The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Of the Cromwell Kindred

by Thomas Carlyle

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CHAPTER III

OF THE CROMWELL KINDRED

Oliver Cromwell, afterwards Protector of the Commonwealth of England, was born at Huntingdon, in St. John’s Parish there, on the 25th of April 1599. Christened on the 29th of the same month; as the old Parish-registers of that Church still legibly testify.^[1]

His Father was Robert Cromwell, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, and younger brother of Sir Oliver Cromwell, Knights both; who dwelt successively, in rather sumptuous fashion, at the Mansion of Hinchinbrook hard by. His Mother was Elizabeth Steward, daughter of William Steward, Esquire, in Ely; an opulent man, a kind of hereditary Farmer of the Cathedral Tithes and Church lands round that city; in which capacity his son, Sir Thomas Steward, Knight, in due time succeeded him, resident also at Ely. Elizabeth was a young widow when Robert Cromwell married her: the first marriage, to one ‘William Lynne, Esquire, of Bassingbourne in Cambridgeshire,’ had lasted but a year: husband and only child are buried in Ely Cathedral, where their monument still stands; the date of their deaths, which followed near on one another, is 1589.^[2] The exact date of the young widow’s marriage to Robert Cromwell is nowhere given; but seems to have been in 1591.^[3] Our Oliver was their fifth child; their second boy; but the first soon died. They had ten children in all; of whom seven came to maturity, and Oliver was their only son. I may as well print the little Note, smelted long ago out of huge dross-heaps in Noble’s Book, that the reader too may have his small benefit of it.^[4]

This Elizabeth Steward, who had now become Mrs. Robert Cromwell, was, say the genealogists, ‘indubitably descended from the Royal Stuart Family of Scotland’; and could still count kindred with them. ‘From one Walter Steward, who had accompanied Prince James of Scotland, when our inhospitable politic Henry iv. detained the poor Prince, driven in by stress of weather to him here. Walter did not return with the Prince to Scotland; having ‘fought tournaments,’—having made an advantageous marriage-settlement here. One of his descendants, Robert Steward, happened to be Prior of Ely when Henry viii. dissolved the Monasteries; and proving pliant on that occasion, Robert Steward, last Popish Prior, became the first Protestant Dean of Ely, and—‘was remarkably attentive to his family,’ says Noble. ‘The profitable Farming of the Tithes at Ely, above mentioned; this, and other settlements, and good dotations of Church lands among his Nephews, were the fruits of Robert Steward’s pliancy on that occasion. The genealogists say, there is no doubt of this pedigree;—and explain in intricate tables, how Elizabeth Steward, Mother of Oliver Cromwell, was indubitably either the ninth, or the tenth, or some other fractional part of half a cousin to Charles Stuart, King of England.

Howsoever related to Charles Stuart or to other parties, Robert Cromwell, younger son of the Knight of Hinchinbrook, brought her home, we see, as his Wife, to Huntingdon, about 1591; and settled with her there, on such portion, with such prospects as a cadet of the House of Hinchinbrook might have. Portion consisting of certain lands and messuages round and in that Town of Huntingdon,—where, in the current name ‘Cromwell’s Acre,’ if not in other names applied to lands and messuages there, some feeble echo of him and his possessions still survives, or seems to survive. These lands he himself farmed: the income in all is guessed or computed to have been about 300l. a-year; a tolerable fortune in those times; perhaps somewhat like 1000l. now. Robert Cromwell’s Father, as we said, and then his elder Brother, dwelt successively in good style at Hinchinbrook near by. It was the Fether Sir Henry Cromwell, who from his sumptuosity was called the ‘Golden Knight’, that built, or that enlarged, remodelled and as good as built, the Mansion of Hinchinbrook; which had been a Nunnery while Nunneries still were: it was the son, Sir Oliver, likewise an expensive man, that sold it to the Montagues, since Earls of Sandwich, whose seat it still is. A stately pleasant House, among its shady lawns and expanses, on the left bank of the Ouse river, a short half mile west of Huntingdon;—still stands pretty much as Oliver Cromwell’s Grandfather left it; rather kept good and defended from the inroads of Time and Accident, than substantially altered. Several Portraits of the Cromwells, and other interesting portraits and memorials of the seventeenth and subsequent centuries, are still there. The Cromwell blazonry ‘on the great bay window,’ which Noble makes so much of, is now gone, destroyed by fire; has given place to Montague blazonry; and no dull man can bore us with that any more.

Huntingdon itself lies pleasantly along the left bank of the Ouse; sloping pleasantly upwards from Ouse Bridge, which connects it with the old village of Godmanchester; the Town itself consisting mainly of one fair street, which towards the north end of it opens into a kind of irregular market-place, and then contracting again soon terminates. The two churches of All-Saints and St. John’s, as you walk up northward from the Bridge, appear successively on your left; the churchyards flanked with shops or other houses. The Ouse, which is of very circular course in this quarter, ‘winding as if reluctant to enter the Fen-country,’ says one Topographer, has still a respectable drab-colour, gathered from the clays of Bedfordshire; has not yet the Stygian black which in a few miles farther it assumes for good. Huntingdon, as it were, looks over into the Fens; Godmanchester, just across the river, already stands on black bog. The country to the East is all Fen (mostly unreclaimed in Oliver’s time, and still of a very dropsical character); to the West it is hard green ground, agreeably broken into little heights, duly fringed with wood, and bearing marks of comfortable long-continued cultivation. Here, on the edge of the firm green land, and looking over into the black marshes with their alder-trees and willow-trees, did Oliver Cromwell pass his young years. Drunken Barnabee, who travelled, and drank, and made Latin rhymes, in that country about 1635, through whose glistening satyr-eyes, one can still discern this and the other feature of the Past, represents to us on the height behind Godmanchester, as you approach the scene from Cambridge and the south, a big Oak-tree,—which has now disappeared, leaving no notable successor.

Veni Godmanchester, ubi
Ut Ixion captus nube,
Sic, etc.

And he adds in a Note,

Quercus anilis erat, tamen eminus oppida spectat;
Stirpe viam monstrat, plumea fronde tegit;—

Or in his own English version,

An aged Oak takes of this Town survey,
Finds birds their nests, tells passengers their way.^[5]

If Oliver Cromwell climbed that Oak-tree, in quest of bird-nests or boy-adventures, the Tree, or this poor ghost of it, may still have a kind of claim to memory.

The House where Robert Cromwell dwelt, where his son Oliver and all his family were born, is still familiar to every inhabitant of Huntingdon: but it has been twice rebuilt since that date, and now bears no memorial whatever which even Tradition can connect with him. It stands at the upper or northern extremity of the Town,—beyond the Market-place we spoke of; on the left or river-ward side of the street. It is at present a solid yellow brick house, with a walled courtyard; occupied by some townsman of the wealthier sort. The little Brook of Hinchin, making its way to the Ouse which is not far off, still flows through the court-yard of the place,—offering a convenience for malting or brewing, among other things. Some vague but confident tradition as to Brewing attaches itself to this locality; and traces of evidence, I understand, exist that before Robert Cromwell’s time, it had been employed as a Brewery: but of this or even of Robert Cromwell’s own brewing, there is, at such a distance, in such an element of distracted calumny, exaggeration and confusion, little or no certainty to be had. Tradition, ‘the Rev. Dr. Lort’s Manuscripts,’ Carrion Heath, and such testimonies, are extremely insecure as guides! Thomas Harrison, for example, is always called ‘the son of a Butcher’; which means only that his Father, as farmer or owner, had grazing-lands, down in Staffordshire, wherefrom naturally enough proceeded cattle, fat cattle as the case might be,—well fatted, I hope. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex in Henry Eighth’s time, is in like manner called always ‘the son of a Blacksmith at Putney’;—and whoever figures to himself a man in black apron with hammer in hand, and tries to rhyme this with the rest of Thomas Cromwell’s history, will find that here too he has got into an insolubility. ‘The splenetic credulity and incredulity, the calumnious opacity, the exaggerative ill-nature, and general flunkyism and stupidity of mankind,’ says my Author, ‘are ever to be largely allowed for in such circumstances. We will leave Robert Cromwell’s brewing in a very unilluminated state. Uncontradicted Tradition, and old printed Royalist Lampoons, do call him a Brewer: the Brook of Hinchin, running through his premises, offered clear convenience for malting or brewing;—in regard to which, and also to his Wife’s assiduous management of the same, one is very willing to believe Tradition. The essential trade of Robert Cromwell was that of managing those lands of his in the vicinity of Huntingdon: the grain of them would have to be duly harvested, thrashed, brought to market; whether it was as corn or as malt that it came to market, can remain indifferent to us.

For the rest, as documents still testify, this Robert Cromwell, did Burgh and Quarter-Session duties; was not slack but moderately active as a country-gentleman; sat once in Parliament in his younger years;^[6] is found with his elder or other Brothers on various Public Commissions for Draining the Fens of that region, or more properly for inquiring into the possibility of such an operation; a thing much noised of then; which Robert Cromwell, among others, reported to be very feasible, very promising, but did not live to see accomplished, or even attempted. His social rank is sufficiently indicated;—and much flunkyism, falsity and other carrion ought to be buried! Better than all social rank, he is understood to have been a wise, devout, stedfast and worthy man, and to have lived a modest and manful life in his station there.

Besides the Knight of Hinchinbrook, he had other Brothers settled prosperously in the Fen regions, where this Cromwell Family had extensive possessions. One Brother Henry was ‘seated at Upwood,’ a fenny district near Ramsey Mere; one of his daughters came to be the wife, second wife, of Oliver St. John, the Ship-money Lawyer, the political ‘dark-lantern,’ as men used to name him; of whom we shall hear farther. Another Brother ‘was seated’ at Biggin House between Ramsey and Upwood; a moated mansion, with ditch and painted paling round it. A third Brother was seated at—my informant knows not where! In fact I had better, as before, subjoin the little smelted Note which has already done its duty, and let the reader make of that what he can.^[7] Of our Oliver’s Aunts one was Mrs. Hampden of Great Hampden, Bucks: an opulent, zealous person, not without ambitions; already a widow and mother of two Boys, one of whom proved very celebrated as John Hampden;—she was Robert Cromwell’s Sister. Another Cromwell Aunt of Oliver’s was married to ‘Whalley, heir of the Whalley family in Notts’; another to the ‘heir of the Dunches of Pusey, in Berkshire’; another to—In short the stories of Oliver’s ‘poverty,’ if they were other-

wise of any moment, are all false; and should be mentioned here, if still here, for the last time. The family was of the rank of substantial gentry, and duly connected with such in the counties round, for three generations back. Of the numerous and now mostly forgettable cousinry we specify farther only the Mashams of Otes in Essex, as like to be of some cursory interest to us by and by.

 

There is no doubt at all but Oliver the Protector’s family was related to that of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the Putney ‘Blacksmith’s’ or Iron-master’s son, transiently mentioned above; the Malleus Monachorum, or, as old Fuller renders it, ‘Mauler of Monasteries,’ in Henry Eighth’s time. The same old Fuller, a perfectly veracious and most intelligent person, does indeed report as of ‘his own knowledge,’ that Oliver Protector, once upon a time when Bishop Goodman came dedicating to him some unreadable semi-popish jargon about the ‘mystery of the Holy Trinity’, and some adulation about ‘his Lordship’s relationship to the former great Purifier of the Church,’ and Mauler of Monasteries,—answered impatiently, ‘My family has no relation to his!’ This old Fuller reports, as of his own knowledge. I have consulted the unreadable semi-popish jargon, for the sake of that Dedication; I find that Oliver’s relationship to Thomas Cromwell is in any case stated wrong there, not right: I reflect farther that Bishop Goodman, oftener called ‘Bishop Badman’ in those times, went over to Popery; had become a miserable impoverished old piece of confusion, and at this time could appear only in the character of begging bore,—when, at any rate, for it was in the year 1653, Oliver himself, having just turned out the Long Parliament,^[8] was busy enough! I infer therefore that Oliver said to him impatiently, without untruth, ‘You are quite wrong as to all that: good morning!’—and that old Fuller, likewise without untruth, reports it as above.

But, at any rate, there is other very simple evidence entirely conclusive. Richard or Sir Richard Cromwell, great-grandfather of Oliver Protector, was a man well known in his day; had been very active in the work of suppressing monasteries; a righthand man to Thomas the Mauler: and indeed it was on Monastic Property, chiefly or wholly, that he had made for himself a sumptuous estate in those Fen regions. Now, of this Richard Cromwell there are two Letters to Thomas Cromwell, ‘Vicar-General,’ Earl of Essex, which remain yet visible among the Manuscripts of the British Museum; in both of which he signs himself with his own hand, ‘your most bounden Nephew,’—an evidence sufficient to set the point at rest. Copies of the Letters are in my possession; but I grudge to inflict them on the reader. One of them, the longer of the two, stands printed, with all or more than all its original misspelling and confused obscurity, in Noble:^[9] it is dated ‘Stamford, without day or year; but the context farther dates it as contemporary with the Lincolnshire Rebellion, or Anti-Reformation riot, which was directly followed by the more formidable ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ in Yorkshire to the like effect, in the autumn of 1536.^[10] Richard, in company with other higher official persons, represents himself as straining every nerve to beat down and extinguish this traitorous

fanatic flame, kindled against the King’s Majesty and his Reform of the Church; has an eye in particular to a certain Sir John Thymbleby in Lincolnshire, whom he would fain capture as a ringleader; suggests that the use of arms should be prohibited to these treasonous populations, except under conditions;—and seems hastening on, with almost furious speed; towards Yorkshire and the Pilgrimage of Grace, we may conjecture. The second Letter, also without date except ‘Tuesday,’ shadows to us an official man, again on business of hot haste; journeying from Monastery to Monastery; finding this Superior disposed to comply with the King’s Majesty, and that other not disposed, but capable of being made so; intimates farther that he will be at his own House (presumably Hinchinbrook), and then straightway ‘home,’ and will report progress to my Lord in person. On the whole, as this is the earliest articulate utterance of the Oliver Family; and casts a faint glimmer of light, as from a single flint-spark, into the dead darkness of the foregone century; and touches withal on an acquaintance of ours, the ‘Prior of Ely,’—Robert Steward, last Popish Prior, first Protestant Dean of Ely, and brother of Mrs. Robert Cromwell’s ancestor, which is curious to think of,—we will give the Letter, more especially as it is very short:

‘To my Lord Cromwell.

‘I have me most humbly commended unto your Lordship. I rode on Sunday to Cambridge to my bed;^[11] and the next morning was up betimes, purposing to have found at Ely Mr. Pollard and Mr. Williams. But they were departed before my coming: and so, “they” being at dinner at Somersham with the Bishop of Ely, I overtook them “there.”^[12] At which time, I opened your pleasure unto them in everything. Your Lordship, I think, shall shortly perceive the Prior of Ely to be of a froward sort, by evident tokens;^[13] as, at our coming home, shall be at large related unto you.

‘At the writing hereof we have done nothing at Ramsey; saving that one night I communed with the Abbot; whom I found conformable to everything, as shall be at this time put in act.^[14] And then, as your Lordship’s will is, as soon as we have done at Ramsey, we go to Peterborough. And from thence to my House; and so home.^[15] The which, I trust, shall be at the farthest on this day come seven days.

‘That the Blessed Trinity preserve your Lordship’s health!

‘Your Lordship’s most bounden Nephew,

‘Richard Cromwell.

‘From Ramsey, on Tuesday in the morning.’^[16]

The other Letter is still more express as to the consanguinity; it says, among other things, ‘And longer than I may have heart so, as my most bounden duty is, to serve the King’s Grace with body, goods, and all that ever I am able to make; and your Lordship, as Nature and also your manifold kindness bindeth,—I beseech God I no longer live. ‘As Nature bindeth.’ Richard Cromwell then thanks him, with a bow to the very ground, for ‘my poore wyef,’ who has had some kind remembrance from his Lordship; thinks all ‘his travail but a pastime’; and remains, ‘at Stamford this Saturday at eleven of the clock, your humble Nephew most bounden,’ as in the other case. A vehement, swift-riding man! Nephew, it has been suggested, did not mean in Henry the Eighth’s time so strictly as it now does, brother’s or sister’s son; it meant nepos rather, or kinsman of a younger generation: but on all hypotheses of its meaning, the consanguinity of Oliver Protector of England and Thomas Mauler of Monasteries is not henceforth to be doubted.

Another indubitable thing is, That this Richard, your Nephew most bounden, has signed himself in various Law-deeds and Notarial papers still extant, ‘Richard Cromwell alias Williams’; also that his sons and grandsons continued to sign Cromwell alias Williams; and even that our Oliver himself in his youth has been known to sign so. And then a third indubitable thing on this matter is, That Leland, an exact man, sent out by Authority in those years to take cognisance, and make report, of certain points connected with the Church Establishments in England, and whose well-known Itinerary is the fruit of that survey, has written in that Work these words; under the head, ‘Commotes^[17] in Glamorganshire’:

‘Kibworth lieth’, extendeth, ‘from the mouth of Remny up to an Hill in the same Commote, called Kevenon, a six miles from the mouth of Remny. This Hill goeth as a wall over-thwart betwixt the Rivers of Thave and Remny. A two miles from this Hill by the south, and a two miles from Cardiff, be vestigia of a Pile or Manor Place decayed, at Egglis Newith in the parish of Llandaff.^[18] On the south side of this Hill was born Richard Williams alias Cromwell, in the Parish of Llanilsen.’^[19]

That Richard Cromwell, then, was of kindred to Thomas Cromwell; that he, and his family after him, signed ‘alias Williams’; and that Leland, an accurate man, said and printed, in the official scene where Richard himself was living and conspicuous, He was born in Glamorganshire: these three facts are indubitable;—but to these three we must limit ourselves. For, as to the origin of this same ‘alias Williams,’ whether it came from the general ‘Williamses of Berkshire’^[20], or from ‘Morgan Williams a Glamorganshire gentleman married to the sister of Thomas Cromwell,’ or from whom or what it came, we have to profess ourselves little able, and indeed not much concerned to decide. Williamses are many: there is Richard Cromwell, in that old Letter, hoping to breakfast with a Williams at Ely,—but finds both him and Pollard gone! Facts, even trifling facts, when indisputable may have significance; but Welsh Pedigrees, ‘with seventy shields of arms,’ ‘Glothian Lord of Powys’ (prior or posterior to the Deluge), though ‘written on a parchment eight feet by two feet four, bearing date 1602, and belonging to the Miss Cromwells of Hampstead,’^[21] are highly unsatisfactory to the ingenuous mind! We have to remark two things: First, that the Welsh Pedigree, with its seventy shields and ample extent of sheepskin, bears date London, 1602; was not put together, therefore, till about a hundred years after the birth of Richard, and at a great distance from the scene of that event: circumstances which affect the unheraldic mind with some misgivings. Secondly, that ‘learned Dugdale,’ upon whom mainly, apart from these uncertain Welsh sheepskins, the story of this Welsh descent of the Cromwells seems to rest, has unfortunately stated the matter in two different ways,—as being, and then also as not being,—in two places of his learned Lumber-Book.^[22] Which circumstance affects the unheraldic mind with still fataler misgivings,—and in fact raises irrepressibly the question and admonition, ‘What boots it? Leave the vain region of blazonry, of rusty broken shields and genealogical marine-stores; let it remain for ever doubtful! The Fates themselves have appointed it even so. Let the uncertain Simulacrum of a Glothian, prior or posterior to Noah’s Deluge, hover between us and the utter Void; basing himself on a dust-chaos of ruined heraldries, lying genealogies, and saltires checky, the best he can!’

The small Hamlet and Parish Church of Cromwell, or Crumwell (the Well of Crum, whatever that may be), still stands on the Eastern edge of Nottinghamshire, not far from the left bank of the Trent; simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of divine service every Sunday. From this, without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell kindred all got their name,—in very old times indeed. From torpedo rubbish-records we learn also, without great difficulty, that the Barons Cromwell were summoned to Parliament from Edward Second’s time and downward; that they had their chief seat at Tattershall in Lincolnshire; that there were Cromwells of distinction, and of no distinction, scattered in reasonable abundance over that Fen-country,—Cromwells Sheriffs of their Counties there in Richard’s own time.^[23] The Putney Blacksmith, Father of the Malleus, or Hammer that smote Monasteries on the head,—a Figure worthy to take his place beside Hephaistos, or Smith Mimer, if we ever get a Pantheon in this Nation,—was probably enough himself a Fen-country man; one of the junior branches, who came to live by metallurgy in London here. Richard, also sprung of the Fens, might have been his kinsman in many ways, have got the name of Williams in many ways, and even been born on the Hill behind Cardiff, independently of Glothian. Enough: Richard Cromwell, on a background of heraldic darkness, rises clearly visible to us; a man vehemently galloping to and fro, in that sixteenth century; tourneying successfully before King Harry,^[24] who loved a man; quickening the death-agonies of Monasteries; growing great on their spoil;—and fated, he also, to produce another Malleus Cromwell that smote a thing or two. And so we will leave this matter of the Birth and Genealogy.

1. Noble, i. 92.
2. Noble, ii. 198, and ms. penes me.
3. Ibid. i. 88.

4. Oliver Cromwell’s Brothers and Sisters.

   Oliver’s Mother had been a widow (Mrs. Lynne of Bassingbourne) before marrying Robert Cromwell; neither her age nor his is discoverable here.

   1. First child (seemingly), Joan, baptised 24th September 1592; she died in 1600 (Noble, i. 88).
   2. Elizabeth, 14th October 1593; died unmarried, thinks Noble, in 1672, at Ely.—See Appendix, No, 23, a Letter in regard to her, which has turned up. (Note of 1857.)
   3. Henry, 31st August 1595; died young, ‘before 1617.’
   4. Catherine, 7th February 1596-7; married to Whitstone, a Parliamentary Officer; then to Colonel Jones.
   5. Oliver, born 25th April 1599.
   6. Margaret, 22d February 1600-1; she became Mrs. Wanton, or Walton, Huntingdonshire; her son was killed at Marston Moor,—as we shall see.
   7. Anna, 2d January 1602-3; Mrs. Sewster, Huntingdonshire; died 1st November 1646:—her Brother Oliver had just ended the ‘first Civil War’ then.
   8. Jane, 19th January 1605-6; Mrs, Desborow, Cambridgeshire; died, seemingly, in 1656.
   9. Robert, 18th January 1608-9; died same April.
   10. Robina, so named for the above Robert: uncertain date: became Mrs. Dr. French; then wife of Bishop Wilkins: her daughter by French, her one child, was married to Archbishop Tillotson.
5. Barnaba Itinerarium (London, 1818), p. 96.
6. ‘35to Eliz. :’ Feb.—April 1593 (Noble, i. 83; from Willis).

7. Oliver’s Uncles.

   1. Sir Oliver of Hinchinbrook; his eldest son John, born in 1589 (ten years older than our Oliver), went into the army, ‘Colonel of an English regiment in the Dutch service’: this is the Colonel Cromwell who is said, or fabled, to have sought a midnight interview with Oliver, in the end of 1648, for the purpose of buying-off Charles i.; to have ‘laid his hand on his sword,’ etc. etc. The story is in Noble, i. 51; with no authority but that of Carrion Heath. Other sons of his were soldiers, Royalists these: there are various Cousin Cromwells that confusedly turn-up on both sides of the quarrel.—Robert Cromwell, our Oliver’s Father, was the next Brother of the Hinchinbrook Knight. The third Brother, second uncle, was
   2. Henry Cromwell, of Upwood near Ramsey Mere; adventurer in the Virginia Company: sat in Parliament 1603-1611; one of his daughters Mrs. St. John. Died 1630 (Noble, i. 28).
   3. Richard: ‘buys in 1607’ a bit of ground in Huntingdon; died ‘at Ramsey,’ 1628; was Member for Huntingdon in Queen Elizabeth’s time :—Lived in Ramsey? Is buried at Upwood.
   4. Sir Philip: Biggin House; knighted at Whitehall, 1604 (Noble, i. 31). His second son, Philip, was in Colonel Ingoldsby’s regiment;—wounded at the storm of Bristol, in 1645. Third son, Thomas, was in Ireland with Strafford (signs Montnorris’s death-warrant there, in 1630); lived afterwards in London; became Major, and then Colonel, in the King’s Army. Fourth son, Oliver, was in the Parliamentary Army; had watched the King in the Isle of Wight,—went with his cousin, our Oliver, to Ireland in 1649, and died or was killed there. Fifth son, Robert, ‘poisoned his Master, an Attorney, and was hanged at London,’—if there be truth in ‘Heath’s Flagellum’ (Noble, i. 35) ‘and some Pedigrees’;—year not given; say about 1635, when the lad, ‘born 1617,’ was in his 18th year? I have found no hint of this affair in any other quarter, not in the wildest Royalist-Birkenhead or Walker’s-Independency lampoon; and consider it very possible that a Robert Cromwell having suffered ‘for poisoning an Attorney,’ he may have been called the cousin of Cromwell by ‘Heath and some Pedigrees, But of course anybody can ‘poison an Attorney,’ and be hanged for it!

   ---

   Oliver’s Aunt Elizabeth was married to William Hampden of Great Hampden, Bucks (year not given, Noble, i. 36, nor at p. 68 of vol. ii.; nor in Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden): he died in 1597; she survived him 67 years, continuing a widow (Noble, ii. 69). Buried in Great Hampden Church, 1664, aged 90. She had two sons, John and Richard: John, born 1594,—Richard, an Oliverian too, died in 1659 (Noble, ii. 70).

   Aunt Joan (elder than Elizabeth) was ‘Lady Barrington’; Aunt Frances (younger) was Mrs. Whalley. Richard Whalley of Kerton, Notts; a man of mark; sheriff, etc., three wives, children only by his second, this ‘Aunt Fanny.’ Three children :—Thomas Whalley (no years given, Noble, ii. 141) died in his father’s lifetime; left a son who was a kind of Royalist, but yet had a certain acceptance with Oliver too. Edward Whalley, the famed ‘Colonel,’ and Henry Whalley, ‘the Judge-Advocate’: wretched biographies of these two are in Noble, pp. 141, 143-56. Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goff, after the Restoration, fled to New England; lived in ‘caves’ there, and had a sore time of it: New England in a vague manner, still remembers them.

   Enough of the Cousinry!—

8. The date of Goodman’s Book is 25th June 1653; here is the correct title of it (King’s Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 73. § i): ‘The two great Mysteries of Christian Religion; the Ineffable Trinity and Wonderful Incarnation: by G. G.G.’ (meaning Godfrey Goodman, Glocestrensis). Unfortunate persons who have read Land’s writings are acquainted with this Bishop Goodman, or Badman: he died a declared Papist. Poor man, his speculations, now become jargon to us, were once Very serious and eloquent to him! Such is the fate that soon overtakes all men who, quitting the ‘Eternal Melodies,’ take up their abode in the outer Temporary Discords, and seek their subsistence there! This is the part of the Dedication that concerns us:
   
   ‘To his Excellency my Lord Oliver Cromwell, Lord General. My Lord,—Fifty years since, the name of Socinus,’ etc.—‘Knowing that the Lord Cromwell (your Lordship’s great-uncle) was then in great favour,’ etc.
   ‘Godfree Goodman.’
9. i. 242.
10. Herbert (in Kennet, ii. 204-5).
11. From London, we suppose.
12. The words within double commas, “they” and “there,” are added for bringing out the sense; a plan we shall follow in all the Original Letters of this Collection.
13. He proved tameable, Sir Richard,—and made your Great-grandson rich, for one consequence of that!
14. Brought to legal black-on-white.
15. To London.
16. Mss. Cotton. Cleopatra E. iv. p. 204 b. The envelope and address are not here; but this docket of address, given in a sixteenth-century hand, and otherwise indicated by the text, is not doubtful. The signature alone, and line preceding that, are in Richard’s hand, In the Letter printed by Noble the address remains, in the hand of Richard’s clerk.
17. Commote is the Welsh word Cwmwd, now obsolete as an official division, equivalent to cantred, hundred. Kibworth Commote is now Kibbor Hundred.
18. ‘Egglis Newith’ is Eglwys Newydd, New Church, as the Welsh peasants still name it, though officially it is now called White Church. River ‘Thave’ means Taff. The description of the wall-like Hill between the two streams, Taff and Remny, is recognisably correct: Kevenon, spelt Cevn-on, ‘Ash-tree ridge,’ is still the name of the Hill.
19. Noble, i. 238, collated with Leland (Oxford, 1769), iv. fol. 56, pp. 37, 38 Leland gathered his records ‘in six years,’ between 1533 and 1540; he died, endeavouring to assort them, in 1552. They were long afterwards published by Hearne.
20. Biographia Britannica (London, 1789), iv. 474.
21. Noble, i. 1.
22. Dugdale’s Baronage, ii. 374, 393-
23. Fuller’s Worthies, § Cambridgeshire, etc.
24. Stowe’s Chronicle (London, 1631), p. 580; Stowe’s Survey, Holinshed, etc.