The private letters of the period which their authors supposed would never see the light, disclose the character and pursuits of Charles. Thus for example, Sir Richard Browne, writing to Hyde on 15th November 1653, says, "finding that some moneys of his Maties will remaine with me, I humbly submitt it to your HonTM consideration whether a hundred Lewises in gold will not be acceptable to his Ma" to be by your Hon' privately delivered into his owne Royall hands, towards his merry playing, wherwith to passe his time at cards this approaching Christmasse." And the grave and prudent Clarendon thus replies to the proposal, which in effect was intended to bribe the King out of his own monies-the Chancellor of the Exchequer however knew his master, and we blame him not for accepting as a gift an offering which might well have been resented as an insult. "I cannot," he says, "but commende your designe, and as I believe the Kinge does not expecte such a present, so I am sure it will be most wellcome to him, and I will promise you to present it to him, in so secrett a manner, as nobody shall know it but himselfe; and be confident I will never converte one penny that belonges to him, to my owne use, in what straights soever I should be."

The same correspondence discloses the pecuniary difficulties of Hyde. Sir Richard Browne had written to tell him he had sent him some wine of which a portion was intended for Lady Lucas, and the letter from which we have already quoted is written in reply to this intimation-it thus continues-"I like very well your distribution of the sacke, and I will not bragge of my share, nor fayle of delivering the proportion you assigne, and if the good lady comes hither, (as by yours ] guesse she intends to do, though Paris at present is a place of

prodigious exspence, every thinge double the pryse of what it was when you left it) the vessell shall stay with her; and I then shall be sure of justice, and I will fetch my allowance in bottles: Let me only give you this warninge, that the carriage be payd for, as I thinke you told me in your former that it was, and I am sure I cannot do it, and then, the sooner it comes the better."

On 27th December following Hyde thus acknowledges an offer of money from Browne. "For your new noble offer. I am not in a condition so plentiful to refuse, for I must tell you I have not had a Lewis of my owne these three months; therefore when you send the bill, lett me know whether you lend me so much oute of your owne little stocke, or whether it be the King's money, for in that case his May shall be the disposer, since my office hath never yett nor shall intitle me to take his money without his direction."

Meanwhile in utter loneliness of heart and aim, surrounded by secret enemies, by hesitating friends, and an awe struck people, Cromwell pursued his solitary and determined way. His character and career have been made the mark in our own days of ill considered and fulsome panegyric; writers who never acknowledge merit until success has crowned her efforts, have recognized in this great man every virtue required to make up their ideal of perfection. We enter not into the controversy; but we see in his stern concentration of purpose, the relentless energy with which he trampled down every obstacle that barred his way to power, and the vast sway he exercised over a fanatical and devoted army, qualities which belong only to men whose ability is guided by unbending resolution, and a clear idea of

the ends they seek. Since the execution of his King Cromwell must have regarded with deep contempt the conduct of the Parliament-by the aid of the weapon he had forged and placed in their hands, they had destroyed the Monarchy, abolished the Upper House, and replaced Laud, Juxon and the Clergy of the Establishment, by a crowd of obscure and illiterate Ministers-but, powerful as they were to destroy, what had they created, what were the institutions they proposed to substitute for those which they had swept away, and with what breakwater did they intend to check the angry tide of discontent which was gradually rising and threatened to overwhelm them.

Within a few hours of the time when Charles wrote his letter to Prince Rupert, Cromwell was proclaimed Protector; he bound himself by solemn oaths to maintain the constitution then established; he received the homage of state and army; and the long line of English Monarchs was apparently swept away for ever to make room for military usurpation. Much wisdom. was evinced in the ordinances then established; many anomalies were abolished; many an ancient chamber was swept and garnished; the changes in the representative system might, had they been persisted in, have prevented the long struggle for reform which the present and past generation has witnessed, and the tolerance accorded, with two exceptions, to every form of Christian belief was wise, far seeing, and unparalleled.

There were blots in the rule of Cromwell, and he was guilty of tyranny and oppression. His government, however. was free from the vacillation of Charles I. and the paltry vices of his son; at least it gave England

peace at home and triumph abroad," and made his subjects feel like the Roman of ancient days that wherever they wandered a far seeing eye and an allprotecting arm watched over their interest and ensured their safety.

Whatever were the faults of Cromwell he never degraded his country. He never abandoned the Protestant cause like Charles I., or sold himself to France like his successor. With few attributes that could command the love or attract the sympathy of his countrymen, he was free from the vices which before and after him made legitimate Monarchs the objects of the misgiving and scorn of those even who wished them well.

The restoration of Charles II. was the natural sequence of the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the anarchy that threatened England when Cromwell died. Theorists of all kinds had experimented on their country, and their experiments had failed; the foreign triumphs of the Protector had not been greater than those won by a woman a hundred years before; the peace at home which England enjoyed was precarious, troubled and broken; it was the peace of exhaustion not of content, and beneath its unruffled surface the conspirator plotted, while the patriot mourned.

Twenty years of strife, destruction, and repression had passed, and men asked themselves with what result. The great institutions reared centuries before had crumbled into dust; the Crown was gone with all its splendid pageantries, and all its historic claims; the Church was swept away, and in the defaced temples of happier times Fifth Monarchy men prophesied and

M

Ranters raved; the great families, who had a lasting hold on the affections of the multitude, were exiled, disgraced, or shorn of half their property; in their place new men ruled who had no sympathy with the people round them, and made no allowance for their weakness and faults; a spirit of fanaticism and gloomy intolerance brooded over the land; every amusement which made life cheerful to the peasant, or graceful and refined to his superiors was repressed as sinful, or sneered at as profane; and all this while the citizen was weighed down by unaccustomed taxation to provide pay for an army which he detested and feared.

There was the stain of blood on the robe of Cromwell which he had neither time nor opportunity to efface. A stern soldier, a remorseless conqueror, a despot in act, and ruling by despotic agencies, while feared by everyone, he was despised by half England as an upstart, and hated by the other half as a tyrant. The men who endeavoured to succeed him had all his faults, but were without the great qualities by which they were so nearly atoned. If they had had the daring and the good fortune to take his place they would only have exhibited on a grand theatre the miserable spectacle of their own incapacity and folly; while the Parliament which was in England their competitor for power was the same effete and despised convention which Cromwell years since had dissolved, amid sympathetic jeers and execrations from a gazing populace.

In every class therefore men were to be found whose prejudices, feelings, and interests were hostile to the existing order of affairs, and they looked back with regret to the institutions that had heen subverted, to the men who were in exile and their youthful King.