... the scaffold, had provided himself with a letter to the sheriff, which was not read at the time, and Sir Walter found his friend thrust by, lamenting that he could not get there. "Farewell!" exclaimed Raleigh, "I know not what shift you will make, but I am sure to have a place" In going from the prison to the scaffold, among others who were pressing hard to see him, one old man, whose head was bald, came so far forward, that Raleigh noticed him, and asked "whether he would have aught of him?" The old man answered, "Nothing but to see him, and to pray God for him." Raleigh replied, "I thank thee, good friend, and I am sorry I have no better thing to return thee for thy good will." Observing his bald head, he continued, "but take this night-cap (which was a very rich wrought one that he wore), for thou hast more need of it now than I." When He ascended the scaffold with the same cheerfulness as he had passed to it; and observing the lords seated at a distance, some at windows, he requested they would approach him, as he wished that they should all witness what he had to say. he finished, he requested Lord Arundel that the king would not suffer any libels to defame him after death "And now I have a long journey to go, and must take my leave"... He embraced all the lords and other friends with such courtly compliments, as if he had met them at some feast," says a letter-writer. Having taken off his gown, he called to the headsman to show him the axe, which not being instantly done, he repeated, "I prithee let me see it, dost thou think that I am afraid of it?"...He passed the edge lightly over his finger, and smiling, observed to the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases," and kissing it, laid it down. After this he went to three several corners of the scaffold, and kneeling down, desired all the people to pray for him, and recited a long prayer to himself... When he began to fit himself for the block, he first laid himself down to try how the block fitted him; after rising up, the executioner kneeled down to ask his forgiveness, which Raleigh with an embrace gave, but entreated him not to strike till he gave a token by lifting up his hand, "and then, fear not, but strike home!" When he laid his head down to receive the stroke, the executioner desired him to lay his face towards the east. "It was no great matter which way a man's head stood, so that the heart lay right," said Raleigh; but these were not his last words. He was once more to speak in this world with the same intrepidity he had lived in it: for, having lain some minutes on the block in prayer, he gave the signal; but the executioner, either un ... mindful, or in fear, failed to strike, and Raleigh, after once or twice putting forth his hands, was compelled to ask him, "Why dost thou not strike? Strike! man!" In two blows he was beheaded; but from the first, his body never shrunk from the spot, by any discomposure of his posture, which, like his mind, was immovable. "In all the time he was upon the scaffold, and before," says one of the manuscript letter-writers, "there appeared not the least alteration in him, either in his voice or countenance; but he seemed as free from all manner of apprehension as if he had come thither rather to be a spectator than a sufferer; nay, the beholders seemed much more sensible than did he, so that he hath purchased here in the opinion of men such honor and reputation, as it is thought his greatest enemies are they that are most sorrowful for his death, which they see is like to turn so much to his advantage." I. D'Israeli. OLIVER CROMWELL. IN the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done. Charles II. and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters and the age they ushered in had forgotten... Puritanism was hung on gibbets, like the bones of the leading Puritans. We have our Habeas Corpus, our free representation of the people; - acknowledgment wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become what we call free men;with their life grounded on reality and justice! This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the Puritans. men And, indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after another, taken down from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as canonised. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchison, Vane himself are admitted to be a kind of heroes; political conscript fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what makes us a free England... They are indeed very noble men these; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphuisms, philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, ship moneys, monarchies of man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold before them; the fancy What alone endeavors to get up some worship of them. man's heart does, in reality, break forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men? One leaves all these nobilities standing in their niches of honor; the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them all in whom one finds human stuff. We are told, it was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foundation of our English liberties should have been laid by superstition, by men demanding chiefly of all, that they should have liberty to worship in their own way. Liberty to tax themselves; that was the thing they should have demanded! Liberty to tax oneself? No century, I think, but a rather barren one, would have fixed on that as the first right of man... I should say, on the contrary, a just man will generally have better cause than money in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his government. Taxgatherer? Money? He will say, "Take my money, since you can, and it is so desirable to you; take it, and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my work here. I am still here, after all the money you have taken from me!"...But if they come to him, and say, "Acknowledge a lie; pretend to say you are worshipping God when you are not doing it: believe not the thing that you found true, but the thing that I find, or pretend to find true!" He will answer: "No; by God's help, no! You may take my purse; but I cannot have my moral self annihilated. The purse is any highwayman's who might meet me with a loaded pistol; but the self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death and revolt against you, and, on the whole, front all manner of extremities, accusations, and confusions, in defence of that!"... Really this is the one reason which could justify the revolting of the Puritans. It has been the soul of all just revolts among men. hunger alone produced even the French Revolution. No, but the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading falsehood which had now embodied itself in hunger. Not What little we know of Cromwell's earlier obscure years, betokens all, an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man. An excitable deep-feeling nature, in such rugged stubborn strength as his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood! The young Oliver is sent to study law; falls, is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man... "He pays back what money he had won at gambling," says the story; he does not think any gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural, this "conversion" as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful truth of things; to see that time and its shows all rested on eternity, and this poor earth of ours was the threshold either of heaven or of hell!... Oliver's life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout man? He has renounced the world and its ways; its prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God...He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay, can himself preach; exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant" or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other higher world; his aim to get well thither, by walking well through his humble course in this world. He courts no notice; what could notice here do for him? 66 ever in his great task-master's eye." His successes in parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God, his spoken thanks to the God of victory, who had preserved him safe and carried him forward so far through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through the death hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy to the "crowning mercy of Worcester fight!" all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Nor will his participation in the king's death involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a king. But it is now pretty generally admitted that the parliament, having vanquished Charles I., had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him... The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence, but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton Court negotiations, shows himself a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man, who, once for all, could not and would not understand, whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose word did not at all represent his thought... We may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather; but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of kingship, he still finding himself treated with outward respect as a king, fancied that he might play off party against party, and smuggle himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both discovered that he was deceiving them... A man whose word will not inform you at all what he means and will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable, again and again. Not so, Cromwell: "For all our fighting," says he, we are to have a little bit of paper!" No! In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical eye of this man; how he drives towards the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what is fact: such an intellect does not belong to a false man; the false man sees false showy plausibilities, expediencies; the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. 66 The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing. Since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man with the eye to see with, the heart to dare, should advance from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged strongest man in England, virtually the king of England, requires no magic to explain it ! Carlyle. ADMIRAL BLAKE. THE life of Robert Blake, general of the land forces and admiral of the fleets of England, during the rule of Cromwell, affords some fine examples illustrative of the daring and decision of the English character when called out by the exigencies of the naval service. Possessed of a most exalted opinion of the prowess and pretensions of Englishmen, he seems to have considered no odds of numbers or disadvantages of position worthy of consideration where his country's honor was concerned, and he supported the Lord Protector most efficiently in his avowed resolution of "making the name of Englishmen as great as ever that of Roman had been "... At the mature age of fifty years this extraordinary man, after having proved himself a good soldier, during the unhappy strife of the civil wars, by his successful defence of the town of Taunton against the royal forces, first took the command of our fleets, leading them to victory, and winning fresh laurels upon their own element from his world-known opponents, Tromp, de Ruyter, and de Witt. Here his want of experience seems, although it may sound paradoxical, to have been of great service to him: he followed |