that it must be worse before it was better: and that this parliament could never have done what was necessary to be done" as indeed," says Hyde, "it would not what he and his friends thought necessary." Cromwell was one of those friends; he had been returned to this parliament for the town of Cambridge, and was returned for the same seat to the next-the famous and infamous Long Parliament, which Charles found it necessary to call in six months after the dissolution.

Cromwell's appearance in this assembly is happily described by Sir Philip Warwick. "The first time," he says, "that ever I took notice of him, was in the very beginning of the parliament held in November, 1640,* when I vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman, for we courtiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes. I came one morning into the house well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking, whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band, which was not much larger than his collar: his hat was without a hatband; his stature was of a good size; his sword

[* He sat in this parliament-commonly known as the Long Parliament-for the town of Cambridge. His fellow. member was John Lawry, Esq.]

stuck close to his side, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untunable, and his eloquence full of fervor."* But it was more by heat and earnestness than by eloquence that Cromwell made himself noticed at this time. One of the first occasions upon which he spoke in this parliament was in a committee, in opposition to Lord Kimbolton, upon the earl of Manchester's enclosure business. He behaved intemperately, "ordering the witnesses and petitioners in the method of proceeding, and seconding, and enlarging upon what they said with great passion."† When the chairman endeavored to preserve order, by speaking with authority, Cromwell accused him of being partial and discountenancing the witnesses; and when, says Lord Clarendon, who was himself the chairman, Lord Kimbolton, " upon any mention of matter of fact, or the proceeding before and at the enclosure, desired to be heard, and with great modesty related what had been done, or explained what had been said, Mr. Cromwell did answer and reply upon him with so much indecency and rudeness, and in language so contrary and offensive, that every man would have thought, that as their natures and their manners were as opposite as it is possible, so their interest could never have been the same. In the end his whole

[* Sir Philip Warwick's Memoirs, ed. 1702, p. 247.] [t Lord Clarendon's Life of himself, ed. 1827, vol., i. p. 89.]

carriage was so tempestuous, and his behavior so insolent, that the chairman found himself obliged to reprehend him, and to tell him if he proceeded in the same manner, he would presently adjourn the committee, and the next morning complain to the house of him."*

Cromwell's name does not appear in the proceedings against Lord Strafford. That he bore his part, however, may be presumed not only from the whole tenor of his after-conduct, but because his cousin St. John was one of the foremost agents in that most iniquitous transaction, one of the deadly sins of the Long Parliament. When the question of the Remonstrance, much against the will of the violent party, was deferred till the morrow, that there might be time for debating it, Cromwell asked Lord Falkland why he would have it put off, for that day would quickly have determined it. Lord Falkland answered there would not have been time enough, for sure it would take some debate; and Cromwell replied, a very sorry one; for he, and those with whom he acted, supposed there would be little opposition. It was so well opposed that the debate continued from nine in the morning till midnight; a thing at that time wholly unprecedented. As they went out of the house,

[* Which he never forgave; and took all occasions afterward to pursue him with the utmost malice and revenge to his death.-Clar. Life, ed. 1827, vol. i., p. 90.]

Lord Falkland asked him, whether there had been adebate. To which Cromwell replied, he would take his word another time, and whispered him in the ear, that if the Remonstrance had been rejected, he would have sold all he had the next morning, and never have seen England more; and he knew there were many other honest men of the same resolution. So near, says Clarendon, was the poor kingdom at that time to its deliverance.*

That memorable Remonstrance, which must have been intended by those who framed it to prepare the way for the evils which ensued, was carried (14th Nov., 1641) by a majority of nine, when not half the members of the house were present: the promoters of the measures were so active, that not a man of their party was wanting, and at the last they carried it by the hour of the night, which drove away more old and infirm opposers than would have sufficed to turn the scale. Whitelock says," the sitting up all night caused many through weakness or weariness to leave the house, and

[* Clar. Hist., ed. 1826, vol. ii., p. 44. Lord Say and Lord Brooke were the promoters of this intended emigration, and, as is well known, Hampden and his cousin Cromwell, and Haselrigge, had actually embarked for the new colony of Saybrooke, when an order of council, restraining all masters and owners of ships from setting forth any vessel without special license was enforced against them. Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque fatura-SOUTHEY, Quar. Rev., No. xciv., p. 478.]

Sir B. R. (Sir Benjamin Rudyard) to compare it to the verdict of a starved jury." 99* What Clarendon observes upon this occasion is worthy of especial notice. "I know not how those men have already answered it to their own consciences; or how they will answer it to Him who can discern their consciences; who having assumed their country's trust, and, it may be, with great earnestness labored to procure that trust, by their supine laziness, negligence, and absence, were the first inlets to those inundations; and so contributed to those licenses which have overwhelmed us. For by this means a handful of men, much inferior in the beginning, in number and interest, came to give laws to the major part: and, to show that three diligent persons are really a greater and more significant number than ten unconcerned, they, by plurality of voices in the end, converted or reduced the whole body to their opinions. It is true, men of activity and faction, in any design, have many advantages, that a composed and settled council, though industrious enough, usually have not; and some that gallant men can not give themselves leave to entertain: for besides their thorough considering and forming their counsels before they execute them, they contract a habit of ill-nature and disingenuity necessary to their affairs, and the temper of those upon whom they are to work, that [* Whitelock, p. 51, ed. 1732.]