summoned the House before him, when, after a rather long speech, he said in a manner that admitted no further question: "I cannot undertake this government with the title of king. And that is mine answer to this great and weighty business." Thus he refused to place on his brows the crown of the Stuarts and of the Tudors. There are few men recorded in ancient or modern history who have been able, like him, to resist a similar temptation. For this posterity has not shown him much gratitude. His sole reward has been insult. We will be more just: we will give justice to whom justice is due, honor to whom honor.

The same writer goes

Royalist writers have blamed Oliver for not accepting the kingship. "In thus yielding to men of weaker minds than his own," says one of these historians,* "Cromwell committed the same error which had been fatal to Charles. The boldest course would have been the safest. The wisest friends of the royal family were of opinion, that if he had made himself king de facto, and restored all things in other respects to the former order, no other measure would have been so injurious to the royal cause." even further, and adds: "His mind (Oliver's) had expanded with his fortune. ...... Fain would he have restored the monarchy, created a House of Peers, and re-established the episcopal church." A singular fate is Cromwell's! Some reproach him for having desired to be king; others blame him for not having desired it...... Both are wrong. He evidently thought that monarchy was a form necessary to Great Britain; but it must be a constitutional monarchy, such as exists in the present day. He would have nothing to do with the republic of one party, or with the despotism of another. He could not establish this form of government during his lifetime; but he did establish it after his death. Oliver is the real founder of the constitutional monarchy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It is in this portion of Cromwell's life that writers have * Southey (Life of Cromwell), who in this agrees with Clarendon.

been the most active in search of hypocrisy, although on many other occasions, both before and after, the same reproach has been made against him. But he could say with St. Paul: Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward. At the very beginning of his public life, he said to his friend Mr. St. John (11th September, 1643), "I desire not to seek myself." At a season when all minds were the most disturbed, and insults the most frequent, he remained calm, and opening his heart to Fairfax, wrote to him with Christian serenity and firmness: "Never were the spirits of men more imbittered than now. Surely the devil hath but a short time. Sir, it's good the heart be fixed against all this. The naked simplicity of Christ, with that wisdom he is pleased to give, and patience, will overcome all this." (11th March, 1647.) Oliver never lost his assurance in God: he never doubted that, sooner or later, the just Judge would vindicate him. "Though it may be for the present a cloud may lie over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them," wrote he to Colonel Jones on the 14th of September, 1647; "yet we doubt not that God will clear our integrity and innocency from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the public good." The cloud has long hung over Cromwell's memory; but God has cleared it away at last, and the most prejudiced eyes will now look-not upon the " monster" which their own imaginations had created, but-upon an upright and sincere man,-upon a Christian, and at the same time upon a hero.

He was

Oliver knew how to profit by the abuse of men. not puffed up by it, as is frequently the case; it the rather made him feel more keenly his own poverty and weakness; but it did not crush him. "When we think of our God, what are we?" he wrote to Lord Wharton, on the 2nd of September, 1648. Oh, His mercy to the whole society

of saints, despised, jeered saints! Let them mock on. Would we were all saints! The best of us are, God knows, poor weak saints;-yet saints; if not sheep, yet lambs; and must be fed. We have daily bread, and shall have it, in despite of all enemies. There's enough in our Father's

house, and He dispenseth it."

Was there no ambitious sentiment in the Protector, especially in this affair of the kingship? To deny this absolutely would be making him superior to the conditions of mortal existence. There is no man that sinneth not, says the Scripture. Oliver was not exempt from this general rule. All that we would say is, that he was conscientious in this struggle, and that if the flesh lusted against the spirit, the spirit fought against the flesh. Cromwell possessed a living faith; and that faith is a power which every day grows stronger in the heart. The object for which God places this heavenly and divine power in man is to overcome the evil, the earthly, and the sensual powers that have taken up their abode in his bosom. The question, therefore, is not whether these two contrary elements,—the new man and the old man, -do not exist together in the same individual; but whether the struggle between them is sincere and loyal.

In Oliver the struggle was indeed sincere.

CHAPTER XIV.

LAST PARLIAMENT AND DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR.

The Installation-Two Houses of Parliament—The grand Design— Petty Quarrels-Parliament dissolved-Conspiracies-Death of Lady Claypole-Consolations-Fever-George Fox at Hampton CourtCromwell's Words on his Deathbed-Confidence-The StormCromwell's Successor-His Prayer and Last Words-His DeathMourning-Cromwell's Christian Character-Oliver and the PopeRestoration of Mankind-The Protestant Way-Oliver's Principles— The Pope's Policy-Conflicts and Dangers of the State-The Two Men of the Seventeenth Century-Conclusion.

On the 26th of June, 1657, Cromwell, after his refusal of the kingship, was again solemnly inaugurated Protector. The Speaker in the name of the Parliament presented to him in succession a robe of purple velvet, a bible, a sword, and a sceptre of massive gold. The parliament was afterwards prorogued until the 20th of January in the following year.

On its re-assembling it consisted of two houses. The Protector had told the Commons that he would not undertake the government unless there was some body which, by interposing between him and the lower house, would be able to keep seditious and turbulent persons in check. This was readily granted; and as soon as the regulating power was established, Oliver thought himself bound to revoke the exceptional measure by which he had supplied its place at the time of the first meeting of the Commons. Their number was augmented by the hundred excluded members,

......

a bold and dangerous concession. The other house (as the Lords were called) consisted of sixty-one hereditary mem

bers, nominated by the Protector, among whom were his two sons and his two sons-in-law.

Cromwell opened this new Parliament on the 20th of January, 1658, beginning with the usual form, My Lords and Gentlemen of the House of Commons. He returned thanks to God for His favors, at the head of which he reckoned peace and the blessings of peace, namely, the possession of political and spiritual liberty. As religion was always the first of interests in his estimation, Oliver, when speaking of this power, which is the strength of nations, called to their remembrance "that England had now a godly ministry [clergy], a knowing ministry; such a one as, without vanity be it spoken, the world has not. . . . . . If God," added he in conclusion, "should bless you in this work, and make this meeting happy on this account, the generations to come will bless us."

......

The proceedings of this Parliament did not answer to the Protector's expectations. The Commons would have no other house. One republican, Haselrig, refused to be made a peer, and took his seat in the Commons. Cromwell endeavored to raise the attention of parliament above all these trivialities, and direct it to the great questions which concerned the country.

Summoning both houses before him on the 25th of January, the Protector said to them ::-"Look at affairs abroad. The grand design now on foot, in comparison with which all other designs are but low things, is, whether the Christian world shall be all Popery? Is it not true that the Protestant cause and interest abroad is quite under foot, trodden down? The money you parted with in that noble charity which was exercised in this nation, and the just sense you had of those poor Piedmonts, was satisfaction enough to yourselves of this, That if all the Protestants in Europe had had but that head, that head had been cut off, and so an end of the whole.

"But is this of Piedmont all? No. Look how the house