it. He approved himself, as Sir Philip Warwick will testify,[1] ‘a man that would set well at the mark,’ that took sure aim, and had a stroke of some weight in him. We cannot here afford room to disentangle that affair from the dark rubbish-abysses, old and new, in which it lies deep buried: suffice it to assure the reader that Oliver did by no means ‘oppose’ the Draining of the Fens, but was and had been, as his Father before him, highly favourable to it; that he opposed the King in Council wishing to do a public injustice in regard to the Draining of the Fens; and by a ‘great meeting at Huntingdon,’ and other good measures, contrived to put a stop to the same. At a time when, as Old Palaceyard might testify, that operation of going in the teeth of the royal will was somewhat more perilous than it would be now! This was in 1688, according to the good testimony of Warwick.[2] Cromwell acquired by it a great popularity in the Fen-country, acquired the name or nickname ‘Lord of the Fens’; and what was much more valuable, had done the duty of a good citizen, whatever he might acquire by it. The disastrous public Events which soon followed put a stop to all farther operations in the Fens for a good many years.
These clamours of local grievance near at hand, these rumours of universal grievance from the distance,—they were part of the Day’s noises, they were sounding in Cromwell’s mind, along with many others now silent, while the following Letter went off towards ‘Sir William Masham’s House called Otes, in Essex,’ in the year 1638.—Of Otes and the Mashams in Essex, there must likewise, in spite of our strait limits, be a word said. The Mashams were distant Cousins of Oliver’s; this Sir William Masham, or Massam as he is often written, proved a conspicuous busy man in the Politics of his time; on the Puritan side;—rose into Oliver’s Council of State at
