therefore that Oliver said to him impatiently, without untruth, ‘You are quite wrong as to all that: good morning!’—and that old Fuller, likewise without untruth, reports it as above.
But, at any rate, there is other very simple evidence entirely conclusive. Richard or Sir Richard Cromwell, great-grandfather of Oliver Protector, was a man well known in his day; had been very active in the work of suppressing monasteries; a righthand man to Thomas the Mauler: and indeed it was on Monastic Property, chiefly or wholly, that he had made for himself a sumptuous estate in those Fen regions. Now, of this Richard Cromwell there are two Letters to Thomas Cromwell, ‘Vicar-General,’ Earl of Essex, which remain yet visible among the Manuscripts of the British Museum; in both of which he signs himself with his own hand, ‘your most bounden Nephew,’—an evidence sufficient to set the point at rest. Copies of the Letters are in my possession; but I grudge to inflict them on the reader. One of them, the longer of the two, stands printed, with all or more than all its original misspelling and confused obscurity, in Noble:[1] it is dated ‘Stamford, without day or year; but the context farther dates it as contemporary with the Lincolnshire Rebellion, or Anti-Reformation riot, which was directly followed by the more formidable ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ in Yorkshire to the like effect, in the autumn of 1536.[2] Richard, in company with other higher official persons, represents himself as straining every nerve to beat down and extinguish this traitorous
- ↑ i. 242.
- ↑ Herbert (in Kennet, ii. 204-5).
died a declared Papist. Poor man, his speculations, now become jargon to us, were once Very serious and eloquent to him! Such is the fate that soon overtakes all men who, quitting the ‘Eternal Melodies,’ take up their abode in the outer Temporary Discords, and seek their subsistence there! This is the part of the Dedication that concerns us:
‘To his Excellency my Lord Oliver Cromwell, Lord General. My Lord,—Fifty years since, the name of Socinus,’ etc.—‘Knowing that the Lord Cromwell (your Lordship’s great-uncle) was then in great favour,’ etc.
