Whether Cromwell's Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.

Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage of sovereignty. The phrases "His Highness's Court" and "His Highness's Household" had become quite familiar. On all public occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell's approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;1 in mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,—e.g. "The Marquis of Hertford," "The Earl of Warwick," "The Earl of Mulgrave," "The Lord Viscount Lisle," "The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill"; and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by calling Fleetwood "My Lord Deputy," Whitlocke "Lord Commissioner Whitelocke," Fiennes "Lord Commissioner Fiennes," and Lawrence "Lord President Lawrence," but there had been a curious extension of usage in this last particular. The Protector's sons had become respectively "The Lord Richard Cromwell" and "The Lord Henry Cromwell" in the newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or other, probably on account of places held in his Highness's Household or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called "Major-General Lambert," and had become "Lord Lambert," and from the beginning of 1656 "Mr. Strickland" had passed into "Lord Strickland." They are so named both in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session of the Second Parliament.

1: Here is a list of Cromwell's Knights of the First Protectorate, so far as I have ascertained them:—Lord Mayor Thomas Viner (Feb. 8, 1653-4); John Copleston (June 1, 1655); Colonel John Reynolds (June 11, 1655); Lord Mayor Sir Christopher Pack (Sept. 20, 1655); Colonel Thomas Pride, of 'Pride's Purge' celebrity (Jan. 17, 1655-6); Major-General John Barkstead, Lieutenant of the Tower (Jan. 19, 1655-6); M. Coyet, of the Swedish Embassy (April 15, 1656); Richard Combe (Aug. 1656); Lord Mayor Dethicke and George Fleetwood, Esq. of Bucks (both Sept. 15, 1656); Ambassador Lockhart, Lord Mayor Robert Tichbourne, Sheriff James Calthorpe, and Lislebone Long, Esq., Recorder of London (all Dec. 10, 1656); Colonel James Whitlocke, a son of Bulstrode Whitlocke (Jan. 6, 1656-7); Thomas Dickson, of York (March 3, 1656-7); Richard Stayner (June 11, 1657).

If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally thrown round himself. The Protector's very aged Mother having died in honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her last words1, the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as follows:—

1: At "ninety-four years of age" according to a letter of Thurloe's the day after her death (Thurloe to Pell, Nov. 17, 1654, in Vaughan's Protectorate, I. 79-81); but Colonel Chester (Westminster Abbey Registers, 521, Note) sees reason for believing she had been baptized at Ely, Oct. 28, 1565, and was therefore only in her ninetieth year at her death.

HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: ætat. 58.

HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS.

Children and Children-in-Law.

1. THE LADY BRIDGET: ætat. 33: Ireton's widow, married to Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then, retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657.

2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: ætat. 31: married since 1649 to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley, Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament, and in the Council of the Protectorate.—Though Lord Richard's tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with "hawking, hunting, and horse-racing," he had been in both the Parliaments of the Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the 18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the Council's Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:—"The Lord Richard Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General Desborough, in virtue of his Highness's Commission under the Great Seal." He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next after the President's in the sederunt.

3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: ætat. 29: in the Army since his boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second Protectorate he was still in the Government of Ireland with his military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.

4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: ætat. 28: married in her seventeenth year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had been made the Lord Protector's "Master of Horse," and had therefore been known for some time by the courtesy-title of "Lord Claypole." He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court; and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.

5. THE LADY MARY: ætat. 21. She was unmarried when the Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as "a person of extraordinary parts." On his own account, and also because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady Mary was thought an excellent match.

6. THE LADY FRANCES: ætat. 19. This, the youngest of Cromwell's children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and Cromwell's ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell's pupil at Eton with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances, as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp. 616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in due time.1 For the Lady Frances, his Highness's youngest daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means indifferent to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1.

1: The will of John Dutton, Esq., of Sherborne, Gloucestershire, was proved June 30, 1657, just four days after the beginning of the Second Protectorate; and young Mr. William Dutton married a widow eventually—"Mary, daughter of John, Viscount Scudamore, and relict of Thomas Russell of Worcestershire, Esq." (Noble's Cromwell, I, pp 153-154).

OTHER RELATIVES

Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second Protectorate, were the following;—(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, ætat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, ætat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member of the Protector's Second Parliament. (3) The Protector's youngest sister ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson. (4) The Protector's niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The Protector's brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His first wife; Oliver's sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a second, and had for some time been less active politically and less Oliverian. (6) The Protector's brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of Cromwell's stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife, Cromwell's sister Jane. (7) The Protector's cousin, or father's sister's son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the Regicides, and latterly member of both Parliaments of the Protectorate and one of the Major-Generals. (8) The Protector's aunt, or father's sister, Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMPDEN, mother of the famous Hampden, and now a very aged widow, living about Whitehall, with another son alive, besides grandchildren by her famous dead son, the eldest of whom, Richard Hampden, was a member of the present Parliament. (9) The Protector's cousin's son, COLONEL RICHARD INGOLDSBY, a Recruiter in the Long Parliament, one of the signers of Charles's death-warrant, and one of the members for Buckinghamshire in both Parliaments of the Protectorate. More distant kindred of the Protector were the DUNCHES of Berkshire, and the MASHAMS of Essex, the head of whom, Sir William Masham, Bart., had been member for that county in the Long Parliament, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth and of the first Parliament of the Protectorate. The poet WALLER was connected with the Protector by his cousinship with the Hampdens.1

1: Among authorities for the facts in this compilation, besides Council Order Books, and the whole narrative heretofore, are Carlyle's three genealogical Notes (I. 16, 20-21, and 54-55), Wood's Fasti, II. 155-8, various passages in Codwin, and two "Narratives" in Harl. Misc III. 429-468.