inaccuracies as you like: dig where you please, water will come! As a crown to all the modern Biographies of Cromwell, let us note Mr. Forster’s late one:[1] full of interesting original excerpts, and indications of what is notablest in the old Books; gathered and set forth with real merit, with energy in abundance and superabundance; amounting in result, we may say, to a vigorous decisive tearing-up of all the old hypotheses on the subject, and an opening of the general mind for new.
Of Cromwell’s actual biography, from these and from all Books and sources, there is extremely little to be known. It is from his own words, as I have ventured to believe, from his own Letters and Speeches well read, that the world may first obtain some dim glimpse of the actual Cromwell, and see him darkly face to face. What little is otherwise ascertainable, cleared from the circumambient inanity and insanity, may be stated in brief compass. So much as precedes the earliest still extant Letters, I subjoin here in the form most convenient.
OF THE CROMWELL KINDRED
Oliver Cromwell, afterwards Protector of the Commonwealth of England, was born at Huntingdon, in St. John’s Parish there, on the 25th of April 1599. Christened on the 29th of the same month; as the old Parish-registers of that Church still legibly testify.[2]
His Father was Robert Cromwell, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, and younger brother of Sir Oliver Cromwell, Knights both; who dwelt successively, in rather sumptuous fashion, at the Mansion of Hinchinbrook hard by. His Mother was Elizabeth Steward, daughter of William Steward,
