Meanwhile, the tone of his Court was a model of purity and honesty. Alone among the Courts of Europe in that age, under Cromwell no man could rise who was profligate in private life, or corrupt in public life. How he had risen socially is shown by the fact that his remaining daughters now married into the nobility. His domestic relations were exceptionally tender and beautiful, and his grief at the loss of his mother and his favorite daughter—his favorite son was already dead—was very great. His letters to and about his sons are just what such letters should be. He explains that he does not grudge them “laudable recreations nor honorable carriage in them,” nor any legitimate expense, but that he does emphatically protest against “pleasure and self-satisfaction being made the business of a man’s life.”

The time had now come, however, when Oliver was to leave alike the family for whom he had so affectionately cared, and the nation he had loved and ruled, and go before the God to whom he ever felt himself accountable. When 1658 opened, peace and order obtained at home, and the crown had been put to England’s glory abroad by the victories in Flanders and the cession of Dunkirk. There was not the slightest chance of Cromwell’s hold on the nation being shaken. So far as human eye could see, his policy was sure to triumph, as long as he lived; but he was weakened by his hard and strenuous life, and the fever, by which he had been harassed during his later campaigns, came on him with renewed force. Even his giant strength had been overtaxed by the task of ruling England alone, and, as he conscientiously believed, for her highest interest. Supreme though his triumph seemed to outsiders, he himself knew that he had failed to make the effects of this triumph lasting, though he never seems to have suspected that his failure was due to his incapacity to subordinate his own imperious will so that he might work with others. He saw clearly the chaos into which his death would plunge England, and he did not wish to die; but as he grew weaker he felt that his hour was come, and surrendered himself to the inevitable.

“I would be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His people,” muttered the dying ruler, showing, as ever, his strange mixture of belief in himself and trust in the Most High; “but my work is done! Yet God will be with His people!”

September came in with a terrible storm, the like of which had rarely been known in England, and as it subsided, on September 3d, the day which had witnessed the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, the soul of the greatest man who has ruled England, since the days of the Conquest, passed quietly away.[[2]]

[2]. In the queer little weekly paper “The Commonwealth Mercury,” of the issue “From Thursday September 2d to Thursday September 9th, 1658,” which contains an account of Cromwell’s death and of his son’s installation, it happens that there is also an advertisement of a pamphlet: “A few sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a damned Soul: By that poor servant of Jesus Christ, John Bunyan.” Cromwell, Milton, Bunyan—what can non-Puritan England, of their day, show to match these three names?

With his death came the chaos he had foreseen, though he had not foreseen that it could be averted only by the substitution of some form of self-government by the people, for the arbitrary rule of one man—however great and good that man might be. For a few months his son, Richard, ruled as Protector in his stead, but, the Protectorate having become in effect a despotism, it was sure to slip from any but Oliver’s iron grasp. Richard called a Parliament, but Parliaments had been hopelessly discredited by Oliver’s method of dealing with them. The army revolted, forced the dismissal of the Parliament, and then the abdication of Richard. Richard’s abler brother, Henry, who was governing Ireland as deputy, resigned also, and the Cromwells passed out of history.

Richard Cromwell.
Painter unknown.
By permission of Sir Charles Hartopp, Bart.

For some months there was confusion worse confounded, and the whole nation turned toward Charles II., and the re-establishment of the Stuart kingship. Monk, the ablest of Cromwell’s generals, a soldier who cared little for forms of civil government, who had already fought for the Stuarts against the Parliament, and who would have stood by Richard had Richard possessed the strength to stand by himself, threw his weight in favor of the exiled king, and thereby prevented the slightest chance of opposition. Charles II. returned, greeted with transports of frantic delight by seemingly almost the whole people.

The King and his followers then took revenge on the dead body of the man whose living eyes they had never dared to face. The bones of Cromwell, of his mother, and of Ireton, were disinterred and thrown into a lime-pit; and the head of the great Protector was placed on a pole over Westminster Hall, there to stand for twenty years.