The Lion's Whelp: A Story of Cromwell's Time

by Amelia E. Barr

"And to what kind of women, Israel?"

"Good, fair women, they tell me; sisters, orphan daughters of the Rev. John Wilmot. Thou seest, then, Martha, there may soon be three families coming up, and not a grandmother among them to look after the children, or give advice to the young mothers. I don't see what Tonbert's wife, or Will's wife, or thy own daughter Jane can do without thee."

She shook her head slightly, but looked pleased and important. The wife and mother was now completely satisfied. And Martha Swaffham was blessed with imagination. She could dream of her new home, and new ties, and give herself, even in London streets, a Paradise in the unknown New World. And, at any rate, in the building of the American Swaffham she would take care that there were plenty of cupboards. Indeed, her plans and purposes were so many, and so much to her liking, that Israel was rather hampered by her expansive hopes and ideas; and though he did not damp her enthusiasm by telling her "she was reckoning without her host," he himself was quite sure there would be many trials and difficulties to tithe her anticipations.

"But it is bad business going into anticipation," he said to himself. "I'll let Martha build and arrange matters in her mind as she wants them; things will be all the likelier to happen so; I have noticed that time and time again. It will be a great water between us, and the sins and sorrows of six thousand years; and if there be a Paradise on earth, it will be where man hasn't had time to turn it into a—something worse."

So the summer days went on, and England had never been so serene and so secure in her strength and prosperity. Throughout the land the farmer was busy in his meadows making hay, and watching the green wheat blow yellow in the warm winds and sunshine. The shepherds were on the fells counting the ewes and their lambs; the traders busy in their shops; the ports full of entering and departing vessels, and the whole nation yet in a mood of triumph over the acquisition of Dunkirk. Cromwell was working feverishly, and suffering acutely. His favourite child, the Lady Elizabeth Claypole was still very ill; he had premonitions and visions of calamity that filled his heart with apprehension, and kept his soul always on the alert, watching, watching for its coming. It might be that he alone could meet it and ward it away from those he loved.

It is certain also that he knew the time for his own departure was at hand. He said to Doctor Verity, "I have one more fight, John. Dunbar was a great victory; Worcester was a greater one; but my next fight will give me the greatest victory of all—'the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.' Do you understand?" And the Doctor made a movement of affirmation; he could not speak.

Wonderful was the labour the Protector now performed. He directed and settled the English affairs in France; he arranged the government of the new English plantations in Jamaica and the West Indies; and he paid particular attention to the needs and condition of the New England Colonies, being indeed their protector, and the only English protector they ever had. He took time to enunciate to France, more strongly than ever before, the rights of all the Protestants in Europe; and he made all preparations for calling another Parliament to consider, and settle more firmly, the business of the English Commonwealth. His work was a stupendous one, and through it all he showed constantly the feverish haste of a man who has a great task to perform and sees the sun dropping to the western horizon. But his heart bore the heaviest share of the heavy burden. It was as if Death knew that this man's soul could only be delivered from the flesh by attacking the citadels of feeling. In every domestic and social relation—son, husband, father, friend—the tenderness of his nature made him suffer; and when on the twenty-third of July Lady Claypole's illness showed fatal symptoms, he dropped all business, and for fourteen days and nights hardly left her presence. And her death on the sixth of August was a crushing and insupportable blow.

Lady Heneage, who was one of her attendants in these last terrible days, was removed in a fainting condition, when all was over, and taken to her old friend Martha Swaffham, for care and consolation. The two women had drifted apart during the past four years, but there was only love between them, and they reverted at once to their old affectionate familiarity. And such sorrow as that affecting Lady Heneage, is soon soothed by kind companionship and sympathetic conversation. She had much to tell that Martha Swaffham was eager to listen to, though the matter of all was suffering and death.

"The Lord Protector was really her nurse," she said. "When her mother fainted, and her husband and sisters could not look on her sufferings, her father held her in his arms, bore every pang with her and prayed, as I hope, Martha, I may never hear any one pray again. It was as if he clung to the very feet of God, entreating that he, and he alone, might bear the agony; that the cup of pain might pass from his child to him—and this for fourteen days, Martha. I know not how he—how we—endured it. We were all at the last point, when suddenly, a wonderful peace filled the chamber, and the poor Lady Elizabeth lay at ease, smiling at her father as he wiped the death sweat from her brow and whispered in her ear words which none but the dying heard. At the last moment, she tried to say, 'Father, but only managed one-half the word; the other half she took into heaven with her. It is now the sixth of August, is it not, Martha?"

"Yes."