while the accusation ran thus high in general, it was not likely that particular characters should escape. Those, especially, who had been any way concerned in the administration of affairs during the king's exile, were to be stript of every humane virtue, and made to appear worse than canibals. Their sobriety, temperance, justice, moderation, piety, were to be reprefented only as hypocrisy and affectation. Oliver Cromwell, to be sure, must stand foremost in the black list. It was not enough to call him usurper, tyrant, traitor ; but even thole very personal qualities, which enabled him to assume and support the first character in the age, were to be rendered ridiculous and contemptible, as well as odious. A very odd method of procedure this ! to persuade us that a man, without the capacity requisite in a common juftice of peace, should be not only too hard for the whole royal family, but even for his own masters, and all the ministers and crowned heads with whom he had any thing to do : that a man without principle, or whose standing principle was no better than this, * " that moral laws are binding only on ordinary occa“ fions," should be more exact and circumspect in the adminiitration of justice than any fovereign who had gone before him ; should seek out capable and worthy men for all employments, more especially for those of the law, so as to give a general fatisfaction. Yet all this, however, we have been taught to believe. Cromwell, it seems, was possessed of no real virtues, either civil or military ; yet acted more like a person possessed of them all, than almost any other we can meet with in cur ancient chronicles.

But facts are very stubborn things, and it is in vain to resist their evidence. The most prejudiced historians on the other side, have related" such actions of our British hero, as fhew their characters of him to be partially drawn ; nay, even in the pictures of their own invention, they have not been able to avoid fome

lineaments

* Burnet's history.

lineaments that contradict the general idea they give of him, and thew him to be another sort of a man than they are willing we should believe. The present age begins to see through all this, and the name of Cromwell is now thought no diffonour to the Engliih nation. At this favourable conjuncture, therefore, when there are not wanting those who wish our publick conduct, in particular with regard to a certain haughty, though contemptible people, were copied from that of this great man, I mall venture to draw together such passages of his life, and range them under proper heads, as may ahew what he really was, and remove, upon the principles of our belt writers on the part of liberty, much of that load of calumny which he has hitherto borne. The task, I apprehend, will not be difficult.

$. 3. His afuming the regal power at the time when he did, will be confidered in a chapter by itself. But it is necessary here to obviate one common objection ; " That being born a private man, he could not, by any means, have a legal right to the sovereignty over others at all.” This maxim has been much conierided for under established hereditary monarchies, and might have been universally received, if reason and hiftory did not prove it to be without foundation. But the most impartial disquisitions of the matter, founded on the common sense and practice of mankind, have long ago convinced the wise and unprejudiced, that no individual, however nobly born, has a right over the person or property of another, except only from mutual compact, entered into for general benefit, the conditions of which are as obligatory on the governing, as on the governed parties. No man, therefore, in the nature of things, is any way superior or inferior to his fellow-citizens, but on such conditions as they are supposed to have reciprocally consented to. It is only to prevent the confusion that riches, interest, or ambition might create, among persons equally qualified, that the fovereignty has been settled in particu

lar

B 3

lar families. It is in regard only to conveniency, that the faccession should remain uninterrupted, as long as it can be consistent with the good of the whole. But where this is infringed, dispensed with, superseded, the obligation is cancelled, the people are free, and may either chuse a new form of government, or put thei: old into other hands. Where this has happened indeed, the choice, for very manifest reasons, has usually fallen on some one of the greatest fortune and figire. But this cannot be attributed to any natural right in the person, unless we suppose authority to be the necessary confequence of riches and interest; which would produce more confusion than any other system that has

yet

been advanced. In a word, the natural and moral qualifications of the person, where the election is entirely free, are the most probable recommendations to the community, whose consent alone can constitute a lawful authority. If I can prove there. fore, that Cromwell had more of these qualifications than

any other man of his age, and as much of this consent as was consistent with the temper of the times, I shall do an act of justice to his memory, which seems to be hitherto wanting.

§. 4. This great man, notwithstanding what fome have ignorantly asserted, was very well descended *. The original name of his family was not Cromwell, but Williams. Morgan Williams, son and heir of Williams, married the sister of the famous Lord Crom

well.

* He says thus of himself, in a speech to the parliament, Sept. 12, 1654. “ I was by birth a gentle.

man, living neither in any confiderable height, nor yet in obfcurity. I have been called to several employments in the nation, and to serve in parlia

ments : and I did endeavour to discharge the du“ ties of an honest man in those services." Mr. Mil. ton calls his house “ noble and illustrious ;” and says, " the name was formerly famous in the nation, when

well, who was made Earl of Eflex by king Henry VIII. By her he had a son named Richard, who was knighted by king Henry, and took the name of his uncle Cromwell, though he kept the arms of Williams. He married Frances, daughter and coheir of Sir Thomas Marsyn; and upon the diffolution of the monasteries, obtained all the lands that belonged to them in Huntingdonshire, which amounted to a prodigious value. This Sir Richard Cromwell, at a folemn triumph held at Westminster, anno 1540, before king Henry VIII, and which was proclaimed in France, Spain, Scotland, and Flanders, overthrew two of the combatants, Mr. Palmer and Mr. Cuspey. He had a son, Henry, who was knighted by queen Elizabeth in the fixth year of her reign. This Sir Henry married Joan, daughter and heir of Sir Ralph Warren, and resided chiefly at Hinchingbrook, where had been a house of nuns. He is said to have been a worthy gentleman, that lived in high esteem both at court and in his country. The father of our protector, Robert Cromwell, Esq; was second son of Sir Henry. There were five more : Sir Oliver was the eldest, who had a vast estate, and after whom his nephew Oliver seems to be named : the others were Henry, Richard, Philip, and Ralph. We read of Sir Oliver, that at his house at Hinchingbrook, on the accession of king James I. he made the most noble entertainment that ever had been made by a private subject, in honour of his sovereign. B 4

But

“ well governed by kings ; but more famous for or" thodox religion, then either first restored or established among us.”

“ He is well born, says ans other author, and of a noble and ancient extract.' Unparalleled Monarch, page 69. Father Orleans, in his history of the revolutions of England, expresses himself thus, “ Cromwell was well enough born, not “ to be contemptible ; and yet not so well as to be “ suspected of aspiring to sovereignty."

But Mr. Robert Cromwell's estate was much inferior to his brother's. He had not above three hundred pounds a year, when his wife, daughter of Sir Richard Steward, brought him a son that was to have at his command the persons and fortunes of three wealthy nations. It was on the 25th of April, 1599, that this prodigy was given to the world, at the town of Hun. tingdon, where his father then inhabited. The accounts we have of his youth are imperfect and unsatiffactory; for he never distinguished himself till he was called upon to do it in a publick capacity. We only learn, that his father took care of his education, send. ing him when grown up, to Sidney-college in Cambridge, where he discovered more inclination to an active than a speculative life: though there are proofs fufficient that his advances in learning were not despicable, since they made him master of a genteel ftile. It was owing, perhaps, to his turn for action, that we read of his running into some excesses, when he retired from Cambridge after his father's death; which occafioned his mother to enter him at Lincoln's-Inn. The ftudy of the law, however, did not long agree with him; and having five hundred pounds a year left him by his maternal uncle, Sir Richard Steward, over and above what he inherited from his father, he fixed entirely in the country, growing as remarkably sober and religious, as he had been before vicious and extravagant. For some time after his reformation he adhered to the church of England, but at last fell in with the puritans.

$. 5. The grievances of the people were at this time many and great, occasioned by the encroachments of the court and clergy, on almost every branch of civil and religious liberty. Cromwell's engagement on the puritan lide, at his first coming into the house of commons, made him a warm stickler for the country interelt. He was one of the committee of religion in king Charles's third parliament; and made hims-lf taken