In the same way the legend which represents Cromwell as attempting to emigrate to America and stopped by an order in council cannot be true as it is usually related, though it is by no means improbable that Cromwell may have thought of emigrating. According to Clarendon, he told him in 1641 that if the Remonstrance had not passed ‘he would have sold all he had the next morning, and never have seen England more’ (Rebellion, iv. 52). In May 1631 Cromwell disposed of the greater part of his property at Huntingdon, and with the sum of 1,800l. which he thus realised rented some grazing lands at St. Ives. In 1636, on the death of his uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, who made him his heir, he removed to Ely, and succeeded his uncle as farmer of the cathedral tithes.
During this period an important change seems to have taken place in Cromwell’s character. His first letter, like his first speech, shows him solicitous for the teaching of puritan theology, and watching with anxiety the development of Laud’s ecclesiastical policy. From the first he seems to have been a puritan in doctrine and profession, but by 1638 he had become something more. After a long period of religious depression, which caused one physician to describe him as ‘valde melancholicus,’ and another as ‘splenetic and full of fancies,’ he had, as he expressed it, been ‘given to see light.’ Looking back on his past life, he accused himself of having ‘lived in and loved darkness,’ of having been ‘the chief of sinners.’ Some biographers have supposed these words to refer to early excesses. They describe rather the mental struggles by which a formal Calvinist became a perfect enthusiast. They should be compared with the similar utterances of Bunyan or ‘the exceeding self-debasing words, annihilating and judging himself,’ which Cromwell spoke during his last illness. In the letter to Mrs. St. John in which Cromwell thus revealed himself he expressed the desire to show by his acts his thankfulness for this spiritual change. ‘If here I may honour my God either by doing or suffering, I shall be most glad. Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself forth in the cause of God than I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand’ (Carlyle, Letter ii.) In the two parliaments called in 1640 Cromwell was one of the members for the town of Cambridge (O. Cromwell, Life of O. Cromwell, p. 263). His connection with Hampden and John secured him a certain intimacy with the leaders of the advanced party in the Long parliament, and both in the House of Commons itself and in the committees he was very active. During the first session Cromwell was ‘specially appointed to eighteen committees, exclusive of various appointments amongst the knights and burgesses generally of the eastern counties’ (Sanford, 306). On 9 Nov., three days after business began, he presented the petition of John Lilburn, who had been imprisoned for selling Prynne’s pamphlets. It was on this occasion that Sir Philip Warwick first saw Cromwell, and noted that in spite of his being ‘very ordinarily apparelled’ he was ‘very much hearkened unto.’ ‘His stature,’ says Warwick, ‘was of (good size, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervour’ (Memoirs, 247). On another committee, appointed to consider the grants made from the queen’s jointure, the question of the enclosure of the soke of Somersham in Huntingdonshire arose, and Cromwell zealously defended the rights of the commoners against the encloser, the Earl of Manchester, and against the House of Lords, who supported his action (Sanford, 370). Cromwell’s name is also associated with two important public bills. On 30 Dec. 1640 he moved the second reading of Strode’s bill for reviving the old law of Edward III for annual parliaments. He spoke earnestly for the reception of the London petition against episcopacy, and was one of the originators of the ‘Root and Branch’ Bill introduced by Dering on 21 May 1641 (Dering, Speeches, p. 62). In the second session Cromwell brought forward motions to prevent the bishops from voting on the question of their own exclusion from the House of Lords, and for the removal of the Earl of Bristol from the king’s councils. Still more prominent was he when the parliament began to lay hands on the executive power. On 6 Nov. 1641 he moved to entrust Essex with the command of the trainbands south of Trent until parliament should take further order. On 14 Jan. 1642 he proposed the appointment of a committee to put the kingdom in a posture of defence (Gardiner, History of England, x. 41, 59, 119; Sanford, 474). The journals of the House of Commons during the early summer of 1642 are full of notices attesting the activity of Cromwell in taking practical measures for the defence of England and Ireland. Though he was not rich, he subscribed 600l. for the recovery of Ireland, and 500l. for the defence of the parliament (Rushworth, iv. 564). On 15 July the commons ordered that he should be repaid 100l. which he had expended in arming the county of Cambridge, and on the 15th of the following month Sir Philip Stapleton reported to them that Cromwell had seized the magazine in the castle at Cambridge, and
