
was in Scotland, had held fresh negotiations at
Newport, in the Isle of Wight, with Charles, who,
to the last, despite the urgent prayers both of his
friends and the more moderate of his opponents,
refused compliance with the conditions offered,
though he must now have apprehended this to be
the only means by which he could retain possession
of his crown. The temper of the commons—
after receiving tidings of the king's unconquered
obstinacy—evinced by the distaste of the majority
toward an angry speech of Vane, so much alarmed
the leaders of the army, that, finding Hammond
more disposed toward the parliament than they had
hoped, they caused by stratagem the custody of the
king's person to be transferred to Colonel Ewre, a
man entirely in their interests, and ordered him to
be removed at once to the strong solitary fortress
of Hurst Castle, on the coast of Hampshire. A
letter from the commons to the general, demanding
instant restitution of the royal person to his former
guardian and abode, was answered by a demand
for payment of arrears due to the army, and, after
a few days, by the march of the most zealous and
enthusiastic regiments to London; the general taking
up his quarters at Whitehall, and other officers
with their detachments at Durham House, the
King's Mews, Covent Garden, Westminster, and
St. James's Palace. Still, undeterred by this bold
step, the Presbyterian party, after a violent debate,
carried it, by a majority of thirty-six against the independents
and the army faction, that “the king's
answer was a ground upon which for the houses to
proceed for the settlement of the peace of the kingdom.”
A resolution which, had it been brought
into force, would have effectually undone all that
had been effected by the long and bloody strife
which had preceded it, and left the king as powerful
for good or evil as he had been at its commencement,
provided he should, as his true policy
would dictate, hold to the friendship of the parliament.
That afternoon a large committee of the
commons waited upon the general at his lodgings
of Whitehall, but met from him only a supercilious
and cold welcome, and no satisfaction. The following
morning, when the members went to take
their seats, a guard of musketeers was at the doors,
headed by Colonel Pride and the Lord Grey of
Groby, who held a list of those who should not be
permitted to go in to the debate, and these were kept
three days in custody in different inns of court,
while the remainder of the house, called afterward
by royalists “the Rump,” voted that the king's answer
to the propositions was not satisfactory. Sir
Edgar, in the earlier part of the late tumults, had
served with Fairfax, and, after the surrender of
Colchester, had resigned his commission, disgusted
by the fate of Lisle and Lucas. Meanwhile, however,
he had been re-elected to the house, the Presbyterians
considering his departure from the army
as an earnest of his accession to their party, while
the independents, wiser in this than their antagonists,
foresaw that, howsoever he might disapprove
their violence, he would, at the least, never join
their enemies. On this account, then, he was suffered
by the soldiers to assume his seat, his name
not being on the list of those excluded. The first
step which he took was to move instantly for an
inquiry into the causes of the present outrage, and
though, when overruled in this by a majority of
those remaining in the house, he coincided with
the opinion that the king's answer was unsatisfactory,
he refused peremptorily to give any vote on the
occasion. Then, after several vain attempts to find
out the devisers of the violence, Fairfax denying
any knowledge of it, and the guards merely stating
that they had their orders, he at the first resolved
to vacate his seat once again; but, after much reflection,
held it the manlier and more upright course
still to continue in the house, opposing, to the best
of his abilities, all inroads on the liberties of Englishmen,
in their most delicate and dearest point,
the privilege of parliament. Just at this juncture,
indeed, upon the very evening of the day which
had been signalized by the exclusion of the Presbyterian
members, Cromwell returned from Scotland,
and took up his abode in the king's palace of
Whitehall. To him, indeed, Ardenne's suspicions
had first pointed as the real mover of this outrageous
measure; yet, on his charging it directly to
him, he answered with so much of ready frankness,
that “he had not been acquainted with the design,
yet, since it was done, he was glad of it, and would
endeavour to maintain it,” and asked so warmly for
his presence and advice at a council to be held that
evening in the house of Ludlow, that he succeeded
almost in convincing him that his suspicions were
unfounded. An early hour of the evening found
Sir Edgar at the place appointed, where he was
shown into a large well-lighted chamber, filled with
about two score of gentlemen, for the most part
the leaders of the army; among whom, at the first
glance, he recognised Ireton, Harrison, and Lilburne,
afterward nicknamed Trouble-world, with
Hacker, Hutchinson resembling a cavalier in his
rich dress and flowing hair, and some of the most
eminent civilians, Sir Harry Vane the younger,
and some few of the Presbyterian party, besides the
master of the house, and Cromwell, who sat aloof,
as it would seem, engrossed in weighty meditation;
Fairfax was not among them. When Sir
Edgar entered Harrison was declaiming with much
vehemence, as well of gesture as of speech, and
not without a species of wild eloquence, against all
forms of monarchy, which he asserted neither to be
“good in itself, nor yet good for the people,” quoting
the whole eighth chapter of the first book of
Samuel, and argaing therefrom “that to be governed
by a king was in itself displeasing to the
King and Monarch of the universe, and absolutely
sinful; for that the Lord himself bade Samuel yet
solemnly protest unto them, and show the manner
of the king that should reign over them;' and
afterward foretold to them `that ye shall cry out
in that day because of the king ye have chosen
you, and the Lord shall not hear you in that day.
Wherefore,” he added, “let us put away from us
this sin and this abomination—let us wash from
our hands the stain of this iniquity—yea! let us
cleanse ourselves with myrrh, with aloes, and with
hyssop, ay, and with blood—even the blood of sacrifice!—from
this offence which stinketh in the nostrils
of Jehovah! And let this man—the firebrand
of eivil conflagration—the drawer of the slaughtering
sword against his people—the slayer of our
brethren and our sons—the spoilers of our vineyards
and our oliveyards—this faithless gentleman
and perjured prince—this tyrant, traitor, murderer,
Charles Stuart—let him be driven out, even as the
scapegoat sent into the wilderness to bear away
the sins and sufferings of the people—let him be
cut off utterly, and cast upon the dunghill, and let
the dogs lick his blood, as they licked that of
Ahab, when the Lord smote him by the arrow of the
Syrian—smote him at Ramoth Gilead that he died
—and let his name be never named in Israel from
thenceforth ever more! So let it be with him, and
let the people cry amen!” To Harrison succeeded
Ireton, and Ludlow after him, both urging the expediency
of the king's death no less strongly than
its justice—descanting loudly on the faithlessness
which he had shown in all his previous dealings
—“his often protestations and engagements in the
name of a king and gentleman which he hath so
often violated”—and the small probability that any
new bond or restraint of conscience should now be
found to fetter one, whom neither his own coronation
oath nor the laws which he had sworn to
honour, uphold, and obey, could hinder from endeavouring
to subvert his country's constitution,
and build an autocratic throne upon the ruin of his
people's freedom.

When these had finished speaking, Sir Edgar
ealmly but impressively addressed them, beseeching
them to ponder deeply and pause long ere they
should take a step irrevocable, and, if it should
prove evil, irretrievable and ruinous. Admitting,
as fully as the warmest advocates for the king's
death, his guilt in aiming at supreme unconstitutional
dominion—his guilt in plunging the whole
population intrusted to his care—even as children
to a father's charge—into the misery of civil slaughter,
merely to gratify his own ambition—his guilt
in violating every covenant and compact he had
made!—owning the utter hopelessness of any effort
to establish peace while he should be within
the realm, in how close custody soever—the folly
of imagining that England's liberties could be in
safety while he should hold the reins of government,
how limited soever in his sway!—declaring
that he believed him in all justice to be guilty even
unto death—“I yet conjure you,” he exclaimed,
“to pause before you shed his blood! If ye depose
him from the throne, and banish him the
realm, ye will gain all advantage that his death
could give you, and more also!—ye will disarm
the tongues of those who would cry out against his
execution as against a sacrilegious and accursed
parricide, and fill the very mouths that would be
open to revile you, with praises of your clemency
and grace. Ye will deprive him wholly of the
means to do you evil, and ye will have this farther
safeguard, that, while he lives, no other can lay
claim to England's crown, whereas, once dead, his
son will instantly succeed to all his father's rights,

and more than all his father's influence on the
minds of men maddened with loyal sorrow and
athirst for vengeance. It was a wise and politic
saw of the old Romans, `to spare the subject and
subdue the proud!' To slay Charles Stuart is but
to elevate a bad king to an honoured martyr!—to
depose and banish him is to degrade him from a
suffering prince into a scorned and abject beggar!
Men will compassionate, and honour, ay! and bleed
for royalty in chains, when they but jeer and scoff
at royalty in tatters! Banish this man, and he
may wander forth from court to court of Europe;
he may be treated with mock deference, may be
styled king and brother, and pensioned with the
crumbs that fall from royal tables—but 'twill be
hollow all and insincere! Scorned and despised,
he will drag out a life held by your sufferance,
weary and painful to himself, and innocent to you
even of momentary cause for apprehension! Slay
him, and ye will buckle harness on the back of
each legitimate hereditary prince of Christendom
against you!—ye will concentrate and renerve the
partisans of royalty now scattered, hopeless, and
undone!—ye will enkindle a consuming flame,
which, though for a brief space it may smoulder
or burn dimly, shall yet wax hourly more broad,
and bright, and high, till it shall soar in triumph
over the liberties of England, shrivelled again, and
blasted, perchance, never to revive!”

His views, shrewd and farsighted as they were,
and couched in language bold and perspicuous,
produced a great effect on the more moderate of
either party, and he was followed by several of the
Presbyterians on the same side, and even by one
or two of the milder officers; but the more zealous
held to their opinions, and urged them with
all their wonted force and ingenuity, and the debate

waxed warm, a strong majority, however, leaning
evidently toward the death of Charles and
the abolition of all royal power in Great Britain.
It was, moreover, brought into debate, and discussed
very earnestly, by what means—if it should
be decided that Charles Stuart must die—his death
should be effected—some hesitating not to advocate
his private taking off by poison or the dagger,
so to avoid the scandal and the odium of his public
execution—to whom the honest but fanatical
and visionary Harrison replied in words of fire, repudiating
the idea of such foul and midnight murder,
and declaring that, as their cause was just, so
should their vengeance be both bold and open!—
that, as his crimes were evident, so should their
punishment be manifest and in the face of day!
“What,” he exclaimed, with real eloquence, “shall
we, the workers of the grandest revolution earth
ever has beheld—the conscience-armed deliverers
of England—the champions of a nation's freedom
—the Christian warriors of an all-seeing God—
shall we take off our foe by ratsbane in the dark,
or slay him with a hireling knife, for a mere paltry
dread of what the world shall say? Not so!
not so! but we will point the world's voice by our
actions—fetter its opinion by our boldness! Let
Charles, I say, let Charles THE KING be brought
to trial in the presence of his peers—THE PEOPLE!
There, if he be found guilty, let him be led to execution
in the world's eye and the sun's! Let him
be slain as a deliberate and solemn sacrifice—offered
as a high victim at the shrines of freedom
and of God! With honour and respect to the
great station he has held, but with implacable and
stern resentment toward the crimes by which he
has defiled it, as he hath done to others so let us
do to him, not as vile stabbers and assassins, but as
elected judges, acting for men below, and answerable
to the Lord on high! Let him henceforth be
an ensample unto those who would enslave their
fellows. Let England be a precept to all nations,
that, when oppressed, they shall arise in the unconquerable
strength of purity, and honesty, and truth!
—that they shall battle boldly, and unto success!—
that they shall judge impartially!—and execute inflexibly
the high decrees of justice and of vengeance!”

Throughout this stirring scene, to Edgar's great
astonishment, Cromwell took no share in the argument,
nor did he even seem to pay the grave attention
which the subject merited to the opinions of
the speakers. Much of the time he was engaged
in whispering, and even jesting, with those who sat
beside him; and once or twice indulged in those
rude ebullitions of practical humour which had
made him such a favourite in the camp, but which
were most unsuitable and unbecoming in a grave
and sorrowful debate, involving, it might be, the life
and death of thousands, the fate of a most ancient
line of kings, the future government of a great and
glorious empire. Not a little astonished and disgusted
at this conduct, Sir Edgar watched him
closely, to detect, if possible, the causes of his mood
and the internal workings of his mind; but, after a
long survey, being still in doubt whether he had
brought to the council a mind predetermined and
unalterably fixed, or whether he had put on levity
of manner to conceal irresolution and a perturbed
spirit, he called openly on Cromwell to give his
opinion.

“Verily,” answered he, “verily I am yet unresolved.
Have at thee, Ludlow!” he continued,
springing to his feet, with a loud boisterous laugh,
and hurling at the head of the republican a cushion

of the sofa on which he was sitting, with such violence
as almost to overturn him, upsetting at the
same time several candles, and throwing the whole
council into confusion, under cover of which he
ran out of the room, and was already half way
down the stairs, when Ludlow, who had pursued
him, struck him between the shoulders with the
same missile, and drove him head-foremost down
the flight of steps and through the door, which had
been opened by a servant in expectation of his exit.
Thus ended the discussion and the council for that
evening; but, within a week, the House of Commons
appointed a committee “to prepare a charge
of high treason against the king, which should contain
the several crimes and misdemeanours of his
reign; which, being made, they would consider
the best way and manner of proceeding that he
might be brought to justice.” About the same
time some idle intercessions, at the request of the
prince, were made in the behalf of Charles by the
states-general of Holland, and a letter yet more
idle sent by the queen to be delivered to the parliament.
In a short time the charge of the committee
was prepared and approved by the commons.
The House of Lords, indeed, rejected it;
and, instantly adjourning for a week, on their return
found their doors locked by orders of the
lower house, and, being thus excluded, sat no more
for many years. Then a high court of justice was
appointed, of the most celebrated and influential
men, civil and military, in the realm. Bradshaw, a
lawyer of great talent and inflexible boldness, was
named lord president, invested with much state,
and having lodgings suitable to his high office assigned
to him at Westminster. The royal prisoner
was brought up from Hurst to Windsor under a
powerful guard of Harrison's command, and thence
to his own palace at St. James, where he was held
in rigorons custody, while every preparation was
made for the accomplishment of that great tragedy,
with the report of which “Europe was soon to ring
from side to side.”

6. CHAPTER VI.

Macbeth.

The day at length arrived, big with the fate of
England and her king—the twentieth of January,
memorable thenceforth through every age for the
most solemn and sublimely daring measure recorded
in the annals of the world. At an extremely
early hour the members of the high court of
justice, which had been constituted with the utmost
labour by the military council that swayed the helm
of state, so as to be a fair representation of all
ranks and classes of society, assembled in the
painted chamber. All the chief members of the
independent party in the commons—Lord Fairfax,
Cromwell, Skippon, Ireton, as the four generals,
with all the colonels of the army—the two chief
justices and the chief baron—six peers—five aldermen
of London—several from the most leading
barristers—and many baronets and country gentlemen
of note, had been at the first summoned to the
discharge of this unprecedented trust; but, when
the House of Lords refused its sanction to the ordinance

for bringing of the king to justice, the
peers and judges were omitted. Sir Harry Vane,
Algernon Sidney, St. John, and some other stanch
republicans, who, although friendly to the king's
deposition, were not consenting to his death, refused
to sit as members of the court; and many
more, either from fear or conscience, failed answering
to their names.

While the commissioners were here assembled,
Ardenne among the rest, news was brought to them
on a sudden that his majesty had landed at Sir
Robert Cotton's stairs, on which Cromwell, who
had been previously conversing with sundry of his
intimates among the judges, with the same air of
jocularity which had so strongly marked his conduct
during the earlier consultation, rose suddenly
from the place where he had been sitting, and
moved with rapid but unequal steps toward the
window. The keen eye of Sir Edgar followed
him, and, to his no small wonder, he perceived
that the hands, which the daring chieftain laid upon
the wainscot to support him as he leaned his body
forward to look upon the royal captive, quivered so
violently as almost to communicate a tremour to
his frame; and, when he turned away, after a long
and anxious gaze upon the destined victim, although
his eye was steady and unblenching, and
his mouth firmly compressed and calm, his whole
face, usually so rubicund and sanguine in its colouring,
was ghastly pale, and his lips white as
ashes. Marvelling greatly at this change in one
so stern and inaccessible to ordinary feelings; remembering,
too, the widely different glance with
which, at a more early period of his great career,
the eye of Cromwell had completely quelled the
proud man at whose aspect he now faltered; and
wishing to investigate the state of mind which

caused so strange a revelation of contending passions,
Sir Edgar was just stepping forward to address
him, when the doors were thrown wide open,
and the judges summoned to the court. Westminster
Hall, that most sublime and ancient specimen
of architecture, brought to perfection, which
modern art has vainly sought to imitate, by those
whom, in our overweening vanity, we children of a
later day presume to style barbarians, had been
prepared, with singular attention to details, for this
most dread solemnity. Benches, row above row,
covered with crimson velvet for the commissioners,
filled all the upper end; Bradshaw, the learned
and undaunted president, sat in the centre of
the front rank on a splendid chair, attired in rich
dark-coloured robes, and supported on the right
hand and the left by his assessors, Say and Lisle,
with a long table similarly decked before them.
The galleries were crowded almost to suffocation
by spectators pale with excitement and anxiety,
while the whole body of the building was filled
by an enormous multitude upon the right, and by
a regiment of musketeers upon the left, in caps of
steel and polished corslets, with their pieces loaded
and their ready matches lighted, a narrow passage
being marked out with silken cords between the
soldiery and populace, affording a free passage
from the doorway to the bar. The judges entered
in the midst of a silence so stern and deep, that
the slight rustling of their mantles and their feet
on the thick carpets, which were strewn within the
bar, was clearly audible. Solemn, severe, and sad,
they took their seats—each man of them, as it appeared,
almost oppressed by the intense feeling of
the vast responsibility which had been laid upon
him, and each determined to acquit himself as became
one called to act, as it were, before the real
and imbodied presence of his country and his God.
As Ardenne looked around him, he felt the blood
thrill painfully in every pore of his own frame! He
saw that the same process was at work in all
around him! Never had he beheld so pale a concourse!
Yet, amid all that colourless and ashy pallor,
there was no sign of trepidation or dismay; it
was the outward aspect of a mind within so rigidly
and painfully resolved, that it had gathered all the
blood toward its citadel the heart, not the weak
failing of the flesh through doubt or terror. Scarce
had their seats been taken ere the doors of that
great hall were opened, and a sedan chair, preceded
and surrounded by a guard of carbineers,
was carried to the bar, where a large chair of velvet
was set forth for the king's accommodation.
There was a pause of intense interest as the prisoner
stepped out—it seemed as if the heart of each
man in that huge apartment had ceased from its pulsations—not
a hand moved, not a breath was drawn.
It was, however, but for a moment; for the king
instantly came forth, dressed in his usual garb of
sable silk, decked only by the star and garter, and
wearing on his head his high-crowned hat, which
he did not remove, when, after a stern and haughty
look of mingled pride and sadness on the assembled
court, he calmly took the seat prepared for his reception.
Nor did he then, by any glance or sign of
courtesy, acknowledge or show any reverence to
the court; but, after sitting still for a few minutes'
space, arose again, and, having turned completely
round with his back toward the judges, gazed
steadfastly down the long area of the hall with the
same severe aspect as before, until the crier of the
court began to read the ordinance of parliament
commanding his arraignment in a sharp ringing
voice, that filled the whole apartment with its distinct
and high-pitched tones. Then he again sat
down, with his eyes fixed immoveably on the commanding
and undaunted features of the president.
The parliament's commission ended, the names of
all the judges were called over—and, first, that of
the president, who answered in a clear voice, quiet
and unmoved by any tremour. Then the lord-general
was summoned, and straight there was a
pause of unexpected silence, for no one answered.
Again the crier's accents wakened the echoes of
the hall—“Lord Fairfax!”—and this second time a
shrill voice, though musical and soft, replied. “He
has more wit,” it said, “than to be present here!”
The court rose in confusion—there was a momentary
tumult, and a clamour of stern import both
from the judges and spectators; but Bradshaw's
high notes, pealing like a silver trumpet's above the
din of tongues, enforced tranquillity, and, calling on
the officers to seize the person who had dared contemn
the court, appeased the short-lived riot. But
when, after a hasty search, no one could be discovered,
the calling of the commissioners proceeded,
until nearly eighty had answered to their names.

Then, with an air of deep religious feeling, mixed
with the consciousness of high authority, engraved
on his strong features, marked, as they were, by
lines of wearing thought, and pale from studious
vigils over the midnight lamp, Bradshaw arose;
and his voice, though it faltered not, was subdued
almost unto tenderness as he addressed the royal
culprit.

“Charles Stuart, king of England—the commons
of England, being deeply sensible of the calamities
that have been brought upon this nation, which are
fixed upon you as the principal author of them,
have resolved to make inquisition for blood; and,
according to that debt and duty which they owe to

justice—to God—to the kingdom, and themselves,
they have resolved to bring you to trial and to
judgment; and for that purpose have constituted
the high court of justice before which you are now
brought.”

This said, Cook, the attorney of the commonwealth,
who sat close to the person of the prisoner,
rose to address the court; but the king, having
in his hand a staff of ebony, tipped with a little
head of silver, laid it upon his shoulder, and, in the
deep tones of authority, commanded him to “Hold!”
which word he still reiterated with warmth, that
might almost have been termed violence, when he
perceived that he was disobeyed at the lord-president's
command.

“My lord,” the attorney said, “I come here to
charge Charles Stuart, the King of England, in the
name of the commons of England, with treason
and high misdemeanour. I desire that the said
charge may be read!” And the lord-president
giving direction to the clerk to read the charge,
the king, in a yet louder and more angry voice,
cried “Hold;” but Bradshaw, his large black eyes
flashing with indignation, sternly forbade the clerk
to notice the rude interruptions of the prisoner at
the bar, but to get on to his duty—and the indictment
was read instantly, containing, in effect, “that
he had been admitted King of England, and trusted
with a limited power to govern according to law;
and, by his oath and office, was obliged to use the
power committed to him for the good and benefit
of the people; but that he had, out of a wicked
design to erect himself an unlimited and tyrannical
power, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of
the people, traitorously levied war against the present
parliament and the people therein represented.”
It then enumerated the calamities which had befallen

England—the free and noble blood which
had been shed like water—the devastation of the
fair face of the land, the burning of its rich and
thriving cities, the slaughter of its bravest sons.
It pointed to the causes—the commissions signed
by his own hand for levying this domestic war—
the raising of his standard in the town of Nottingham—his
presence at Edgehill, and other battles
fought under his eye and at his instigation—so many
flagrant proofs that “he had been the author and
contriver of these unnatural, cruel, and bloody wars;
and was therein guilty of all the treasons, murders,
rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages,
and mischief to the nation which had been
committed in the said wars, or been thereby occastened;
and that he was, therefore, now impeached
for the said crimes and treasons, on the behalf and
in the name of all the good people of England—”

As the clerk read these words, while all the vast
assemblage was hushed in the deep silence of attention
and excitement, the same shrill voice which
had before proclaimed the absence of the Lord-general
Fairfax again exclaimed, in tones so thrilling
that they penetrated every portion of the building—“No!
nor one hundreth part of them.” The
tumult which ensued was yet more wild and more
alarming than before; the whole crowd sprang to
their feet with a hoarse savage murmur, and a rush
and a rustling of their feet and garments that
might be heard to a considerable distance. One
officer, a grim hard-featured fanatic, leaped forward
from the ranks, and pointing with his sheathed rapier
to that division of the galleries whence the
disturbance had proceeded, furiously shouted to his
men, bidding them “Level their muskets and give
fire!” A fearful scene ensued—the heavy rattling
of the matchlocks, as they were thrown forward,

ready for instant use, by the fierce soldiery, was
almost drowned by the cries, shrieks, and exclamations
of the spectators, many of whom were females,
all now in mortal terror at the prospect of
receiving an immediate volley, rushing in all directions
to and fro, and some of them endeavouring
to drop down into the body of the hall. Before,
however, time was given for the men to fire, it
was announced to the lord-president that the disturber
of the court was, in truth, no other or less
personage than the Lady Fairfax, who had taken
this extraordinary mode of testifying her dislike to
the proceedings, and had been now persuaded to
withdraw. On this announcement silence and
peace was once again restored, and after a few
moments the clerk went on with the arraignment,
repeating the offensive words more loudly than before—“On
the behalf and in the name of all the
good people of England, as a tyrant, traitor, and
murderer—and an implacable and public enemy to
the commonwealth of England.” Then, with remarkable
and singular ill-taste, and as ill-judgment,
Charles, who had been continually gazing about
the court in different directions, as if entirely free
from interest of any sort in the proceedings—now
lowering on the judges with cool contemptuous
haughtiness—now glaring with an eye of bitter hatred
on the dark soldiery which kept the avenues
—now gazing with an air of sad reproachful gravity,
not all unblent with pity, on the bulk of the
spectators—actually burst out into a loud and ringing
laugh as the word traitor was pronounced.

Bradshaw again arose majestically firm and
steady—though evidently moved to anger by the
open undisguised contempt of Charles—and with
strong emphasis, and evident determination to check
this disrespectful levity on the king's part, though

not without consideration for the high place and
natural displeasure of the prisoner at the proceedings
of the court, rebuked him for the tone and air
he had adopted—a tone and air becoming neither
his own dignity—his position at the present moment—nor
the exaited duties and great power of
the court before whom he stood arraigned. With
the same air of unconcealed contempt which he
had hitherto displayed, Charles listened to the
president's address, and answered by a denial of
the existence of any authority whatever in the court
—of any right pertaining unto them or to the
English people to hold their king to trial—or of
any legal power at all vested in those before whom
he now stood. Little occurred worthy of farther
note during the three days of this singular and all-important
ceremonial. The king, persisting in denial
of the court's authority, refusing to plead to
the indictment under which he stood arraigned,
and constantly breaking in with frivolous and uncivil
interruptions upon the business and proceedings
of the trial, was, at the end of the first day, remanded,
and the commissioners adjourned to the
ensuing Monday, the twenty-second instant. Upon
this second day the prisoner's behaviour was the
same; and, after some considerable altercation, he
was again remanded, and led back under close custody
to Sir Robert Cotton's house, where lodgings
were assigned to him during the hearing of his
cause. Again, on the next day, the twenty-third,
the court resumed, and, on the king's appearance
at the bar, the commonwealth's attorney instantly
craved judgment on him as contumacious; saying
that the innocent blood shed by him cried aloud
for justice. For the last time the prisoner was
commanded by the president to plead, and warned
that, by persisting in his present course, he would
but draw upon him an immediate judgment; but
Charles again refused to offer any answer or defence,
crying out that he “valued not the charge a
rush”—that he “would not now violate the trust
his people had reposed in him, by owning a new
court of judicature”—that “it was for their liberty
he stood, and, but for this, he would not here object
to giving satisfaction to the English people of the
clearness of his past proceedings.” The clerk accordingly
was ordered to record the prisoner's default—and
the court once again adjourned until
the twenty-seventh, sitting throughout the interval
caused by the king's determination in the painted
chamber daily, and hearing witnesses to the fact
of his setting up the standard of his cause at Nottingham—the
leading of his troops in armour at
Edgehill, Newbury, and Naseby—the issuing of
mandates and commissions to his officers for prosecution
of the war!—and seeking to establish proofs
with which they judged it needful to hold themselves
provided, in case of the king's choosing at
the last to plead. After this pause they met as
previously, upon the twenty-seventh, in the great
hall at Westminster, and the cause was once more
resumed; but still the king refused to answer or
submit; and then the president informed him that
the court had considered and agreed upon a judgment,
but yet—if he had any thing to say in defence
of himself in respect to the matter charged—
they were prepared to hear him. In reply, Charles
demanded to be heard before both houses of the
parliament, assembled in the painted chamber, before
the passing of the sentence. This, after an
adjournment of the court for half an hour to consider
on the king's proposition, was refused, as
being, in effect, but a new denial of their jurisdiction
as now constituted, and a fresh contempt. On
the return of the commissioners he was at once informed
that he had all too long delayed the court
already by his contempt and contumacy, and that
they were resolved unanimously to proceed to judgment
and to punishment. Then, in a long speech,
eloquent and lucid, and replete with arguments
which might appear most fitting to excuse and justify
such a proceeding, and to convince the world of
the right moral justice of a measure not certainly
in strict conformity with legal precedents, Bradshaw
proceeded to pass sentence on the prisoner—
and, toward the end of his oration, urged on the
king the scriptural example of David's late repentance
for his imitation.

Unmoved and haughty, with his dark features
marked by no expression save a slight scornful
sneer, Charles rose, still covered, and strove once
again to interrupt him—demanding to be heard
concerning those great imputations thus laid to his
charge, but was again reminded that he had refused
to own the court, and that too much delay
and liberty had been already granted to him. The
sentence was then read—the president affirming it
to be “the sentence, judgment, and resolution of
the whole court,” and all the members standing up
to testify their full concurrence with their speaker.
For the last time the royal culprit claimed to be
heard; but, at the president's direction, the guards
withdrew him, still exclaiming loudly—“that, since
he was not suffered for to speak, he might expect
what sort of justice other men should have of them!”
Various and wild were the expressions of disgust
and approbation among the multitude; some cried
“God save the king!” despite the angry scowls and
bitter menaces of the fanatical and furious guards
—others, and far the most in numbers, shouted,
with inflamed visages and bitter tones, “Justice!”

and “Vengeance!” and “Away with him!”—and
one, more brutal than the rest, offered to strike
him with his hand as he was led forth from the
hall, and actually spat upon his beard! The court
arose! the members dispersed to their homes! the
most unprecedented, singular, and solemn trial on
record in the anuals of the universe was ended—a
trial, wherein a puissant nation was the plaintiff—a
king, the son and grandson of a long line of mighty
and hereditary monarchs, the defendant—and the
point at issue, the momentous question whether
the kings of England should be despots over cringing
and soul-shackled slaves, or the first magistrates
of an enlightened, wise, and free, and potent
people! Happily for England! happily for the
world! the judges of that wondrous court were
equal to the task. Their verdict was the fiat of
their country's freedom—rational, moderate, and
stable! and to the world that verdict set forth an
example that has been followed, far and near, to
the establishment of liberty, and happiness, and
even-handed justice, in regions then obscured by
the thick night of tyranny and ignorance! By his
blood Charles Stuart sealed the charter of England's
constitution; and, though for a short time
the people lapsed again beneath a sway as absolute
as his, it was but for a time!—and the seeds sown
in that first revolution, moistened with noble blood,
and matured by the stormy breath of war, though
they lay dormant for a space, were not extinct, but
grew up to a fair and fertile crop, and so have
flourished since—and may they flourish so for
ever! It may be that the death of Charles was
a great legal wrong!—it may be that among his
judges many were actuated by insane and senseless
feelings of overstrained religion—that many
were urged on by personal resentments!—personal
hopes and fears!—personal pride!—and personal
ambition! But, not the less for these things, it
must be confessed that it was A GREAT MORAL
RIGHT! If Charles deserved to live, no tyrant ever
merited to die! If Charles had lived, England
had never been, what she now is, THE FREE! nor
would another land, the giant offspring of an immortal
mother, have carried those same principles,
for which her parent bled before her, into effect
over a space a thousand times more mighty! The
good traits of the man—such as they were, feeble
and faintly marked, and showing rather the absence
of strong vice than the existence of distinguishing
and vivid virtue—must neither hide nor
palliate the evil actions and worse motives of the
king! That it was his design to do away, so far
as in him lay, with England's constitution!—to
reign uncurbed by parliaments—the only salutary
check on regal sway!—to wield the boundless
power of the nation's sword, and grasp with the
same hand the vast resources of the nation's purse!
—to mould the church into an instrument and
weapon of his despotic government!—to reign, in
short, an absolute and autocratic sovereign!—none
can at this time doubt, unless they wilfully seal up
their minds against the truth! In desperate diseases,
means that at other times were desperate
and deadly must be applied to cure! and it may
be asserted, without much danger of disproof, that,
by the death of Charles, and by that only, could
the great principles of that immortal struggle have
been wrought out to their fulfilment. It was twice
needful!—needful, that it might hold up a terrible
and salutary dread to future tyrants—that it might
tear the roots of despotism from the soil they
would have rendered sterile!—and doubly needful,
that, by conducting England through the fearful
ordeal of democratic anarchy, it might infuse a yet
more salutary dread into the people, of liberty unregulated
and immoderate—licentiousness, not freedom!
These were, in part, the thoughts of Andenne
as he subscribed his name to that strange
instrument which, next to Magna Charta, may be
looked upon in its results as the chief cause of
England's present greatness. Under her previous
sovereigns, ambitious, great, and wise as many of
them doubtless were, England was but, at best, a
secondary power. Under her first and sole usurper
she blazed forth, on the instant, into a star of
almost solar magnitude; and, but for that death-warrant,
the navigation act had never given her dominion
over the boundless seas, nor made her, as
the great commercial nation, one of the mightiest
springs and morers of the universe.

What were the real motives of that man, who, if
he did not absolutely bring about, might, beyond
question, absolutely have prevented, the execution
of the king, no human understanding may divine.
But the great probability is, that, like most human
motives; they were of mingled strain—half fire and
half clay! Sir Edgar, in the course of the proceedings,
had been convinced, to his full satisfaction,
that the mind of Oliver was strangely and
unnaturally overwrought. His coarse and vulgar
jocularity at Ludlow's house—his paleness and unwonted
trepidation on the king's first appearance—
the little share he took in any portion of the trial,
for, except one outbreaking of fierce temper when
Mr. Downes, during the last adjournment, most pathetically
urged the members to grant his majesty's
demand of a joint conference of the three estates,
he had scarce taken any interest in what was
going forward—and, above all, his brutal and half-frantic
jests during the same adjournment, when

he daubed Henry Martin's face with ink, and jeered
and laughed so as to move the wonder of all present—all
these things, taken in connexion with the
state in which he found him when he visited his
chamber to beseech him after the sentence had
been passed, had proved to Ardenne, past all
doubt, that he was awfully perturbed in spirit. It
was late in the evening of the day following the
trial that Sir Edgar, who, though he had concurred
in the sentence, wished its mitigation,
sought Cromwell's lodging at Whitehall, nor was
it without some urgency that he compelled the soldiers
and domestics to admit him. The fortunate
commander was already in possession of the superb
apartments which had so lately called his fallen
rival master. In the first antechamber of that gorgeous
suite, two privates of the ironsides were sitting
by a blazing fire, its bright light flashing from
their steel armour and accoutrements in strong and
painful contrast to the luxurious decorations and
appliances of royal case among which they were
seated. The second and third rooms of the suite
were vacant, although dazzlingly illuminated by
many waxen lights; but, long before he reached
the door of the last room, Ardenne's attention was
aroused by the deep groans, mingled with broken
exclamations—snatches of fervent but disjointed
prayer, and bursts of passionate and painful weeping,
which fell upon his ear as he advanced. He
rapped against the panel, but his signal was unheard,
or, at the least, unheeded—though the
sounds which he had heard had now ceased, saving
only the sullen echoes of heavy and irregular steps,
distinctly audible even as they fell on the soft texture
of the three-plied Persian carpets. Scrupulous
though he was, and jealous almost to excess
of undue familiarity, Sir Edgar was too much excited
now to stand on points of form. He turned
the gilded handle, and almost noiselessly the door
revolved upon its hinges; and, in one of his most
dark moods, hypochondriac or conscience-stricken,
that wonderful man stood before him. The large
apartment sumptuously decked with furniture and
hangings of splendid crimson velvet—the toilet-table
with its appurtenances of transparent crystal
and plate of solid gold—the royal arms of England
embroidered on the tester of the bed, piled high
with coverlets of down and satin, passed scarcely
seen before the eyes of the spectator engrossed in
observation of the strange being who now tenanted
the halls of England's sovereign. A single light,
and that obscure and waning, stood on the central
table of some rich eastern wood, and on the hearth
a few decaying brands, which had been suffered to
burn low, smouldered with more of smoke than
flame, casting a sickly and unnatural light about
the chamber. But HE—the tenant!—with blood-shot
eyes, and features ghastly wan and haggard—
he strode to and fro with steps irregular and almost
staggering—now waving his extended arm on high
—now striking it upon his broad breast with a violence
denoted plainly by the heavy and dull sound
of the oft-repeated blows. Tears—copious and
agonizing tears—those which console not nor relieve,
but burn like vengeful fires—flowed down
his hollow cheeks—and his words, wild as his gait
and gestures, were now of bitter self-reproach, of
accusation, and remorse—now of sincere and humble
penitence—and now of fierce ecstatic triumph!
—but, in an instant, in the twinkling of the eye, as
he perceived that be was not alone, his air and aspect
were, as if by magic transformation, utterly
changed and calm.

“Ha! good Sir Edgar,” he exclaimed, “this is

a pleasure such as I have not long experienced—
nor, though such friendly visitations were once ordinary
things betwen us, of late days expected!”

“I have called on you,” Ardenne gravely replied,
“I have called on you now, lieutenant-general, not
for mere ordinary reasons, whether of friendship or
of ceremonial—but upon matters of great weight
and interest to England! To come to the point at
once, I have called here believing—and hoping
likewise—that I shall find in you a real and unselfish
patriot—one that regards not self-aggrandizement,
or fame, or wealth, or power, when compared
to his country's weal. In this hope—this belief—
I have come to implore you, as a friend and faithful
counsellor, that you will interpose your powerful
influence to shield this most unhappy king from
death. Justice required that he should be condemned—justice
is satisfied! The great example
is set forth to England and the universe!—all ends
are answered that his execution can attain! And
you, sir, who have won the brightest crown of warlike
honour that has been witnessed in these later
days, beware! Beware, I say, lest present times,
ay! and posterity to boot, shall deem that, in
permitting Charles to perish by the headsman's
axe, you have looked rather to your own than to
your country's interests! Kill him—for, in neglecting
to preserve, you actually kill no less than
if alone, and by a single mandate, you condemned
him—kill him, and it may well be you shall reign
yourself as monarch over England—but, to gain a
precarious, short-lived, and unhappy eminence, you
shall lose present peace and future glory—you
shall cast from you the esteem and love of those
who have bled and would die for you—you shall
stand high in solitary friendless state—without the
lingering consolation of a self-approving spirit!

Spare him—save him—and you shall be the first
for ever in the heart and judgment of every honest
Briten—while England's name exists, yours shall
live in coeval glory—the title of the loftiest worth
—the purest patriotism—the most disinterested
clemency that earth has witnessed since her young
surface bore the steps of giants and of angels!”

“Nay! you wax warm in eloquence!” Oliver
answered, coldly. “Surely your zeal doth eat you
up! yea, the desire of your heart doth rise up to
your brain, and cloud its better reason. I would—
ay, of a surety I do profess to you—I would lay
down not merely the poor honour—that vainest and
most fickle breath of human fantasy—which you
ascribe to me, to whom it is not due, but to the
Lord of Hosts!—but my life even—my existence
upon earth!—my hope of seeing England the freest
and the first of European princedoms!—that so
this bruised and bending reed might not be trodden
in the mire—this frail and half-cracked potsherd
might not be shivered into atoms! But, when the
Lord hath spoken, what mortal shall gainsay him?
Was it not borne into our hearts—branded with characters
of living fire upon the inmost tablets of our
souls—`Ye shall avenge my people—for their blood
and their children's blood, which he hath spilled
upon the ground that hath not drunk it up, calleth
aloud for vengeance!—yea! ye shall slay the king.'
Is it not written that `ye shall not suffer one of
them to live!' and what are we that we should contradict
Jehovali? I could not if I would—I could
not if I would—and that I would do so, as the
game stands, I say not—now save Charles Stuart
from the infliction of that righteous sentence which
you have aided to pass on him! The people have
arisen in their might—the people's voice hath gone
forth to the utmost portions of the world, `The

king shall surely die!' the people's voice is God's
voice! Hear it and tremble—hear it and obey!”

At once the latest hope of Edgar vanished; the
firm determination, evinced not by words only, but
by the cold hard eye, the compressed lip, the
clinched hand, and the hard-set teeth through
which the low stern voice was sent out in a harsh
and hissing whisper, proved to him so distinctly,
as to banish even hope, that Charles had not a
possibility, much less a chance, of life at Cromwell's
intercession! and from the lip of Cromwell
only could any intercession come that should prevail
over the angry prejudices and morose fanaticism
of the army! Seeing the fruitlessness of effort,
he desisted! With a sick heart and boding
spirit he departed from the presence of the arbiter,
whom even now he knew not whether to think an
over-zealous patriot or an ambitious hypocritical
adventurer, playing a deep game for a mighty venture,
and strode away to find in his lone lodging a
sleepless bed disturbed by ominous and sad presagings—by
doubts, by sorrow, by remorse!—for
he already had begun bitterly to repent the part
which he had borne in the great revolution now
about to terminate so tragically for the ruler—so
disastrously, as his fears told him, for the ruled—
and, above all, so fatally for England's permanent
and real peace. Scarcely had Edgar gone from
Cromwell's presence, before a new petitioner arrived,
and, with yet more of difficulty than the former
had experienced gained access to the presence
of his kinsman; for that petitioner was no
other than his cousin, Colonel John Cromwell, an
officer of the Dutch service, and commissioned as
his agent with the parliament by the Prince of
Wales, who at this time, resided at the Hague. In
the commencement of the interview the able and

accomplished soldier confined himself to solemn
and ceremonious remonstrances against the act in
contemplation; assuring his great relative of the
resentment, horror, and disgust which this atrocious
crime—for so he hesitated not to call it—
would kindle throughout every Christian land!—
would kindle, not against England, nor the parliament,
nor army—but against him alone, who, as
the world well knew, could wind the reins of government
just as he listed, pointing the councils of
the one and wielding the war-weapons of the other!

“Tush! cousin,” answered Oliver, “tell me not
of atrocity and crime! 'Tis a great act of sovereign
and solemn justice!—but, were it as you say,
I have no power to alter it. It is the army, and
not I, who will inflict this justice on the king,
brooking not any let nor hindrance.”

“Remember you not, sir,” exclaimed the other,
“how, some twelve months ago, you did profess to
me, that `rather would you draw your sword in
the defence of Charles, than suffer these republicans
to harm one hair upon his head!'—have you
forgotten this and other such asseverations, or do
you wilfully and of aforethought violate your word?”

“Well, right well I remember it!” Cromwell
replied, in tones of great asperity, “and well you do
now to remember me of it; for so you remind
me of his base and lying insincerity, that drove the
faithful and brave army into such bitterness of
wrath as not even I could stem, either by force or
counsel! The times are changed—the times are
changed, and strangely! since I spoke so to you—
and on his own head be his blood!—for by his own
craft, his own ingrate and selfish subtlety, hath he
dragged down on him this ruin. If it be true, that
whom the gods have destined to destruction they
first deprive of reason, as the wise Ethnics did believe,

then hath the Lord of Hosts hardened the
heart of this man that he should die, not live!”

“You are determined, then, to do this deed of infamy
and horror?” the foreign officer demanded.

“I am determined!” Oliver answered, sternly,
“I am determined not to interfere with England's
course of judgment. I have prayed for the king,
and fasted! yea, I have striven with the Lord
these many times that some way might be given
me to save him—but no return hath yet been made
to me, nor any sign, ner answer!”

Then Colonel Cromwell rose up from his seat,
and walking with light steps toward the doorway,
cautiously looked out, and satisfied himself that no
one was within earshot; then turning the key with
a wary hand, and dropping a strong night-latch,
he returned, and drawing from his bosom an emblazoned
parchment containing his credentials, and
a large sheet of vellum perfectly blank and vacant,
but signed at length and sealed, in his own name
and for his royal father, by Charles Stuart, prince
of Wales and heir apparent, he laid them on the
table under the eye of his bold kinsman.

“Cousin,” he said, “it is no time to dally now
with mere words in this matter. Look here at
this carte blanche. It is in your sole power now
to make—not yourself only—but your posterity,
and family, and kindred, happy, and great, and honourable
through all ages! Else, as they changed
their name in bygone days from Williams unto
Cromwell, so now must they be forced to change
it once again; for this one fact will bring such infamy
upon the name and the whole generation of
them, that no after ages will be able to wipe out
the shameful stain!”

The general's features worked convulsively, and
his face flushed crimson, and paled, and flushed

again, as he heard this address; and his hand
dropped down to his dagger's hilt, and griped it
with such force as if he would have buried his
strong fingers in the ivory pommel; but, when his
guest had ended, he answered in a quiet voice,
though evidently guarded and constrained.

“You have done!” he said, “you have done, sir,
and I have heard you out! I have been hitherto
calm!—very calm,” he continued, gradually warming,
as he spoke, into fierce ire; “I have endured
to hear my motives questioned—my assertions
doubted—and the great cause, of which I am a
most unworthy, but a most sincere supporter,
scoffed at, and vilified, and held up as atrocious in
the world's eye, infamous, and shameful! Calmly
I have endured all this!—nay, I have heard my
own good name traduced, my family dishonoured,
the name of Cromwell coupled—coupled, I say, as
if synonymous—with villany and its reward—disgrace!
Calmly I have endured this also! But
you have dared to bribe me! presumed to fancy
that you could buy me, not like a fettered captive
in the body, but like a renegado and apostate in
the chainless mind. You! you—a Cromwell—
have ventured, face to face, to offer me the basest
of affronts—to tender to me gold, and rank, and
titles, to turn me from my righteous purpose—to
seduce me from my conscience, my allegiance, and
my honour! Thank God—thank God!—I say,
thank God, if you believe in him—that I am regenerate,
and you a Cromwell—for were I one jot
more a sinner than I am—or you one tittle less
connected with my blood—then had I sheathed
this dagger”—and, as he spoke, he drew and dashed
the weapon furiously upon the ground before his
feet—“dudgeon deep in your heart! Begone! you
have your answer!”

Truly had Oliver said that the tempter was of

his own blood; for he rose firmly from his chair,
and, with an erect and unflinching carriage, looked
full in his enraged kinsman's eye till he ceased
speaking; and then—“Tush! cousin Oliver,” he
said, “I care not for your vagaries of passion—I
am a soldier, man, and not a woman or a child,
that words can daunt me. But now you are distempered—think
of this matter deeply; weigh it,
and ponder on it ere you answer. I shall await, at
my inn, your reply until to-morrow morning. Give
you good-night and better temper!” and he withdrew,
believing in his heart that Oliver's rage was
but assumed, and that the golden bait would take.
But sadly was he destined to be deceived; for, at
about an hour after midnight, a messenger came to
him from Whitehall, and told him he might now
go to bed, for he must not expect any more answer
than he had unto the prince; for that the
council of the officers had again been seeking God
—and there was no hope for it, but the king must
die. Accordingly, upon the following morning, the
celebrated twenty-ninth of January, Charles, after
a mournful parting with his children, was led
through the palace-garden and park of St. James
to his own chamber at Whitehall, where he prayed
for a space with Bishop Juxon, who afterward accompanied
him to the block; thence to the banqueting-hall,
and thence, through a passage broken
in the wall, unto the scaffold. There, after a short
speech, which he concluded by declaring that he
“had a good cause—he had a gracious God—and,
therefore, he would say no more,” he laid down his
head on the block, and died, with such a perfect
dignity, such a serene and modest fearlessness, unmixed
with any thing of boldness or parade, as to
justify the observation, applied originally to another,
that “no action of his life became him like
the leaving of it!”

7. CHAPTER VII.

Julius Cæsar.

æneid, II., 556.

Midnight was on the mighty city. The happy
sleep had swept away the cares of thousands in
its still deathlike oblivion. The multitudes who
had assembled to sate themselves with gazing on
the sad yet exciting spectacle of the morning,
wearied and worn out with the unnatural tension
of their nerves during that day of horror, had passed
away to seek a contrast in the repose of their domestic
chambers. The very guards were slumbering
on their posts about the precincts of Whitehall,
and not a sound or breath disturbed the silence
of the night. Within the palace, in one of those
sublime apartments which he had loved so well
while living, upon a lofty bed, adorned with crimson
curtains, and rich ostrich plumes, and the gold-blazoned
arms of England, lay a plain oaken coffin,
half covered with a pall of sable velvet. Many
tall waxen torches blazed around the room in candlesticks
of solid silver, six feet at least in height,
and their light glanced upon a narrow plate of silver
decking the coffin's lid, whereon were these
few words, “King Charles—1648.” No mourning
crowds wept round the couch whereon the
hapless prince slept that cold sleep that knows no

earthly waking. No coroneted peers watched over
the embalmed remains—no flippant pages hushed
their accustomed merriment in reverence to the
ashes of their master—no guard of honour, with
trailed arms and downcast visages, stood sentinel
without the door; but, with their carbines loaded,
sheathed in their buff coats and bright armour, two
privates of the ironsides strode to and fro, passing
each other and repassing at brief intervals—the
ringing of their heavy armature, and the loud sounds
of their spurred and booted footfalls, awakening
strange echoes in that apartment of the dead. The
night wore onward, and the stars began to wink in
the cold skies, and the first coming of the morn
was felt in the increasing chillness of the air; hitherto
had the watch of those unusual mourners been
lonely and uninterrupted. The clock, however,
was just striking three, and its loud cadences were
vocal still through the long vacant halls and vast
saloons of the deserted palace, when a remote and
stealthy footstep broke upon the silence which was
succeeding fast to the loud chimes. The soldiers
interchanged alarmed and jealous glances, blew
their slow matches to a vivid flame, and, listening
with wary ears and ready weapons, resumed their
guarded walk. Nearer and nearer came the step,
firm, regular, and low, but evidently not desirous
of avoiding observation—now it was at the door—it
paused, and, bringing simultaneously their weapons
to the level, the soldiers halted between the
body and the door, and challenged loudly, “Stand,
ho! the word. Stand, or we shoot!”

“Justice and freedom!” answered a harsh and
croaking voice—and, bearing in his right hand a
small waxen taper, and in his left a staff of ebony,
Oliver Cromwell entered. He was dressed plainly
in a full suit of black cloth, with silken hose, and

a loose cloak of broadcloth faced with velvet, a
very light black-hilted rapier hanging from his girdle
in lieu of the long heavy broadsword which he
so rarely laid aside; his face was very pale, but
perfectly composed and grave, with the mouth
firmly closed, and the eyes shining with a steady
and unaltered light.

“Good watch,” he cried, as he came in, “you
keep good watch. Cold work, I trow, and cheerless.
What would ye say now to a flagon of October—hey!
Stephenson, hey! Bowtell? So! so!
ye are on duty, ye would say—well, interrupt me
not for that—I will relieve ye for a brief space—
but one at a time—one only! Stephenson, give
me thy carbine and the match—and now get thee
down to the buttery; tarry not over half an hour,
and return straightway to take bluff Bowtell's
place!” The soldier grinned significantly, gave
up his weapon to his officer, and walked off greatly
pleased at this brief intermission of an unpleasant
duty. Cromwell looked after him as he departed,
and, when his footsteps had sunk into silence, depositing
the carbine he had taken in a corner, he
walked up slowly to the coffin with a strong stately
step and unmoved aspect.

“He hath not broken on thy watch, then?” he
demanded, with a grim smile, but evidently speaking
thoughtfully and with emotion, although wishing
to conceal his feelings by an assumption of unfeeling
merriment; “he hath not waked to scare
ye?”

“Now may the Lord forbid,” returned the superstitious
soldier, half alarmed at the words and
manner of his officer; “what mean you, worthy
general?”

“Why, how now, simpleton?” Cromwell replied;
“you look, in truth, as if he had walked forth in

his untimely cerements to affright you. But fear
not, Bowtell, fear not!—the king sleeps sound!—
and shall sleep till the day when the great trumpet
of Jehovah shall call him to a mightier judgment,
and, it may well be, to a darker doom! Have they
screwed down the coffin?” he continued; “I fain
would look upon him;” and he moved closer to the
bed, and, throwing back the pall of velvet, tried to
raise the lid; but, though not permanently fastened
down, it yet resisted the attempt, being held tightly
by some two or three stout spikes. After a
moment's pause he thrust the ferrule of his staff into
the chink, and made an effort thus to draw the
nails out of their sockets; but they had been driven
in too firmly, and the staff creaked as though it
would have broken. “Lend me thy rapier,” he exclaimed;
“its steel hilt will have strength enough;”
and, with the word, he forced the pommel into the
aperture between the lid and side, and, leaning
heavily upon the weapon as a lever, wrenched up
the cover with an impetus so sudden that the
nails flew into the air, and struck against the canopy
which overhung it. Then he stood fixed, and,
for a short time, speechless, regarding, with a disturbed
and cloudy brow, the mangled body of his
victim. The body, which had been opened and embalmed,
was swathed in bandages of linen drawn
so tightly round the limbs, that, when the shroud
was lifted, the perfect form and the development
of all the muscles might be traced as plainly as
while he was in life—the head, partially covered
by an embroidered napkin bound about the brows,
and a broad riband of white silk fastened beneath
the chin, was in its proper place; but a small interval,
that showed like a discoloured streak of dingy
red, marked its disseverment. The face was pale,
but scarcely more so than its wont, and far less
ashy in its hues than that of the undaunted warrior
who leaned over it. The lips retained their usual
and healthful colour, with something of a smile still
visible about them; the eyes were closed, but
naturally, and as if in sleep; the nose preserved
its wonted form, unsharpened as yet by the iron
hand of death. There was, indeed, no sign or
symptom of a painful and untimely dissolution on
those serene and comely lineaments—something
there might be of a languor not characteristic of
the living man, of a placidity and peace more deep
than usual; but nothing which could have led any
one to fancy that the thread of life had been snapped
violently, for him who slumbered there so
tranquilly, by the rude weapon of the executioner.
For a long time Cromwell spoke not a word—nor
moved a limb—nor even winked an eyelid—steadfastly,
solemnly gazing on the features of his fallen
foe and rival. “He sleeps indeed!—he sleeps,
how peacefully and well! That eye shall flash no
more with kingly pride; that lip be wreathed no
more into the calm but haughty sneer! The busy
brain, that plotted so much wo to England—the indomitable
mind, that would not swerve one hairbreadth
from its purpose, no, not to purchase life—
are these—are these, too, in repose, like that cold
voiceless lip, that nerveless and inanimate right
hand? Is that sleep dreamless? Doth the soul,
plunged in a dark and senseless torpor, lie paralyzed
and shorn of its pervading vigour in the abyss
of Hades?—or hath it but awakened from this
trance, after the turmoil of mortality, to more complete
perfection—to consciousness, and wisdom,
and unchanged immortality? Dost thou know,
thou cold form—dost thou know now who stands
beside thee? He who continually strove against
the tyranny thou wouldst have set up in the land!
—he who beat down thy banner in the field, and
swept thy gallant cavaliers like dust before the
whirlwind!—he who brought down thy glory from
the throne, and paved thy path to that still hostelry
—the grave? Dost thou know this—and yet not
start from out thy bloody cerements? I do but
dream,” he went on, after a moment's pause—“the
king is nothing! a mere clod in the valley! `Hell
from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy
coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all
the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from
their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee—Art thou also become
weak as we?—art thou become like unto us?
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the
noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee,
and the worms cover thee! How art thou fallen
from Heaven, oh Lucifer, son of the morning! how
art thou cut down, which didst weaken the nations!'
Thus was it written of a mightier one than thou—
thus hath it been with thee! Thy place is empty
upon earth—thy country no more knows thee!
Verily thou art fallen asleep—asleep for many a
thousand years—until thou shalt be summoned to
make answer in the spirit for all thy deeds wrought
in the flesh. Yet then, even then, wilt thou have
nothing, fallen great one, nothing to witness against
me. But for thine own self-will—thine own tyrannical
and senseless folly—thine own oppressing of
the saints, and trampling under foot the delicate
and tender consciences of men—nay, more than all
this, but for thine own false-dealing and foul treachery
toward those who would have served thee truly
—thou mightst have still sat in the high place
of thy forefathers!—thou mightst have outshone
them, so far as the sovereign of a free and mighty
nation outshines the chieftain of an enslaved and
paltry tribe!—thou mightst have been served by
hands and swords, through the Lord's help, invincible—honoured
and loved by hearts loyal, sincere,
and single-minded!—thou mightst have fulfilled
the number of thy days, dying in green old age
amid the tears and lamentations of thy people, and
bequeathing to thy sons that puissant and time-honoured
sceptre which now shall never more be
wielded by thy race. Alas! alas! for man! Who
that looked on thee in thy fair and princely youth
would have presaged so sad an end to thy bright-seeming
fortunes? Surely this frame of thine,
which mine own eyes have seen so proud-enthroned
upon thy charger's back, rallying thy followers
through the havoc and the terror of the battle—
surely this frame of thine, so strongly knit, and
muscular, and manly, was formed to baffle hardships
and to brave long years! Surely, but for
thine own insane and selfish folly, thou wast formed
to die old! Lo!” and, as he thus spoke, he laid
the finger of his right hand in the gaping wound, and
with cool scrutiny examined the consistency and
texture of the muscles, “lo! how sound is this
flesh, how wiry and elastic these dissevered sinews.
There is no symptom here of disease or debility!
—no decay—no corruption of the system! But
for the axe, he had lived years—ay! many and
long years! But, verily, all things are of the Lord
—and had He not predestined him to die, then
had he hardened not his heart, nor raised up foes
against him, of whom it is a scripture that `none
shall be weary nor stumble among them; none
shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of
their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes
be broken.' Whom the Lord listeth to destroy,
surely he striveth but in vain; for who shall find
strength in the sword, or refuge in the speed of
horses, against the Lord of Hosts? Then say not
that I slew thee, but the Lord—for how had I defended
thee against the God of Battles—or how
had I acquitted whom He had judged to destroy?”
He paused from the long wild declamation which
he had poured out in the perturbation of his spirit,
half conscious, and, perhaps, half self-convicted of
criminal ambition, and struggling to convince himself
entirely of the truth of the dark creed he had
adopted, and thus to satisfy his restless spirit by a
halt voluntary self-deception. The sentinel, meantime,
had stood beside him, with his hand still
outstretched as when he first extended it to receive
again his sword, gazing partly in admiration, partly
in fear and awe, now on the calm and rigid countenance
of the dead king, now on the varying
and agitated features of his almost remorseful
judge, but less astonished at the scene than would
have been expected, in consequence of the prevailing
custom of his party to pray and preach,
with every species of whining cant or furious raving,
on all occasions anywise uncommon or surprising.
For several minutes' space Oliver gazed
again in silence on the body, and then replacing
the lid gently and almost tenderly—“Farewell,”
he said, “farewell on earth for ever! Strangely
have we been linked together here below, and
wonderfully do we part! Hadst thou prevailed,
my fate had been more bitter! Farewell! farewell!
we meet no more, whether for good or evil,
until that final meeting when God must judge between
us two—till then, sleep soundly—and then
awake—He only knows—to what!”

He then replaced the screws, and threw the
pall across the coffin as before, the soldier Bowtell
holding a torch, which he had taken from the
nearest candelabrum, to assist him; this finished,

he withdrew a pace or two, wrapped his cloak
closely round him, and sat down upon a settle near
the bed. The soldier, having replaced the light,
stood for a little time in silence, and then—“I pray
you tell me now,” he said, “heutenant-general,
what mode of government shall we now have?”

“The same as then was!” he answered, in a
sharp decisive tone; and, instantly relapsing into
silence, sat in deep sullen thought, until the other
soldier came back from the buttery; then, forgetting
quite or disregarding his first promise of relieving
Bowtell in his turn, he took up the small
taper he had brought with him, and left the room
in his dark mood, speaking no word to either of the
sentinels.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Antony and Cleopatra.

Some months had passed after the death of
Charles, during which a new form of government
had been established. By a vote of the commons
the existence of the upper house was declared dangerous
and useless, and, without more ado, it was
abolished. About the same time, by another vote,
monarchy was extinguished, and it was made high
treason to proclaim, or otherwise acknowledge,

Charles Stuart, commonly called the Prince of
Wales, as king of England. A council of state
had been next composed, of forty-one members—
among whom were Fairfax, Cromwell, Bradshaw,
with St. John and the younger Vane—on whom
devolved the duties of the executive, with a proviso
that they should resign their powers to the state
as soon as the republic should be settled on a per
manent and stable basis. Some disaffection of the
army, and tumults which, for a short time, threatened
to be dangerous to the new government,
were put down and punished rigorously by the
zeal and energy of Cromwell, and all domestic
matters wore now a show of happier and fairer
promise than Ardenne had ever hoped to witness;
while the republic had already been acknowledged,
and received the greetings of many—the most
powerful potentates of Europe. Spring had grown
into early summer; but, while all things around him
gradually wore a fuller and more perfect beauty,
while buds expanded into full-blown blossoms, and
woods put on their freshest garniture of green, and
the rich fields gladdened the farmer's heart by their
broad promise, the hopes of Ardenne had been
blighted more and more, had faded into sorrows,
had been seared and dried up into absolute despair.
A very few days after the king's execution
he had been summoned to repair with speed to
Woodleigh, where Sibyl—his beloved — his last
and only link to the cold world—was dangerously, if
not desperately ill. He found her—as his crushed
heart too truly had presaged—already dying. He
watched beside her couch, and day by day marked
the successive inroads of disease on that dear
form! He saw her hourly growiag weaker, paler,
and less earthly in her mortal frame; and hourly,
as he thought, more heavenly, more angelic in her
mind. Between them there was now no estrangement,
no distrust. Death, which to ordinary spirits
is a separation—death was to them a bond of union.
Disguise was at end—both felt, both knew, and
both acknowledged that “some wintry blight,” indeed
“some casual indisposition,” was the immediate
cause of her decline, yet that a pined and
broken heart had sapped the corporeal energies, and
betrayed the fortress to the insidious spoiler. Sorrow,
regret, deep mourning, cast their dark shadows
over them, but remorse came not near them—
nor reproach—nor any bitter feeling except the
sickening sense of hope deferred. Sad though it
was and pitiful, it was a lovely scene—that deathbed!
The bold and fearless soldier, unmanned
utterly, and sobbing like a sickly infant over the
wreck of her whom he felt that he now loved better
when stricken, blighted, and cut off already
from communion with the sons of men, than when
she was the pride and admiration of all who chanced
to meet her. It has been said already that there
was no disguise between them; and now, when
every possibility of selfish motives was removed;
when there could be no more the slightest misconstruction;
when all asperities were, in truth, softened
down by the approach of that great alchymist
of mortal deeds and mortal causes—death! all that
had been before obscure and intricate was rendered
plain as noonday. And Sibyl shamed not
to confess her sense of her own hapless error, an
error which had robbed her lover of all chance of
happiness on earth—had robbed herself of life!—
and Ardenne, melted and tortured by contrition,
and half-repentant, as has been shown already, of
the part which he had played, and morbidly dissatisfied
with the result of the experiment, sat groaning
in the spirit by her pillow, and confessed, in very
liopelessness of heart, that he had cast away his
all for a mere vision—for a most vain and senseless
fancy. But in these bitter moments it was
hers, as the true woman's part, still to enact the
comforter—to point the real evils, which, while in
health and happiness, she scarce would have admitted
such, that he had battled to put down—and
the more real benefits which must spring up hereafter
from the anarchy that had succeeded to the
fall of Charles, as darkness follows the decline of
day only to bring forth the more pure and mellow
moonshine. She died—and Ardenne was, indeed,
alone—alone for ever!—without one tie on earth
—without one kindred creatore through whose
veins the pure blood of his fathers poured its unmingled
current—without one selfish hope—without
one feeling left that could disturb or alienate
his absolute devotion to his country's weal! He
looked upon her cold corpse with a tearless eye—
he saw the fresh green sod heaped over her—and
felt that he had sacrificed his all, and sacrificed it
in chase of a phantom! He felt that England
was as far from rational and real liberty as at the
war's commencement, and how much farther from
the blessed calm of an established peace. A cold
and bitter mood of grief had fallen on him, obscuring
all his brighter qualities, and overpowering the
energies of a mind once as elastic and pervading
as the tempered steel! It had changed his very
soul!—it had made him—even more than all the
previous sorrows he had known, the previous perils
he had faced, the previous disappointments he
had writhed in bearing—an altered—a new man!
The brilliant dreams and the warm hopes of youth
had faded long ago! The high and noble purposes
of middle age—the pure ambition to be a
benefactor, not of his countrymen alone, but of the
universal human race—the steady longing after an
honest and clear fame—the sacred fire of patrioism
itself, were now, if not extinct, so chilled
and overwhelmed by the dull apathy of settled wo,
that it had needed much again to raise them into
luminous and active being. It was just when he
was the most absorbed in this sad stupor, some
three or four days only after the death of his lost
Sibyl, that an express arrived to rouse him from
his sullen musings among the shades of Woodleigh,
which had become once more his own—he being
next of kin to his untimely-parted cousin. It was
an express from that great man, who, more than
ever, now, since the decease of Charles, swayed as
he chose the destinies of England, craving his instant
presence to confer on matters of the highest
import both to themselves and to their country. It
is true that, long before this period, Sir Edgar Ardenne
had ceased to feel that deep respect and
almost veneration which he once had entertained
for Cromwell. He had long found his suspicions
growing daily and hourly more strong—daily and
hourly more confirmed by overt actions. Still, with
such wondrous skill and subtlety had the arch-schemer
wound along his path, onward, still onward!
that it was quite impossible to say at what
point of his ascent, or if indeed at all, he had
passed the confines of sincerity and patriotism, to
enter the stern regions of ambition. That Cromwell
at this time enjoyed a power eminently great,
and at the same time dangerous, Ardenne could
not deny—that he had attained to that power by
his own energy was self-apparent—but whether
he had framed the course which had exalted him
according to the dictates of religion and of conscience,
and so found his own high fortunes while
seeking but for England's weal; or whether he
had struggled forward to his own grandeur as his
only goal, he could not even now decide. One
thing he clearly saw, that the experiment had for
the present failed!—that, by the death of Charles,
tyranny was indeed put down!—but put down
only to be followed by anarchy—or by a tyranny
more mighty than the former! But, seeing this,
he saw no present way of extrication save through
the medium of the very man whom he suspected,
whom he feared, the most. He therefore judged
it most advisable not to permit the alienation
which had been growing up between them to become
total; but, keeping a shrewd watch on all his
motions, to discover, if possible, what might be his
ulterior views, and, so far as his own influence
might avail, to keep him in the path of honesty
and honour. “He can do more for England than
any living man,” he muttered to himself, as, in obedience
to the unexpected summons, he shook off
his lethargy and set his foot in the stirrup—“he
can, beyond all question; and let us hope he will.
He had high virtues once no less than wondrous
talents; and, certainly, I know not why I
should assume it as a fact that they are now extinct.
And I—since I have lost all else—since I
have worn away the flower of my years—wasted
the sweetness of my whole existence in struggling
for my country, why should I hesitate to
pour out the dregs of an unprized and wearisome
existence; why should I doubt to cast away life itself
also—a life which only separates me from her
—if that my life can profit England? I will—I will,
as I have begun, so persevere! Consistency and
honour now alone are left to me, and never will I
disobey their dictates! A name which, though I
never shall transmit to others, I, at least, its last
owner, never, never will disgrace!” He took his
solitary way to London, and, if not the less sad,
was at the least less bitterly absorbed by sorrow;
he mingled, with a grave aspect, certainly, and a
subdued demeanour, in the chance society of men,
and struggled, not all unsuccessfully, to shake off
a melancholy which, though it was a luxury to indulge,
he felt it was a duty to repress. The third
day toward nightfall found him already in the
heart of the metropolis, which, under its new masters,
wore a composed and steady aspect of society,
not, indeed, very gay or pleasing, yet praiseworthy
at least for the entire absence of rude revelry or
riot in the crowded streets. Ardenne found Cromwell,
as when he last had visited him, occupying
the royal chambers of Whitehall, but with far
more of pomp and show than he had as yet witnessed
about the person of the independent leader.
Two or three officers, richly attired, waited in the
anterooms, and a page, sumptuously though not
gayly dressed, opened the door of his apartment to
the gallant baronet with deep and silent reverence.
The cordial warmth which Oliver exhibited would
in itself have called forth something of suspicion
from the mind of Sir Edgar; for, latterly, although
not absolutely estranged from each other, there
had been a passing coldness, a want of frank and
cheerful confidence between them, which caused
the present alteration of the general's air and manner
to be very obvious. But, to confirm his fears,
after a short discourse on various matters connected
with state policy and questions of the day—
“You have not heard, I trow, Sir Edgar,” Cromwell
began abruptly, after a little pause, “you have
not heard of the new trust the parliament hath now
of late conferred on me?—even the Lord Lieutenancy
of Ireland, with command of the forces
needful to crush the embers of this accursed rebellion
that yet devours the land!”

“I have not,” answered Ardenne. “Have you
accepted it?”

“Surely I have,” returned the general; “for,
of a truth, the commons' house, ay! and the councit
of state also, were very urgent! yea! unto the
taking no denial! for, at the first, I would have
fain denied it. Truly my soul is sick of war and
tumult, and would retire to the privacy of humble
and domestic life. But, as I say, they would take
no denial! and, moreover, after a while, diligently
searching the Lord's will, praying myself with
earnest zeal, and profiting, too, by the prayers of
better men, I have been convinced that my repugnance
to this duty was not of the Lord—but a back-sliding
rather, and a fainting of the flesh; a yielding
to the vain temptations of the world and the
devil! It is not for me to draw my hand from off
the handle of the plough, when He hath manifestly
fixed on me the task of turning up the hard and
stubborn glebe.”

“A powerful army, doubtless, is assigned to
you,” said Ardenne, half musing, half inquiring.

“Doubtless! Twelve thousand horse and foot
—the picked men of the host, that hath so gloriously
worked out the freedom of the land—the
regiments and their commanders subject to my
own choice! One hundred thousand pounds of
sterling silver in the military chest, and all things
corresponding! Verily, by the Lord's help, soon
shall we have peace as settled in the wildest bog of
Ireland as in the heart of London!”

“It is a great trust!” Ardenne again answered,
coldly, “the greatest for a subject! When set
you forth?”

“Speedily,” Cromwell replied, “right speedily!

—but, ere I go, I have yet one thing to perform—
the parliament, as not content with these high honours
it hath done me, commands me to appoint all
the chief officers. The master of the horse is a high
post—important, onerous, and of great weight!
Now, Edgar Ardenne, though we have differed
somewhat lately, I do know you able, valiant,
honest, and trusty—such are the attributes needful
for this great office—go with me—it is yours!”

“I thank you,” Edgar replied, perfectly unmoved.
“Think me not ignorant of the honour,
nor yet ungrateful when I decline that honour. In
truth, I am sick of blood—blood of my countrymen!
I would to God no drop of it had been shed
here in England—for I do fear me very much it
hath been shed in vain.”

Oliver was evidently discomposed; he rose abruptly,
and took many turns about the room, muttering
to himself; then, stopping suddenly—“Mark
me!” he said. “I love you, Edgar Ardenne, I have
loved you ever!—yea, since that first night when
we met nigh Roysten—I have felt ever that in you
there is an honesty different from that of men.
You preach not, neither do you pray much in public,
yet I do well believe you have more true religion
than half the saints of the land. You can
fight, too, with the foremost—and counsel better
than the wisest! You must go with me! you
must strike on my side! Surely the Lord shall
yet do greater things for this regenerate land than
he hath done already—though wondrous are his
works and great his loving-kindness — and it is
graven in my heart within me, that by me shall
he do them!—although I be but a rough instrument,
a blunt and edgeless tool, for his omnipotent
right hand! Go with me, now, go with me—and
I say not that I will make you great—for, of a

truth, it is not for a grovelling worm upon the
earth to speak of making earthworms great!—
creation is the Lord's, and the Lord's only!—but I
do say that my fortunes shall be thy fortunes also!
and my hopes thine! Lo! you, I have a daughter—one
yet a maid—comely, too, in the flesh—discreet,
and virtuous, and sage—even my youngest
—Frances! Again! I say not that I will give
her to thee in the bonds of wedlock; for, truly,
hearts cannot be given and transferred like golden
dress—neither do I esteem it wise or lawful for
a parent to do any force to those most strong and
inward inclinations! But this I will say—for it is
a truth, I do profess to you, a very truth!—that I
believe the maid hath looked not hitherto on any
man to love him—and that, rather than any man on
earth, would I see thee my son-in-law! Thine own
high qualities, so that the Lord look down upon
this work, will do the rest! Give me thine hand;
say that thou wilt go with me! surely thou shalt
be next in power unto myself—next in the glory
of the deeds we shall accomplish in the Lord's
qause and England's. Thou shalt see yet, and
share in very mighty changes—”

“I were dishonest,” Sir Edgar interrupted him,
with vehemence, “I were dishonest! a base traitor
to my cause, my conscience, and my country, did
I pretend to doubt your meaning! I read you,
sir, I read you as you were an open book before
me—but me you know not, nor can comprehend
at all! Neither—great as you are, and greater as
you wish to be—can you tempt me one inch from
the straight path! My heart, General Cromwell,
is in the grave!—in the grave with that peerless
woman who once, at your hands, saved me from a
father's madness! Not—not to be a queen's—an
angel's husband, would I forego the memory of her

on earth—the hope of her in Heaven! As for
what you call greatness, I care not for it—nay, I
do loathe it!—for it is villany—dishonour—shame!
Farewell! I leave you, sir, in sorrow—in strong
and bitter sorrow! Fairly I tell you to your face.
I do suspect you very deeply—and if it be as I
suspect, I will oppose you to the death! Pause!
pause—and oh! consider!—it is a little thing to be
a king!—a tyrant!—a usurper! It is the mightiest
of all things to have the power to be so, and
the virtue to decline that power! Be, as you may,
your country's friend, its guardian, and its father!
Beware! I say, beware how you attempt to be its
ruler! Better is a pure conscience than a golden
bawble! He who cannot err hath said, `What
shall it avail a man to gain the whole world and
lose his own soul!' You say you love me—I did
once love—honour—esteem—ay! venerate you—
you, Oliver Cromwell! and rather would I hew off
the best limb of my body than see you play the part
which I do fear you meditate! Answer me not,
sir! no profession can convince me. Actions—actions,
sir—actions only can prove to me your truth.
Sincerely I pray God that I may be in error—
sincerely I pray God you may be strengthened
to cast temptation far behind you—to be the great,
the glorious, the immortal benefactor of your land,
you may be if you will! Go, then, to Ireland—go
—do your duty; I will adhere to mine. My sword
is in its scabbard, never to come forth more unless
my country shall require it against a foreign foe!
or—a domestic tyrant! Farewell! may Heaven
give you strength—farewell!”

“Do we part friends?” asked Oliver, whose
strong nerves were greatly shaken, and whose
mind, wholly impassable at ordinary moments to
such feelings, was penetrated by a sense of absolute

humiliation, and overpowered by the sublime
and genuine force of real virtue; “do we part
friends?”

“And shall, I trust, meet friends!” Edgar replied,
clasping his hand with fervour, while a tear
stood in his dark eye. “You have no truer friend!
—no more sincere admirer—be but yourself—within
the four seas that gird Britain! May Heaven
protect you, and preserve you—as I have thought
you—as I would think you ever—noble!”

Again he grasped his hand, wrung it hard, turned,
and left the room.

“Can it be so?” cried Cromwell, in a low
thoughtful tone, “can it be so?—and hath he read
my inward soul—read it more truly than myself?”
He strode across the room with a loud step and a
kingly port. “Not king—but the first man in
England! Ha!” but again his proud glance sank,
his firm step faltered, and he struck his bosom
with the eager violence of passionate repentance.
“Avaunt!—avaunt!—get thee behind me!—no!
no! he erred!—he erred!—yet had he wellnigh
made me deem myself a villain! `Not king, but
the first man in England!' Well, first in virtue!
—first in sincere god-seeking piety!—first, it may
be, in good report—which men call fame!—in the
Lord's favour, and the people's love! But not—
not first in power, or wealth, or rank! Not first, as
that bold Ardenne said, in villany! No! no! he

erred, and I am sound at heart—my breast is proof
to thy devices! Avaunt, thou crafty devil! I am
strong—strong—strong in virtue!”

He saw not Ardenne any more for many a year
of peril and success—of labour and of sin—and of
the world's arch phantom—glory! But six days
afterward Edgar beheld him, seated in his coach
of state, dragged by six stately horses, tossing their

plumed heads and shaking their superb caparisons
as proudly as though they were conscious of the
freight they drew along the crowded streets. He
marked the quiet air of exultation and of triumph
that sat on his firm lip and glanced from his deep
eye! He noted the unwonted splendour!—the
gorgeous dresses and accoutrements of his lifeguard—eighty
young men — majors and colonels
of the army, mounted more splendidly than the
pretorian band of any king in Europe; sheathed in
bright steel, with waving plumes, and floating
scarfs, and all the bravery of the cavaliers! He
saw the haughty bearing of his son Henry—his
lieutenant and master of the horse!—he saw the
soldiery, in their magnificent array, trooping along,
with their proud banners flaunting in the summer
sunshine, and the triumphant clangour of their
military music waking the merriest echoes behind
their adored leader!—and, above all, he heard the
thundering acclamations of the multitude as that
pomp swept along!—and, with a heavy sigh, he
turned from that sight in all other eyes so glorious
and majestic—a sigh for Cromwell's fame!—a sigh
for England's peace!