Charles II. escapes to France.

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be hung, the man told the monarch he spoke like an honest man. The job being done, the monarchmounted and continued his journey. Charles reached Bristol, having been several times recognized by servants and others who were familiar with his appearance, but in spite of their poverty and humble position, he remained secure in their disinterested fidelity.

Not finding the boat he had expected at Bristol to convey him to France, he was obliged to take up his wanderings again; and finally, after he had spent forty-two days as a miserable fugitive, he escaped to France, where he and his companions, on their arrival, appeared in such a sorry plight that the landlord of an inn refused to harbor them, taking them to be thieves or otherwise disreputable characters.

Cromwell was now the great man of England. His journey to London was a series of ovations, and his reception at the capital triumphant. The Parliamentary Commissioners received him with great respect, which was returned by a grandeur and an exalted courtesy on the part of the republican general, that could not have been surpassed by the dignity of a prince. Cromwell certainly did not forget what was due to his position as an exponent of the religious sentiment of the day, but took good care to make the usual professions of humility, and to ascribe "all the glory to the Lord." The republican was as grand and sumptuous as a prince in his

generosity, and bestowed upon each of the Commissioners a fine steed, and distributed among them some of the noble captives, who followed in the victor's train. Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, opened his eyes to the swelling grandeur of his general, and remarked: "This man will be King of England yet." To the triumph of Cromwell were added the successes of his lieutenants in Ireland and Scotland. Ireton was victorious in one kingdom, and Monk in the other. The American Colonies which had long held out for monarchy, now declared for the new government. The fleet had subjected the Channel islands, and now the authority of the Commonwealth was supreme wherever Englishmen ruled. The republic and Cromwell rose to power together.

CROM

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMWELL, with a palatial residence, a princely revenue, and the command of a large army, which he had always led to victory, was the most prominent as he was the most powerful man in England. Though the government was republican, and its theory equality, Cromwell having, by crushing the civil war, erected out of the fragments of a disorganized monarchy, the fair proportions of the Commonwealth, stood supreme within the temple to whom all would bow in worship. Monarchs courted him, great ministers of state did him homage, royal ambassadors humbled themselves before him. The powerful Mazarin, the minister of Louis le Grand, obsequiously sought his friendship. Cromwell was thus early treated as a power, and it was felt that in him centered England's might. The great man instinctively received the homage as his due, and made terms with monarchs, as if he wore the crown "which rounds the temples of a king." Louis XIV. instructs his ambassador, the Comte d'Estrades, "to open himself with all confidence with said Sieur Cromwell." And moreover, the great monarch

writes to him, as he would to a royal brother, to assure him of his good-will, and to entreat him to give credence to the ambassador who bears the letter, as a person in whom his majesty places entire confidence. This was while Cromwell was a private person, and held no authority but his military command. The leading politicians conferred with Cromwell on all the great questions, at his own house, and without his counsel nothing was devised, as without his mediation nothing done. The Parliament began to be alarmed, and strove to check the growing influence of their general by disbanding a portion of the army. Cromwell warily concealed his opposition to this wholesome measure, and apparently assented to what a regard for economy, as well as the fears of military usurpation demanded. Accordingly the army was diminished by the disbanding of the militia, which the commander-in-chief was not loth to spare, since it was a branch of the service which, from its direct relations with the people, readily sympathized with popular feeling. He was content with the veteran troops, who had been disciplined to fidelity, and were never unmindful of their gratitude to him who had led them to victory, and who were ever willing to obey their great leader.

Cromwell did not, in consequence of its distance from London, reside in Hampton Court, which had been conferred upon him, but preferred to remain in his town residence, where he had taken up his

quarters with his family. His purpose was to be in the midst of the great current of London, where he might watch closely the tide of affairs which was to bear him into fortune. Cromwell was surrounded by his family; his eldest son, Richard, who was now married, alternated between his father's residence in town and that of his wife's father, Richard Mayor, Esq., in the country. His son Henry, who had borne a manly part in the Irish invasion, had returned to London. Among the family circle was Cromwell's daughter, who had married Ireton. She had become a widow on the death of her husband by the plague in Ireland, and was now the object of the sedulous courtship of Fleetwood, one of Cromwell's most distinguished officers, whom she took for her second husband. Mrs. Claypole, another daughter, often comes up to London, on a visit to her father, from her husband's country-seat in Northamptonshire. Cromwell's wife is of course with him, as well as his aged mother, who, shaking her head with nervous alarm at the growing greatness of her son, never cares that he should be long out of her sight.

Young Richard Cromwell, who is indolent and fond of pleasure, enjoys the luxuries of the regal position of his father, and, prone to the dissipation of London life, lounges away the morning in the company of young gallants, while his wife is showing herself in the state carriage or receiving the visits of