that, they will say I tremble for fear.‘—If Oliver, among the ‘immense crowd,’ saw this scene, as is conceivable enough, he would not want for reflections on it.
What is more apparent to us, Oliver in these days is a visitor in Sir James Bourchier’s Town residence. Sir James Bourchier, Knight, a civic gentleman; not connected at all with the old Bourchiers Earls of Essex, says my heraldic friend; but seemingly come of City merchants rather, who by some of their quarterings and cognisances appear to have been ‘Furriers,’ says he:—Like enough. Not less but more important, it appears this Sir James Bourchier was a man of some opulence, and had daughters; had a daughter Elizabeth, not without charms for the youthful heart. Moreover he had landed property near Felsted in Essex, where his usual residence was. Felsted, where there is still a kind of School or Free-School, which was of more note in those days than now. That Oliver visited in Sir James’s in Town or elsewhere, we discover with great certainty by the next written record of him.
1620
The Registers of St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate, London, are written by a third party as usual, and have no autograph signatures; but in the List of Marriages for ‘August 1620,’ stand these words, still to be read sic:
‘Oliver Cromwell to Elizabeth Bourcher. 22.’
Milton’s burial-entry is in another Book of the same memorable Church, ‘12 Nov. 1674”; where Oliver on the 22d of August 1620 was married.
Oliver is twenty-one years and four months old on this his wedding-day. He repaired, speedily or straightway we believe, to Huntingdon, to his Mother’s house, which indeed was now his. His Law-studies, such as they were, had already ended, we infer: he had already set up house with his Mother; and was now bringing a wife home; the due arrangements for that
