some time to be christened at Huntingdon, as did also those of his married sisters: whence it is inferred that their grandmother probably remained there. Perhaps Oliver himself may not yet have absolutely quitted his native place, or may have still for some time kept his wife and family at Huntingdon. He had by this time four sons and two daughters, who were all living, with the exception, .perhaps, of his first-born, a son, who appears to have died in infancy or boyhood. Another son, who died the day after he was baptized, and two more daughters, were afterwards born to him. His eldest son was born in October, 1621, and his youngest daughter and child in December, 1638.

Cromwell's farm at St. Ives was rented from the estate of Slepe Hall, and lay at the south-eastern extremity of the town, which stands upon the northeast or left bank of the Ouse, the river here being carried by a bend to the south-east out of its general northerly course. Here he resided for about four years and a half. The parish clerk of St. Ives told Noble, in the latter part of the last century, "that he had been informed by old persons, who knew Mr. Cromwell when he resided at St. Ives, that he usually frequented divine service at church, and that he generally came with a piece of red flannel about his neck, as he was subject to an inflammation in his throat." The vicar of St. Ives at this time was the Rev. Henry Downett; he was deprived of his living by the parliament in 1642; and, as Cromwell was then one of the Committee of Religion, it is presumed that he had nothing to say in favour of his former clergyman's soundness of doctrine. Almost the only memorial of Cromwell now remaining at St. Ives is his signature in one of the parish registers to a memorandum of the election of overseers for the streets and highways, in April, 1634. His name stands first of eleven subscribed to the entry. There was formerly another signature of his to a similar memorandum for the preceding year, but it has been cut out. It seems that they now point out what is called Slepe Hall, being the last house at the south-eastern extremity of the town, as the

one in which he lived; it serves at present for a boardingschool, and Mr. Carlyle, from whose late work, ' Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' we derive our information, appears to make it out that the local tradition is in all probability a mistake. Noble expressly tells us that Cromwell's house was no longer standing in his time. "Mr. Atkyns, an attorney," he says, "lives in a handsome one built upon the site of the old one; it stands just without the town." There is also a letter of Cromwell's, dated from St. Ives, the 11th of January, 1635 (or 1636, as we should now reckon), which Harris gives from the original in the British Museum, although such original is no longer to be found in that repository. It is addressed" To my very loving friend Mr. Storie, at the sign of the Dog, in the Royal Exchange, London," and abundantly demonstrates the strong hold that religion or puritanism had by this time taken of him, and that his whole heart was in the work. Yet it equally expresses the practical turn and faculty of the man; it is an earnest application to Storie not to allow a lectureship, which he had been instrumental with other subscribers in establishing in the county of Huntingdon, to go down for want of funds to pay the lecturer; and even Noble himself, a well-endowed clergyman, ought to have seen something more than "a convincing proof how far Oliver was at that time gone in religious enthusiasm," in the concluding sentences: "You know, Mr. Storie, to withdraw the pay is to let fall the lecture for who goeth to warfare at his own cost? I beseech you, therefore, in the bowels of Christ, put it forward, and let the good man have his pay.' Such, indeed, are all Cromwell's letters that have come down to us, without, we believe, a single exception. That the work of this world is to be done energetically, but in the spirit of a higher world-that is not so much the principle which he appears to have constantly kept in view as it is the man himself, the expression of his whole soul and being. If he was a religious enthusiast, he was certainly no mere dreaming visionary. The most unenthusiastic or irreligious person never showed more of

sublunary sagacity, alacrity, and strenuousness than he did in whatever he undertook. If his heart was elsewhere, his hand was not the less here. But in truth, his heart, too, was not the less among the things of earth for being also among those of heaven; for in his view heaven and earth were one-the earth was, in a sense, only a preliminary or lower heaven.

But his residence at St. Ives was now drawing to a close. A few days after the letter we have just quoted was written, his uncle Sir Thomas Steward died at Ely; he was buried in the cathedral there on the 30th of January, 1636. We have seen what Dugdale writes about an attempt made by Cromwell, it is not stated when, to have his uncle declared a lunatic in order that he might get possession of his estate, wherein we are told he failed, and also what is blunderingly recorded by Bate about his uncle Sir Robert Steward, after some aversion he had taken up, having been reconciled to him by the good offices of certain clergymen and courtiers, that is, we suppose, puritanic clergymen on the part of the nephew on that of the uncle, persons of his own or the church and king's side having an influence with the old man, and also, it may be, kindly disposed to Cromwell for the sake of the loyal stock he was sprung from. Both stories are as vague as can well be, nor does the one seem very consistent with the other; but the fact at any rate is, that Sir Thomas by his will, made the same month in which he died, left Oliver his principal heir. He became in this way possessed of very considerable estates in and near Ely, partly consisting of land and tithes held under the dean and chapter; and he thereupon transferred himself to that city. He resided, Noble tells us, in the glebe-house, near to St. Mary's churchyard, still occupied in Noble's time by the lessee of the same tithes, then a Mr. Page. house," says Mr. Carlyle, "though somewhat in a frail state, is still standing; close to St. Mary's churchyard; at the corner of the great tithe-barn of Ely, or great square of tithe-barns and offices, which is the biggest barn in England but one,' say the Ely people. Of this

"The

house, for Oliver's sake, some painter will yet perhaps take a correct likeness; it is needless to go to Stuntney, out on the Soham road, as Oliver's painters usually do; Oliver never lived there, but only his mother's cousins! Two years ago this house in Ely stood empty, closed finally up, deserted by all the Pages, as the commutation of tithes' had rendered it superfluous; this year (1845), I find it is an alehouse, with still some chance of standing. It is by no means a sumptuous mansion; but may have conveniently held a man of three or four hundred a year, with his family, in those simple times. Some quaint air of gentility still looks through its ragged dilapidation. It is of two stories, more properly of one and a half; has many windows, irregular chimneys, and gables. Likely enough Oliver lived here; likely his grandfather may have lived here, his mother have been born here. She was now again resident here. The tomb of her first husband and child, Johannes Lynne and poor little Catharina Lynne, is in the cathedral hard by."

Cromwell continued to live at Ely till the breaking out of the quarrel between the king and the parliament in the end of 1640; and his family seems to have remained there for six or seven years longer, or till after the termination of the first civil war. It was while resident here that, in the year 1638, he took the lead in opposing the proceedings of the Earl of Bedford and other proprietors associated for draining the neighbouring fens, and by rousing the popular spirit succeeded in stopping certain of their measures, which, if they had carried off the water from the land, would also have carried off the land from those to whom it rightfully belonged. Whence he obtained from the popular gratitude the title of Lord of the Fens. It appears that Cromwell did not, as has been commonly affirmed, object to any draining of the Fens, but only to the business being carried on upon the unjust principle of the undertakers, who had in fact entered into a confederacy with the crown to have it managed in such a way as that the two parties should divide all the advantage between them.

and disregard all interests but their own. Sir Philip Warwick informs us that Cromwell's conduct in this affair attracted the special notice of his friend and kinsman Hampden, so that, in the beginning of the Long Parliament, the latter characterised his cousin as an active person, and one that would sit (or set) well at the mark.'

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But before this Cromwell's popularity in the eastern counties had sent him up as one of the members for the town of Cambridge to what is called the Short Parliament, which met on the 13th of April, 1640, and was dismissed on the 5th of May. And he was returned again for the same place to the Long Parliament, which met on the 3rd of November.*

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"The first time that ever I took notice of him," writes Sir Philip Warwick (Memoirs,' p. 247) was in the very beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I vainly thought myself a worthy young gentleman (for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes). I came one morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking, whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled; for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar; his hat was without a hatband; his stature was of a good size, his sword stuck close to his side, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and

* Dugdale's account (in his 'Short View of the Troubles') is a piece of good comedy: "His boldness and eloquence in this business (of the Fens) gained him so much credit, as that, soon after, being necessitated through his low condition to quit a country farm which he held at St. Ives, and betake himself to mean lodgings in Cambridge, the schismatical party there chose him a burgess for their corporation in that unhappy Long Parliament, which began," &c. &c. His election to the Short Parliament is unknown to Dugdale, although so well informed on the subject of his lodgings at Cambridge.

VOL. VII.