The foregoing anecdote may be of interest as showing that traditions may come down from remote periods by few links, and thus be but little differing from the actual occurrences.
H. J. B.
66. Hamilton Terrace,
St. John's Wood, March 5. 1851.
Oliver Cromwell.—Echard says that his highness sold himself to the devil, and that he had seen the solemn compact. Anthony à Wood, who doubtless credited this account of a furious brother loyalist, in his Journal says:
"Aug. 30, 1658. Monday, a terrible raging wind happened, which did much damage. Dennis Bond, a great Oliverian and anti-monarchist, died on that day, and then the devil took bond for Oliver's appearance."
Clarendon, assigning the Protector to eternal perdition, not liking to lose the portent, boldly says the remarkable hurricane occurred on September 3, the day of Oliver's death. Oliver's admirers, on the other hand, represent this wind as ushering him into the other world, but for a very different reason.
Heath, in his Flagellum (I have the 4th edit.), says:
It pleased God to usher in his end with a great whale some three months before, June 2, that came up as far as Greenwich, and there was killed; and more immediately by a terrible storm of wind: the prognosticks that the great Leviathan of men, that tempest and overthrow of government, was now going to his own place!"
I have several works concerning Cromwell, but in no other do I find this story very like a whale. Would some reader of better opportunities favour us with a record of these two matters of natural history, not as connected with the death of this remarkable man, but as mere events? Your well-read readers will remember some similar tales relative to the death of Cardinal Mazarine. These exuberances of vulgar minds may partly be attributed to the credulity of the age, but more probably to the same want of philosophy which caused the ancients to deal in exaggeration.