Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/511

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CROMWELL 507 Rich spoils were taken from the Spanish fleets. Appeals were made to Cromwell for assistance from various states. These proceedings were expensive, and funds ran so low that it became necessary to call a parliament, to meet Sept. 17, 1656. The elections caused much excite- ment. To prevent the return of eminent re- publicans, some of them were imprisoned. But the majority was adverse to Cromwell, who thereupon excluded more than 100 of them from the house. Wishing to gain popu- larity, he allowed parliament to put an end to the power of the major generals. It was moved that the protector should take the title of king, and, after much debating and intrigu- ing, this was carried, as were some other pro- visions calculated to restore the old English polity. Cromwell longed for the crown, but he durst not accept it against the determined opposition of some of the highest military officers and the general sense of the army ; he accordingly refused the offer. The other pro- visions were adopted, and the lord protector was newly inaugurated, with great pomp and solemnity. Parliament adjourned, to give him time to create a house of lords. When it re- assembled, the excluded members having been restored, the commons refused to recognize the other house, and Cromwell dismissed this, his last parliament, his last words to it being, "Let God judge between me and you! " to which some of the republicans answered, " Amen ! " The brief remainder of his life was passed amid plots having his murder for their end. He had such good intelligence that every- thing became known to him, and the plots uniformly failed. Yet the precautions he had to adopt were of a humiliating character, and resembled those of the Greek tyrants. He was much in need of money for the public ser- vice, but he durst not impose taxes by his own authority. Meantime his foreign policy went on successfully, the bonds of alliance between England and France being of the strongest nature. English forces fought side by side with the French against the Spaniards, the latter having some of the banished English cavaliers under their banners. Cromwell told the men of the army he sent to the aid of Louis XIV. that they were to show the same zeal for the monarch that they showed for himself; and Louis and his minister (Mazarin) evinced their attachment to Cromwell in va- rious ways. Had the protector lived, he would probably have found the means of carry- ing on his government. Another parliament was thought of, from which the republicans were to be excluded, and Cromwell's last public act was to dissolve the committee that had the subject under deliberation. In the summer of 1658 his second daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, died; and as she was his favorite, the effect on his shattered body and disturbed mind was serious. After some previous ill- ness, he was forced to confine himself to his room, Aug. 24, 1658, from a tertian fever. On Sept. 3, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, and known as his " fortunate day," he died, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and in the midst of the most terrible storm of those times, which both friends and enemies con- nected with his death, but with different as- sociations. The remains of the protector were soon consigned to Henry VII. 's chapel, as it was impossible to keep them. The public funeral took place Nov. 23. After the res- toration of the Stuarts, the body of Crom- well was disinterred and gibbeted at Tyburn, and then buried under the gallows, the head being placed on Westminster hall. Cromwell had five sons: Robert, born 1621, died 1639; Oliver, born 1623, died in battle, 1648 ; James died in infancy ; Richard and Henry survived him. He had four daughters : Bridget, mar- ried first to Ireton, and then to Fleetwood, died at the age of 57, in 1681 ; Elizabeth, born 1629, married to John Claypole, died 1658; Mary, born 1637, married to Viscount (after- ward earl of) Fauconberg, died 1712 ; Frances, born 1638, married first to Robert Rich 1657, and, Rich dying in a few months, then to Sir John Russell, died 1721. The wife of the pro- tector survived him 14 years, dying Oct. 8, 1672, after having lived in retirement since the downfall of her- family. There are many lives of Cromwell, the best of which is that in Mr. Forster's "Statesmen of the Commonwealth of England." Carlyle's " Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches " is a work of great ex- cellence. Gleig's " Lives of the most eminent British Military Commanders " contains a good military biography of the protector. Most of the other biographies are worthless. Claren- don's great work bears hard upon Cromwell. Even the able volumes of M. Guizot are tinged with his peculiar views, and are not always just either to the statesmen of the long parlia- ment or to Cromwell individually; but they contain much matter not to be found else- where. Sanford's " S.tudies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion" contains much valu- able matter concerning Cromwell, admirably told, but it terminates with the battle of Mars- ton Moor. It corrects many errors in Crom- well's history that had long been received as truths. II. Riehard, the third and eldest sur- viving son of Oliver Cromwell, and second lord protector, born at Huntingdon, Oct. 4, 1626, died at Cheshunt, near London, July 12, 1712. In 1647 he became a student of Lincoln's Inn, where he remained two years. He did not study much, but devoted himself to the plea- sures of the field and the table, to the former of which he had become attached while leading a rural life in the early years of the civil war. In politics he is said to have been a royal- ist, and to have interceded with his father for the king's life. In 1649 he married Dorothy, daughter of Richard Mayor of Hursley, where they resided during most of Oliver's protector- ate, Richard indulging in hunting and hospital- ity. Oliver did not think highly of his son's