the generations noble: and here in England, in the Century called the Seventeenth, we see the last aspect of it hitherto, not the last of all, it is to be hoped. Oliver was henceforth a Christian man; believed in God, not on Sundays only, but on all days, in all places, and in all cases.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 72.

CHARLES AND THE PARLIAMENT.

Sir Oliver Cromwell has faded from the Parliamentary scene into the deep Fen-country, but Oliver Cromwell, Esq., appears there as Member for Huntingdon, at Westminster' on Monday the 17th of March,' 1627-8. This was the Third Parliament of Charles; by much the most notable of all Parliaments till Charles's Long Parliament met, which proved his last.

Having sharply, with swift impetuosity and indignation, dismissed two Parliaments because they would not 'supply him without taking 'grievances' along with them; and, meanwhile and afterwards, having failed in every operation foreign and domestic, at Cadiz, at Rhé, at Rochelle; and having failed, too, in getting supplies by unparliamentary methods, Charles 'consulted with Sir Robert Cotton what was to be done;' who answered, Summon a Parliament again. So this celebrated Parliament was summoned. It met, as we said, in March, 1628, and continued with one prorogation till March, 1629. The two former Parliaments had sat but a few weeks each, till they were indignantly hurled asunder again; this one continued nearly a year. Wentworth (Strafford) was of this Parliament; Hampden too, Selden, Pym, Holles, and others known to us: all these had been of former Parliaments as well; Oliver Cromwell, Member for Huntingdon, sat there for the first time.

It is very evident, King Charles, baffled in all his enterprises, and reduced really to a kind of crisis, wished much this Parliament should succeed; and took what he must have thought incredible pains for that end. The poor King strives visibly throughout to control himself, to be soft and patient; inwardly

CHARLES AND HIS PARLIAMENT.

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writhing and rustling with royal rage. Unfortunate King, we see him chafing, stamping,-a very fiery steed, but bridled, check-bitted, by innumerable straps and considerations; struggling much to be composed. Alas! it would not do. This Parliament was more Puritanic, more intent on rigorous Law and divine Gospel, than any other had ever been. As indeed all these Parliaments grow strangely in Puritanism; more and ever more earnest rises from the hearts of them all, "O Sacred Majesty, lead us not to Antichrist, to Illegality, to temporal and eternal Perdition!" The Nobility and Gentry of England were then a very strange body of men. The English Squire of the Seventeenth Century clearly appears to have believed in God, not as a figure of speech, but as a very fact, very awful to the heart of the English Squire. He wore his Bible • doctrine round him,' says one, as our Squire wears his shot'belt; went abroad with it, nothing doubting.' King Charles was going on his father's course, only with frightful acceleration: he and his respectable Traditions and Notions, clothed in old sheepskin and respectable Church-tippets, were all pulling one way; England and the Eternal Laws pulling another; the rent fast widening till no man could heal it.

This was the celebrated Parliament which framed the Petition of Right, and set London all astir with 'bells and bonfires' at the passing thereof; and did other feats not to be particularised here. Across the murkiest element in which any great Entity was ever shown to human creatures, it still rises, after much consideration, to the modern man, in a dim but undeniable manner, as a most brave and noble Parliament. The like of which were worth its weight in diamonds even now; but has grown very unattainable now, next door to incredible now. We have to say that this Parliament chastised sycophant Priests, Mainwaring, Sibthorp, and other Arminian sycophants, a disgrace to God's Church; that it had an eye to other still more elevated Church-sycophants, as the mainspring of all; but was cautious to give offence by naming them. That it carefully 'abstained from naming the Duke of Buckingham.' That it decided on giving ample subsidies, but not till

D

there were reasonable discussion of grievances. That in manner it was most gentle, soft-spoken, cautious, reverential; and in substance most resolute and valiant. Truly with valiant patient energy, in a slow, stedfast English manner, it carried, across infinite confused opposition and discouragement, its Petition of Right, and what else it had to carry. Four hundred brave men,-brave men and true, after their sort! One laments to find such a Parliament smothered under Dryasdust's shot-rubbish. The memory of it, could any real memory of it rise upon honourable gentlemen and us, might be admonitory, would be astonishing at least.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 82.

A GENTLEMAN FARMER.

In or soon after 1631, as we laboriously infer from the imbroglio records of poor Noble, Oliver decided on an enlarged sphere of action as a Farmer; sold his properties in Huntingdon, all or some of them; rented certain grazing-lands at St. Ives, five miles down the River, eastward of his native place, and removed thither. The Deed of Sale is dated 7th May, 1631; the properties are specified as in the possession of himself or his Mother; the sum they yielded was £1800. With this sum Oliver stocked his Grazing-Farm at St. Ives. The Mother, we infer, continued to reside at Huntingdon, but withdrawn now from active occupation, into the retirement befitting a widow up in years. There is even some gleam of evidence to that effect: her properties are sold; but Oliver's children born to him at St. Ives are still christened at Huntingdon, in the Church he was used to; which may mean also that their good Grandmother was still there.

Properly this was no change in Oliver's old activities; it was an enlargement of the sphere of them. His Mother still at Huntingdon, within few miles of him, he could still superintend and protect her existence there, while managing his new

operations at St. Ives. He continued here till the summer or spring of 1636. A studious imagination may sufficiently construct the figure of his equable life in those years. Diligent grass-farming; mowing, milking, cattle-marketing: add "hypochondria," fits of the blackness of darkness, with glances of the brightness of very Heaven; prayer, religious reading and meditation; household epochs, joys and cares:-we have a solid, substantial inoffensive Farmer of St. Ives, hoping to walk with integrity and humble devout diligence through this world; and, by his Maker's infinite mercy, to escape destruction, and find eternal salvation in wider Divine Worlds. This latter, this is the grand clause in his Life, which dwarfs all other clauses. Much wider destinies than he anticipated were appointed him on Earth; but that, in comparison to the alternative of Heaven or Hell to all Eternity, was a mighty small matter.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 97.

VESTIGES.

Oliver, as we observed, has left hardly any memorial of himself at St. Ives. The ground he farmed is still partly capable of being specified, certain records or leases being still in existence. It lies at the lower or South-east end of the Town; a stagnant flat tract of land, extending between the houses or rather kitchen-gardens of St. Ives in that quarter, and the banks of the River, which, very tortuous always, has made a new bend here. If well drained, this land looks as if it would produce abundant grass, but naturally it must be little other than a bog. Tall bushy ranges of willow-trees and the like, at present, divide it into fields; the River, not visible till you are close on it, bounding them all to the South. At the top of the fields next to the Town is an ancient massive Barn, still used as such; the people call it 'Cromwell's Barn: 'and nobody can prove that it was not his! It was evidently some ancient man's or series of ancient men's.

Quitting St. Ives Fen-ward or Eastward, the last house of all, which stands on your right hand among gardens, seemingly the best house in the place, and called Slepe Hall, is confidently pointed out as 'Oliver's House.' It is indisputably Slepe-Hall House, and Oliver's Farm was rented from the estate of Slepe Hall. It is at present used for a Boardingschool: the worthy inhabitants believe it to be Oliver's; and even point out his ' Chapel' or secret Puritan Sermon-room in the lower story of the house: no Sermon-room, as you may well discern, but to appearance some sort of scullery or washhouse or bake-house. "It was here he used to preach," say they. Courtesy forbids you to answer, "Never!" But in fact there is no likelihood that this was Oliver's House at all: in its present state it does not seem to be a century old; and originally, as is like, it must have served as residence to the Proprietors of Slepe-Hall estate, not to the Farmer of a part thereof. Tradition makes a sad blur of Oliver's memory in his native country! We know, and shall know, only this, for certain here, that Oliver farmed part or whole of these SlepeHall Lands, over which the human feet can still walk with assurance; past which the River Ouse still slumberously rolls towards Earith Bulwark and the Fen-country. Here of a certainty Oliver did walk and look about him habitually during those five years from 1631 to 1636; a man studious of many temporal and many eternal things. His cattle grazed here, his ploughs tilled here, the heavenly skies and infernal abysses overarched and underarched him here. * **

How he lived at St. Ives: how he saluted men on the streets; read Bibles; sold cattle; and walked, with heavy footfall and many thoughts, through the Market Green or old narrow lanes in St. Ives, by the shore of the black Ouse River, shall be left to the reader's imagination. There is in this man talent for farming; there are thoughts enough, thoughts bounded by the Ouse River, thoughts that go beyond Eternity, and a great black sea of things that he has never yet been able to think.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., pp. 125, 131.