was this. Blake cruising on the coast of Spain, watching as usual for Plate Fleets, heard for certain that there was a Fleet actually coming, actually come as far as the Canary Isles, and Blake now lying in the Bay of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe there. makes instant sail thither; arrives there still in time this Monday morning early; finds the Fleet fast moored in Santa Cruz Bay; rich silver-ships, strong war-ships, sixteen as we count them; stronger almost than himself,—and moored here under defences unassailable apparently by any mortal. Santa Cruz Bay is shaped as a horse-shoe; at the entrance are Castles, in the inner circuit are other Castles, Eight of them in all, bristling with great guns; war-ships moored at the entrance, war-frigates moored all round the beach, and men and gunners at command: one great magazine of sleeping thunder and destruction: to appearance, if you wish for sure suicide to run into, this must be it. Blake, taking measure of the business, runs into it, defying its loud thunder: much outthunders it,mere whirlwinds of fire and iron hail, the old Peak never heard the like; silences the Castles, sinks or burns every sail in the Harbour; annihilates the Spanish Fleet; and then, the wind veering round in his favour, sails out again, leaving Santa Cruz Bay much astonished at him. It is the last action of the brave Blake; who, worn out with toil and sickness and a cruise of three years, makes homeward shortly after; dies within sight of Plymouth.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., p. 244.

INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR.

Land-General Reynolds has gone to the French Netherlands, with Six-thousand men, to join Turenne in fighting the Spaniards there; and Sea-General Montague, is about hoisting his flag to coöperate with him from the other element. By sea and land are many things passing;-and here in London is the loudest thing of all: not yet to be entirely omitted by us,

INSTALLED AS PROTECTOR.

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though now it has fallen very silent in comparison. Inauguration of the Lord Protector; second and more solemn Installation of him, now that he is fully recognised by Parliament itself. He cannot yet, as it proves, be crowned King; but he shall be installed in his Protectorship with all solemnity befitting such an occasion.

Friday, 26th June, 1657. The Parliament and all the world are busy with this grand affair; the labours of the Session being now complete, the last finish being now given to our new Instrument of Government, to our elaborate Petition and Advice, we will add this topstone to the work, and so, amid the shoutings of mankind, disperse for the recess. Friday at two o'clock, in a place prepared,' duly prepared, with all manner of 'platforms,''cloths of state,' and 'seats raised one above the other,' 'at the upper end of Westminster Hall.' Palaceyard, and London generally, is all a-tiptoe, out of doors. Within doors, Speaker Widdrington and the Master of the Ceremonies have done their best: the Judges, the Aldermen, the Parliament, the Council, the foreign Ambassadors, and domestic Dignitaries without end; chairs of state, cloths of state, trumpet-peals, and acclamations of the people-Let the reader conceive it; or read in old Pamphlets the 'exact relation' of it with all the speeches and phenomena, worthier than such things usually are of being read.

'His Highness standing under the Cloth of State,' says Bulstrode, whose fine feelings are evidently touched by it, the 'Speaker, in the name of the Parliament, presented to him: 'First, a Robe of purple velvet; which the Speaker, assisted by 'Whitlocke and others, put upon his Highness. Then he,' the Speaker, 'delivered to him the Bible richly gilt and bossed,' an affecting symbolic Gift: After that, the Speaker girt the 'Sword about his Highness; and delivered into his hand the Sceptre of massy gold. And then, this done, he made a Speech 'to him on these several things presented;' eloquent mellifluous Speech, setting forth the high and true significance of these several Symbols, Speech still worth reading; to which his Highness answered in silence by dignified gesture only.

Then Mr. Speaker gave him the Oath;' and so ended really in a solemn manner. 'And Mr. Manton, by prayer, recom'mended his Highness, the Parliament, the Council, the Forces by land and sea, and the whole Government and People of the 'Three Nations, to the blessing and protection of God.'-And then 'the people gave several great shouts;' and 'the trumpets 'sounded; and the Protector sat in his chair of state, holding 'the Sceptre in his hand;' a remarkable sight to see. 'On 'his right sat the Ambassador of France,' on his left some other Ambassador; and all round, standing or sitting, were Dignitaries of the highest quality; and near the Earl of Warwick, stood the Lord Viscount Lisle, stood General 'Montague and Whitlocke, each of them having a drawn 'sword in his hand,'-a sublime sight to some of us!

And so this Solemnity transacts itself; which, at the moment, was solemn enough; and is not yet, at this or any hollowest moment of Human History, intrinsically altogether other. A really dignified and veritable piece of Symbolism; perhaps the last we hitherto, in these quack-ridden histrionic ages, have been privileged to see on such an occasion.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., p. 301.

SPANISH INVASION PLOT.

One of these days, [January, 1658] there came a man riding jogtrot through Stratford-at-the-Bow, with 'a green glazed cover over his hat,' a 'nightcap under it,' and 'his valise behind him;' a rustic-looking man: recognisable to us, amid the vanished populations who take no notice of him as he jogs along there,—for the Duke of Ormond, Charles Stuart's head man! He sat up, at Colchester, the night before, 'playing shuffleboard with some 'farmers, and drinking hot ale.' He is fresh from Flanders, and the Ex-King; has arrived here to organise the Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion, and see what Royalist Insurrection, or other domestic mischief there may be hopes of. Lodges now, 'with dyed hair,' in a much disguised manner, at the house of

ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE.

85

'a Papist Chirurgeon in Drury Lane;' communicating with the ringleaders here.

The Spanish Charles-Stuart Invasion is again on foot, and no fable. He has Four English-Irish Regiments; the lowminded Dutch, we understand, have hired him Two-and-twenty ships, which hope to escape our frigates some dark night; and Don John has promised a Spanish Army of Six-thousand or Ten-thousand, if the domestic Royalists will bestir themselves. Like the waves of the sea, that cannot rest; that have to go on, throwing up mire and dirt! Frantic-Anabaptists too are awakening; the general English Hydra is rallying itself again, as if to try it one other last time.

Foreign Affairs also look altogether questionable to a Protestant man. Swede and Dane in open war; inextricable quarrels bewildering the King of Sweden, King of Denmark, Elector of Brandenburg, all manner of Foreign Protestants, whom Oliver never yet could reconcile; and the Dutch playing false; and the Spaniards, the Austrians, the Pope and Papists, too well united!-Need enough that this Parliament be unanimous.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., p. 333.

ROYALIST INSURRECTION FAILURE.

His Highness, before this Monday's sun sets [Feb. 4, 1658], has begun to lodge the Anarchic Ringleaders, Royalist, FifthMonarchist, in the Tower; his Highness is bent once more with all his faculty, the Talking-Apparatus being gone, to front this Hydra, and trample it down once again. On Saturday he summons his Officers, his Acting-Apparatus, to Whitehall round him; explains to them 'in a Speech two hours long' what kind of Hydra it is; asks, Shall it conquer us, involve us in blood and confusion? They answer from their hearts, No, it shall not! "We will stand and fall with your Highness, we will live and "die with you!"—It is the last duel this Oliver has with any Hydra fomented into life by a Talking-Apparatus; and he

again conquers it, invincibly compresses it, as he has heretofore

done.

One day, in the early days of March next, his Highness said to Lord Broghil: An old friend of yours is in Town, the Duke of Ormond, now lodged in Drury Lane, at the Papist Surgeon's there: you had better tell him to be gone! Whereat his Lordship stared; found it a fact however; and his Grace of Ormond did go with exemplary speed, and got again to Bruges and the Sacred Majesty, with report That Cromwell had many enemies, but that the rise of the Royalists was moonshine. And on the 12th of the month his Highness had the Mayor and Common Council with him in a body at Whitehall; and 'in a Speech at large' explained to them that his Grace of Ormond was gone only on Tuesday last;' that there were Spanish Invasions, Royalist Insurrections and Frantic-Anabaptist Insurrections rapidly ripening;—that it would well beseem the City of London to have its Militia in good order. To which the Mayor and Common Council, 'being very sensible thereof,' made zealous response by speech and by act. In a word, the Talking-Apparatus being gone, and an Oliver Protector now at the head of the Acting-Apparatus, no Insurrection, in the eyes of reasonable persons, had any chance. The leading Royalists shrank close into their privacies again,-considerable numbers of them had to shrink into durance in the Tower. Among which latter class his Highness, justly incensed, and considering,' as Thurloe says, 'that it was not fit there should be a Plot of this kind every winter,' had determined that a High Court of Justice should take cognisance of some. High Court of Justice is accordingly nominated as the Act of Parliament prescribes : among the parties marked for trial by it are Sir Henry Slingsby, long since prisoner for Penruddock's business, and the Rev. Dr. Hewit, a man of much forwardness in Royalism. Sir Henry, prisoner in Hull and acquainted with the Chief Officers there, has been treating with them for betrayal of the place to his Majesty; has even, to that end, given one of them a Majesty's Commission; for whose Spanish Invasion such a