ground on which his opposition to government was thenceforth to be maintained.

Upon the dissolution of Parliament, Cromwell returned to the duties or amusements of domestic life. In the year 1630, when a new charter was granted by the King to the corpo ration of Huntingdon, he was appointed a justice of the peace, in conjunction with his old schoolmaster Dr Beard, and Robert Bernard, Esq., a proof that his hostility to the Crown was either not known, or lightly regarded. But his native town did not now prove agree able to him. Sir Oliver, his uncle, who lived in the neighbourhood, was decidedly loyal, and possessed sufficient influence over the townsmen to keep them steady to the royal cause; and hence he could expect no encouragement in pursuing the line of policy to which his views of duty or of interest had begun to invite him. It is said, too, that he bore with impatience the precedency assumed by Dr Beard, whose academical rank entitled him to certain honours not granted to his ambitious pupil. The embarrass ed state of his affairs, too, has been assigned as a reason for his desire to remove to a different part of the country. But, whatever truth there may in this, there is no doubt that in the year 1631, he prevailed upon his mother, his wife, and his uncle, Sir Oliver, to concur with him in the sale of the lands and tithes which belonged to the family, in order that he might realize such a sum of money as would enable him to engage in some more profitable branch of business. The purchase was made by Richard Oatley and Richard Owen, who paid L.1800 for the lands, tene

be

ments, leases, and tithes belonging to the widow Cromwell and her son, situated in Huntingdon, Godmanchester, and Brampton. Lord Sandwich, who now possesses the said property, informed Mr Noble that, in the rental of the estates there is a small portion of land near Godmanchester still called Cromwell's Swath, and two acres in the manor of Brampton, which continued to bear the name of Cromwell's Acres -the only memorial of a local nature which remains to identify the residence, and perpetuate the fame, of one of the most remarkable that England has produced.

persons

There is, indeed, still preserved at Huntingdon a document to which the Protector's signature is affixed. In 1630, a gentleman in the immediate vicinity of the town wished to buy from the burgesses a small piece of land which lay contiguous to his estate. The corporation and principal inhabitants consented to. the transfer, but the lower class of the people raised an outcry against disposing of any part of their common property; when, to obviate this prejudice, the intending purchaser obtained the signatures of as many as were willing to sell the little portion of pasture ground. The third name in the list is that of Cromwell, immediately after that of his old and stern preceptor Dr Beard. This occurrence, perhaps, is of no great moment, but it shows that Oliver had not yet deserted the banners of the aristocracy.

With the money which he had raised by the sale of his property, Cromwell stocked a farm near St Ives, where he devoted his attention during four or five years to the pursuits of agri

culture. His success, however, in this new undertaking, appears not to have corresponded to the usual activity of his disposition; and whatever may have been the cause of his failure, it is certain that his worldly affairs did not keep pace either with his reputation for piety, or with his influence among his neighbours. It has been surmised that he spent the greater part of his time in devotional exercises and expositions of the Holy Scriptures. Instead of sending his servants into the fields at an early hour, he detained them at home, it was said, to listen to his enforcement of divine truth, or to his illustrations of the favourite doctrines which at that period began to take possession of the popular mind. In the evening he assembled them once more to hear a repetition of some lecture at which he had assisted in the course of the day; to relate the experiences of which it was expected. that every good Christian preserved a minute, record; and to compare the progress which they were severally making in the course of practical religion. Meantime the labours of the farm were neglected, and the affairs of the pious master were fast hastening to ruin. The cold and damp air, too, affected his constitution, while his mind became more and more a prey to the most gloomy apprehensions, the fruits of that epidemical fanaticism which was then spreading over both the British kingdoms. His appearance in the parish church was long remembered, from the circumstance that he generally wore a piece of red flannel round his neck, as he was subject to an inflammation in the throat, occasioned by excessive moisture and impure air.

There is probably much exaggeration in the above statement, not only because it is founded upon the representations of his enemies, but more especially because it betrays the most entire inconsistency with the general character of Cromwell, than whom none ever knew better how to accommodate means to ends. It is true he had not yet discovered an object suited to his genius, or calculated to rouse and interest the latent powers of his mind; and being ignorant of farming as a branch of rural industry, he might by his best efforts only involve himself in deeper embarrassments, and in more hopeless poverty. Be this as it may, his experiment at St Ives is said to have had no other effect than to place him on the brink of ruin, when, by the death of his maternal uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, he succeeded to a considerable property in the neighbourhood of Ely, which at once procured for him a more respectable station than he had theretofore occupied, and supplied him with the means of supporting his new rank. Mr Noble informs us that a large barn which Cromwell built, still goes by his name, and that the farmer who now rents the lands which he occupied, marks his sheep with the identical irons which Oliver used, and which have upon them the letters O. C. In the town, too, there yet remains a more characteristic memorial of the Protector,—a number of swords possessed by various individuals, and bearing the initials of the warlike agriculturist, a part of the supply, it has been conjectured, that he sent down in the year 1642, and for

which the House of Commons voted to him a hundred pounds.

It has been observed, that Cromwell, while he resided at St Ives, continued to attend the established church; and there is evidence on record, that he was occasionally intrusted with the civil business of the parish. But it is clear, at the same time, that he was not on good terms with the clergy. He exerted all the influence which he possessed for the encouragement of fanatical lecturers, both there and at Huntingdon; and it appears that he used the power with which he was invested as one of the Committee of Religion in the Long Parliament, to persecute the regular incumbents under the most frivolous pretences. The Rev. Henry Downett, was vicar of St Ives at the period in question, who, in the year 1642, was taken into custody by the Sergeant-at-arms, for refusing to admit a factious lecturer, and forthwith sequestered. Mr Reynolds, the curate, was silenced by the same tyrannical authority, the exercise of which, on this occasion, has usually been attributed to the instigation of their late townsman, who, if he had been favourably disposed towards them, could easily have prevented so severe a punishment.* The industrious compiler of the Memoirs suspects, that by procuring complaints against them, he was the direct and immediate cause of the sufferings of these two orthodox and loyal divines. I am the more apt to believe this to be the case, says he, as Cromwell seems to have harboured revenge against such

* Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy.