manded him as his diocesan he should preach nothing to the contrary. Mainwaring, so justly censured in the House for his sermons, was, by the same bishop's means, transferred to a rich living. If these are the steps to church preferment," added he, "what are we to expect?" Cromwell's statement so impressed the House, that it resolved on immediate action. In the Commons' Journals of the same day, there stands recorded the following notice: "Upon question ordered. Dr Beard of Huntingdon to be written to by Mr Speaker, to come up and testify against the bishop: the order for Dr Beard to be delivered to Mr Cromwell." *

The Protestant temper of the House was not to be restrained. The King, by the help of the Speaker, tried to evade its determinations. When it came to the point, Mr Speaker Finch refused repeatedly to "put the question," alleging that he had the King's orders to adjourn. But at length, after an astonishing scene, in which the Speaker gave way to tears, while the members around menaced him if he persisted in opposing the mind of the assembly, he was forcibly detained in his chair until they had passed three emphatic resolutions protesting against "Arminianism, Papistry, and illegal tonnage and poundage." Dissolution, of course, immediately followed these proceedings; and Cromwell, after a brief Parliamentary experience, returned to his native Huntingdon, to remain still for some years in comparative obscurity. There can be no doubt, however, that from this time he became a man of mark in his party. Far more, probably, than we can now guess, he had shown during this short period of public life, powers fitted to raise him to influence and distinction; while, at the same time, he had entered into

* CARLYLE.

connection with the great national leaders of the movement. He was no longer merely the head of a provincial party, but one of a patriot band, representing a powerful national feeling. In communion with such men, he must have felt his sympathies elevated, and his convictions enlightened and strengthened.

Cromwell returned to Huntingdon in the spring of 1629. In the course of the following year he was named along with his old schoolmaster, and Robert Barnard, Esq., a Justice of the Peace for that borough. Here he remained for three years or so, still carrying on, apparently in connection with his mother, his old farming operations. He seems, however, to have been but ill at ease-troubled with dark thoughts as to his own spiritual condition and the state of the country. It is to this period that Mr Forster refers his "strange fancies about the town-cross," and his hypochondriacal apprehensions of death. It can be easily imagined how his strong nature, having been called forth into temporary excitement by the events of the Parliament of 1628, and having sunk back into an uneasy and tormenting inaction, would prey upon itself.

In 1631 he effected the sale of the properties in which he was interested in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon, and removed to St Ives, five miles down the river, where he rented a grazing farm. His mother appears to have remained at Huntingdon, as we find that his children continued to be baptised in the old church there. At St Ives he became still more distinguished than hitherto for his systematic and rigorous devotions, and for the religious influence which he sought to exercise over those around him. He prayed with his family and servants in the morning and evening. He sought to mix up religion with the work of

the fields, just as afterwards he mixed it up with the work of fighting. The spirit which inspired and fashioned his famous Ironsides out of ploughmen and graziers, was now working in him. He continued also, with increasing heartiness, his old concern in the Puritan lecturers sustained by the rich merchants of London. These lecturers had been greatly persecuted during the years succeeding the dissolution of Parliament. Laud and his accomplices had hunted them down wherever they could, and discouraged and broken up the system as far as in their power. St Ives appears to have been fortunate in possessing for its lecturer, up to the year 1635, one Dr Wells, "a man of goodness, and industry, and ability to do good in every way, not short of any man of England," says Oliver, in his first extant letter. This letter is in every way remarkable. It is addressed "to my very loving friend Mr Storie, at the sign of the Dog in the Royal Exchange, London ;" and after congratulating Mr Storie and his fellow-citizens on their good works in "providing for the feeding of souls," by means of the lectures which they had instituted in the county-and speaking of the excellence of Dr Wells, who had been so acceptable in his calling, and since whose coming the Lord had wrought by him much good among them-it proceeds to regret the likelihood of the lectures' discontinuance for want of funds. "And surely," he urges, "it were a piteous thing to see a lecture fall in the hands of so many able and godly men, as I am persuaded the founders of this are, in these times wherein we see they are suppressed, with too much haste and violence, by the enemies of God's truth. Far be it, that so much guilt should stick to your hands, who live in a city so renowned for the clear shining light of the gospel.

You know, Mr Storie, to withdraw the pay is to let fall the lecture-for who goeth to warfare at his own cost?"-a very characteristic hint-the clear light of common sense (as always with him) shining through the most fervid expressions of religious feeling.

Amidst all his religious exercises, Oliver's farming was not prosperous. The lands seem to have been of a boggy, intractable character, yielding no return for his patient industry. It is the sneer of Hume, copying Heath as usual, that "the long prayers which he said to his family in the evening, and again in the afternoon, consumed his own time and that of his ploughman," and left no leisure for the care of his temporal affairs. No man was ever less likely than Cromwell to commit such a mistake. He had now,

and always, far too practical an eye for such maundering. Yet, whatever was the cause, he did not succeed at St Ives. His crops failed, and his health became disordered. The cold and damp of the district affected his throat, producing a kind of chronic inflammation in it. It was remembered long afterwards what a strange appearance he used to make at church, as he came up the aisle-his throat rolled in flannel, his rough dress ill-arranged-and the red flannel flaunting after him.

In 1636 he is found no longer at St Ives, but at Ely. Here he had succeeded to his maternal uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, who, as his fathers before him, had farmed the cathedral tithes. He took up his residence in the old glebe-house near St Mary churchyard-a house still standing, and described by Mr Carlyle in 1845 as an alehouse, with still some chance of standing; "by no means a sumptuous mansion," he adds, "but it 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." Here Cromwell spent the few remaining years of comparative inaction that still awaited him, "living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity," as he told his Parliament of 1654.

The state of the country was in those years rapidly getting worse. Charles had nearly played out his scheme of self-government. The trial of Hampden, protracted for months, served to feed the popular discontent. The quiet magnanimity of the victim, the eloquence of his defence, the legality as well as righteousness of his cause, all served to stimulate the public ardour, and strengthen the rising feeling against the ministers and the Court. The bishops, too, were carrying their shortlived triumph to its most oppressive and insolent excesses. Old Palace Yard, on the 30th of June 1637, presented a spectacle calculated to move men's hearts -not to submission, nor even to despair, but to fierce impatience and rooted vengeance rather. Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton-a lawyer, physician, and clergyman-were there exhibited in three pillories, and had their ears cut off and their cheeks branded before a large crowd. This was what Laud's ingenious ecclesiastical devices had come to. These men had ventured to question not only the policy but the legality of these devices. Prynne had openly declared that he was prepared to prove them to be contrary to the law of England. This was the answer he and the rest received. Legal or not, they were to be enforced at the expense of the ears of all gainsayers. The threat was a vain one. "Cut me, tear me," cried Prynne, “I fear thee not-I fear the fire of hell, not thee;" while Bastwick's wife, at the foot of the scaffold, received her husband's ears into her lap and kissed them.