Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/56

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26

INTRODUCTION

our Oliver’s Aunts one was Mrs. Hampden of Great Hampden, Bucks: an opulent, zealous person, not without ambitions; already a widow and mother of two Boys, one of whom proved very celebrated as John Hampden;—she was Robert Cromwell’s Sister. Another Cromwell Aunt of Oliver’s was married to ‘Whalley, heir of the Whalley family in Notts’; another to the ‘heir of the Dunches of Pusey, in Berkshire’; another to—In short the stories of Oliver’s ‘poverty,’ if they were other-

1628; was Member for Huntingdon in Queen Elizabeth’s time :—Lived in Ramsey? Is buried at Upwood.

Sir Philip: Biggin House; knighted at Whitehall, 1604 (Noble, i. 31). His second son, Philip, was in Colonel Ingoldsby’s regiment;—wounded at the storm of Bristol, in 1645. Third son, Thomas, was in Ireland with Strafford (signs Montnorris’s death-warrant there, in 1630); lived afterwards in London; became Major, and then Colonel, in the King’s Army. Fourth son, Oliver, was in the Parliamentary Army; had watched the King in the Isle of Wight,—went with his cousin, our Oliver, to Ireland in 1649, and died or was killed there. Fifth son, Robert, ‘poisoned his Master, an Attorney, and was hanged at London,’—if there be truth in ‘Heath’s Flagellum’ (Noble, i. 35) ‘and some Pedigrees’;—year not given; say about 1635, when the lad, ‘born 1617,’ was in his 18th year? I have found no hint of this affair in any other quarter, not in the wildest Royalist-Birkenhead or Walker’s-Independency lampoon; and consider it very possible that a Robert Cromwell having suffered ‘for poisoning an Attorney,’ he may have been called the cousin of Cromwell by ‘Heath and some Pedigrees, But of course anybody can ‘poison an Attorney,’ and be hanged for it!

Oliver’s Aunt Elizabeth was married to William Hampden of Great Hampden, Bucks (year not given, Noble, i. 36, nor at p. 68 of vol. ii.; nor in Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden): he died in 1597; she survived him 67 years, continuing a widow (Noble, ii. 69). Buried in Great Hampden Church, 1664, aged 90. She had two sons, John and Richard: John, born 1594,—Richard, an Oliverian too, died in 1659 (Noble, ii. 70).

Aunt Joan (elder than Elizabeth) was ‘Lady Barrington’; Aunt Frances (younger) was Mrs. Whalley. Richard Whalley of Kerton, Notts; a man of mark; sheriff, etc., three wives, children only by his second, this ‘Aunt Fanny.’ Three children :—Thomas Whalley (no years given, Noble, ii. 141) died in his father’s lifetime; left a son who was a kind of Royalist, but yet had a certain acceptance with Oliver too. Edward Whalley, the famed ‘Colonel,’ and Henry Whalley, ‘the Judge-Advocate’: wretched biographies of these two are in Noble, pp. 141, 143-56. Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goff, after the Restoration, fled to New England; lived in ‘caves’ there, and had a sore time of it: New England in a vague manner, still remembers them.

Enough of the Cousinry!—

[1] Sir Philip: Biggin House; knighted at Whitehall, 1604 (Noble, i. 31). His second son, Philip, was in Colonel Ingoldsby’s regiment;—wounded at the storm of Bristol, in 1645. Third son, Thomas, was in Ireland with Strafford (signs Montnorris’s death-warrant there, in 1630); lived afterwards in London; became Major, and then Colonel, in the King’s Army. Fourth son, Oliver, was in the Parliamentary Army; had watched the King in the Isle of Wight,—went with his cousin, our Oliver, to Ireland in 1649, and died or was killed there. Fifth son, Robert, ‘poisoned his Master, an Attorney, and was hanged at London,’—if there be truth in ‘Heath’s Flagellum’ (Noble, i. 35) ‘and some Pedigrees’;—year not given; say about 1635, when the lad, ‘born 1617,’ was in his 18th year? I have found no hint of this affair in any other quarter, not in the wildest Royalist-Birkenhead or Walker’s-Independency lampoon; and consider it very possible that a Robert Cromwell having suffered ‘for poisoning an Attorney,’ he may have been called the cousin of Cromwell by ‘Heath and some Pedigrees, But of course anybody can ‘poison an Attorney,’ and be hanged for it!

[2] Sir Philip: Biggin House; knighted at Whitehall, 1604 (Noble, i. 31). His second son, Philip, was in Colonel Ingoldsby’s regiment;—wounded at the storm of Bristol, in 1645. Third son, Thomas, was in Ireland with Strafford (signs Montnorris’s death-warrant there, in 1630); lived afterwards in London; became Major, and then Colonel, in the King’s Army. Fourth son, Oliver, was in the Parliamentary Army; had watched the King in the Isle of Wight,—went with his cousin, our Oliver, to Ireland in 1649, and died or was killed there. Fifth son, Robert, ‘poisoned his Master, an Attorney, and was hanged at London,’—if there be truth in ‘Heath’s Flagellum’ (Noble, i. 35) ‘and some Pedigrees’;—year not given; say about 1635, when the lad, ‘born 1617,’ was in his 18th year? I have found no hint of this affair in any other quarter, not in the wildest Royalist-Birkenhead or Walker’s-Independency lampoon; and consider it very possible that a Robert Cromwell having suffered ‘for poisoning an Attorney,’ he may have been called the cousin of Cromwell by ‘Heath and some Pedigrees, But of course anybody can ‘poison an Attorney,’ and be hanged for it!