Here, as everywhere, the man's own words are his best biography. What he really was, what he thought, what he aimed to do, what he failed to do, how he lived, and fought, and governed, we can learn more from meditation on these words than we can in any other way. We get, if not completely to understand him, yet to understand him better than we ever did before-to gather up the threads of his life into a more consistent tissue-to see what meaning it had, and what influence on human history it exercised.

The life of Cromwell naturally falls into three great divisions. The first extends to the close of what may be called his private life, or to the outbreak of the civil war in 1642; the second runs from this period throughout the whole of his brilliant career as a Puritan patriot and soldier, a space of twelve years or so, on to 1654; the last comprises the period of his Protectorate, when he appears as a statesman and sovereign, a brief space of scarcely four years (16541658). The proportion between these several periods is remarkable: the long and well-matured discipline of more than forty silent years of home thought and common business, through which the Puritan hero was prepared for his work; the struggle of twelve; the triumph of four. It is well to remember that up to middle age, the man whom we see finally ruling the destinies of England, and leading in triumph the interests of Protestantism in Europe, was a quiet farmer in the fens of Huntingdon. This of itself were sufficient to show that no mere theory of restless pride or of selfish aggrandisement will gauge his character, and account for him as an historical phenomenon. To whatever degree the desire of power may have

been cherished in him by his remarkable fortunes and the ever-expanding consciousness of his genius, he must also have possessed many strongly-marked features, independently of the ambition which absorbed the later energies of his career, and drew forth the imperial pomp and passion of his character.

Cromwell was born in the spring of the last year of the sixteenth century, at Huntingdon. He was the fifth child, and the only son that survived, of Robert Cromwell, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, and brother of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, an excellent property in the immediate neighbourhood, now belonging to the Montague family. It was sold by this same Sir Oliver, uncle of our hero, to this family. Sumptuous living, an easy and rejoicing hospitality on the part of both the father and the son, had reduced the fortunes of the house, and rendered such a step necessary. The father, Sir Henry, was called, from his profuse expenditure, "the Golden Knight," and Sir Oliver seems to have vied with him in this respect. In 1603, immediately after the accession of James, he entertained the King and his retinue with great magnificence at Hinchinbrook. Again, in 1617, when James was on his way to Scotland, with Dr Laud in his company, intent on Episcopal innovations there, he repeated his hospitality, although, on this second occasion, with diminished splendour; and soon afterwards the property passed out of his hands. The good knight, however, continued to cherish warmly his Royalist predilections, even when his nephew had become the great Parliamentary captain. A fine old country gentleman he seems to have been, with the genuine hearty humour of the race. It is a capital

trait recorded of him, that when his eldest son-in whom the family turn for expenditure was hereditary -presented a list of his debts, craving for some aid towards their payment, Sir Oliver answered with a bland sigh, "I wish they were paid."

On his father's side Cromwell was thus of a gentle and old family +-of the same stock, in fact, from which Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, came. This famous minister of Henry VIII., as Mr Carlyle has shown in detail, was nephew to Oliver's great-grandfather. On his mother's side a far higher but somewhat more imaginary descent has been claimed for him. His mother's name was Elizabeth Stuart; she was the daughter of William Stuart of the city of Ely, "a kind of hereditary farmer of the cathedral tithes and church lands round that city;" and the story is that this Stuart family in Ely was an undoubted offshoot of the royal family of Scotland, having sprung from one Walter Steward, who had accompanied Prince James into England, when he was seized and detained by Henry IV. This scion of the royal blood of Scotland is supposed to have married advantageously and settled in England; and one of his race having been Popish Prior of Ely, on the dissolution of the monasteries, was made, in reward for his pliancy of character, the first Protestant dean, through whom came the mother of our hero.

Cromwell's father, according to the well-known popular story, was a brewer. This occupation does not seem very compatible with his kindred and descent, and the hero-worshipper is apt to kindle into some indigna

* CARLYLE.

"I was by birth a gentleman," he himself says.-Speech to Parliament, Sept. 12, 1654. "Genere nobile atque illustri ortus," says Milton.

tion at the suggestion. There seems, however, a fair foundation for the story, though Royalist calumny has touched it with ready exaggerations. Robert Cromwell was evidently a farmer of certain lands of his own lying round Huntingdon. His proper business was to manage his own estate; but as his house was conveniently situated for the purpose, with the little brook Hinchin running through its courtyard into the Ouse, he seems to have combined brewing with agriculture, under the laudable impulse of gain. Heath's version, in fact, may not be very far from the truth-viz., that "the brew-house was managed by Oliver's mother and father's servants, without any concerniment of his father therein."

Oliver Cromwell's mother was plainly a spirited, earnest, and industrious woman, who grudged no labour for the good of her family. When she was left a widow with six daughters, she gave dowries of the work of her own hands to five of them, sufficient to marry them into wealthy and honourable families. To the last-and she survived to see her son raised to the highest pinnacle of power-she cherished her simple tastes and homely sense. She desired that she might be buried without ceremony in some country churchyard -a desire, however, with which her son did not comply. There is a portrait of her, Mr Foster says, at Hinchinbrook, "which, if that were possible, would increase the interest she inspires, and the respect she claims; the mouth so small and sweet, yet full and firm as the mouth of a hero-the large melancholy eyes-the light pretty hair-the expression of quiet affectionateness suffused over the face, which is so modestly enveloped in a white satin hood-the simple beauty of the velvet cardinal she wears, and the richness of the

small jewel that clasps it, seem to present before the gazer her living and breathing character."*

Cromwell was the only son of his father's family that survived. Of his numerous sisters we know little beyond the fact of their marriage. Of his relatives, however, it may be interesting to know further, that one of his aunts on the father's side was the mother of John Hampden, who was therefore full cousin to Oliver; and that another cousin, the son of an uncle Henry, was the famous Oliver St John, the ship-money lawyer. Cromwell's kindred, therefore, were on all hands sufficiently notable. He sprang from the gentry of England; and if he gave to his family name an undying distinction, it conferred upon him, from the first, credit and reputation.

Many semi-mythical stories are told of our hero's childhood and youth. There is probably some grain of truth preserved in them, with loads of calumny and falsehood. In some, the element of fact or trait of character, from which the mythical embellishment has arisen, can be clearly traced. This is particularly the case with the singular story told by Noble and Heath, of his having, during the Christmas revels at his uncle's house, " besmeared his clothes and hands. with surreverence" (whatever that may particularly mean), and in this state accosted the master of misrule, and "so grimed him and others upon every turn," as to create a serious disturbance, and lead to his being thrown into an adjoining pond, and there “soused over head and ears." Such a story not inaptly corresponds with his odd and somewhat coarse turn for practical jokes in after years; and probably this well-known feature of his later character is the simple

* FOSTER'S Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 9.