66. Hamilton Terrace,
St. John's Wood, March 5. 1851.
_Oliver Cromwell._--Echard says that his highness sold himself to the
devil, and _that he had seen the solemn compact_. Anthony à Wood, who
doubtless credited this account of a furious brother loyalist, in his
Journal says:
"Aug. 30, 1658. Monday, a terrible raging wind happened, which did much
damage. Dennis Bond, a great Oliverian and anti-monarchist, died on
that day, and then the devil took _bond_ for Oliver's appearance."
Clarendon, assigning the Protector to eternal perdition, not liking to lose
the portent, boldly says the remarkable hurricane occurred on September 3,
the day of Oliver's death. Oliver's admirers, on the other hand, represent
this wind as ushering him into the other world, but for a very different
reason.
Heath, in his _Flagellum_ (I have the 4th edit.), says:
It pleased God to usher in his end with a great whale _some three
months before_, June 2, that came up as far as Greenwich, and there was
killed; and more immediately by a terrible storm of wind: the
prognosticks that the great Leviathan of men, that tempest and
overthrow of government, was now going to his own place!"
I have several works concerning Cromwell, but in no other do I find this
story very like a whale. Would some reader of better opportunities favour
us with a record of these two matters of natural history, not as connected
with the death of this remarkable man, but as mere events? Your well-read
readers will remember some similar tales relative to the death of Cardinal
Mazarine. These exuberances of vulgar minds may partly be attributed to the
credulity of the age, but more probably to the same want of philosophy
which caused the ancients to deal in exaggeration.