We would like to know more of Richard Cromwell's boyhood. We would like to know how he lived and what he did as a small boy on that cattle farm among the fens at St. Ives, and at the more spacious homestead in the shadow of the great gray towers of Ely Cathedral. We would like to know whether he liked sport, as most boys do, or whether he was too lazy to exert himself at play. We would like to know how he studied, and what he learned at the Free Grammar School at Felsted, where, one after the other, four of the Cromwell boys were sent; whether he loved football as much as his father did, and became a champion full-back as his father did when he was a boy.
I am afraid Richard Cromwell was just as careless at his books as at the later duties that came to him; for, from things that have come down to us, we know how his busy father, who was as ambitious for his boys as all fathers are, had but little patience with lazybones anywhere, and reproved boy Dick for his carelessness as he found fault with young Mr. Dick, in later years, for his shiftless ways.
Troublesome times came to England. The people rose in defence of their rights. The King fell. The throne and crown were abolished. The Parliament bent before the iron will of the people's champion, and from the Captain of a troop and the General of an army the determined farmer of the fens took the helm and steered his country through reefs and breakers, until, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the commonwealth of England became the first power in Europe, unconquerable on the land, invincible on the sea.
Step by step Cromwell rose to power. Against his own desire he rose, the one strong man in England. And, as he advanced, his family rose with him into notice and position. One by one the older boys died. Robert, a promising lad of seventeen, died at Felsted School; Oliver, the second son, named for his father and a Captain in the cavalry, died just before the great victory of Marston Moor, and Richard Cromwell thus became the eldest living son, heir to the estates, successor in power, but never heir to the fame that his mighty father attained.
For there was in "lazy Dick" nothing of his father's masterful manner or genius in leadership, nothing of the display and vast hospitality that made famous his ancestor, known as "the Golden Knight of Hinchinbrook," nothing of the dash and daring that marked his more remote ancestor, "Diamond Dick," who unhorsed all his rivals at a tournament, and so defended the king's colors that the pleased monarch, bluff King Henry the Eighth, called the victorious champion his "diamond."
We are not even certain that Richard Cromwell fought in the wars against the King, as did his brother Oliver and Henry. We cannot find that he desired either the position or prominence that his father's rise to greatness gave him. Richard Cromwell cared only to live and die a quiet, inoffensive, lazy country squire. At any other time in the history of the world he might easily have lived unknown, unhonored, and unsung. It was his father's fame that brought him into notice; it was because he had neither the will, the inclination, nor the ability to take up his father's work, and carry it forward for the greatness and glory of England, that to-day the world holds in such slight esteem this quiet son of Cromwell.
We should not blame people for not doing what they cannot do. It may be, indeed, that "lazy Dick" was not shiftless, though he was lazy, nor a numbskull simply because he was not great. Richard Cromwell liked to take things easy; he hated to be bothered; he liked to keep out of trouble, and was willing to let the world wag as it would so long as he had a comfortable home and nothing particular to do.
There is nothing really bad in this; but boys and men of that stamp, you know, never help the world along. And I am afraid that "lazy Dick," notwithstanding all his opportunities and the high position to which he was finally advanced, never did anything to help the world along. If a good thing came in his way he took it, enjoyed it if he could, and got out of it if it proved troublesome and laborious.
When he was twenty his father tried to make him a lawyer; but he soon dropped that profession. He offered him a command in the army, but Dick seems never to have accepted it. When he was twenty-three he married a nice girl in Hampshire. Oliver Cromwell loved her dearly, but he and her father had their hands full trying to make Dick "toe the mark."
