The Lord Whitelocke was silent; he was rather startled at what

he took to be the kernel of Cromwell's speech--his enmity to

the Parliament--and he was not deceived by the gentleness and

self-effacement of the Lord-General, who, he knew, was indeed capable

of doing away with the Parliament as he and his had done away with the

King. And there was now, as always, the great fact to be remembered

and reckoned with that Cromwell had behind him the army of his own

creation, that fierce military whose enthusiasm was not much curbed

or checked by regard for mere formal institutions and laws of men's

framing.

"In very deed," he replied, "your power and the power behind you is too

high. How can we withstand it?"

"My power, such as it be," returned the soldier mildly, "cometh from

God and the People. Be assured that if I use it for other than the

glory of one and the good of the other it will pass from me. I say this

because meseemeth you have fear of the army, poor souls; but I did not

open this talk for any matter of argument with thee, but rather in a

friendly spirit to discuss the present jars."

"You have discussed them to good purpose, sir," returned Whitelocke

dryly. "I perceive that you look upon the Parliament and the Council of

State with ill-will and mistrust."

"I think," replied Cromwell, still gazing at the pale cloud floating

in the pale sky over Whitehall, "that we need a Governor over this

England."

"Where is he to be found?" demanded Whitelocke.

"The Lord will bring such an one forward in His good leisure," said

Cromwell.

Whitelocke liked this speech still less than those which had gone

before it; he thought it meant that the Lord-General intended in truth

to set himself against the Parliament.

"Who will be your Governor of England?" he asked.

"Who can resolve that question?" said Cromwell evasively.

"What is your proposal to solve the present difficulties?" was

Whitelocke's next question. He was determined that he would, if

possible, gain something definite from the present conversation.

The Lord-General made no answer, and they walked on slowly and in

silence. The very last leaves were scattered from the boughs overhead

on to the frosty ground at their feet, and a little low, sharp wind was

blowing across the city.

Bulstrode Whitelocke waited for the Lord-General's answer. Himself a

moderate man, to a point he was wholly with Cromwell's tolerance and

large-mindedness; but when Cromwell's moderation suddenly culminated in

daring action, then Whitelocke refused to follow him. He had been one

of the most active of those who had endeavoured to frame a treaty with

the late King, and had warmly supported Cromwell's attempts to bring

Charles to a compromise; but he had refused to sit in the High Court of

Justice that had tried and condemned the King. So now he felt that they

were again reaching a crisis when he could not support any longer the

man whom he so sincerely admired.

But the Lord-General would not any further disclose himself, and when

Whitelocke was about to press for a reply he caused a distraction by

pausing and pointing to a gentleman walking near the archery fields, to

which they had now nearly approached.

"I know his face, who is he?" asked Cromwell.

Bulstrode Whitelocke, somewhat vexed at this abrupt change of subject,

answered briefly--

"He is the Latin Secretary to the Council of State."

"Ah," said the Lord-General, "a very worthy citizen. I have heard of

him. From the first he hath given his testimony to the good cause. I

would there were many more such among you."

By this, the person of whom he spoke drew near, and seeing the two

gentlemen, and knowing Whitelocke and recognizing Cromwell, he stopped

and bowed.

Cromwell turned towards him, and Whitelocke had no choice but to do

likewise.

"You are the Latin Secretary," said the Lord-General. "You have written

much in defence of the cause. I have often sought an occasion to speak

to you."

The gentleman thus addressed bowed in some confusion like one

overwhelmed by a great honour.

"Do you know me?" asked Cromwell.

"I do, my Lord-General," was the reply, given in a sweet musical

voice. "What lover of truth and freedom doth not?--'My lord fighteth

the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy

days.'"

He spoke with a warm sincerity which raised his words above the

suspicion of flattery, and a flush overspread his naturally pallid

features.

There was something about his person and manner wholly attractive; in

his youth (he was now in middle age) he must have been of a beauty

almost feminine, and his traits still had a frail and delicate

comeliness; his large dark blue eyes were fatigued and heavy lidded

as if swollen with overuse, and his pale cheek and the brow shaded

by the long locks of brown hair bore traces of sickness and anxiety;

his figure was slender and noble, and his black clothes were fine

in quality; his whole appearance was of an elegance wholly lacking

to the Lord-General's person; indeed, for all the sobriety of his

attire, he appeared more like one of the unfortunate Cavaliers than

one of the most vigorous champions of the Independents, the author of

_Eikonoclastes_.

"I thank you, Mr. Milton," replied Cromwell. "I hope we may be better

acquainted. You have laboured much and your reward halts, but I believe

you have that greatness in you which is pleased to serve England

without fee."

"For the little that I do I am even overpaid," replied John Milton,

with a deepening of his boyish flush.

The glance of the two men met, and a look flashed between them as if

they were wholly one in spirit; then the Secretary bowed again, and

each went his way.

"The Council have bidden him write an answer to Salmasius' work," said

Whitelocke. "He calls it _A Defence of the People of England_--but it

doth not proceed as quickly as he would wish because his eyes fail him.

He told me that at times he could hardly see the letters on the paper."

Cromwell looked back at the slender, erect figure walking away under

the bare trees.

"Thou hast a brave heart if I mistake not," he murmured.

Then he went on again, Bulstrode Whitelocke still waiting for him to

deliver himself.

Not until they had almost reached the confines of the Park and the

houses of Charing Cross did the Lord-General speak.

Then, turning suddenly to his expectant companion, he said--

"What if a man should take it upon himself to be king?"

Whitelocke stared, startled beyond concealment.

"Well?" urged Cromwell gently.

The lawyer, recovering himself, took refuge in the pedantic, formal

objections offered by the law and the constitution.

Cromwell listened patiently. When Whitelocke, rather confused and

breathless, had brought his speech to an end he answered mildly--

"Neither the law nor the constitution gave authority for the execution

of a king. Yet we did it. Therefore we may do other things for which

there is no warrant in charter or Parliament roll, but for which the

warrant cometh from God. Yet for the moment I have no more to say."

CHAPTER III

EXIT THE PARLIAMENT

During these days the Lord-General and his colleagues, Harrison and

Lambert, waited much on the Lord, confessing their sinfulness and

asking for Divine help.

Behind them was always the army, demanding arrears of pay, work for the

poor, and the suppression of the general lawlessness of the kingdom;

there were many more conferences between the lawyers and the soldiers;

towards the close of 1652 Cromwell gently, and Lambert and Harrison

not at all gently, began to say that it was the Lord's will that

the Parliament should go. Parliament, they declared, should call a

convention and then abdicate.

The gentlemen at Westminster, seeing the military saints were in

earnest, set themselves to prepare a scheme of government which should

meet the approval of the army; the wise and valiant Sir Harry Vane, the

younger, drew up a bill to provide for a provisional government, the

nucleus of which was to be the members now sitting, they who had been

ever in the forefront of the fight since that fight had begun.

This scheme to give perpetuity to a body which they wished to

completely abolish only further exasperated the army; Cromwell and

Harrison pushed forward their own bill.

On the 19th of April, Vane and Cromwell and their several supporters

held another conference in the suite of apartments in Whitehall Palace,

now given to the Lord-General, at which both parties agreed to stay

their hands until the discussion should be resumed and brought to some

conclusion. The next day Cromwell was more cheerful than had been usual

with him of late; he loved polemics and to measure his rhetoric with

others; yesterday's long argument with Sir Harry Vane had enlivened

him; he looked forward to a resumption of the conference and to a final

triumph for the Cause; he had recently communed much with himself,

brooded and considered in his soul, and he was convinced that God had

further work for him; part of that work he believed to be to settle the

nation--and not by way of the Parliament.

That morning as he was at breakfast with Lambert and Harrison an abrupt

end was put to his tranquillity and satisfaction.

News was brought that the Parliament had assembled early and were

hurrying through Sir Harry Vane's bill.

The Lord-General sank at once into gloomy silence, while the other two

soldiers heavily condemned the perfidy of the Parliament men.

"I will not believe it," said Cromwell at last. "Nay, I will not

believe falsehood of Sir Harry Vane."

"But maybe," suggested Major-General Harrison, "his followers have got

beyond Sir Harry and done this thing despite him."

"Nay," returned the Lord-General. "I believe it not."

"You are too slow to move!" cried Harrison, with some heat. "If it had

not been for your hesitation there would have been no Parliament to

defy the poor toilers in God's cause."

The Lord-General pushed his tankard away from him.

"You are one," he answered, "who will not wait the Lord's leisure, but

would hurry into that which afterwards honest men must repent."

"You have waited the Lord's leisure too long," said Harrison. "Much

delay is not good."

"When the Lord speaks, I obey," answered Cromwell, with some grimness;

"and then my actions are as swift as any man's, yea, even as thine,

Major-General Harrison. I have given some poor testimony to that

effect."

"Meanwhile," put in Lambert, "the miserable remnant at Westminster

are making their bill law--and where are we? Even made a mock of and

slighted."

As he spoke another messenger arrived, and close on his heels a third,

to say that the Parliament were in very deed pushing through Sir Harry

Vane's bill.

Then Cromwell rose.

"'Up, Lord, and help me, O my God,'" he said, "'for Thou smitest all

mine enemies upon the cheek-bone--Thou hast broken the teeth of the

ungodly!' Now is the time--yea, even now." He turned to Harrison. "Come

with me to Westminster and let us testify to God."

He called for his hat; he wore his black coat and his grey worsted

stockings and a plain neck-band.

As he was leaving Whitehall he ordered a guard of soldiers to accompany

him, and marched down to Westminster with them behind him, as Charles

had marched with his armed followers from the same Palace to the same

Parliament eleven years before.

When they reached Westminster Hall he left the file of muskets in the

outer room, and he and his two generals passed to their usual places in

the Commons.

There were about sixty members present; at the silent entrance of the

three soldiers all looked round and about them, and some shifted in

their places and whispered to their neighbours. "I see Old Noll's red

nose," said one as Cromwell entered; "we are like to have a tempest."

But the Lord-General went quietly to his seat, as did his two

companions; and the members, whatever trepidation they might feel,

displayed none, but continued their debate, preparatory to passing Sir

Harry Vane's bill.

Cromwell listened, his arms folded, his head bent on his breast; the

sweet April sunshine filled the chamber with a pleasant haze in which

the motes danced; Sir Harry Vane looked often at the Lord-General as

if he would find an opportunity to excuse himself for his seeming

breach of faith; indeed, his supporters had taken the matter out of his

hands and forced the bill on, whether he would or no; but Cromwell sat

glooming, and would not meet his eye.

The discussion proceeded, moderate, orderly; presently the Lord-General

called to Major-General Harrison, who sat opposite to him on the other

side of the House, to come to him.

"Methinks," said Cromwell grimly, looking about him, "this Parliament

is rife for a dissolution--and that this is the time for doing it."

Harrison, impetuous as he was, was startled by this; he might urge

Cromwell to action, and blame his slowness, but when Cromwell was

roused Harrison, like any other, was alarmed.

"Sir," he replied, lowering his voice (for their conversation was being

observed with suspicion), "this work is very great and dangerous,

therefore, seriously consider of it, before you engage in it."

"You say well," replied Cromwell, and lapsed into moody silence again.

Harrison took the seat next him, Lambert being near.

The members, though still outwardly tranquil, hastened the debate, and

in a short while the question for passing the bill was about to be put.

Then Cromwell moved, and, leaning sideways to Harrison, touched him

on the arm and said, "This is the time; I must do it;" and then he

suddenly stood up, taking off his hat, and throwing out his right hand,

he addressed the members with great passion.

"What heart have ye for the public good," he cried--"ye who support

the corrupt interest of presbytery and that of the lawyers, who are

the props of tyranny and oppression? This is a time of rebuke and

chastening, but as the Lord liveth, we will have neither rebuke nor

chastening from such as you!"

The members, swept into silence by the suddenness and violence of his

speech, made no reply; all eyes were fixed on him as he stood on the

floor of the House, his face flushed and his eyes fiery under the

lowering brows.

"What do ye care for but power?" he flung at them, and his voice rang

into the farthest corners of the Hall. "What do you care for but to

perpetuate that power? As for that Act"--he pointed to where it lay

ready to be passed--"you have been forced to it, and I dare affirm

that you never designed to observe it! I say your time has come; the

Lord hath done with you--He has chosen more worthy instruments for

the carrying on of His work--I say He will have no more paltering and

fumbling with traps and toys of the ungodly!"

Here Sir Peter Wentworth got to his feet amid a hum of approbation.

"This is the first time," he declared, red in the face, "that ever I

heard such unbecoming language in Parliament--and it is the more horrid

as it comes from the servant of the Parliament, and a servant whom

Parliament hath so highly trusted--yea, and so highly obliged," he

added, with meaning.

But he could get out no more. Cromwell stepped into the midst of the

House and waved his hand contemptuously.

"Come, come!" he cried. "I will put an end to your prating!"

Then, stamping his feet and clapping on his hat as he saw several rise

in a tumult to answer him, he said in a loud, stern voice, "You are

no Parliament--I say you are no Parliament! I will put an end to your

sitting!"

Then, while several tried to speak together and there was a confusion,

the Lord-General bade the serjeant attending the House open the doors,

which he did.

"Call them in," said Cromwell; "call them in." And Lieutenant-Colonel

Wolseley, with two files of muskets, entered the House and marched up

the floor.

Then Sir Harry Vane, seeing the soldiers, stood up in his place and

protested loudly--

"This is not honest! Yea, it is against morality and common honesty!"

Cromwell turned round and sorted him with his glance from the press.

"Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!" he cried. "The Lord deliver me

from Sir Harry Vane!"

Then pointing out another member, he cried, "There sits a drunkard,"

and so railed at several separately, ending, "Are these fit to govern

God's poor people?"

The House was now in absolute disorder and confusion, but the

Lord-General's voice rose above it all.

His angry eye lit on the mace.

"What shall we do with this bauble?" he asked, and added, "There, take

it away!"

Major-General Harrison went up to the Speaker.

"Sir," he said, "seeing things are reduced to this pass, it is no

longer convenient for you to remain here."

The Speaker answered, "Unless you force me, I will not come down."

"Sir," replied Harrison, "I will lend you my hand."

And, so saying, he took hold of him and brought him down.

Then Cromwell turned again to the Members who were all coming from

their places.

"It is you who have forced me to do this!" he cried, with passion, "for

I have sought the Lord day and night that He would rather slay me than

put me on the doing of this work!"

Turning to Lieutenant-General Wolseley, who commanded the muskets, he

ordered him to clear the House, which was done, the Members forlornly

departing under the command of the soldiers, Cromwell sternly watching

the while.

And when the benches were all empty he went to the clerk, who was

blankly and in a bewildered way holding Sir Harry Vane's Bill, and,

snatching it from his hands, put it under his cloak.

Then ordering the doors to be locked, he went back to Whitehall with

Lambert and Harrison. But the day's work was not yet complete; he had

barely reached his headquarters before Lieutenant-General Wolseley came

up to say that the late Parliament's creation, the Council of State,

were sitting as usual in the Painted Chamber.

"Say you so?" replied Cromwell, and he turned back to Whitehall as he

had turned back to Hampton when he heard of Charles' double dealing.

Lambert and Harrison accompanied him, and the three swept into the

Painted Chamber with little ceremony.

John Bradshaw, the late King's judge, was in the chair; he faced the

Lord-General as he had faced the unhappy King, with unshaken dignity

and calm.

Cromwell was now composed; but he eyed the Councillors fiercely as he

walked up the room.

"If you meet here as private persons," he said, "you shall not be

disturbed, but if you meet as a Council of State, this is no place for

you," his harsh voice became ominous. "Since you cannot but know what

has just been done in the House, take notice that the Parliament is

dissolved."

The Latin secretary raised his tired blue eyes with something of

admiration as well as keen interest in their glance, but Bradshaw

replied with unmoved sternness, eyeing Cromwell with a directness as

uncompromising as Cromwell eyed him.

"Sir," he said, "we have heard what you did in the House, and before

many hours all England will hear it. But, sir, you are mistaken to

think that the Parliament is dissolved--for no power under Heaven can

dissolve them but they themselves, therefore take _you_ notice of that."

"Ha, Mr. Bradshaw," returned the Lord-General, "you may talk and talk,

but I say that the Lord has done with you and with these others about

you. I know that you are a person of an upright carriage, who has

notably appeared for God and for the public good, but I say that your

time is over--other means are to be used now, yea, other means!"

"The means of force and violence," replied John Bradshaw calmly, "and

to them we must submit. I do not deny that, but your right we shall

always deny, therefore remember it----"

"You are no longer a Council of State," said Cromwell, "and none shall

any longer give heed to you. Go about your several businesses."

Bradshaw came down from his place.

"And with us goes the Commonwealth," he returned. "What will you put in

place of it?"

"The Lord shall show in His leisure," said Cromwell sternly, and went

from the Painted Chamber with Lambert and Harrison after him.

And so it was over; the Parliament had followed the King; the last

remnant and pretence of a constitution had been swept away, and a

sudden military revolution had placed the army at the head of the

nation, their leader thereby becoming the greatest man in England.

For, the King gone, the Parliament broken, who was there left for any

man to look to save he who had swept away both King and Parliament and

now stamped angrily out of Westminster Hall?

Even Harrison had been taken by surprise; he was enthusiastic, as he

foresaw an uninterrupted reign of God's chosen, those military saints

who were sacred and purified by their fights for the Lord, but he was

also a little bewildered as to the course future events must take.

Lambert merely said, "This is a difficult business and requires careful

handling."

But Cromwell himself was openly exalted and uplifted; his passion of

anger gave way to a passion of spiritual enthusiasm.

"This hath been a call from the Lord!" he cried, as the three walked

back to Whitehall. "Yea, a direct call! Own it, for it hath been

unprojected, and is marvellous! This morning did we know of this thing?

Nay, and now it is done! And this hath been the way the Lord hath dwelt

with us from the first. He hath kept things from our eyes all along so

that we have never seen His dispensations beforehand!"

"Truly," replied Harrison, "He hath marvellously witnessed for us, and

thou hast been as Joshua who scattered the enemies of the Lord at the

waters of Merom, and chased them even into the valley of Mizpeh, and

burnt Hazor with fire."

"The Edomites, the Ammonites, and the Moabites are scattered," said

Lambert, "but who is now to reign in Israel?"

"We whom God hath called," replied Cromwell.

And so they came to the headquarters of the army at Whitehall, the

palace of the late King; and the second revolution was complete.

CHAPTER IV

"THE NEW ORDER"

The rule of the Lord-General and his council of officers, governing

in a form parliamentary, called "the little Parliament" was a failure

complete and absolute.

Soldiers could not do the work of lawyers, nor the veterans of Naseby,

Preston, Dunbar, and Worcester rule England as well as they had

defended her. Such measures as they carried were totally against the

principles and policy of their leader, who passed from rapt enthusiasm

to sad disillusion, and finally to gloomy anger again; the military

saints, chosen of the Lord as they were, and the very cream of the

elect, could not govern England.

In December 1653, after many consultations with his councils, Cromwell,

who hesitated to break up another Parliament by force, persuaded the

officers to hand back their powers to him from whom they had received

them.

The soldiers, though fanatic, narrow, and intolerant, were neither

self-seeking nor unreasonable; they saw that they were unable to govern

the country, and that there was only one man who could undertake the

task that had been too much for them.

Whether he had the courage, the daring, the firmness to seize this

position, to step to the front and take the command so completely,

to take upon himself the burden of rule in the present state of the

country, after so many attempts at government had failed, was yet to be

seen.

He had hitherto shown no personal ambition and no desire to thrust

himself forward, his manner being rather to keep himself in the

background and wait for God to bid him act.

The moment was serious, perilous, even awful; the Members of the last

Parliament and the officers met constantly in prayer; conferences,

meetings between all the able men available, were frequent; the people,

sternly and austerely ruled for the last three years, with the Puritans

triumphant and the Cavaliers utterly silenced and suppressed, waited in

a quietude that concealed an intense excitement.

On Wednesday, the 15th of December, the Lord-General rode from one of

these meetings to his home, now at Hampton Court. He arrived there

bitten with the cold and covered with fine snow. He went straight

to the fire in the room which his family used to dine in, and flung

himself with the weariness of one spent in mind and body into the great

wicker chair with arms and red cushions that he commonly used.

The noble, pleasant room was empty save for Elisabeth, his daughter

(the Claypoles had a suite of apartments at Hampton Palace), and her

youngest child, who was asleep on her knee. He had not noticed her at

first, so quietly was she withdrawn into the shadows, and her low,

pleased exclamation, "My father!" gave him a little start.

"Betty!" he impetuously flung out his hand to her; she softly laid the

sleeping boy on the velvet couch from which she had risen, and, coming

to his side, knelt beside him, and slipped her hand inside his.

He gazed with affectionate pleasure at her charming face, bright and

delicate, sensitive and resolute, lifted to his, the brown, waving

hair, the expressive blue eyes, the mouth a little wistful, the chin a

little proud, the whole infinitely dear and loving.

"What has happened to-day?" she asked gently.

The look of heaviness her greeting had lightened returned to his

countenance; he lifted his head and stared into the mellow flames that

sprang from the great logs between the brass and irons.

"Betty, it hath come," he said; "it is to be laid on me, the burden,

yea, the whole burden. Mine was the responsibility," his rough voice

rose a little. "I put down the King, I broke the Parliament--I set up

the officers who failed (the more blame to me)--and now it is I who

must guide the State."

"Thou?" murmured Elisabeth.

"Who else?" he continued moodily, "who else? It is a call from God and

the people, and no man could ask for more. Yea, I know the Lord hath

called me as He called me ten years ago from St. Ives--this is thy

work--get thou up and do it!"

"Thou--wilt thou be King?" asked Elisabeth, dropping his hand with a

shiver of fear.

"Even so," he replied sombrely; "but not with the name of a thing so

hated shall I be called. Some time ago this came to me as the thing to

do--a flash out of a cloud--then darkness came again; but now it is

before me, very clearly, that I must be the Governor of England."

"It is a high calling and an awful place to hold," said his daughter.

"And I am sick in the body, often and often tired in the soul. Thou

dost know," he added, with a kind of passion, "how very, very willing I

was to retire after Worcester fight; often upon riding the rough ways

in Scotland, often when sick in Ireland, have I dreamt to come back to

a meek, sweet retirement, but it was not to be. God sought me out again

and bid me go forward. And now there is this come upon me. Betty, I

shall soon be fifty-five years old. I feel myself, in many ways, old.

But there is this work to do. And it is for England. Yet how shall

I prevail where these upright and wise ones failed? For they strove

earnestly, yet God would not have them. Will He forsake me also? 'Oh,

that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest!'

Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. I would

hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest!"

And his head drooped on his breast as if he was discouraged.

Elizabeth took his inert hand again between her fresh, warm palms.

"Why should you fear a cold success in this great venture?" she asked.

"Truly it is a great and awful thing to take a king's place, but shall

not the Lord still support you as hitherto, and bless you with notable

victories?"

Cromwell, still staring into the fire, answered slowly.

"I have some sparks of the light of His countenance, which keeps me

alive--yet I see ahead difficulties greater than any I have yet met.

What are charges in the field compared to factions in the State? I say

the saints failed, and shall not I fail? Will not men say to me, as

the Hebrew said to Moses--'Who made thee a Prince and a judge over us.

Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?"

Elisabeth shuddered.

"Ay, I killed the Egyptian," continued Cromwell, glooming, "but there

are many more out of Egypt ready to take his place, ready to confound

us, yea, there are plenty of diabolic persons abroad, ready to set

snares for the godly, even the devil and all his angels are lying in

wait to thwart this England which the Lord hath elected for His own!"

"But thou canst meet and conquer them, if it be in the power of any man

to do so," returned Elisabeth simply. "Again I say it is a high and

fearful thing that thou must undertake, but I know that in all things

thou wilt walk according to the Gospel."

The Lord-General turned to look at her as she knelt beside him in her

rosy gown with the firelight glowing over her, her faced upturned, and

her hands clasped on the arm of his chair--a sweet comforter truly, in

her seriousness and loving encouragement, in her eager belief in him

and rapt piety.

"That is not how many will speak of me, Betty," he said, with a sad

tenderness. "Rather will they call me usurper and traitor, and say that

I have put down others for carnal ambition. Many hard and contemptuous

things will be said of me, Betty."

"I know," she answered bravely, "but need _we_ care?"

As she spoke, a third came down the shadowy room, and joined

them--Elisabeth Cromwell.

The Lord-General rose and went up to her.

"You are tired!" she cried, noting that before all, and she caught his

arms and peered up into his face tenderly through the dim light.

"Mother," said Mrs. Claypole, rising from beside the empty chair--"the

new orders are decided upon to-day----"

"Ah!" cried Cromwell's wife, "and thou?"

"My dear, my best," he said, "we must live at Whitehall now----"

"The king's palace?" she exclaimed, recoiling a little.

"Yea," he answered gently, "for I am called to be the new Governor of

this country."

"Why, that is a fearful thing!" she said, with a half-terrified laugh.

"Thou wilt never more be safe, nor I at peace!"

She let go her hold on his sleeves and moved to the fire.

"I was happier before it all began," she said abruptly; "this startles

me." She gave again that piteous laugh, which was more like a sob. "I

am too old to learn to be a Prince's lady," she said.

And she glanced in the mirror above the mantelpiece, looking at her

grey hair and meek face.

"I would sooner not put this up in Whitehall for all the world to gape

at!" she said.

"Ah, mother!" cried Betty Claypole, and embraced her and kissed her

hand.

"Did you not expect this?" asked the Lord-General mournfully. "I did

so--because," he added, with great simplicity, "I saw no other fitted

for the place."

"There is no other" said his daughter. "He is one and only--is it not

so, mother? And thou art one and only, too, dear, and wilt shine in

Whitehall far higher than the French Queen."

The Lord-General turned with a little smile to both of them.

"By now you should be used to living in a palace," he said.

"What will they say of us?" asked Elisabeth Cromwell, still troubled.

"They will say that we have put ourselves up in the King's place."

"There is no king," interrupted Cromwell firmly. "And as for the place

I undertake to fill, the whole people have called me to it, yea, the

whole people."

He repeated this statement as if to persuade and convince himself; he

well knew that his authority came from a very few of the people, mainly

from the army leaders, and that his election was not the result of a

general demand on the part of the nation; only the minority had hailed

him, the majority remained as always, passive, almost indifferent--or

fiercely hostile.

He might be going to rule for the people's sake, purely, but he was not

going to rule by their wish. He felt this a weakness in his case and

strove to cover it, even to deceive himself in it; a general election,

a genuine appeal to the country, might have resulted in bringing in

the second Charles Stewart, and for the sake of the cause he had not

dared risk it. Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, who in many ways represented

the average Englishman, had pressed Cromwell to call in Charles after

the crisis of a year ago, and no one knew better than the Lord-General

that the three islands seethed with royalist plots and the restless

intrigues of various fanatical sects. No one knew better than he,

either, what a target for hatred and rage he would be, what undying

fury he would arouse, how many and implacable his enemies would become.

His call might be from God, it certainly was not from the people of

England.

Elisabeth Claypole knew something of all this, and to her there

was something piteous in the strong man's attempt to belittle his

difficulties and disguise the narrow basis on which his authority

rested.

Elisabeth Cromwell broke the thoughtful silence.

"And thou wilt be Governor of England!" she said. "Scarcely can I

believe it."

She voiced the incredulity of many; yet the thing was done.

On the following Friday, His Excellency the Lord-General of the Forces

became His Highness the Lord-Protector of England, and was installed in

that office with all ancient ceremonial, formerly used by kings, and

kings alone.

There was an installation in the Chancery Court, Westminster Hall, His

Highness appearing in a richer dress than he had ever worn before, even

at his son's wedding--rich velvet, all black, with a band of gold round

his hat, a fine sword, and sword band.

So he went in procession from Whitehall and back again, attended by

the Lord Mayor, the judges, and other dignitaries, in robe of state,

outriders, running footmen, guards of soldiers, and the usual shouting

crowd, half-awed, half-jeering, and wholly curious, some wishing

confusion to red-nosed Noll and some thanking the Lord that He had sent

a gracious saint to reign over them.

The sergeants with their maces, the heralds in gold and scarlet,

proclaimed, at Old Exchange, at Palace Yard, and in other places,

Oliver Cromwell Lord-Protector, with the same dignity, and ceremony,

and shouting as Charles Stewart had been proclaimed King. So a change

so tremendous was accomplished with such little outward difference.

The new ruler had given his oath of fidelity to the new Constitution

(an instrument drawn up in four days by the officers, with Lambert at

their head) and had received the great seal and sword of State. By the

afternoon all was over, and the man who little more than ten years

ago had been a gentleman farmer, with no experience save that of the

routine of a country estate, with no more knowledge of God and man than

he could learn from his one Book, with no power, influence, or wealth

at all, was now sole ruler, dictator, and symbol of one of the greatest

nations in Europe and foremost champion of the Reformed Religion....

Elisabeth Claypole (Lady Elisabeth now) slept that next spring in

Whitehall; the first night she lay on a bed with blue satin curtains

brought by Henriette Marie from France, and not sold with the King's

other effects by reason of the fine workmanship of the needlework on

them.

A mirror once used by the Queen was in the room too, her fleurs-de-lis

were embroidered in the hangings, and the whole chamber was still

redolent of the perfumes she had kept in the caskets and cupboards.

Elisabeth, who had less than any of her family the stern belief in

fatalism, which was the central doctrine of their austere and heroic

creed, and less blind reliance on the justice of the Puritan cause,

felt a faint horror and a regretful remorse at lying among these

splendours when the woman to whom they had belonged (to whom they

still belonged, Elisabeth thought) dwelt in poverty and loneliness,

unfortunate as Queen and wife.

That first night she dreamt dismal things, and woke up in the dark,

oppressed with confused remembrances of the excitement of the day.

And with other remembrances, more awful; often had she heard an account

of the execution of the King and listened with horrified and reluctant

ears.

Now, as she sat up in the great bed, shivering in the winter night, she

pictured, all too clearly, the late King as he had been described to

her--the slender figure in the pale blue silk vest, with the George on

the breast, and the hair gathered up under a white satin cap.

She thought that she saw him glimmer across the dark, looking down at

his feet--he wore the wide shoes with silk roses, which had gone out of

fashion since his death--and then at her, smiling bitterly.

He came, without moving his limbs, gliding to the bed, passed it, rose

up a man's height from the floor, and disappeared in a shaft of shaking

light.

"We are intruders here!" said Elisabeth, cold to the heart. She got

out of bed (her husband was still asleep; she could hear his even

breathing) and stood shivering in the keen air.

A chill like a presage of death crept through her veins; the whole

place seemed to exhale an air of hate and misery.

So strong was this feeling that she fumbled for a gown in the dark, and

stole to the next chamber to look at her infant son.

The moonlight was in his room, and she saw him sleeping peacefully

beside his nurse. Elisabeth crept back, dreading lest she should

conjure up another awful image of the late King.

"I am not going to be happy here," she kept saying to herself. "I am

not going to be happy here."

The next day she did not leave her bed, and before long it was known

that the Protector's favourite daughter was stricken with a lingering,

nameless illness.

CHAPTER V

HIS HIGHNESS

"Was England ever in a better way?" demanded the Lord-Protector. "Even

under Elisabeth of famous memory (for so we may truly call her) was

this country more quiet at home, more respected abroad? Nay, there is

no malignant in the land can say it----"

"Surely Your Highness hath no need to make any defence to us," said

the Lord Lambert, one of his military council. Some number of them

and other dignitaries were gathered in his apartment at Whitehall,

listening to him.

His Highness, who had hitherto been pacing restlessly up and down the

room, here came to a pause before the table at which the officers and

councillors sat.

"I have need to defend myself before all men," he exclaimed vehemently,

"for on every hand am I decried and blamed! I speak not of plots

against my life and such little matters--the work of a few diabolic

persons in the pay of Charles Stewart--but of the great discontent

of the Prelatists, of the rage of the Papists, of the intolerance of

all--yea, even of the sharpness and bitterness of many of God's people

who go about saying that the ways of Zion are filled with money, that

their gold is dim, and that there is a sharp wind abroad, but not to

cleanse the land."

None of the officers offering to speak, Cromwell continued, still in an

impassioned manner--

"Whoever speaks so is wrong! God put me here. My authority is from

Him--I will come down for none of them."

He went to the window embrasure and stood there, with his back to the

light, his hat pulled over his brows, his arms folded on his breast,

gazing at his councillors and friends.

The Protectorship had lasted over a year, and Cromwell was now as

absolute as ever any Stewart had dared to be.

His first Parliament had gone the way of the last of King Charles'; the

members presuming to question the Instrument by which Cromwell had been

elected, His Highness had again resorted to the file of soldiers with

loaded snaphances, and, gathering the expelled members in the Painted

Chamber, had made them swear fealty to the Instrument and to himself

before he permitted them to return to their places.

The immovable Bradshaw, Sir Arthur Haselrig, one of the famous five

members, and some others refused the oath; the rest took it and went

back.

But so impossible was it to combine a military autocracy with the

ancient methods of civil government, so impossible for soldiers and

lawyers to work together, that the Parliament again displeased His

Highness by revising the Instrument into a constitution which His

Highness could not accept.

On the earliest opportunity he dismissed them, and had since ruled

entirely on his own authority with such help as he might get from the

Council of officers.

So when all the ancient landmarks had been carried away, the power

of the sword remained standing and the army and their general ruled

England; it was a strange ending to the long, earnest, and bloody

struggle, an ending neither Pym nor Hampden had ever foreseen, nor

Cromwell himself, when the Parliament he was afterwards to break had

sent him down to Cambridge to raise a troop for the defiance of the

King.

In ruling without a Parliament he was doing what Strafford and Charles

had perished for attempting, in keeping a huge standing army (it was

now twice the number named in the Instrument) he was doing what no king

of England had been permitted to do; he had, in fact, the power at

which Charles had aimed, and he had what Charles had never been able

to attain--the armed force to maintain him in that power.

When he dealt with the Parliament he had used the methods Strafford

would have used had he dared, and he was ruling now with the absolutism

which Strafford had always passionately hoped would one day belong to

his master.

But what had not been possible to a descendant of many kings, with all

tradition behind him, had been achieved easily enough by a soldier

produced by a revolution, who had nothing to rely on but the gifts

within himself.

Cromwell was too clear-sighted not to discern the illogical position

he was occupying, but it did not disturb him, nor did he find it very

wonderful; his fatalism (which his enemies termed opportunism) accepted

without question all that the Lord should be pleased to send; his

enthusiasm for the cause of liberty disguised, even from himself, the

arbitrary nature of his authority, and the victorious soldier, who had

fought God's battles from Naseby to Worcester, was not to be frightened

from the position he held by any malignant talk of his unlawful right.

Nor was the wise patriot and ardent statesman to be argued from the

point of vantage from whence he could do the best for England.

But the plots, agitations, upheavals, intolerances, and violences about

him, even among his own one-time friends (some of whom, including the

lofty-minded Vane, were in the Tower), did shake and trouble him.

These, more than anything, thwarted him in his honest and strenuous

attempt to set up an orderly government on the ruins left by the

violence of war and the wreckage of social upheaval.

"I will not have intolerance!" he broke out now, suddenly at his

Council. "I say I will not have it--let every man who is not a

Prelatist or a Papist--who doth not preach licentious doctrines in the

name of Christ--let him worship in peace!"

"In this way many damnable heresies will creep into the land," answered

one of the officers.

"I would rather," cried His Highness, "permit Mahometanism in the land

than have one of God's people persecuted!"

His Council remained silent; not one of these men agreed with him, and

it was a notable tribute to the respect and affection they had for him

that none of them raised a voice in dissent.

He felt, however, their opposition, as indeed he felt the opposition of

the entire nation to this dearest of his ideals--toleration.

It seemed as if men never would agree to leave their neighbour in peace

on the question of religious belief; and the extraordinary bitterness

of the feeling between the various sects was more and more vexing to

Cromwell, who had always held tolerance as a matter of principle, and

now, as he advanced more and more in greatness and power, recognised

it as being a necessary element of wise government at home and useful

alliances abroad.

"God," he continued, driving home his point with a certain labour, as

if he struggled to put into words what no words would convey, "hath

elected England--He hath made us the instruments of some work of His.

He wishes us to go forward--to fight heresies and Antichrist--but also

He wisheth us to remain united in brotherly love, not to be too nice

and strict about the religion of the man next us, so long as he be

working clearly in due fear of Him--were we not all kinds in the army?

Did any fight the worse for being an Anabaptist? Nay, I do not think

so. God hath need of all of us who love Him."

General Lambert answered--

"This is very well here, among sober men, but how shall Your Highness

get such a doctrine accepted among the general?"

"Yea," said the Lord-Protector gloomily. "Truly the fools trouble me

more than the knaves--most of all do the lukewarm vex me, for nought

will bring them to any reason--give me a Saul sooner than a Gallio!"

"Sir," replied one of the officers, "there are Sauls, and plenty too,

and maybe the Lord calleth us to combat these sooner than to smooth

over heresies and live peaceably with those who are little better than

the heathen and the infidel."

Cromwell groaned.

"There is much to do," he answered. "I say there is much to do--yea,

serious and mighty things; and shall we stop on the way to argue upon

trivial matters?"

"Trivial matters!" echoed several voices at once.

The Lord-Protector flashed upon them--

"Yea, so I say! Study how a man may serve the State, not how he may be

persuaded from his proper beliefs--this is enough for any man. 'With

my whole heart have I sought Thee--O let me not go wrong out of Thy

commandments!'--he who can say that from his heart, leave him in peace.

Even these poor people the Quakers--what harm is there in them that

they should be so roughly used? What hath God said?--'I have loved thee

with an everlasting love--with loving kindness have I drawn thee!'

Shall we, too, not strive for a little of this kindness? What have we

not had to contend with of late? A Parliament that was but a clog and

a hindrance, rebellions such as that at Salisbury, godly men such as

Major-General Harrison led astray, rising of Anabaptists--all manner of

trouble and confusion--and shall we add to it by persecuting those who

differ from us in small matters of doctrine?"

The Council remained silent; the Keepers of the Great Seal glanced

at one another. These men were not in dread of His Highness as his

Parliament had been; they were not his creation to be scattered at his

will--nay, he was rather their creation--yet they knew that when it

came to a struggle he always prevailed, gently or roughly, directly

or indirectly, and they were aware of his whirlwind resolutions and

believed that if occasion arose they, too, might be smitten and cast

aside, even though they were the very foundations on which his power

stood.

The Protector, eyeing them keenly, was silent too.

The Master of the Rolls, Lenthall (the Speaker whom Harrison had

helped from the chair when Cromwell had dismissed the remnant of

Charles' last Parliament), propping his grim face on his thin hand,

asked His Highness what he was discontented with.

"Surely," he said, with some austerity, "the work of Christ is being

accomplished in England? Abroad we have good respect--I think General

Blake hath made the name of English respected on the seas--all Europe

hath recognized this Commonwealth. Why is Your Highness so vexed and

troubled?"

He spoke with some sternness, for he believed, in common with many of

his colleagues, that the Protector aimed at an even greater personal

power, and to make himself king in name as he was in fact--an ambition

which was intensely displeasing to the army and to their leaders,

nearly all of whom were staunch Republicans.

"I am vexed and troubled because there is so much confusion and

littleness at home," replied Cromwell. "There is more lamenting over

the putting down of cock-fighting, play-acting, and horse-racing,

gambling, and such lewd sports than ever I heard over the loss of any

good thing. There are plots and confusions manifold, and the Lord hath

veiled the future from me, therefore I am vexed and troubled. Yet," he

added, with a change of voice and a bright flash in his eyes, "I am

not discouraged nor disheartened--ye must not so misread me--'in the

daytime also He led them with a cloud, and in the night with a pillar

of fire'--so it hath always been with me--do not think that that hath

ever failed me."

No man had any speech with which to answer him, and the little assembly

broke up with the usual courtesies. Only Lambert said as he was

leaving: "'He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in

all thy ways.'"

When they had all gone His Highness went to the table where they had

been sitting, and sat down in his great chair of honour and dropped his

head on his breast.

Many and great thoughts oppressed him; the melancholy that was such

a close companion to his enthusiasms overcame him. He saw himself

old, weary, faced with an impossible situation, with unsurmountable

difficulties.

For some while he sat so, his head sinking lower, his hands clasped on

his knees; then he was aroused by the gentle opening of the door, and

Elisabeth Claypole came softly into the Council Chamber.

"Forgive me," she said. "I did see that the others had gone, and,

knowing that you must be alone, I feared you had fallen into sad

thoughts." She approached him. "It is not well, my father--nay, it is

not well--that you should sit alone with melancholy thoughts."

She sank into the chair that the stern Lambert had just left; the dark

wood and leather now framed a very different picture from that the

austere soldier had made.

Long ill-health, which physicians could not cure, and intervals

of lingering illness, which physicians could not ease, had robbed

Elisabeth Claypole of much of her vivacity and much of her fresh

comeliness, but she still remained, despite her languor, her paleness,

a certain sadness caused by constant pain, a creature choice and rare,

and, despite all, cheerful and courageous. As the Lord-Protector lifted

his tired eyes to gaze at her dear face he saw in her youthful features

a sudden startling likeness to his mother, who had died, still valiant

and serene, a few months after she had moved into the King's palace.

This curious resemblance between one dead, so full of years, and one

young and living gave him a feeling of horrid presage; he rose abruptly.

"Betty, I wish you would get well," he said.

She smiled faintly.

"That is what Bridget says," she answered (Bridget Ireton was Bridget

Fleetwood now, the wife of one of her father's most honoured generals.

Mary and Frances were still to wed, and great matches were foretold

for them); "but you must not think so much of me--I shall soon be well

enough."

Her father gazed at her, yearning over that lost brightness which he

had condemned once as evidence of a carnal mind; her grey gown, her

modest laces, her smooth ringlets--all were plain enough now; though

her father had put on great state and lived almost with the ceremonial

of a king, the Lady Elisabeth had no longer any heart for pretty

vanities.

"Methinks," said Cromwell bluntly, "thou art not happy when thou art at

Whitehall."

"I love Hampton better," she replied evasively.

It was not difficult for him to divine what her thoughts were--what

they always had been.

"Thou dost think thy father liveth in another man's house by living in

the King's palace," he said, with whimsical tenderness.

"No, no," she answered, with an effort; "but it remindeth me of old,

unhappy times--of all the blood that was shed--of the King himself

(poor, wretched King)----"

Cromwell interrupted vehemently.

"He did not die for nothing, neither he nor the others--that judgment

on the tyrant was the fruit and crown of all our efforts and prepared

the way for such of Christ's work as we have been able to do since.

Betty"--he turned to his daughter with the same half-anxious,

half-proud air of defence with which he had turned to his Council a

little before--"is not this country better at home and abroad than it

was under the late King?"

"All bear witness to that," she replied quickly; "and that is the

reason why you should be more uprised in spirits, sir."

"I have much to overcome," he answered.

"What hath the Lord said?" rejoined the Lady Elisabeth--"'With him that

overcometh will I share My throne.'"

"Dear one, thy rebuke is well," answered His Highness gently, "and do

not doubt that I shall go forward to the end. But at present there are

some things hard to bear--mostly the estrangement from some Christians

of my acquaintance. I did never think to be parted from Major-General

Harrison and John Bradshaw, those godly men. Albeit I have tried my

best to remain with them, and I hope yet to win Major-General Harrison."

"He is hard, father--he is hard and fierce," replied Elisabeth

Claypole. "He was cruel to many poor men--I have heard notable talk of

it----"

"Thou art too pitiful," said Cromwell, "and judge as a woman. There

is no man among us--not thy brother Henry, not Lambert, nor Dishowe,

nor my son Fleetwood, a finer soldier or a truer Christian than Thomas

Harrison."

"I do not like him," insisted the Lady Elisabeth, with a sparkle of

her former spirit. "Methinks he smells of his father's trade, and

it is credibly believed that he hath plotted against you with the

Anabaptists--Richard told me as much."

"As to that I will demand an answer of these charges from him,"

returned Cromwell gloomily. "Believe me that I love him."

For answer and comfort she rose and went up to him; as she took him

lovingly by the upper arm she started. She felt something hard beneath

the rich black velvet which he wore.

"You have armour on!" she murmured.

"Since young Major Gerrard set the precedent there have been many ready

to follow his example," replied His Highness. "And in this way I would

not die--nay, I would not die shot like a beast."

"O Christ, preserve us all!" cried Lady Elisabeth, and fell weeping

over the heart that her father had to guard with a steel corselet from

the assassin's bullet or knife.

He put his arm round her as if she had been a child (so, indeed, she

still seemed to him); and the thoughts of both went back to the happy

home in St. Ives, before they had known sickness or death among them,

when she had not gone in silk nor he in secret armour, when they had

not known the perils of great positions nor the magnificence of kings'

palaces.

CHAPTER VI

MAJOR-GENERAL HARRISON

Major-General Harrison, in grim retirement, sternly rejected the

Lord-Protector's half-wistful attempts to win him, and even refused to

come to Whitehall as a friend and dine or sup with the Cromwell family.

His Highness, however piqued or hurt he might be in secret, refused to

allow any persecution of his old comrade-in-arms, though Harrison was

becoming daily more involved with the Anabaptists and that peculiar

section of enthusiasts who were styled Fifth-Monarchy Men, because they

believed that the four kingdoms foretold by St. John had come to pass,

and that the kingdom now approaching was the fifth, that of Christ.

His Highness was lenient with them as with other fanatics: it was in

his nature to be tolerant and to prefer any form of enthusiasm to

lukewarmness. He was gentle with the Quakers, and listened patiently

to George Fox's mystic denunciations of him. "I am sure that thou and

I should be good friends did we but know each other," had been his

parting words. He interceded, though vainly, for the poor, half-crazed

Naylor, who had allowed his followers to salute him as the Messiah and

had been sentenced by Parliament to brandings, whippings, and pillories

that meant a hideous death.

But though the Lord-Protector was merciful he was also strong, as had

been abundantly proved.

When fanaticism became insubordination and the cause of religious

liberty cloaked mutiny and revolt, when, in brief, things mystic and

intangible interfered with things very practical and tangible, His

Highness struck, once and for ever.

He raised no objection to men finding in the pages of the Revelations a

doctrine comfortable to themselves; but if they used such doctrines as

a pretext for rebellion, he knew how to hold them down with a firm hand.

Therefore, though he argued sweetly and meekly with Thomas Harrison, he

had that redoubtable saint closely under his observation, as he also

watched Harry Vane and Bradshaw and Haselrig and other of his one-time

friends.

His Highness was busy in these days, full of high business with France

and Spain and the Netherlands as well as with this business of keeping

order at home; for Oliver Cromwell, who had always been a great man,

was now a great Prince, and England had become of more importance in

Europe than she had been since the royal Elisabeth or the royal Harry V.

It was the Lord's doing, said His Highness, the Lord who had elected

the English as His chosen people. A league of the Protestant nations

in one alliance was foremost of the Lord-Protector's deeply cherished

schemes; at present it seemed far from consummation: more practical

matters occupied His Highness. With Blake on the seas and himself at

home, England was powerful and vigorous; outwardly she was serene

as she was glorious, but none knew better than Cromwell himself how

beneath this serenity raged faction, discontent, and confusion, and how

uncertain the tenure of this glory was--merely the tenure of his own

life.

Soon after a certain complicated and perilous plot against that life

had been discovered and crushed, Cromwell received, among other news

equally disturbing (for troubles did not lack in England this turbulent

spring), an account, well attested, of Major-General Harrison's

treasonous dealings with the Fifth-Monarchy Men and of a widespread

plot to seduce the army from its allegiance.

An Anabaptist preacher had held forth boldly. "Wilt thou have Christ or

Cromwell?" he had asked. In daring and in defiance these enthusiasts

were getting beyond all common prudence.

His Highness sent for Major-General Harrison, not in the terms of

friendship now, but as a Prince summoning a subject.

Major-General Harrison came, grimly but serenely, and was ushered

through all the state the Protector kept, for, though simple with his

family and friends, to the outer world he held as much show as any

monarch, into the presence of His Highness, who waited him in a very

rich chamber that still contained some of the late King's pictures and

hangings and carpets.

The Lord-Protector was standing facing the door. He looked less than

his years, and his expression and pose were both of extraordinary

vigour; he wore brown velvet gallooned with gold and a great falling

collar of lace; his hair was now as grey as Charles' when he was

brought prisoner to Hampton Court; but his mournful, resolute face

showed no sign of age or feebleness.

Thomas Harrison was unbooted, for he had come by water; his attire was

the very extreme of severe simplicity, and his dark countenance was

pale and stern.

He took off his high-crowned hat as he came into the Protector's

presence and flung it, with his cloak, across a chair; he made no

reverence and eyed His Highness with calm hostility.

This cold look from one who had been his ancient friend, who had shared

with him so many hopes, enthusiasms, toils, and victories, smote the

Protector to the heart. He had been prepared for this enmity; but now

that he was actually in the presence of his former companion-at-arms,

the sight of the figure he had so often seen foremost in the field of

battle, fighting for the Lord, and the face which he had seen so often

fired by an exaltation kindred to his own, overwhelmed him with a

tender sadness and the tears sprang into his eyes.

"Thomas Harrison," he cried, "I did not think that we should meet thus!"

"Nor I," replied the other sombrely. "Sir, have your say with me and

let me go--for I have nobler work to do than a vain waiting on men in

palaces."

His Highness slightly flushed.

"I see what rankles in thy mind," he replied. "Yet I did think that,

whatever the general might say, a man such as thou wouldst have

believed the best, not the worst. Nay," he added more warmly, "why

shouldst thou think so meanly of me? Looking into thy own heart, thou

knowest thy motives and principles pure--hast thou not the generosity

to credit that I might look into my heart and say the same?"

Major-General Harrison gazed at him unmoved.

"Wherefore this defence?" he asked. "I have accused you of nothing."

"Not in words," replied the Lord-Protector, "but by thy whole conduct

and manner."

"Neither need trouble thee," said the soldier calmly, speaking with

more mildness and adopting the form of speech both more respectful and

more affectionate, "since thou needst not see me save by thy own wish."

"It was needful that I should see thee," returned His Highness, "it was

very needful. Hard things are said of thee--yea, difficult and curious

things."

He walked about the room, looking at the floor, his arms folded behind

him, then stopped before Harrison, who remained a few paces from the

door standing by the chair on which were his hat and cloak.

"Thou hast meddled with Anabaptists and these mistaken people called

Fifth-Monarchy Men," he said abruptly.

A grim smile flashed over Harrison's face.

"Art thou become a persecutor and a watcher over men's consciences and

a spy on their actions?" he asked.

"Nay," replied His Highness, grimly too, "thou knowest well enough if

I am tolerant or no, Thomas Harrison; thou knowest me very well, even

to the roots of my heart. But now I am Governor of England, and over

England I shall watch."

"Thou art," said the undaunted Republican, "a tyrant."

"I am a ruler by charter of God and the People," said Cromwell. "It is

well known in this nation and in all the world"--he lifted his head

with great dignity--"whether I am a tyrant or no. But I will admit this

much, I have as much power and authority as many a bad king. Take that

along with thee."

"I take along with me," returned Harrison, "that thou art a tyrant;

and though it hath pleased God, in His mysterious decrees, to place

thee where thou art, I know that He hath done it to bring a further

rebuke and chastening upon us before the coming of His kingdom and for

thy destruction. There is a wind abroad over the land, but one which

neither purifies nor cools--the presence of God is not with thee nor

with those under thee."

"This is hardly said," answered the Lord-Protector sadly. "Ah, thou

hast gone so far with me--canst thou not go a little further? Together

we fought, together we judged that wicked man, Charles Stewart----"

Harrison interrupted.

"Then thou wast acting as God directed--but lately thou hast acted

as if a bad angel possessed thee. The true saints who fought with

thee then could not fight with thee now, Lord Cromwell. A poor few we

are--nay, a pitiful remnant, but we believe that before long it will be

made known from Heaven that we are right, although it hath seemed good

to Him to suffer this turn to come upon us--so that we are a forsaken

few."

"Nay, not forsaken!" cried His Highness, much agitated. "Is it not for

thee, and such as thee, that this Government exists?"

"I know not," replied Harrison coldly. "Methought that it existed for

itself, as all governments do."

"Truly" cried the Lord-Protector, with rising anger, "they who call

thee hard have reason--nay, thou art more, thou art unjust."

"Unjust!" repeated Harrison, with more emotion than he had so far

shown. "Is thy memory so feeble or thy heart so false as not to recall

the old days, the bright morning of our hopes and triumphs?"

He came a step nearer, holding out his hands and speaking vehemently.

"We rejoiced in slaying the enemies of the Lord; with many tears

and prayers and strivings we sought assurance of the Lord's will

and brought the tyrant to judgment. Thou and I put our names to his

death-warrant; thou and I will answer together for that deed before the

Heavenly Throne, and I can say before Him who searcheth all hearts, I

did this thing thinking His hand was in it, and that the land could

only be cleansed from blood by the blood of him who first shed blood.

But thou, what canst thou say?--I slew this man that I might climb into

his place, succeed to his power, sleep in his rich bed, have carnal

honours for my children, and a high name for myself! Oh, Oliver, thou

canst say nothing else!"

"Before Him who made me a Joshua over this Israel I need no defence,"

answered His Highness simply. "He knoweth my poor heart and what He put

therein--and how this miserable flesh, with many stumbles, tried to do

His will. I am not afraid of my God. Leave Him to judge me and return

to thy ancient faithfulness to me."

"Thou wert," said Harrison, "as the apple of mine eye, but now I loathe

thee. Thou hast turned aside, and thou shalt not tempt me to follow

thee, even if thou flatterest me, saying, 'Come and sit on my right

hand and share my power.'"

The Lord-Protector took a sharp turn about the room.

"Thou art deluded, I plainly see," he said; "but it cannot be allowed

that thou shouldst run into these excursions, though I have given thee

a great latitude--I say that it cannot be allowed. I have with a great

deal of patience suffered thee to sally out, but I perceive thou art

misled, yea, and rebellious--surely we will have no rebellion."

"Do what you will with me," said Harrison calmly. "I will give my

little poor testimony to the truth as I know it. Maybe I am a little

mistaken, but I act according to my understanding, desiring to make the

revealed Word of God in His Holy Scriptures my guide."

"Thou art mistaken," replied Cromwell gloomily. "Beware of a hard heart

and an obdurate spirit. And beware of these Fifth-Monarchy Men. They

plot against the Commonwealth--they plot against my life."

"You believe that of me?" asked Harrison sharply.

"Why not?" returned His Highness scornfully. "Thou hast put thy hand to

the removal of one tyrant and may willingly desire to remove another."

"What I did against Charles Stewart was not done in a corner," said the

Republican calmly, "nor should I act in a hidden way against you or

against anyone."

"Nay," said Cromwell impulsively, "I believe it. Forgive me. But thou

art in these Fifth-Monarchy plots."

"We do not plot," returned Harrison, "nor intrigue, whatever may be

noised of us."

"Thou mayst put what name thou wilt to it, Major-General Harrison,"

said His Highness; "but it is a known fact that thou seekest to disturb

the Government and seduce the army."

"I neither own the Government nor molest it. But wherefore these words?

I do not seek to fly or in any way to save myself. Sir, I am in your

power, both I and those poor hearts, those few redcoats who still hold

the pure doctrine."

"Thou knowest," replied the Lord-Protector hastily, and with evident

emotion, "that I wish to be at peace with all men--even with the

malignants."

"Yea!" cried Thomas Harrison, with a flame of anger in his dark eyes,

"you have been very ready to make peace with Bael--to this has your

tolerance led you!"

"I would that thou hadst a little more tolerance," was the mild reply.

"These are vain words," said the soldier impatiently. "You and I have

parted company long since. Our ways lie differently now. Tell me what

you will of me and let this end."

Oliver Cromwell looked at him fully and mournfully, then sighed.

"If thou wilt recognise the Government thou mayst live in peace for me."

Thomas Harrison replied in a tone serene and unmoved--

"I will not; come what may, I will not."

The Lord-Protector straightened his figure (which drooped a little in

the shoulders of late), and then the blood slowly overspread his face.

"I shall not take this lightly," he said; "for my own dignity I may not

take it lightly--I am the Governor of England. I have some authority."

"The brief carnal power of a thing of clay," replied Harrison, with an

exalted smile. "Wherefore should I seek to please thee, who in a few

years will be gone from this scene, leaving behind thy power and thy

splendour? I listen to the voice of Him before whom thou and all the

nations of the earth are less than a drop of water in the bucket; my

thoughts are fixed, not on this dusty sojourn here, but on those azure

eternities which God giveth to His servants. Therefore I will not obey

thee in this matter, for my conscience is against it."

The Lord-Protector was silent a moment, then he spoke in a tone from

which all friendliness and pleading had gone.

"Then if you will not recognize the Government, you must cease to serve

it. I shall ask for your commission."

Major-General Harrison gently unfastened his sword thread and laid the

plain weapon and the plain belt on a little table which stood near the

Protector.

"There is my sword," he said, "which hath done some poor little

service. Take it and let it rust."

Cromwell remembered Marston Moor, Naseby, Basing, Oxford, many warm

acts of friendship, many mutual prayers--all the old laborious,

hopeful, triumphant days which they had shared.

He said nothing; his hand went out as if yearningly and lovingly

towards the weapon which he had so often seen red with the newly

smitten blood of God's enemies.

He still did not speak, and his silence was stern.

Thomas Harrison took up his hat and cloak, and with a courteous but

cold salute turned to take his leave.

His Highness turned to watch him and suddenly spoke, even as the other

had his hand on the door.

"Thomas Harrison, it is very fitting that I make some defence to you.

You have known me very well, and you believe hard, diabolic things of

me. I would make some answer to this. I may bear the unkind thoughts of

mine enemies, but I would be relieved of the ill-opinion of those who

were once my friends."

Harrison paused, and then turned with his back to the door, still

unmoved and hostile, but attentive, as if compelled to that amount of

respect by the rough, impassioned voice and fervent tones of the man

for whom he would have given his life a few years ago. As he listened

to his one-time beloved General, something of the old affection touched

him, though faintly; he waited.

"You accuse me of base ambition," said His Highness, lifting his

head--his face had a look of a lion, mournful and infinitely

strong--"but that failing I never had. You accuse me of grasping at

the King's power, but that I never wanted. A man was needed--England,

I say, had need of a man--but none came. Any of you could have come

forward to take this place I hold--this place of no peace, little

sleep, and endless labour--any of you! But you were not called, or you

did not heed the call, you stepped aside--and England waited. I know

not if you lacked courage, or if your conscience called you different

ways--but none offered. And I, on in years and something broken by the

wars, besought the Lord not to put this upon me--yet He did. And I did

not shirk it. I obeyed Him as I did when I left London to form a troop

in Cambridge that time the King did raise his standard against the

people. Each time the Lord's breath was through me, as wind is through

a hollow reed, and by Him I could do a little. That is my only merit.

And England is something now--the home of His chosen. You were nice,

you hesitated, you made punctilios--but I heard the call and saw the

light, as oft in the battalion, and I obeyed. I have tried many ways of

government, each as it comes to my hand. What my position truly is I

know not--I am a parish constable set to keep the peace. Yet here I be,

by God's will, and here I do my work. You may judge me with charity,

Thomas Harrison, as one upon whom a very heavy burden hath been laid."

He paused, and his head drooped.

"There is no more to say," he added, and his rough voice had fallen

lower. "Farewell--'God watch between me and thee when we are absent

from one and another.'"

"Amen," said Thomas Harrison.

And so they parted.

The Lord-Protector stood lonely in the rich chamber, which had been

furnished by the dead King and the banished Queen.

He went to the window and looked on the spring fairness of the garden,

on the warm glitter of the river and the sails going down to the sea.

His greatness oppressed him in that moment, and he was home-sick for

the past and the uneventful days of his youth.

CHAPTER VII

LADY NEWCASTLE

Through the mingled splendour and distress, brightness and confusion

of these years of the Lord-Protector's ruling in England, while the

glory of England rose to a perilous height (her renown glittered as the

foam on a wave cast for a moment into the sun--soon to fall into the

darkness of the waters again and to be lost), while Oliver Cromwell

shone refulgent in all men's eyes, the Lady Elisabeth Claypole, moving

from her husband's house to her father's palaces, and in all places

greatly loved, faded visibly and pitifully.

She had always been an advocate of mercy, and many a Cavalier owed his

life or his estate to her pleadings, and there was no one, however he

might hate Cromwell, who had not a gentle thought for this daughter

of his. Among her keen, delicate sisters she showed yet more keen and

delicate, and though she had now lost the fresh English fairness which

bloomed in the Lady Mary and the Lady Frances, and which had become

womanly grace in Bridget Fleetwood, yet of all of them she was the most

lovable. If any wished a favour from the Lord-Protector it was to her

they went to ask her intercession, for as her illness and her weakness

grew and her end came nearer, nearer with every painful breath she

drew, His Highness' tender love increased into an agony of yearning,

until it seemed as if he could refuse her nothing.

One April, when His Highness was deep in great affairs--letters to

Cardinal Mazarin, letters to General Blake now sailing victorious in

foreign waters, questions of his taking the title of King, questions

of the Fifth Monarchy men having broken out rebelliously at last, and

Thomas Harrison being in the Tower for abetting them--a supplicant

came to Hampton with a very earnest entreaty to be allowed to see the

Lord-Protector. Whereat John Thurloe, His Highness' faithful secretary,

was indignant almost beyond the bounds of courtesy, and mighty angry

with the servants who had let the lady get as far as the antechamber.

"Lackeys," said she, on hearing his complaint, "are still used to pay

respect to princesses."

But he told her she could by no means see His Highness, and he spoke so

firmly that she sadly turned away.

"Alas!" she murmured, "that I should be sent like a beggar from the

door of a usurper!"

John Thurloe regarded her sharply.

"Had you been a man, madam, you would have had to answer for that

remark."

The lady turned and seemed about to reply, when Elisabeth Claypole

chanced to pass the open door, and, seeing a stranger there, she

entered.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"A lady who will not give her name," said the secretary dryly; "but no

one can see His Highness now."

"My name," said the stranger, with that air of fantastic dignity which

disguised her haggard sadness, "is something too great to be bandied

about here--but give me yours, madam."

"I am Elisabeth Claypole, madam," returned the Protector's daughter

mildly.

The lady swept a courtly curtsey.

"There is no need," she replied, "for me to disguise my quality from

one so generous and good. I am, madam, the wife of the unfortunate

Marquess of Newcastle."

This name, which a few years ago had been one of the greatest in the

land, and still echoed in the minds of men, had an effect on John

Thurloe and even on Elisabeth herself. The new order had not endured

long enough for people to have eradicated the instinct of respect for

noble blood and ancient names; for a moment the Marchioness, in her

poor attire, abashed the two commoners, so strong still were tradition

and the old teaching.

Then Elisabeth Claypole spoke.

"Will you come with me, madam, and take a little poor hospitality?"

Thurloe, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the distinguished

petitioner, put in his word.

"I will give Your Grace's name to His Highness presently, but I do fear

it is useless."

"Come with me, madam," repeated the Lady Elisabeth, and she gently took

the Marchioness by the hand and led her to her apartment.

Lady Newcastle came meekly; for all her air of pride she was downcast

and bewildered with misfortune.

The Lady Elisabeth's room looked on the river, now shaded by willow

trees covered with drooping yellow and red leaves, the banks were grown

with tall grasses and rushes, and the first pale flowers of spring,

beyond the soft fields, faded into the soft sky.

Elisabeth Claypole loved to sit day after day at her deep window gazing

on that scene, watching the river that wandered through such pleasant

ways through the great city, past the palace, past the Traitor's Gate,

out to the wonder and turmoil of the open sea.

It was a beautiful chamber hung with embroidery of her own stitching,

and furnished with many curious pieces from the Netherlands and China,

carpets of Persia, and two mirrors framed in glass flowers and done by

the Venetians.

She put a chair for the Marchioness and herself sank into the window

seat, glancing swiftly at her guest. She saw a lady of a medium

loveliness, most piteously worn and marred by sorrow, and attired in

a tasteful if unusual style, which gave her the appearance of being

richly dressed; but Elisabeth's quick eyes saw that the grey silk dress

had been turned and scoured, that the ruffles of lace had been darned

again and again, and that she wore no jewels. The Protector's daughter

felt ashamed of her own velvet gown and the valuable pearls she had in

her ears.

"I wished to see your father, madam," said Lady Newcastle, in a voice

where fatigue and humiliation struggled with a natural pride.

"Alas!" murmured Elisabeth. "He is so pressed with business--will you

tell your errand to me, my Lady Newcastle?"

"I have come to England in company with my brother-in-law to endeavour

to obtain some remnant of my husband's estates," was the answer. "And

we were returning in despair, when I, unknown to him, thought to make

this personal appeal."

The Lady Elisabeth knew at once that the unfortunate gentlewoman had

made an utterly hopeless journey, for she was well aware that one of

the late King's generals, and a royalist so notable as the Marquess of

Newcastle, could never obtain grace from the Commonwealth.

Wishful, as ever, to avoid inflicting pain rudely, she made an evasive

answer.

"Will your lord swear fealty to the Government, madam?"

"Nay--do you take him for a disloyal wretch?" flashed the Marchioness.

"Then," replied Elisabeth, with something of her pride roused, "I

wonder that you should have undertaken the labour of this journey."

A pallor overshadowed the royalist lady's features, and she hung her

head, as if she heard in these words the full extent of her miseries

and the depths of her humiliations.

"Could you see how the exiles live in Paris, in Rotterdam--in Antwerp,"

she answered--"all of us--even the Queen--you would not wonder at my

endeavour, however foolish, to obtain some relief."

It was the Protector's daughter who paled now; the thought of the

English exiles wandering miserably through Europe had constantly

haunted her.

"You are then in distress?" she asked, in a low voice.

"In the greatest poverty," replied Lady Newcastle, her pride melting

before the touch of tenderness, and the tears suddenly reddening her

eyes. "The French King makes nothing of us; he is all for an alliance

with the usur--with your father. The Princess of Orange can do nothing

for us, for, since her husband died, the Netherlands have put down

her son and so--and so----" she paused to command herself, then

continued: "Do not think I complain for myself. My lord was ruined

when I married him in Paris. I took him for great and exceeding love,

as he did me, seeing I was dowerless, and I make it no hardship to

share his exiled wanderings with him--but there are so many others even

wanting bread--and Her Majesty and the Princess Henrietta are in such

distress----But not to you should I speak of these things. I would only

explain how it is that I have so far lowered my dignity as to come here

on this errand."

Elisabeth Claypole caught a glimpse of the sufferings, poverties,

and misery of the exiled English in this speech, given so humbly, so

haltingly, yet with the accent of a pride unquenched.

My lady dashed the tears from her eyes with a laced handkerchief.

"I am Margaret Lucas," she added, "and well used to misfortunes. I came

to England to try what I could do, but I found no friend anywhere, nor

any one who would bring me before your father. So I came to-day--wildly

and foolishly, it might be--to ask if he would give my lord his rights."

"I would not give you false hopes," replied the Lady Elisabeth. "My

Lord's estate is forfeit, and no entreaties of yours or mine could

avail to restore it."

"Entreaties?" cried Lady Newcastle. "I fear I could not entreat----"

She abruptly checked her sentence, but Elisabeth knew well enough that

some hard thing against the Protector had been on her tongue.

"Have patience, my lady, this life is very short and full of sadness.

All these great affairs and great pains will soon be past, and others

will be in our places while we shall be at rest--up there"--she pointed

to the sky--"above it all, God grant!"

"You speak as if you too were unfortunate!" said the Marchioness

wonderingly. "Surely, Mrs. Claypole, you do not need philosophy to

sweeten your lot."

"I am dying," answered Elisabeth Claypole. "And I am young and have

much on this earth that I love, also I suffer very greatly--so much

that I wish I could die quicker. Therefore," she added sweetly, "you

see that I have not found the world wholly pleasant, and why I long for

these mansions God hath prepared for us above."

My lady's warm heart was greatly moved by this touching confession.

"Forgive me, I did not know," she answered; "but I dare hope you are

mistaken----"

"Those who love me deceive themselves, but I know," smiled Elisabeth.

"I am not afraid to die--but sometimes, madam, I am a coward before the

pain, the great pain,"--then, hastily turning the subject from herself,

she added,--"I mix not at all in business, I know my father doeth

God's work--yet I am most grieved for you and such as you, for all the

blood shed, for all the misery. Ah me!--our day is now, we seem very

glorious, but what doth it all hang on? My father's life--no more. And

it may be that we too shall end and come to nothing and your turn come

again. I know not. Sometimes life seems very far away from me, as if I

surveyed it from a distance, and saw it all blurred and vague."

"How many sad women I have seen!" exclaimed Margaret. "The Queen--you

would not know her--an old woman, all burnt away with fiery tears;

Lady Strafford, all broken and silenced; Lady William Pawlet, who

hath crept into a convent and is as near a nun as a widow may be--and

myself--how I have wept--mine eyes are weakened for ever because of

tears. It was for Charles, my dear, dear brother ... you know they

shot him, poor gallant soldier, outside Colchester.... Your father was

guiltless of that, or nothing had brought me here to-day."

Elisabeth did not answer; Cromwell was certainly not responsible for

the military executions, so harsh and unnecessary, of Lucas and Lisle

after the siege of Colchester; but it had been the work of Bridget's

first husband, Henry Ireton (a man whom she had never liked), and so

she could not condemn the action though her heart cried out against it.

The Marchioness rose, and the gentle April sunlight flicked the scoured

silk, the darned lace, the face so peaked and worn for one so young.

"Well, well," she said, with quivering lips, "one goes on living--but

the world is never the same after these things have happened. How

differently I dreamed it would be!"

"I also," answered Elisabeth Claypole. "I never thought of death at

all. Far, far off I fancied him, and behold, he was knocking at the

door. But the world does not heed poor silly women, madam; we are but

the dust bruised by the tramplings of great events; nations march

past and leave us weeping. God send you a good deliverance from your

sorrows. I will do what little I can, and ask my father to receive your

petition, but well I know it hopeless."

"I thank you," said Margaret; "from my heart I thank you for your good,

your generous, graciousness. I cannot think of you as my enemy----"

"Why should you?" cried Elisabeth. "We are both English women. I hope

the day is near when all such shall be united."

She rose and unlatched the lattice, and a fresh air blew in from the

young leaves that quivered on the willows and the young grass that

waved in the fields.

"The river!" said Margaret, looking over her shoulder. "I often dream

of the river, it seems woven through everything--twisted in and out

of the past years and all their story. In Paris, among strangers, I

think of the river, and grow sad with home-sickness. The river is very

dear--and means so much."

"I think so too," said Elisabeth. "Consider how it will flow on the

same, hundreds of years hence, when all the present kingdoms of the

earth will be dust like yester year's roses."

"I hope I shall die in England," said my lady irrelevantly; "and now

farewell," she added bravely. "Forgive me my sad coming."

"Come again," interrupted the Lady Elisabeth, taking her hand. "I may

have news for you. Where do you lodge?"

"With Mrs. Brydon, a cousin of my father over against the Exchange.

I am called Mrs. Lucas there, for any pomp is foolish in such sorry

circumstances."

"Come again in a few weeks--my father is so occupied with the Spanish

War--but I will speak to him of my lord's estates. Yet I can promise

nothing," she added reluctantly.

"Yet I love you dearly for the kindness," replied Margaret, holding out

her hands.

Elisabeth took them in her own frail fingers; these two women were

strangely drawn to one another.

"I pray Heaven you will recover," added the Marchioness. "I think you

will recover. Madam, you will live to be very happy."

"God may make me happy," said Elisabeth, "but not on the earth now."

"Nay, you will live to encourage other unfortunates as you have

encouraged me."

Both of them had tears in their eyes; obeying a mutual impulse, they

bent and kissed each other on the cheek.

Elisabeth came with Margaret to the outer door of her apartments, and

there gave her in charge to one of the ushers to be conducted from the

palace with all courtesy.

Before she returned to her chamber she asked if His Highness was at

leisure.

She was told that he was deeply engaged with his secretary on the

questions to be put before the Council when he returned to Whitehall

to-morrow.

Lady Newcastle returned to an alien London, and sat down in her forlorn

and ancient splendour to write to her beloved lord in Antwerp, where he

lodged in the house of the late King's painter, Sir Peter Rubens.

As the shadows fell over the city, over the fresh countryside, over

the river, as the night moths came out and the early stocks and pinks

in the gardens at Hampton Palace filled the air with sweetness, His

Highness still toiled in his cabinet, and Elisabeth Claypole still sat

at the open window of her room with folded hands and thoughtful eyes

gazing across the twilight.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY ELISABETH

When the Marchioness of Newcastle, after waiting long and vainly,

returned at length to Hampton Court and asked for the Lady Elisabeth,

she was told that the Protector's daughter was too ill to see any one.

After lingering a little, and trying other sources of communication

with the court and finding none, she returned sadly with her husband's

brother to Antwerp to take up again her exiled life.

All through that summer and autumn Elisabeth Claypole had seemed

sinking down to death. She knew little of what passed: of how, after

long debates, His Highness had refused the title of King ('a feather

in his cap,' he called it; a feather he would fain have had, many

said, only the army had willed otherwise), but had been installed in

purple and ermine as Lord-Protector of the new-formed Constitution and

presented with Bible and sword; of how ambassadors had come and gone

in England and the war with Spain proceeded brilliantly; how plots

were formed and exposed and His Highness went in a continual fear of

his life that was beginning to undermine his calm nerves and resolute

courage, and of how he and his Generals toiled continually----

Of all this Elisabeth Claypole knew little; she was scarcely conscious

of more than the darkened room in which she lay and of the figures of

her mother and sisters coming and going softly, of her husband grieving

by her bed, and her father's presence in such moments as he could

spare to hold her hand and speak comforting words to her tired ears.

By the spring they thought that they had cured her; but in the summer

she drooped again, though she went to the marriage of her sister

Frances with young Mr. Rich, the Earl of Warwick's heir.

Frances was the last to wed, for Mary was now Lady Fauconberg. Many

finer matches had been suggested for this youngest of the Protector's

daughters; some had even tried to bring about a marriage between her

and Charles Stewart, and the women of His Highness' family had favoured

this scheme, but Cromwell waved it aside--'If he could forgive his

father's death, I could not forgive the loose manner of his life'--and

Frances had wedded, after much opposition, Mr. Rich, a delicate youth.

In the June of this year of 1658 came the great news of the fall of

Dunkirk, the defeat of the Spanish, and the flattering friendship of

the French. London glittered with a congratulatory embassy from Paris;

in the midst of the pageantry, His Highness, who had already interfered

once to save the poor people of the valleys of Piedmont, was once more

extending his mighty protection to them, and Mr. Milton, the Latin

Secretary to the Council of State, was turning His Highness' letters

into Latin: Mr. Milton dictated his translations now, for he was lately

become utterly blind.

The news of the battle of the Dunes raised England to a yet higher

point of fame than she had yet reached. France could refuse such an

ally nothing, and Mazarin interfered to protect the Piedmontese.

So went affairs abroad and in England well too, save that the finances

were strained, His Highness having dissolved the Parliament in

February, preferring, indeed, to govern without one.

"God be judge between you and me," were the concluding words of his

last speech.

Other sorrows beside the illness of his daughter visited His Highness

this summer: Mr. Rich died a few months after his marriage, leaving

poor Frances a widow at seventeen; the old Earl of Warwick died, an

ancient friend of the Protector; most painful and terrible loss of all,

the youngest son of the Lady Elisabeth died, and she fell again into

illness and was soon at a desperate extremity.

In between his entertainment of the French ambassadors at Whitehall,

his conferences with his Council, and all the routine of government,

His Highness would take his coach and drive to Hampton, and sit for

a while in his child's darkened chamber and pray with tears that her

agony might be lessened.

His own health began to suffer. Those about him noticed that the deep

gloom which had settled on his spirits was affecting his strength; he

still looked and seemed in every way younger, much younger than his

years; he had a great appearance of strength; he gave the impression

of being firmly built, and set, and able to endure for a great while

yet the powerful winds which buffeted his high and glorious pinnacle of

splendour.

Yet those most with him, especially Thurloe, his ardent and faithful

secretary, thought that underneath this calm and strong exterior he

was much shaken in mind and health. His domestic sorrows were known

to affect him sorely, his nerves were strained to breaking-point by

the constant apprehension of assassination, the future was believed

to weigh on him, for there was no settlement of the country for any

period longer than his life, and it became daily more apparent how the

whole fabric of Puritan government depended on that life, on his unique

position and influence with the army, on the dominating force of his

personality, on the glory of his prestige and the glamour of his genius.

He had always seemed so vigorous, and glowing with the light and the

fire of an immortal spirit that no one associated him with age or

death or thought about his successor; but it was possible that to

himself, as the atmosphere of death chilled his home, might come the

reflection that the England of his making was as baseless as the Greece

of Alexander, and might as easily fall to pieces at his death--only

his captains were not the men to divide the spoils. What, then, would

follow?

He may well have asked himself that question and pondered over it in

these dark days.

The Lord Richard, his eldest surviving son, was a mere country

gentleman, with neither strength nor talents--nay, rather of an

indolent turn and a certain softness; to set him to hold together the

various elements which controlled the nation would be to invite certain

failure.

The Lord Henry, his second son, was as able a man as any about him and

already of much distinction in his military and diplomatic career;

but he was not the man to step into another's place: ambition did not

spur his noble qualities. Then there were the Lord Fleetwood, his

son-in-law, the Lord Lambert, Disbrowe, many fine, fearless soldiers,

Blake, Monck. But where was _the_ man--the one pre-eminently marked out

to continue the work of His Highness?

No one could point to such an one. The Lord-Protector had the right

of naming his successor, but as yet had not done so; the new-founded

Constitution (the last attempt to frame a civil government on the

foundations of arbitrary military power) was scarcely complete, and

after these last glorious successes in the Spanish War there was

further persistent talk of a kingship for the Protector. Many said this

title was a certain thing; but it was a thing yet pending, and with it

the question of the succession.

There were many jars and confusions, too, in the inner state of England

that might well weigh on the spirit of the Protector. His body was

worn with gout and a slight but lingering aguish fever. He might

neglect none of his business, and maintain the appearance of mental and

physical strength, but John Thurloe, his constant companion, was not

deceived.

"His Highness," he said to Whitelocke, "is a sick man, and these vigils

by the Lady Elisabeth will wear him to a great disease."

That summer was notable for the fierceness of the heat: day by day

the sun beat down without either rain or cloud, night after night the

stars shone with unveiled brilliance; then towards the beginning of

August a light wind blew for several days and cooled the air. Elisabeth

Claypole seemed to rally a little as the great heat was relieved, and

His Highness, who had left business for several days lately to watch

by her, thought it safe to return to London, where the French notables

were still being entertained.

On Friday the 6th of August he came back to Hampton Court; he came in

a coach, for, having lately been flung from his carriage, he was too

shaken to ride on horseback. That day he had been more than usually

cheerful; he had even smiled at the reports from France: tales of how

his Ironsides (oh, irony!), now fighting there side by side with the

followers of the Scarlet Lady, had given their General trouble by their

behaviour in the churches of the idolaters, one lighting his pipe

from the candle on the high altar. Then he heard how Mr. Hugh Peters

had endeavoured to make long sermons before the magnificent Cardinal,

hoping to convert him from his deep errors.

At the name of Mr. Hugh Peters His Highness smiled no more; it recalled

to him strangely that winter morning in Whitehall when he had paced

the boarded gallery in sick agitation, and Hugh Peters, in his black

clothes, had gone out to the scaffold and helped knock a staple in and

hurried to and fro in enthusiastic excitement.... It seemed so long ago

... and now this same Hugh Peters was arguing with Cardinal Mazarin,

and the young King of France was sending him a rich sword with a

jewelled hilt ... a King who was the nephew of that other King who had

knelt down at the block that January morning.

His Highness did not set much store by this costly sword: his victories

had been won with plainer weapons.

While he was in his coach, hastening towards Hampton, he took from his

pocket a pamphlet which was then making much stir in England. The title

was _Killing no Murder_, and it set forth with much eloquence that any

murderer of Oliver Cromwell would be justified by God and man.

His Highness read the paper from beginning to end, then put it back in

his pocket.

"There is no notice to be taken of such things," said John Thurloe, who

sat opposite him.

"It is no matter one way or another," answered His Highness; and he

took from his bosom a small Bible and gave it to Thurloe and asked him

to read from it aloud, "For," he said, "I feel my eyes tired."

"What shall I read?" asked the secretary, leaning towards the light

of the window and unclasping the Book: the coach had just turned by

Turnham Green and the road was smooth.

"Read," said the Lord-Protector, "the fourth of St. Paul to the

Philippians, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth verses--read aloud

in a strong voice."

Which John Thurloe did.

"'Not that I speak in respect of want: but I have learned, in

whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be

abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere, and by all things, I am

instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to

suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth

me.'"

His Highness repeated the last sentence.

"'_I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me._' This

Scripture did once save my life," he added, "when my eldest son, poor

Robert, died, which went as a dagger to my heart--indeed, it did."

He paused and John Thurloe looked up, startled to hear him refer to a

sorrow so ancient. But Cromwell's thoughts seemed to be in the past.

"In my great extremity," he continued, "I did read these passages

of Paul's contention--of the submission to the will of God in all

conditions; and it was hard--indeed, it was hard. In my weakness I

said, 'It is true, Paul, _you_ have learned this, and attained to

this measure of grace; but what shall _I_ do? Ah, poor creature, it

is a hard lesson for me to take out. I find it so!' But reading on to

the thirteenth verse, where Paul saith, '_I can do all things through

Christ which strengtheneth me_,' then faith began to work and my heart

to find support, saying to myself, 'He that was Paul's Christ is my

Christ too!'--and so I drew waters out of the well of salvation."

"Why should Your Highness remind yourself of this?" asked Thurloe

anxiously.

"Oh, Thurloe!" cried the Lord-Protector, with a great sigh, "it is to

nerve myself in case another of my children should be taken from me.

If she should die--it would be almost more than I could bear. Yet God

might take her, though I have wrestled with Him for her life, even as

David wrestled for the life of his son. My brave, sweet one! She was

always good and loving, was she not, Thurloe? Wonderful and inscrutable

are His ways that He should lay such suffering and agonies on one so

delicate and valiant!"

The secretary had no more to say; neither did His Highness speak again,

but gazed out of the window at the sun-dried countryside, at the

orchards where the dry wind blew the shrivelled leaves of red and gold

from the fruit too early ripe, at the great elms and oaks rustling the

foliage to the ground, at the thatched and gabled cottages where the

children ran to the doors to watch the coach with the four horses and

outriders and the troop of Lifeguards go by.

Soon they came in sight of the river, with islands and barges and

reaches, where the boats were drawn above the tide and a few boys

fished, knee-deep in mud.

Then they lost the river and passed between private mansions standing

among trees, and so to the village of Hampton as the sun was sinking in

a glow of unstained fire.

As they neared the Palace His Highness became very pale, and he looked

once or twice with an air of dread from the window, as if he expected

to see some awful change over the place.

But no scene could have been more peaceful: the river flowed softly

between the fading willows and the banks where the tall grasses, white

whorls of hemlock, and clusters of parsley flowers grew; the last light

of the sun glowed on the red bricks of the Palace and cast long shadows

from the summer flowers in the garden; up among the high chimney-stacks

white pigeons fluttered home with light upon their wings.

Cromwell entered the Palace. The first to meet him was one of the

grooms of his chamber; the man gave him a frightened look and moved

away without speaking.

He went towards his daughter's apartments, and in the corridor Frances

Rich, a child in widow's mourning, came towards him with staggering

steps.

He paused.

"Oh, my father!" she said, and lifted a face swollen with weeping.

"What is it, my dear?" he asked, in a still voice. "Be calm, my child,

my dear."

He took her trembling little figure by the shoulder and smoothed back

the damp hair from her forehead.

"Is she dead?" he asked. "Is she gone--is Betty dead, dear?"

"Oh, my father!" sobbed poor Frances again, and seemed unable to find

other words.

Elisabeth Cromwell came down the passage, and with her the Lord

Claypole.

"Ah," said His Highness, "is it over? And I left her--yet only for a

little--and she is gone."

His wife came and put her arms round his neck and wept on his shoulder

a little, then she took his hand and led him to their daughter's

chamber, followed by those two other mourners, also sick with grief and

watching.

Elisabeth Claypole lay dead, she had fallen from one convulsion fit to

another, and breathed her last breath, in great pain and suffering, but

with a composed and cheerful mind and a serene and hopeful soul.

She was dead; very young she looked as she lay in the great bed in

the darkened chamber with the shadows over her; the rich coverlet was

straightened across her limbs, the sheet smoothed, the pillow shaken;

she was at peace after the long tossings to and fro, the hot nights of

agony, the dragging days of unconsciousness.

Very small she looked and delicate; her hair seemed like a handful of

fine silk on the pillow, her hands white flowers on the coverlet; her

head was drooping slightly sideways, and the gentle look she wore in

life had returned, effacing all trace of suffering.

There were many standing round her; all made way at the approach of His

Highness; he came up to the bed and looked down at her.

"'My life is waxen old with heaviness,'" he murmured, "'and my years

with mourning.... I am become like a broken vessel.'"

He bent over her stillness, his transient sorrow breaking vainly

against her eternal repose.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," said Elisabeth Cromwell,

and touched her husband's hand.

He went to his knees on the bed-step and put his head on his folded

hands.

"May He who sitteth above the waterflood comfort me--for in myself I

can do nothing!" he muttered.

They left him there, for they thought that he prayed; but it was not

so: the valiant spirit had been robbed of its matchless fortitude at

last; His Highness was in a swoon of anguish.

CHAPTER IX

EXIT HIS HIGHNESS

From that day he sickened rapidly; his strength fell from him with a

suddenness that amazed those about him. He attended business as usual,

wearing the purple of royal mourning, but the heaviness of his spirit

was noticed by all.

Towards the end of August, George Fox, the Quaker, came to Hampton

Court to see His Highness about the persecution of the Friends; he

went by river, and soon after he stepped ashore at Hampton he saw His

Highness riding at the head of his Lifeguards, going towards the Palace

under the shade of the riverside trees.

George Fox waited until the cavalcade, which was coming slowly towards

him, into Hampton Court Park, had reached him, gazing steadily the

while at that figure of His Highness, drooping a little in the saddle

and looking ahead of him, with an extraordinary air of stillness.

"I felt and saw," wrote Fox afterwards, when he was back in his

cobbler's shop in London, "a waft of death go forth against him, and

when I came to him he looked like a dead man."

His Highness was very courteous; he checked his horse when he saw the

patient figure, russet-clad, with the broad-brimmed hat, waiting for

him, and welcomed Fox as warmly as he had done two years before when

the Quaker saw him at Hyde Park Corner among his Guards, and pressed to

his carriage window, and spoke to him gravely--as he spoke to him now,

warning him, and laying before him the sufferings of the Friends, even

as the spirit moved him to do.

His Highness listened; the stillness of his demeanour, remarkable in

one naturally so full of energy and eloquence, did not alter; he said

very little, only kindly bade Fox come and see him at his house next

day.

And so he rode on slowly towards the red palace, "and I," wrote Fox in

his _Journal_, "never saw him more."

For the following day, when he came from Kingston to Hampton again, the

doctors would let no one see His Highness, who was fallen worse--of a

tertian ague, they said--and would never ride at the head of his famous

Guard again, either through Hampton Court Park or anywhere else. George

Fox had been the last to see the Lord-Protector on horseback, girt with

a sword.

Soon after he was moved by coach to London, where the air was thought

to be better for his complaint; St. James's Palace, that he intended

to lodge at, not being immediately ready, he was taken to Whitehall,

and on the Wednesday following half the nation was praying for him, and

half waiting breathlessly, "for a great deliverance."

In Whitehall, a meeting of preachers and godly persons besought God

with prayers and tears to spare His Highness, and all over the city

were apprehension, expectation, hopes, fears, and supplication.

So it had come to this: the twenty years of great events, with all the

toil, achievement, triumph, tumult, and sorrow, had swept up to this

moment when the gentleman farmer from St. Ives, who had received a

command from God, lay dying at Whitehall, with that command executed

as far as it is in a man to accomplish a mission he conceives Divine,

dying, with England breathless, and the son of the late tyrant

breathless too, and watching and waiting from across the water.

It seemed to many valiant souls as if this England so violently shaped

anew into something of the form which was the ideal of Puritanism,

purged and glorified, was no more than the vivified dream of this one

man, and that when he passed from the earth it would be as when a

sleeper wakes--the dream would be dispelled and all things become as

they had been.

What he himself might think, now that he knew the summons had come,

none could tell, for he was mostly silent during the ebb and flow of

his illness, and only spoke to pray; once or twice the passionate

entreaties to God, which he heard rising around him, and the passionate

affection of his family and friends, seemed to rouse in him a desire

and hope of life. He could not but know that his work was not yet

finished, and that this was not the best of times for him to die.

"Lord, Thou knowest," he said, "that if I do desire to live, it is to

show forth Thy praise and declare Thy works!" and, "Is there none that

says, Who will deliver me from this peril?" then, "Man can do nothing;

God can do what He will."

And at times he fell into a kind of enthusiasm, speaking much of the

Covenants of Works and of Grace and expounding them; to his wife and

children, who felt their very life being torn from them, he spoke, too:

"Love not this world"--he repeated the words with great vehemence, as

was his wont--"I say, love not this world; it is not good that you

should love this world--children, live like Christians. I leave you the

Covenant to feed on!"

But for the most he had done with human affection; weeping did not seem

to touch that heart that had once been so tender to tears.

He did not even look at those about him, but upwards at the dark canopy

of his bed; and to that inner eye which had beheld the sword stretched

out of the cloud in the barn at St. Ives, it was no covering of

tapestry which hung above him, but the threshold of the eternal world.

The dry wind, which had begun before the Lady Elisabeth died, and blown

for weeks across the Island from sea to sea, deepened and strengthened

now from day to day, and at the end of this month of August, when His

Highness was rapidly coming to the end of all storms and calms alike, a

hurricane of wind arose--the most fearful, violent, and protracted any

man could remember.

The angry seas sucked in ships and sailors and beat furiously on the

coast, trees were uprooted, haystacks and barns overturned, tiles and

chimneys cast down; in the cities men could scarcely stand in the

streets for the wind which roared and piped round the corners.

The great man dying and the great storm raging became mysteriously

connected in the minds of those watching and waiting breathlessly;

there were not wanting those who said that it was the Devil come for

His Highness, nor those who thought it was the sound of the wings of

God's angels, nor those who thought that it was devils and angels both

wrestling together.

It was drawing near to that most glorious day for Oliver Cromwell

and his cause, the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar

and Worcester, and of the calling of the first Parliament of His

Highness--a day of general thanksgivings and triumph to all Puritans.

As the stormy winds rocked Whitehall Palace and rattled at the window

out of which Charles Stewart had stepped to die, and at the window of

the room where the Lord Protector lay, His Highness rallied from his

slumbers and sat upright in his great bed and listened to the tempest,

as a soldier might sit up in the dark and listen the night before a

battle.

"I think I am the poorest wretch alive," he said, "but I love God,

or, rather, am beloved by Him--I am a conqueror and more than a

conqueror--'_through Christ which strengtheneth me_'"--so he repeated

again the words which had saved him once, long ago. But as he sat up,

hearkening to the blowing winds without, his comfort seemed to go from

him.

"It is a fearful thing," he said, "to fall into the hands of the Living

God!"

He raised himself up and stretched out his hand towards the wind as if

he appealed to something in that tumult outside his palace.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!" he

cried again.

So high and loud the wind howled that those about him shivered as if

they feared to be struck by some supernatural force; but Cromwell sat

erect, and again cried out, "I say it is a fearful thing to fall into

the hands of the Living God!"

One of the chaplains praying in the adjoining chamber heard His

Highness' raised and agonized voice and entered the sick-room.

To him Oliver Cromwell turned eagerly.

"_Tell me_," he asked, in a voice of intense wistfulness, "_is it

possible to fall from Grace?_"

"Nay," said the pastor, "it is not possible."

"_Then_," said the dying man, "_I am saved, for I know that I was once

in Grace_."

He clasped his hands, and the family and friends about him, whom he

seemed to have forgotten, heard, in the pauses of the wind, his prayer--

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant

with Thee through Grace! And I may--I will--come to Thee, for Thy

people! Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to

do them some good, and Thee service--many of them have set too high a

value on me, others wish and would be glad of my death--Lord, however

Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on and do good for them."

His voice rose now like the voice of a well man, almost as strong as

the voice that had greeted with a psalm the rising sun before Dunbar.

"Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love--and

go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation--and make the

Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on

Thy Instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to

trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too.

"And pardon the folly of this short prayer--even for Jesus Christ's

sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen!"

And after this he lay down among his pillows and slept, despite the

storm.

And there began to be whispers about the succession, which hitherto no

one had dared name.

It was vaguely believed that His Highness _had_ named him, some while

ago, and the sealed paper containing his wishes was at Hampton. Thurloe

and the Lord Fauconberg sent there for it, but the paper could not be

found; and His Highness' body was fast sinking into eternal slumber,

and his spirit escaping them, and they were all confused and amazed at

what might be before them.

The faithful Thurloe approached his bed and asked him who was to be his

successor.

At which His Highness turned his head and was silent.

"The Lord Richard?" whispered Thurloe, and the Lord Protector was

believed to answer, "Yes, yes," but no man could be sure of what he

said. Henry Cromwell was absent; the rest of his family were near

him, but he seemed to forget them. Only twice he asked intensely for

"_Robert, Robert_, my eldest son."

He fell now into great pains, but with them came great cheerfulness of

spirit.

"God is good," he was heard to say--"indeed, He is--God is good--my

work is done. Yet God be with His people."

On the eve of the thanksgiving day, which shall never be kept as a

thanksgiving day again, save by an oppressed people, secretly in their

hearts, the victor of the battles which made the 3rd of September

glorious was seen to be very near the end of his restlessness and his

pain.

He spoke to himself continually, judging and abasing himself, and

his eyes were continually turned upward to that rich canopy and rich

ceiling, which was certainly neither covering nor concealment to him

who saw the light beyond the palace roof.

His sad, forlorn wife (who saw but dark days ahead of her) besought him

to drink and sleep and held out a cup to him.

"It is not my design to drink or sleep," he answered, "but my design is

to make what haste I can to be gone."

All through the windy night he prayed brokenly; once he spoke of

Harrison, and seemed troubled; once he asked God to spare Betty further

pain, and again he said, "Is Robert dead?--and Oliver?"

When the sun was up over city and golden river, and the vast crowds

waiting anxiously, His Highness had fallen to silence.

Neither to the God who waited for him, nor to his forlorn family, nor

to the breathless nation did His Highness speak again in any earthly

tongue.

That afternoon the Lord ungirt the sword with which He had invested his

Captain twenty years before, and in Whitehall Palace Oliver Cromwell's

lifeless body lay--and the nation flew asunder into confusion.

"My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.

"But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever--and Thy remembrance

throughout all generations....

"They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as

doth a garment.

"And as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed:

_but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail_." Amen. Amen.

_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_

End of Project Gutenberg's The Governor of England, by Marjorie Bowen