truly expressed in saying that, while the wife of Cromwell had good sense enough to be contented with a humble station, she had yet spirit and dignity sufficient for the loftiest. "She was, indeed," says an impartial witness, "an excellent house-wife, and as capable of descending to the kitchen with propriety as she was of acting in her exalted station with dignity. Certain it is, that she acted a much more prudent part as protectress than Henrietta did as queen ; and that she educated her children with as much ability as she governed her family with address. Such a woman would, by a natural transition, have filled a throne." This pleasing picture, of a virtuous and able woman's character, seems to me to be completed by the fact her biographer should be proud to subjoin that she was the only one of the relatives of Cromwell whose kinsmen received no place of profit or emolument under the protectorate of Cromwell.*

ridicule this in his "Cutter of Coleman Street," has put the following into Cutter's mouth, as part of his description of his friend Worm: -" He would have been my lady protectress's poet: he writ once a copy in praise of her beauty; but her highness gave for it but an old half-crown piece in gold, which she had hoarded up before these troubles, and that discouraged him from any further applications to court." The portraits of Mrs. Cromwell now in existence give the lie to this, nevertheless: and represent a pretty and comely person, with just such an expression on the face as is borne out by her quiet and unoffending character.

The name of Bourchier appears in some of the appointments. Yet, in a MS. of the Suffolk gentry during the usurpation, now existing in the handwriting of sir John Cullum, is to be found the following entry: "In 1655, Bourchier, esq., and Bourchier, gent., brothers of Oliver Cromwell's wife, and sons of sir Ja. Bourchier, knt., in the parish of Whepsted, within about four miles of Bury. Sir John found in the registers these items: -Mr. James Bourchier buried the 15th of March, 1656; Mr. Henry Young and Mrs. Susan Bourchier were married the 8th of April, 1656." No doubt, therefore, these were claimants for office, had their sister countenanced the claims. It will not, perhaps, be out of place here to append a sketch of the few incidents in the life of the protectress, after her great husband's death; what other mention she receives in these pages will be in the ordinary course of my narrative. On the revival of the council of officers, after Cromwell's death, they showed themselves not insensible to her merit; they obliged the parliament to make a suitable settlement upon her, at a time when the Cromwellian interest was no more. It was grateful in them, and honourable to her. "Perceiving the return of the king," however, Noble tells us, "would take place, she conveyed a great quantity of gold, and some of the best and most portable valuables belonging [as was alleged, but by a fiction of royalty alone] to the royal family, to a fruiterer's warehouse, near the sign of the Three Cranes, in Thames-street, with an intention to export them out of the

Such was the partner for life's journey whom Cromwell had the good fortune to obtain, and from his union with whom his useful life began. He fixed his residence in his native town of Huntingdon, and having reconciled all old differences with his wealthy kinsmen. the Baringtons, the Hampdens, his uncle sir Oliver, and all whom his early courses had offended - he addressed himself to those studies and pursuits which were to pave his way to greatness.

Then was seen the same vehemence of temper in the rigid duties of life which had so recently transported its owner into the extremes of pleasure. Cromwell's house became notorious as the refuge of nonconformist ministers, or of such as suffered in any way for conscience' sake. Nor was he content with offering them this refuge merely. He encouraged them to opposition he stimulated his fellow townsmen to support them in it he attended the bishop of Lincoln in person (afterwards the famous archbishop Williams) to press their suits —

kingdom; but it being discovered, the council, May 16, 1660, ordered persons to view them; who reported that some pictures, and other things belonging to his majesty, were found; the remainder was attached in the custody of lieutenant-general Cox; and June 9, following, information was given to the house of lords, that she, her son Richard, and Henry, lord Herbert, had many deeds, evidences, and writings belonging to the lord marquis of Worcester [whose estates Cromwell had received from parlia ment in payment of his military services], all of which they were ordered to deliver up. She had, until about this time, resided at the Cockpit and at Whitehall; but, leaving these places, she went from London, and 'retired into Wales. Mr. Granger says, he was credibly informed that she was a considerable time in Switzerland; but probably she never was there. Finding that no inquiries were made after her, she returned into England, and found an asylum in the house of her son-in-law, Mr. Claypole, at Norborough, in Lincolnshire, where she continued unto her death, courting obscurity. She had, as I have before mentioned, had the tithes of Hartford settled upon her: these she gave up. Oliver some years afterwards gave her a grant of 2000. per ann.; but probably she never received any part of it, as it was, I think, issuing out of estates which were given to him by the parliament, and belonged to the delinquent loyalists; who, at the restoration, would naturally reclaim what had been illegally and forcibly taken from them. The 8000l. per ann., settled upon her by the parliament, was never paid to her, nor perhaps any part of it; so that we must suppose she had but trifling means to support herself upon during her widowhood, and that arising chiefly from the sale of those valuables that she retained after the protector's death. She survived her husband seven years; and, dying at Norborough, was buried in a vault in the chancel of that church, but no memorial whatever is to be found to her memory.'

he preached for them - he prayed with them *— he proclaimed in every place the wrongs they were exposed to, and urged at every season, and by every allowable means, the necessity of redress.t

Herein was shown, by this extraordinary man, his aptitude for the great claims and questions of the age. Of all the discontents that then muttered at a distance of the coming change-of all the grievances that were pushing on the stumbling and shambling government of the first Stuart to the inevitable precipice awaiting it —of all the mighty motives that were likely, while they stirred masses of men to generous suffering and great action, to consolidate in the end one tremendous party, irresistible and unyielding for life or death-the

"His house," says a writer in the " Biographica Britannica," " became the retreat of the persecuted nonconformist teachers; and they show a building behind it which, they say, he erected for a chapel, where many of the disaffected had their religious rites performed, and in which Mr. Cromwell himself sometimes gave them some edifying sermons. From his strenuousness in their cause, he was soon looked upon as the head of that party in the county; and he often interested himself warmly in their behalf, by attending Dr. Williams, bishop of Lincoln, and importunately desiring some mitigation for such of the nonconformist preachers as had fallen into trouble; he regarding them as suffering persecution for conscience' sake."

Having satisfied himself with the venerable divines of the church, says Heath," he fell in with some of the preciser sort; began to show himself at lectures, to entertain such preachers at his house, to countenance that way, and be very zealous in all meetings of such people, which then began to be frequent and numerous, and to exercise with them by praying and the like; to estrange himself from those his benefactors, and at last to appear a publique dissenter from the discipline of the Church of England." The same writer gives, in the way of a sneer, a noble instance of the truth and sincerity of Cromwell's new way of life. "And now," he says, "he was grown (that is, he pretended to be) so just, and of so scrupulous a conscience, that, having some years before won 301. of one 'Mr. Calton at play, meeting him accidentally, he desired him to come home with him, and to receive his money, telling him that he had got it by indirect and unlawful means, and that it would be a sin in him to detain it any longer; and did really pay the gentleman the said S07. back again." Mr. Noble, too, in the course of his zealous researches, discovered, in one of the manuscripts submitted to him, a similar anecdote, which he thus relates:-"Dr. Hutton, in his MS. book, says, that Oliver won some mo. ney from Mr. Rob. Compton, a genteel lad, son of a draper, or some such trade, in London; and it being by unfair play, he was determined to repay it him, which he did most opportunely, for the messenger found him at an ordinary, surrounded by bailiffs, so that he could not venture to leave the room; but he satisfied the debt, which was 207., and took away with him 1007." Sir Philip Warwick, too, distinctly tells us that "he used a good method upon his conversion, "for he declared he was ready to make restitution unto any man who would accuse nim, or whom he could accuse him. self to have wronged. To his honour I speak this, for I think the public acknowledgements men make of the public evils they have done to be the most glorious trophies they can have assigned to them."

questions of religion and the conscience not only stood the first, but might be said to hold every other within their mighty embrace. For what the church was then immortal language has depicted-in describing all that aspired to dignity in her service, from the curate to the bishop,

as

"Such as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.
Of other care they little reck'ning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook; or have learn'd ought else the least

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw:

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread :
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said."

So great was the influence acquired by Cromwell, in his masterly seizure of such grievances as these, that the chiefs of his fellow-townsmen offered to return him for the borough in the next parliament that should be summoned. The effort was made in 1625, and failed ; but, in 1628, Oliver Cromwell went up to Westminster, and took his seat in the third parliament of Charles I., as member for the borough of Huntingdon.*

A question has been raised as to the nature of his employment at Huntingdon in the interval after his marriage, since there is little doubt that his own private resources were insufficient to his support. It scarcely admits of a doubt, as it seems to me, that he took an active share in the business of his mother's brewery.

* An impression has prevailed that he sat in the 1625 parliament - as alleged by various writers, and even by the plodding and curious Mr. Noble. A friend of one of his later biographers, however, Dr. Russel, supplies the following decisive note on this point:-"A few years since there was a disputed election case in the borough, which was carried to a committee of the house, and it became necessary that authenticated copies of the returns should be procured from the originals in the town. I examined these, and found that Cromwell sat only once for Huntingdon, namely, in the third parliament of Charles I., as stated above. In the first parliament of that monarch, the former members, sir Henry St. John and sir Henry Mainwaring, were returned."

The universal attempts of the royalists of his day, both before and after the usurpation, to cast ridicule upon his having once followed the occupation of a brewer*, are surely enough to raise a strong presumption of the fact (however justly the ridicule may be despised), in the absence of any counter statement on the part of his friends or dependants. And there is a passage in Milton's noble panegyric of him, applying to a somewhat later period, which is not without a certain strong bearing on the question:-"Is matura jam atque firmata ætate, quam et privatus traduxit, nulla re magis quàm religionis cultu purioris, et integritate vitæ cognitus, domi in occulto CREVERAT; et ad summa quæque tempora fiduciam Deo fretam et ingentem animumn tacito pectore aluerat." "Being now arrived to a ripe and

1 See Appendix, (C.) A thousand other instances might be givenas in Hudibras, where the knight's dagger is spoken of:

"It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this and more it did endure;
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done on the same score."

Again, in a description of the house of commons : —
""Tis Noll's old brewhouse now, I swear,

The speaker's but his skinker,"

Their members are like th' council of war,'
Carmen, pedlars, tinkers."

And in another description of the protector's court :

"Who, fickler than the city ruff,

Can change his brewer's coat to buff,
His dray-cart to a coach, the beast
Into two Flander's mares at least:
Nay, hath the art to murder kings,
Like David, only with his slings.'

And finally, for it is unnecessary to give more, in a song called "The sale of Religious Household Stuff:"

"And here are Old Noll's brewing vessels,

And here are his dray and his slings."

With prose writers such allusions are scarcely less abundant. Walker, who wrote the "History of Independency," and prophesied that Cromwell (then lieutenant-general to Fairfax) would assume the supreme sway, added to his prediction," Then let all true saints and subjects cry out with me,God save king Oliver, and his brewing-vessels."" And, speaking of Harry Parker, under the name of Observator, he notices his return from Hamborough, and that "he is highly preferred to be a brewer's clerk (alias secretary to Cromwell)." Cowley's "Cutter of Cole. man Street" has also an allusion to the business of Cromwell, when Worm, in derision of Cutter's learning, is made to ask, "What parts hast thou? Hast thou scholarship enough to make a brewer's clerk ?"