CHAPTER V.

Containing a Review of Cromwell's Actions and Character in the relations of Private as well as of Public Life.

I. NO MAN was ever composed of more jarring elements than Oliver Cromwell. His character was made up of contrarieties; and hence the fact, that abundant materials have been supplied to those who have wished to represent him as the worst of human beings, as well to that equally inconsiderate class of biographers who have held him up as the model of a sincere Christian and a good ruler. His natural temper appears to have been sullen and enthusiastic; susceptible of deep impressions, and reluctant to yield any sentiment or opinion which had once taken hold of his conviction. Impatient of the lot in which Providence had placed him, he became reckless and discontented in the earlier part of his life; and afterwards, when the current of public events seemed to bring great objects within the reach of the active and the daring, he assumed the principles of a reformer in church and state; found fault with every thing around him, and stimulated others who had more influence than himself, to seize so favourable an

opportunity for extending the power of the people, as well as for obtaining individual distinction. His own confession, when he first entered Parliament, that "he knew what he would not have, but did not know what he would have," describes the restless undefined ambition which at that time agitated his soul, and which made him equally ready to encounter the privations of a remote colony, where he should meet with no superior, or to fight his way to eminence at home, where he hoped soon to see the highest consent to become his equals.

The enthusiasm of his spirit necessarily led him into the transports, ecstasies, and revelations which were common in his time. Indeed, he retained throughout his whole life symptoms of that elation and excitement which were remarked in the first stage of his personal reformation; and which at a later period were imputed, according to the different principles of the observers, to an overstrained imagination, to the inspiration of the Deity, or to infernal possession. Before his memorable victories of Dunbar and Worcester, his eyes were observed to sparkle, his frame became agitated, and he burst out into strange and violent fits of laughter. At no time, in fact, was he himself altogether free from the nervous excitability, or fanatical frenzy, which he knew so well how to excite and to direct in others.*

The character which attached to his early days, has been already analysed with sufficient minuteness. That he was a free liver cannot

* Warwick's Memoirs, p. 276. Note in Edinburgh Edition.

be concealed: but, except the attempt which he made to seize his uncle's property, under the pretext that the worthy knight was no longer able to manage his affairs, we find nothing in the traditionary notices which have come down to us, which could be candidly employed to prove the want of ordinary moral principle, or of domestic kindness. He is said, indeed, to have been vindictive, and disposed to cherish for years the remembrance of a bad turn at the hand of a political or theological adversary. Of this malign propensity his historians have given several examples; and particularly in the case of certain clergymen, who opposed his views in regard to a lectureship, and who were afterwards made to feel the weight of his resentment in the deprivation of their benefices.

That Cromwell was capable of the most atrocious cruelties, is proved by his conduct at Drogheda and Wexford, where he put thousands to death in cold blood; and yet, with the inconsistency which marked his character, he was known to weep at individual suffering, and to be melted by the sight of private distress. The same physical temperament, too, which threw a settled gloom on his general habits, carried him occasionally to great bursts of mirth, and even to acts of buffoonery. Nay, what was more remarkable, and which certainly indicated a very particular constitution of mind, his feats of merriment usually arose from the intensity of serious feeling. Like a musical string unduly stretched, his spirits rebounded from the highest point of emotion and sadness, down to the lowest species of jesting and coarse familiarity. His conduct to

wards Ludlow, while the council of officers were deliberating on the most awful subject that could occupy the attention of a human tribunal, illustrates the principle now stated; and it is manifest that when he threw the cushion at the colonel's head, his mind had just satiated itself with an anticipation of the horrors and dreadful contingencies which would attend their resolution of putting the King to death. When, again, he threw ink in Marten's face, from the pen with which he had signed the warrant for Charles's execution, he yielded to that morbid quality of his nature which hurried him from one extreme to another; from a racked intensity of painful thought, to the playfulness of a child or of an idiot. It was the effect of that hysterical irritation which leads indifferently to a fit of laughter or to a paroxysm of sobbing.

There is an odd instance of this mixture of the serious and the ludicrous recorded by Dr Hutton, and preserved in the Harleian Miscellany. "At the marriage of the Lady Frances Cromwell to Mr Rich, the grandson and heir of

*This lady, according to the gossip of the day, was meant for Charles II. The Earl of Orrery-formerly Lord Broghil-told Bishop Burnet that, one day during those heats about kingship, he came to Cromwell, and told him that he had been in the city all the morning, upon which the Protector asked what news he had heard there. The other answered, he was told that he was in treaty with the King, who was to be restored, and to marry his daughter. Cromwell expressing no indignation at this, Lord Orrery said, in the state into which things were brought, he saw not a better expedient; they might bring him in on what terms they pleased; and Cromwell might retain the same authority he then had, with less trouble. Cromwell answered, the King can never forgive his father's blood.

the Earl of Warwick, the Protector, whose mind at that moment was far from being at ease, amused himself by throwing about the sackposset among the ladies to spoil their clothes, which they took as a favour, as also wet sweetments; and daubed all the stools where they were to sit with wet sweetments; and put off Rich's wig and would have thrown it into the fire but did not, yet he sat upon it. An old formal courtier, Sir Thomas Billingsley, that was gentleman usher to the Queen of Bohemia, was entertained amongst them, and he danced before them with his cloak and sword, and one of the four of the Protector's buffoons made his lip black like a beard, whereat the knight drew his knife, missing very little of killing the fellow."

Every one has heard of his rude funning with the soldiers; encouraging them to throw burning coals into one another's boots, and to steal away a dinner prepared for the officers, at the very moment the latter were to sit down tozlut it. He took great pleasure, in short, in what is called a practical jest, which in his mind occupied the place of wit, and of that refined humour which is so nearly allied to it. His rough jocularity at his daughter's marriage will remind the reader of the still coarser display of whim

Orrery said, that he was one of many that were concerned in that, but he would be alone in the merit of restoring him. Cromwell replied, he is so damnably debauched, he would undo us all; and so turned to another discourse without any emotion, which made Orrery conclude he had often thought of that expedient."-BURNET, vol. i. p. 119.