The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 53

by Thomas Carlyle

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LETTER LIII

Here, by will of the Destinies preserving certain bits of paper and destroying others, there introduces itself a little piece of Domesticity; a small family-transaction, curiously enough peering through by its own peculiar rent, amid these great world-transactions: Marriage-treaty for Richard Cromwell, the Lieutenant-General’s eldest Son.

What Richard has been doing hitherto no Biographer knows. In spite of Noble, I incline to think he too had been in the Army; in October last there are two Sons mentioned expressly as being officers there: ‘One of his Sons, Captain of the General’s Lifeguard; his other Son, Captain of a troop in Colonel Harrison’s Regiment,’—so greedy is he of the Public Money to his own family!^[1] Richard is now heir-apparent; our poor Boy Oliver therefore, ‘Cornet Oliver,’ we know not in the least where, must have died. ‘It went to my heart like a dagger; indeed it did!’ The phrase of the Pamphlet itself, we observe, is ‘his other Son,’ not ‘one of his other Sons,’ as if there were now but two left. If Richard was ever in the Army, which these probabilities may dimly intimate, the Lifeguard, a place for persons of consequence, was the likeliest for him. The Captain in Harrison’s Regiment will in that case be Henry.—The Cromwell family, as we laboriously guess and gather, has about this time removed to London. Richard, if ever in the Lifeguard, has now quitted it: an idle fellow, who could never relish soldiering in such an Army; he now wishes to retire to Arcadian felicity and wedded life in the country.

The ‘Mr. M.’ of this Letter is Richard Mayor, Esquire, of Hursley, Hants,^[2] the young lady’s father. Hursley, not far from Winchester, is still a manorhouse, but no representative of Richard Mayor’s has now place there or elsewhere. The treaty, after difficulties, did take effect. Mayor, written also Major and Maijor, a pious prudent man, becomes better known to Oliver, to the world and to us in the sequel. Richard Norton, Member for Hants since 1645, is his neighbour; an old fellow-soldier under Manchester, fellow-colonel in the Eastern Association, seemingly very familiar with Oliver, he is applied to on this delicate occasion.

 

FOR MY NOBLE FRIEND COLONEL RICHARD NORTON: THESE

“London,” 25th Feb. 1647.

Dear Norton,—I have sent my Son over to thee, being willing to answer Providence; and although I had an offer of a very great proposition, from a father, of his daughter, yet truly I rather incline to this in my thoughts; because, though the other be very far greater, yet I see difficulties, and not that assurance of godliness,—though indeed of fairness. I confess that which is told me concerning the estate of Mr. M. is more than I can look for, as things now stand.

If God please to bring it about, the consideration of piety in the Parents, and such hopes of the Gentlewoman in that respect, make the business to me a great mercy; concerning which I desire to wait upon God.

I am confident of thy love; and desire things may be carried with privacy. The Lord do His will that’s best;—to which submitting, I rest, your humble servant,

OLIVER CROMWELL.^[3]

 

What other Father it was that made ‘the offer of a very great proposition’ to Oliver, in the shape of his Daughter as Wife to Oliver’s Son, must remain totally uncertain for the present ; perhaps some glimpse of it may turn up by and by. There were ‘difficulties’ which Oliver did not entirely see through; there was not that assurance of ‘godliness’ in the house, though there was of ‘fairness’ and natural integrity; in short, Oliver will prefer Mayor, at least will try him,—and wishes it carried with privacy.

 

The Commons, now dealing with Delinquents, do not forget to reward good Servants, to ‘conciliate the Grandees,’ as splenetic Walker calls it. For above two years past, ever since the War ended, there has been talk and debate about settling 2,500l. a-year on Lieutenant-General Cromwell; but difficulties have arisen. First they tried Basing-House Lands, the Marquis of Winchester’s, whom Cromwell had demolished; but the Marquis’s affairs were in disorder; it was gradually found the Marquis had for most part only a Life-rent there: —only ‘Abbotston and Itchin’ in that quarter could be realised. Order thereupon to settle ‘Lands of Papists and Delinquents’ to the requisite amount, wheresoever convenient. To settle especially what Lands the Marquis of Worcester had in that ‘County of Southampton’; which was done,—though still with insufficient result.^[4] Then came the Army Quarrels, and an end of such business. But now in the Commons Journals, 7th March, the very day of Oliver’s next Letter, this is what we read:^[5] ‘An Ordinance for passing unto Oliver Cromwell, Esquire, Lieutenant-General, certain Lands and Manors in the Counties of Gloucester, Monmouth, and Glamorgan, late the Earl of Worcester’s, was this day read the third time and, upon the question, passed; and ordered to be sent unto the Lords for their concurrence.’ Oliver himself, as we shall find, has been dangerously sick. This is what Clement Walker, the splenetic Presbyterian, ‘an elderly gentleman of low stature, in a gray suit, with a little stick in his hand,’ reports upon the matter of the Grant:

‘The 7th of March, an Ordinance to settle 2,500l. a-year of Land, out of the Marquis of Worcester’s Estate,—old Marquis of Worcester at Ragland, father of my Lord Glamorgan, who in his turn became Marquis of Worcester and wrote the Century of Inventions,—2,500l. a-year out of this old Marquis’s Estate ‘upon Lieutenant-General Cromwell! I have heard some gentlemen that know the Manor of Chepstow and the other Lands affirm’ that in reality they are worth 5,000l. or even 6,000l. a-year;—which is far from the fact, my little elderly friend! ‘You see,’ continues he, ‘though they have not made King Charles “a Glorious King,”’ as they sometimes undertook, ‘they have settled a Crown-Revenue upon Oliver, and have made him as glorious a King as ever John of Leyden was!’^[6]— —A very splenetic old gentleman in gray;—verging towards Pride’s Purge, and lodgment in the Tower, I think! He is from the West; known long since in Gloucester Siege; Member now for Wells; but terminates in the Tower, with ink, and abundant gall in it, to write the History of Independency there.

1. 5th October 1647 (Royalist Newspaper, citing a Pamphlet of Lilburn’s), Cromwelliana, p. 36.
2. Noble, ii. 436-42,
3. Harris, p. 501. Copy of this, and of the next Two Letters to Norton, by Birch, in Ayscough Mss. 4162, f, 56, etc.
4. Commons Journals (iv. 416), 23d January 1645-6: the Marquis of Worcester’s Hampshire Lands. Ib. 426, a week afterwards: ‘Abberston and Itchell,’ meaning Abbotston and Itchin, Marquis of Winchester’s there. See also Letter of Oliver St. John to Cromwell, in Thurloe, i. 75.—Commons Journals (v. 36) about a year afterwards, 7th January 1646-7: ‘remainder of the 2,500l.’ from Marquis of Winchester’s Lands in general; which in a fortnight more is found to be impossible: whereupon ‘Lands of Delinquents and Papists,’ as in the Text. None of these Hampshire Lands, except Abbotston and Itchin, are named. Noble says, ‘Fawley Park’ in the same County; which is possible enough.
5. v. 482.
6. History of Independeney (London, 1648), part i. 83 and 55.