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conduct; in his early life; at his first entrance upon public business; in his achievements as a soldier; in his rise to political power; and, finally, in his government of the three kingdoms, which he was the first to conquer. His character throughout is made to depend upon his actions; and the reader, accordingly, is every where supplied with evidence by means of which he may at once form his own judgment, and also ascertain the accuracy of the opinions which have been propagated by others.

LEITH, October 12, 1829.

LIFE

OF

OLIVER CROMWELL.

CHAPTER I.

Containing an Account of his Family, as also of his Habits and Domestic Pursuits until he entered upon his Military Career at the breaking out of the Civil War.

AS CROMWELL occupied no distinguished place in society till he was well advanced in life, his biographers have all along been deprived of the advantage of enlivening their narrative by a relation of those minor circumstances of education, early habits and propensities, on which the interest of personal history has its main dependence. Not being born in that high rank which holds out to all its members the means and inducements for future eminence, he found no one to record his progress through the several stages of childhood and youth; the incidents of which, in most cases, not only afford indications of individual temper and disposition, but also, not unfrequently, form the character of the mass of

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human beings, and determine the line of their most ardent pursuits. He was nearly forty years of age before he attracted any particular notice beyond the limits of his own family or neighbourhood; and when at length he appeared like the sun at noonday, and assumed a place in the eye of the world, which secured for him a lasting celebrity, the occurrences of his early days were already forgotten, or only remembered by those who, in describing the path through which he had advanced to power, were too much disposed either to flatter or to condemn.

In writing the life of a man who owed every thing to his own abilities and good fortune, it may seem superfluous to occupy the attention of the reader with genealogical details. It is proper, however, to mention that Oliver Cromwell belonged to a family which, several generations before his time, had attained to a considerable degree of wealth and reputation. The industry of Mr Noble has discovered that the ancestor of the Protector, in the fourth remove, was Morgan Williams, or rather Morgan ap William, a Welsh gentleman of respectable property, whose father, William ap Yevan, held an honourable place in the household of Jasper, Duke of Bedford, and even, it is said, in that of his nephew, King Henry the Seventh. Mr Morgan Williams married a sister of Thomas Lord Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, through whose powerful interest at Court he was enabled to lay the foundation of that opulence and rank which continued to throw lustre on his descendants during several subsequent

reigns. His eldest son, under the auspices of the Vicar-General, his uncle, rose rapidly into favour with Henry the Eighth, by whom he was elevated to the order of Knighthood, and also enriched by the grant of some valuable estates which, from time to time, fell to the disposal of the Crown. An attempt on the part of the Roman Catholics, in the year 1536, to check the progress of the Reformation in some of the eastern counties, afforded to the King a pretext for demolishing, to a still greater extent than he had hitherto thought expedient, the various monastic establishments in that district of England, and for disposing of their revenues to his favourites and dependents. Among other lands bestowed upon Sir Richard, either as the reward of his military services, or for a small payment in money, was the estate of Hinchinbrooke, in the county of Huntingdon, which thenceforth became the principal seat of the Cromwell family.

The distinguished person now mentioned assumed the surname of Cromwell, in compliance with a policy suggested by Henry the Eighth, who, with the intention of abolishing all distinction between the English and the Welsh, as well, perhaps, as for facilitating business in the courts of law, did all in his power to induce the latter people to adopt family names, and to relinquish entirely that more primitive mode of denoting lineal descent which the different branches of the Celtic race appear to have derived from their Oriental progenitors. It would seem that Morgan ap William himself had so far accommodated his nomenclature to the new

style, that he changed his address to Mr Morgan Williams; but as this surname was still very recent, his Majesty recommended to Sir Richard to use that of Cromwell, in honour of his relation the Earl of Essex. Hence, as all the other sons of the Glamorganshire squire followed at the same time the example of their eldest brother, the family patronymic fell gradually into disuse; although we are informed that, in almost all their deeds and wills, the progeny of William ap Yevan signed themselves Cromwell alias Williams, down to the reign of James the First.

Sir Richard left his estates and honours, which appear to have suffered no diminution from the downfall of his powerful relative, Lord Essex, to his eldest son, whose name was Henry. This gentleman was held in high esteem by Queen Elizabeth, who knighted him in the year 1563, and did him the further honour of becoming his guest, at his house of Hinchinbrooke, upon her return from visiting the University of Cambridge. He had six sons, named Oliver, Robert, Henry, Richard, Philip, and Ralph; the second of whom was the father of the remarkable individual whose character and actions constitute the principal subject of the following narrative.

Mr Robert Cromwell married the daughter of a gentleman resident in the city of Ely, whose name was Steward, a cadet, it is supposed, of a family of the same name, to whom belonged the lands and castle of Rosyth, in the county of Fife. According to Mr Noble, he was called William Steward, and described as claiming an

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