Whether he had the courage, the daring, the firmness to seize this position, to step to the front and take the command so completely, to take upon himself the burden of rule in the present state of the country, after so many attempts at government had failed, was yet to be seen.
He had hitherto shown no personal ambition and no desire to thrust himself forward, his manner being rather to keep himself in the background and wait for God to bid him act.
The moment was serious, perilous, even awful; the Members of the last Parliament and the officers met constantly in prayer; conferences, meetings between all the able men available, were frequent; the people, sternly and austerely ruled for the last three years, with the Puritans triumphant and the Cavaliers utterly silenced and suppressed, waited in a quietude that concealed an intense excitement.
On Wednesday, the 15th of December, the Lord-General rode from one of these meetings to his home, now at Hampton Court. He arrived there bitten with the cold and covered with fine snow. He went straight to the fire in the room which his family used to dine in, and flung himself with the weariness of one spent in mind and body into the great wicker chair with arms and red cushions that he commonly used.
The noble, pleasant room was empty save for Elisabeth, his daughter (the Claypoles had a suite of apartments at Hampton Palace), and her youngest child, who was asleep on her knee. He had not noticed her at first, so quietly was she withdrawn into the shadows, and her low, pleased exclamation, "My father!" gave him a little start.
"Betty!" he impetuously flung out his hand to her; she softly laid the sleeping boy on the velvet couch from which she had risen, and, coming to his side, knelt beside him, and slipped her hand inside his.
He gazed with affectionate pleasure at her charming face, bright and delicate, sensitive and resolute, lifted to his, the brown, waving hair, the expressive blue eyes, the mouth a little wistful, the chin a little proud, the whole infinitely dear and loving.
"What has happened to-day?" she asked gently.
The look of heaviness her greeting had lightened returned to his countenance; he lifted his head and stared into the mellow flames that sprang from the great logs between the brass and irons.