The Governor of England

by Marjorie Bowen

Without pause or hesitation or check, with fierceness, vigour, and irresistible onslaught, Cromwell had overcome Ireland, and had left the unfortunate country, silenced now with her own blood, to cherish for ever a terrible image of this Englishman, and a terrible hatred.

Next, he turned against Scotland, where the second Charles, having denounced the faith of his father, and the religion of his mother, having taken the Covenant (submitting in a moment to those things which the late King had died rather than yield to), was setting up once more the standard of the Stewarts.

Cromwell (now Lord-General, for Fairfax, too cold and meticulous for these times, had retired) met the Scots at Dunbar and beat Lord Leven and David Leslie as thoroughly as he had beaten Hamilton at Preston, and with troops as tired, hungry, and outnumbered, as they had been hungry and outnumbered then. Dunbar Drove they called this, as they had called the other Preston Rout.

Both were mighty victories.

Then, a year later, on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar, Cromwell, supported by Lambert and Harrison, marched to meet another invading army of Scots headed by the young Charles, and on the banks and bridges of the Severn and in the streets of Worcester city, beat them again, ruining completely the cause of the young Stewart, who watched the day from the cathedral tower, then fled, hopeless, not to Scotland, but beyond seas, this time to seek an asylum at his sister's court.

That was the end of it. Cromwell had subdued kings and kingdoms; there was no one left to lead any army across the Border or ships across St. George's Channel, and neither of the sister islands would be likely to attempt to measure swords with England again. There were no more gallant Cavaliers to rise up for a lost cause. Montrose had been hanged in Edinburgh, and the young King for whom he died had repudiated him almost before the heroic soul had left the gallant body. Hamilton, Capel, Holland, Derby, had suffered on the block, kissing the axe that had slain their master; the rest were beyond seas, in exile and poverty, or in their own country outnumbered, forlorn, impoverished, and silenced.

And the man who had thus achieved the triumphs of his cause and his beliefs, the soldier who had been victorious in every engagement he had undertaken, whose enthusiasm, fire, and faith had heartened his party when even the bravest had been daunted, was the man who was riding into London to-day, welcomed by salvos of artillery and pealing of bells.

Five of the foremost Members of Parliament had ridden out to meet him on his march. One of the royal palaces, that of Hampton, had been given him as a residence; he enjoyed now a grant of nearly six thousand a year, and in his train, as he entered London, were many of the noblest in the country, and with him rode the Lord Mayor, the Speaker, the Council of State, the Aldermen, and Sheriffs.

It was noticed that his carriage was simple and modest; the triumphant conclusion of the nine years' struggle had no more power to shake him from the calm inspired by his sombre creed and intense beliefs than the rebuffs, confusions and temptations of the struggle itself. He was still, in his own eyes, as much God's mere instrument as when he sowed his grain and reaped his harvest in Huntingdon; and the future and his rise or fall were as absolutely preordained by the Lord now as then.

With a modesty that was absolutely unaffected he declined all credit for his overwhelming victories; and with a simplicity some mistook for irony (but irony was not in his nature), he remarked of the huge multitude which had gathered to see him pass: "There would be even more to see me hanged," so exactly did he value the popular favour, and so completely was he aware of the peril of the height on which he stood.