the same. In the end, his whole carriage was so tempestuous, and his behavior so insolent, that the Chairman found himself obliged to reprehend him; and to tell him, That if he,' Mr. Cromwell, 'proceeded in the same manner, he' Mr. Hyde 'would presently adjourn the Committee, and the next morning complain to the House of him. Which he never forgave; and took all occasions afterwards to pursue him with the utmost malice and revenge, to his death,'-not Mr. Hyde's, happily, but Mr. Cromwell's, who at length did cease to cherish malice and revenge' against Mr. Hyde! Tracking this matter, by faint indications, through various obscure sources, I conclude that it related to the 'Soke of Somersham** near St. Ives; and that the scene in the Queen's Court probably occurred in the beginning of July, 1641.† Cromwell knew this Soke of Somersham near St. Ives very well; knew these poor rustics, and what treatment they had got; and wished, not in the imperturbablest manner it would seem, to see justice done them. Here too, subtracting the due subtrahend from Mr. Hyde's Narrative, we have a pleasant visuality of an old summer afternoon in the Queen's Court' two hundred years ago. Cromwell's next Letters present him to us, not debating, or about to debate, concerning Parliamentary Propositions and Scotch 'Eighth Articles,' but with his sword drawn to enforce them; the whole Kingdom divided now into two armed conflicting masses, the argument to be by pike and bullet henceforth. Commons Journals, ii., 172. Ibid., 87; 150; 172; 192; 215; 218; 219,-the dates extend from 17th February to 21st July, 1641. PRELIMINARY. THERE is therefore a great dark void, from February, 1641, to January, 1643, through which the reader is to help himself from Letter III. over to Letter IV., as he best may. How has pacific England, the most solid pacific country in the world, got all into this armed attitude; and decided itself to argue henceforth by pike and bullet till it get some solution? Dryasdust, if there remained any shame in him, ought to look at those wagonloads of Printed Volumes, and blush! We, in great haste, offer the necessitous reader the following hints and considerations. It was mentioned above that Oliver St. John, the noted Puritan Lawyer, was already, in the end of January, 1641, made SolicitorGeneral. The reader may mark that as a small fraction of an event showing itself above ground, completed; and indicating to him a grand subterranean attempt on the part of King Charles and the Puritan Leaders, which unfortunately never could become a fact or event. Charles, in January last or earlier (for there are no dates discoverable but this of St. John's), perceiving how the current of the Nation ran, and what a humor men were getting into, had decided on trying to adopt the Puritan leaders, Pym, Hampden, Holles and others, as what we should now call his 'Ministers' these Puritan men, under the Earl of Bedford as chief, might have hoped to become what we should now call a 'Majesty's Ministry,' and to execute peaceably, with their King presiding over them, what reforms had grown inevitable. A most desirable result, if a possible one; for of all men these had the least notion of revolting, or rebelling against their King! This negotiation had been entered into, and entertained as a possibility by both parties: so much is indubitable: so much and nothing more, except that it ended without result.* It would in * Whitlocke, Clarendon; see Forster's Statesmen, ii., 150-7. |