LETTER CXIX.

For my beloved Son, Richard Cromwell, Esquire, at Hursley in Hampshire: These.

DICK CROMWELL,

Carrick, 2d April, 1650.

I take your Letters kindly: I like expressions when they come plainly from the heart, and are not strained nor affected.

I am persuaded it's the Lord's mercy to place you where you are: I wish you may own it and be thankful, fulfilling all relations to the glory of God. Seek the Lord and His face continually :-let this be the business of your life and strength; and let all things be subservient and in order to this! You cannot find nor behold the face of God but in Christ; therefore labour to know God in Christ; which the Scripture makes to be the sum of all, even Life Eternal. Because the true knowledge is not literal or speculative; 'no,' but inward; transforming the mind to it. It's uniting to, and participating of, the Divine Nature (Second Peter, i. 4): That by these ye might be partakers ' of the Divine Nature, having escaped the corruption that 'is in the world through lust.' It's such a knowledge as Paul speaks of (Philippians, iii. 8-10): 'Yea doubtless, and 'I count all things but loss for the excellency of the know'ledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For whom I have suf⚫fered the loss of all things; and do count them but dung 'That I may win Christ, and be found in Him,—not having mine own righteousness which is of the Law, but that which is through the Faith of Christ, the righteousness 'which is of God by Faith ;-that I may know Him, and 'the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His Sufferings; being made conformable unto His Death."

1 These sentences,- well known to Oliver; familiar to him in their phraseology, and in their sense too; and never to be finally forgotten by the

How little of this knowledge is among us! My weak prayers shall be for you.

Take heed of an unactive vain spirit! Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History: it's a Body of History; and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of Story.-Intend1 to understand the Estate I have settled: it's your concernment to know it all, and how it stands. I have heretofore suffered much by too much. trusting others. I know my Brother Mayor will be helpful to you in all this.

You will think, perhaps, I need not advise you To love your Wife! The Lord teach you how to do it ;-or else it will be done ill-favouredly. Though Marriage be no instituted Sacrament, yet where the undefiled bed is, and love, this union aptly resembles that of' Christ and His Church. If you can truly love your Wife, what 'love' doth Christ bear to His Church and every poor soul therein,— who "gave Himself" for it and to it! Commend me to your Wife; tell her I entirely love her, and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord to her. I wish her everyway fruitful. I thank her for her loving Letter.

My

I have presented my love to my Sister and Cousin Ann, &c. in my Letter to my Brother Mayor. I would not have him alter his affairs because of my debt. purse is as his my present thoughts are but To lodge such a sum for my two little Girls ;-it's in his hand as well as anywhere. I shall not be wanting to accommodate him to his mind; I would not have him solicitous.-Dick, the Lord bless you every way. I rest,

Your loving Father,

OLIVER CROMWELL.*

earnest-hearted of the Sons of Men,- -are not quoted in the Original, but merely indicated. 1 Old word for endeavour.'

* Memoirs of the Protector Oliver Cromwell, by Oliver Cromwell, Esquire, a Descendant of the Family (London, 1822), i. 369. An incorrect,

In the end of this month, 'the President Frigate,' President Bradshaw Frigate, sails from Milford Haven to attend his Excellency's pleasure,' and bring him home if he see good to come. He has still one storm to do there first; that of Clonmel, where 'Two-thousand foot, all Ulster men,' are gathered for a last struggle ;—the death-agony of this War, after which it will fairly die, and be buried. A very fierce storm, and fire-whirlwind of last agony; whereof take this solid account by an eye-witness and hand-actor; and so leave this part of our subject. The date is 10th May, 1650; a Letter from Clonmel in Ireland :'

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"Worthy Sir,-Yesterday," Thursday, 9th May, "we stormed "Clonmel in which work both officers and soldiers did as much " and more than could be expected. We had, with our guns, "made a breach in their works ;-where, after an hot fight, we gave back a while; but presently charged up to the same ground again. But the Enemy had made themselves exceeding strong, by double-works and traverse, which were worse to "enter than the breach; when we came up to it, they had cross"works, and were strongly flanked from the houses within their "works. The Enemy defended themselves against us that day, "until towards the evening, our men all the while keeping up "close to their breach; and many on both sides were slain.” The fierce death-wrestle, in the breaches here, lasted four hours: so many hours of hot storm and continuous tug of war, " and

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many men were slain." "At night, the Enemy drew out, on "the other side, and marched away undiscovered to us; and the "Inhabitants of Clonmel sent out for a parley. Upon which, "Articles were agreed on, before we knew the Enemy was gone. "After signing of the Conditions, we discovered the Enemy to be 'gone; and, very early this morning, pursued them; and fell "upon their rear of stragglers, and killed above 200,-besides "those we slew in the storm. We entered Clonmel this morning, " and have kept our Conditions with them. The place is consi"derable; and very advantageous to the reducing of these parts

dull, insignificant Book; contains this Letter, and one or two others, in possession of the Cromwell Family.'-Another Descendant, Thomas Cromwell, Esquire's Oliver Cromwell and his Times (London, 1821), is of a vaporous, gesticulative, dull-aërial, still more insignificant character; and contains nothing that is not common elsewhere.

Whitlocke has heard

"wholly to the Parliament of England."

by other Letters, That they found in Clonmel the stoutest Enemy this Army had ever met in Ireland; and that there was

never seen so hot a storm of so long continuance, and so gallantly defended, either in England or Ireland.""

The Irish Commander here was Hugh O'Neil, a kinsman of Owen Roe's :-vain he too, this new brave O'Neil! It is a lost Cause. It is a Cause he has not yet seen into the secret of, and cannot prosper in. Fiery fighting cannot prosper in it; no, there needs something other first, which has never yet been done! Let the O'Neil go elsewhither, with his fighting talent; here it avails nothing, and less. To the surrendered Irish Officers the Lord Lieutenant granted numerous permissions to embody regiments, and go abroad with them into any Country not at war with England. Some Five-and-forty Thousand' Kurisees, or whatever name they had, went in this way to France, to Spain, and fought there far off; and their own land had peace.

The Lord Lieutenant would fain have seen Waterford surrender before he went: but new Letters arrive from the Parliament; affairs in Scotland threaten to become pressing. He appoints Ireton his Deputy, to finish the business here; rapidly makes what survey of Munster, what adjustment of Ireland, military and civil, is possible ;-steps on board the President Frigate, in the last days of May, and spreads sail for England. He has been some nine months in Ireland; leaves a very handsome spell of work done there.

At Bristol, after a rough passage, the Lord Lieutenant is received with all the honours and acclamations, the great guns firing thrice;' hastens up to London, where, on Friday 31st May, all the world is out to welcome him. Fairfax, and chief Officers, and Members of Parliament, with solemn salutation, on Hounslow Heath: from Hounslow Heath to Hyde Park, where are Trainbands and Lord Mayors; on to Whitehall and the Cockpit, where are better than these,—it is one wide tumult of salutation, congratulation, artillery-volleying, human shouting ;-Heroworship after a sort, not the best sort. It was on this occasion

1 Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 81).

2 Whitlocke, p. 441.

that Oliver said, or is reported to have said, when some sycophantic person observed, "What a crowd come out to see your Lordship's triumph!"—"Yes, but if it were to see me hanged, how many would there be !”’———

Such is what the Irish common people still call the “Curse of Cromwell;" this is the summary of his work in that country. The remains of the War were finished out by Ireton, by Ludlow : Ireton died of fever, at Limerick, in the end of the second year;2 and solid Ludlow, who had been with him for some ten months, succeeded. The ulterior arrangements for Ireland were those of the Commonwealth Parliament and the proper Official Persons; not specially Oliver's arrangements, though of course he remained a chief authority in that matter, and nothing could well be done which he with any emphasis deliberately condemned.

There goes a wild story, which owes its first place in History to Clarendon, I think, who is the author of many such: How the Parliament at one time had decided to exterminate' all the Irish population; and then, finding this would not quite answer, had contented itself with packing them all off into the Province of Connaught, there to live upon the moorlands; and so had pacified the Sister Island.3 Strange rumours no doubt were afloat in the Council of Kilkenny, in the Conventicle of Clonmacnoise, and other such quarters, and were kept up for very obvious purposes in those days; and my Lord of Clarendon at an after date, seeing Puritanism hung on the gallows and tumbled in heaps in St. Margaret's, thought it safe to write with considerable latitude respecting its procedure. My Lord had, in fact, the story all his own way for about a hundred and fifty years; and, during that time, has set afloat through vague heads a great many things. His authority is rapidly sinking; and will now probably sink deeper than even it deserves.

The real procedure of the Puritan Commonwealth towards Ireland is not a matter of conjecture, or of report by Lord Clarendon; the documentary basis and scheme of it still stands in

1 Newspapers (in Kimber, p. 148); Whitlocke, p. 441.

26 November, 1651 (Wood in voce): Ludlow had arrived in January of the same year (Memoirs, i. 322, 332, &c.).

Continuation of Clarendon's Life (Oxford, 1761), pp. 119, &c. &c.