After lingering a little, and trying other sources of communication with the court and finding none, she returned sadly with her husband's brother to Antwerp to take up again her exiled life.
All through that summer and autumn Elisabeth Claypole had seemed sinking down to death. She knew little of what passed: of how, after long debates, His Highness had refused the title of King ('a feather in his cap,' he called it; a feather he would fain have had, many said, only the army had willed otherwise), but had been installed in purple and ermine as Lord-Protector of the new-formed Constitution and presented with Bible and sword; of how ambassadors had come and gone in England and the war with Spain proceeded brilliantly; how plots were formed and exposed and His Highness went in a continual fear of his life that was beginning to undermine his calm nerves and resolute courage, and of how he and his Generals toiled continually——
Of all this Elisabeth Claypole knew little; she was scarcely conscious of more than the darkened room in which she lay and of the figures of her mother and sisters coming and going softly, of her husband grieving by her bed, and her father's presence in such moments as he could spare to hold her hand and speak comforting words to her tired ears.
By the spring they thought that they had cured her; but in the summer she drooped again, though she went to the marriage of her sister Frances with young Mr. Rich, the Earl of Warwick's heir.
Frances was the last to wed, for Mary was now Lady Fauconberg. Many finer matches had been suggested for this youngest of the Protector's daughters; some had even tried to bring about a marriage between her and Charles Stewart, and the women of His Highness' family had favoured this scheme, but Cromwell waved it aside—'If he could forgive his father's death, I could not forgive the loose manner of his life'—and Frances had wedded, after much opposition, Mr. Rich, a delicate youth.
In the June of this year of 1658 came the great news of the fall of Dunkirk, the defeat of the Spanish, and the flattering friendship of the French. London glittered with a congratulatory embassy from Paris; in the midst of the pageantry, His Highness, who had already interfered once to save the poor people of the valleys of Piedmont, was once more extending his mighty protection to them, and Mr. Milton, the Latin Secretary to the Council of State, was turning His Highness' letters into Latin: Mr. Milton dictated his translations now, for he was lately become utterly blind.
The news of the battle of the Dunes raised England to a yet higher point of fame than she had yet reached. France could refuse such an ally nothing, and Mazarin interfered to protect the Piedmontese.
So went affairs abroad and in England well too, save that the finances were strained, His Highness having dissolved the Parliament in February, preferring, indeed, to govern without one.
"God be judge between you and me," were the concluding words of his last speech.
Other sorrows beside the illness of his daughter visited His Highness this summer: Mr. Rich died a few months after his marriage, leaving poor Frances a widow at seventeen; the old Earl of Warwick died, an ancient friend of the Protector; most painful and terrible loss of all, the youngest son of the Lady Elisabeth died, and she fell again into illness and was soon at a desperate extremity.