as if she had seen something not to be spoken of. Lady Mary Fanconberg
says the family ought to leave Hampton Court; there is a feeling about
the place both unhappy and unnatural. I felt it. Every one felt it,
even the soldiers on guard."
After the death of his beloved daughter Elizabeth, the life of Cromwell
was like the ending of one of those terrible Norse Sagas with the
additional element of a great spiritual conflict. He was aware of his
own apparition at his side; the air was full of omens; he felt the
menace of some shadowy adversary in the dark; he saw visions; he dreamed
beyond nature; he had, at times, the wild spirits of a fey man, and
again was almost beside himself with unspeakable grief. Israel Swaffham
was constantly with him. The two men were friends closer than brothers.
They had loved each other when boys, and their love had never known a
shadow.
"But I am in great trouble about him," said Israel to his wife. "It
cannot last. Since Lady Claypole's death he eats not, drinks not,
sleeps not; his strong, masculine handwriting, the very mirror of his
courageous spirit, has become weak and trembling. He lives much alone,
keeps from his family as if he feared they might be in danger from his
danger. And he thinks and thinks, hour after hour; and 'tis thinking
that is killing him. I can tell you one thing, Martha, a thinking soul
is always sorrowful enough, but when it is a great soul like Oliver's,
and it is wretched for any cause, then every thought draws blood."
"For such dismal thought and feeling there is the Holy Scriptures."
"Yes, yes, Oliver knows the Comforter, and sometimes there is a message
for him. Last night he made Harvey read him the fourth of Philippians,
and he said when he had listened to it, 'This Scripture did once save my
life when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed
it did;' then, with a great joy he repeated the words, 'I can do all
things through Christ which strengthened! me;' adding, 'He that was
Paul's Christ, is my Christ too!'"
Cromwell had hoped that his great afflictions would bring his friends
back to his side; but envy, hatred and greedy ambition are not to be
conciliated. Even at this time, Ludlow, Lambert, Vane, Harrison,
Marten,--all the men whom he had trusted, and who had trusted him, stood
aloof from his sorrow; and their sullen indifference wounded him to the
quick. He had a burning fever both of the body and soul, but in two
weeks he gathered a little strength and left Hampton Court for
Whitehall. His unfinished work drove at him like a taskmaster. He must
make great haste, for he knew that the night was coming.
"I am glad he is back in Whitehall," said Martha to her husband, when
she heard of the change. "I remember something that Jane said about
that old, gloomy Court; he will get better in London."
"I know not, Martha," answered Israel sadly; "Fairfax was with him
to-day, and he might as well have drawn his sword on his old
friend,--better and kinder had he done so."
"Fairfax is proud as Lucifer. What did he want?"
"The Duke of Buckingham has been sent to the Tower--where he ought to
have been sent long ago; but he is married to the daughter of Fairfax,
and the haughty Lord General went to see Cromwell about the matter. He
met him in the gallery at Whitehall and asked that the order for
Buckingham's arrest should be retracted. And Cromwell told him that if
the offense were only against his own life, the Duke could go free that
hour, but that he could not pardon plotters against the Commonwealth.
It grieved him to the heart to say these words, and Fairfax saw how ill
and how troubled he looked. But he had not one word of courtesy; he
turned abruptly and cocked his hat, and threw his cloak under his arm in
that insolent way he was ever used to when in his tempers. And Oliver
looked at me like a man that has been struck in the face by a friend.
Then he went to his desk and worked faithfully, inexorably, all
day;--but--but----"
"But what, Israel?"
"It is near--the end."
Indeed, this interview with Fairfax seemed to be the last heart-weight
he could carry. That night, the man who had been used to shelter his
dove-like wife from every trouble in his strong heart, laid his head
upon her shoulder and said pitifully, "O Elizabeth, I am the wretchedest
creature! Speak some words of hope and peace to me." Then she soothed
and comforted him from the deep wells of her tenderness, and never once
put into words the fearful thought which lay deep in her heart--"What
will become of me when he is gone?" But Oliver had this same anxious
boding, and he managed that night to tell his wife that if God, in
mercy, called him on the sudden, Israel Swaffham had his last words and
advices for her,--words that would then be from Oliver in heaven to
Elizabeth on earth. They spoke of their old, free, happy life; of their
sons and daughters both here and there, and mingled for the last time
their tears and prayers together.
"Let us trust yet in God, dear Oliver," she said, as they rose from
their knees; "is He not sufficient?"
"Trust in God!" he cried. "Who else is there in the heaven above, or in
the earth beneath? And as our John Milton says--
"'. . . if this truth fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.'
Trust in God! Indeed I do! God has not yet spoken His last word to
Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell." Then he drew her close to his heart,
kissed her fondly, and said, almost with sobs, "My dearest, if I go the
way of all the earth first, thou wilt never forget me?"
"How could I forget thee? How could I? Not in my life days! Not in my
eternal days! Heart of my heart! My good, brave, true husband,
Elizabeth will never forget thee, never cease to love thee and honour
thee, while the Everlasting One is thy God and my God."
The next day he went to his desk and began to write, but speedily and
urgently called for Israel Swaffham. When he answered the call, Oliver
was in great physical agony, but he took some papers from a drawer and
said, "When I am no longer here, Israel, give these to my wife. Thurloe
has the key to all State questions; he knows my intents and my judgments
on them. And there is one more charge for you: when all is over, speak
to the army for me. Tell the men to remember me while they live. Truly,
I think they will. Tell them I will take love and boldness to myself,
and plead for them when I am nearer to God than I am now. It may be we
shall serve together again--among the hosts of the Most High. Say to
them my tears hinder my last words, as indeed they do. Now let me lean
on you, Israel. I am going to my last hard fight."
When he reached his room, he stood a moment and looked wistfully round
it. It was but a narrow chamber, but large enough for the awfully
close, near conflict, that he had to fight in it,--a conflict which was
to put asunder flesh and spirit, and within its few feet, with strange,
strong pains deliver the Eternal out of Time, and set free his Immortal
Self from the carnal prison-house of many woes in which he had suffered
for more than fifty-nine years. For ten terrible days and nights the
anguish of this struggle went on unceasingly, sometimes the great
Combatant being "all here" and full of faith and courage, sometimes far
down the shoal of life and reason, and wandering uneasily through bygone
days of battle and distress and darkness. Then Israel held his burning
hands, and listened, while in a voice very far off, he ejaculated such
passages as had then been familiar to him:--"The shield of His mighty
men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots shall
rage in the streets--they shall seem like torches, they shall run like
the lightnings."[4] And once at the midnight when all was still he
cried, "If the Lord had suffered it, then I had died on the battle-field
as His Man of War, with tumult, with shouting and with the sound of the
trumpet."[5]
[4] Nahum 2:4.
[5] Amos 2: 2.
He had turned to face his last enemy on the twenty-fourth of August, and
on the thirtieth there was such a tempest as had never before been seen
in England. Whole forests were laid on the ground; traffic was swept
from the roads and the streets, and the ships from the stormy seas; and
the tide at Deptford, to the dismay of the superstitious, threw up the
carcass of a monstrous whale. The chambers of Whitehall were filled
with the roar of the great winds. The guards leaned on their arms,
praying or talking solemnly together on the prodigy of the storm.
"Michael and the devil had a dispute about the body of Moses," said one
old grizzled trooper to his companion. "Are they fighting about our
Cromwell, think ye, Abel?"
"Who knows?" was the answer. "The Prince of the Powers of the Air has
His battalions out this night, but Michael and his host will be
sufficient. You'll see, Jabez, when the storm is over, our Cromwell
will go;" and he drew his hand across his eyes and added, "He'll have
company, Jabez, a great bodyguard of ministering angels; and sure a soul
needs them most of all between here and there. Evil ones no doubt, to
be watched and warded, but the Guard sent is always sufficient."
Israel sat near the men, and heard something of what they said, but he
was too inert with grief and weariness to answer them. Presently,
however, Doctor Verity joined him. They said a few words about the
storm, their words being emphasised by the falling and crashing of trees
outside the windows, and by thunder and lightning and driven torrents of
rain; and then Doctor Verity said in a low voice, "_He_ knows nothing of
this--he is still as death; he barely breathes; he is unconscious;
_where is he_, Israel?"
"Not quite gone--not quite here---- Is he watching the battle of
elements in the middle darkness?" Then he told the Doctor what Abel and
Jabez had said, and for some minutes only the pealing thunder and the
howling winds made answer. But John Verity was thinking, and as soon as
there was a moment's lull in the uproar, he said, "Oliver is no stranger
to the Immortals, Israel. They have heard of his fame. In their way,
they have seen and helped him already. Oliver has fought the devil all
his life long. While his body lies yonder, without sense or motion,
where is his spirit? Is it now having its last fight with its great
enemy? Israel, I was thinking of what Isaiah says, about hell being
moved to meet Lucifer at his coming."
"I remember."
"May not heaven also be moved to meet a good man? May not the chief ones
of the earth arise, each from his throne, to welcome a royal brother,
and narrowly to consider him, and ask of the attending angels, 'Is this
he who moved nations, and set free his fellows, and brought forth for
his Master one hundredfold?'"
"Yet how he has been reviled; and what is to come will be worse."
"He has already forgiven it. I heard him praying ere he 'went
somewhere' that God would 'pardon such as desire to trample upon the
dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too;' and then he added,
just as a little child might, 'and give us a good-night.' And somehow,
Israel, I do think he is having a good-night. I do surely think so."
"But oh, John, John Verity, all this great life is to be a failure. All
our travail and toil and suffering to be a failure!"
"No, indeed! There is no failure. No, no, nothing of the kind! We
have ushered in a new era of Freedom. We have made a breakwater against
tyranny. Kings will remember forevermore that they have a joint in
their necks. Oliver has done, to the last tittle, the work he was sent
to do. It is Oliver the Conqueror! not Oliver the Failure. But I could
weep my eyes out for the cruelties his tender heart has had to bear.
There are some men I could wish a tenfold retribution to, and I think
they will get it. Baxter has whined and whined against Cromwell, but he
will have plenty of opportunities yet to wish Cromwell back. And there
is Vane! he will not find Charles Stuart as forbearing to his fine
mystical unreasonableness as Cromwell has been; he may lay his head on
the block before long. As for Lambert and Fairfax and the rest, the
subtle Monk will be too much for them. Let them alone, their sins will
find them out; and we will sail westward in good hope. Remember, Israel,
it is not incumbent on us to finish the work; we can leave it in God's
hands. And though we have to leave it behind us incomplete, God will
use it some way and somewhere, and the news will find us, even in
heaven, and sweeten our happy labours there. I believe this, I do with
all my soul."
On Thursday night, the second of September, being the ninth day of his
hard fight, he bade his wife and children "a good-bye"; but into this
sacred scene not even the tenderest imagination may intrude. Afterward
he appeared to withdraw himself entirely within the shadow of the
Almighty, waiting the signal for his release in a peaceful, even a
happy, mood, and saying in a more and more laboured voice, "Truly God is
good--indeed He is--He will not--leave. My work is done--but God will
be--with His people." Some one offered him a drink to ease his
restlessness and give him sleep, but he refused it. "It is not my
design to drink or to sleep," he said; "my design is to make what haste
I can to be gone." The last extremity indeed! but one full of that
longing desire of the great Apostle "to depart and be with Christ, which
is far better."
The next morning, the third of September, his Fortunate Day, "the day of
Dunbar Field and Worcester's laureate wreath," he became speechless as
the sun rose, and so he lay quiet until between three and four in the
afternoon, when he was heard to give a deep sigh. The physician in
attendance said softly, "_He is gone!_" And some knelt to pray, and all
wept, but unmindful of his tears, Israel Swaffham cried in a tone of
triumph--
"Thou good Soldier of God, Farewell! Thou hast fought a good fight,
thou hast kept the faith, and there is laid up for thee a crown greater
than England's crown, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous judge, shall give thee."
But Doctor Verity went slowly to the beloved Dead; he put tenderly back
his long gray hair, damp with the dew of death, and closed the eyelids
over his darkened eyes, and kissed him on his brow, and on his lips; and
as he turned sorrowfully away forever, whispered only two words:--
"_Vale_ Cromwell!"