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whatsoever, to destroy the life of Oliver Cromwell, a certain low mechanic fellow, which act it was declared would be acceptable to God, and to all good men: for which noble work the perpetrator was promised a reward of £500 a year for ever, and the honour of knighthood, on the faith of a Christian king. This was murder in intent: but the same men, Charles Hyde, Ormond, and the rest of them, were the authors of murder in fact-namely, that of Dr. Dorislaus, the English ambassador at the Hague; which was speedily followed by the murder of Ascham, the ambassador at Madrid.

Of Dr. Dorislaus' murder at the Hague, Clarendon gives the following account:

"Whilst he was at supper, the same evening that he came to the town, in company of many others who used to eat there, half-a-dozen gentlemen entered the room with their swords drawn, and required those at the table 'not to stir; for there was no harm intended to any but the agent who came from the rebels in England, who had newly murdered their king.' And one of them, who knew Dorislaus, pulled him from the table, and killed him at his feet: and thereupon they all put up their swords, and walked leisurely out of the house, leaving those who were in the room in much amazement and

consternation. Though those who were engaged in the enterprise went quietly away, and so out of the town, insomuch as no one of them was ever apprehended, or called in question: yet they kept not their own counsel so well, (believing they had done a very heroic act,) but that it was generally known, they were all Scottish men, and most of them servants or dependants upon the Marquis of Montrose."* In the same volume of his work the historian has to relate the trial and execution of this same Marquis of Montrose, who was condemned by the parliament of Scotland "to be hanged upon a gallows thirty feet high, for the space of three hours." Numbers of his adherents underwent the same fate; among them probably the murderers of Dorislaus, of whom one, it seems, was saved, under I know not what pretence.The murder of Ascham by the royalists, at Madrid, took place under circumstances similar to those which attended that of Dorislaus.— Clarendon gives us one version of them, written in so extenuating a tone, and with so many contemptuous epithets bestowed on the victims, that we are almost led to suppose he was not clear of the guilt, which, at all events, he seems

History VI., 297.

not to have thought very great. In fact, we may certainly infer that, against republicans, this "noble historian," as Warburton is fond of calling him, considered assassination allowable; for he speaks, evidently with approval, of assassinating the Protector, which he artfully attributes to the whole nation. Warburton says, moreover, that "this is confirmed by Thurlow's papers, by which it appears that the royal family did project and encourage Cromwell's assassination." The bishop also is inclined to look upon the affair with no very severe eye: "Without doubt," says he, "they had high provocation." Notwithstanding which he is not satisfied, though he has clearly some misgivings, that such a step would have been justifiable. "But such a step appears neither to have been prudent nor honourable."* Only appears!

Is it wonderful that Milton was severe, when the pious churchman, who had volunteered to attack the poet, gave the following advice to all his acquaintances, "if they were genuine Christians?""You that love Christ, and know this miscreant wretch, stone him to death, lest you smart for his impurity."

History VI., 44. Warburton's Notes on Clarendon,

VIII.

These citations give some account of the times. We very much fear that the tempers of some men, in reference to these events, have not much altered in many places. Charles is a martyr still. The return of Charles II. was a glorious Restoration-these regicides all deserved death: the king is surrounded by a beautiful ideal halo still. All these illusions charm, like figures on the mist. Stern History reads quite another dissertation on the times. Facts abundantly show who were the wrong-doers, and what was the wrong done. Milton is the noblest representative of the state of those days before his eyes had passed all the great events of this era of our story. To one who so profoundly loved the heroic attitudes of the soul, it must have been indeed a delight to live in constant intercourse with men whose souls were as noble and brave as the most illustrious of the land of Epaminondas and Camillusto be a sharer in the events which were to liberate a great nation;-to behold link by link snapping from her fetters-the proud prelates who had used the screw, the boot, the pillory, and the executioner's axe, to control the laws of thought, banished; and the licentious nobles humbled, whose cruel taxes and monopolies had fastened heavy fetters upon the health and

happiness of the hall, the grange, and the cottage. He had also beheld one who in his person had utterly eclipsed all that the most magnificent hero of ancient story had performed, and who carried with him into his seat of power the more humble and domestic virtues of the little homestead of Huntingdonshire.

Milton beheld all this; he lived on terms of intimacy and friendship with this illustrious man; did his form rise to his imagination when he first conceived, and invested with the splendour of his genius, him, who "seemed no less than archangel ruined?" Then came those other days-days we can never recall without a sigh -the days when the nation relapsed again to all its old licentiousness, and to more than all its old persecution, despotism, and blood-shedding; England's darkest and most disgraceful days; when a traitor, in the pay of France, sat on the throne of England; when the Dutchman mocked the British flag at Sheerness, and threatened to pour his fiery forces along the Thames; when Vane was borne to the scaffold, to be murdered, and Hugh Peters was yet more horridly slaughtered; when ship after ship drifted over the seas, with brave hearts, flying from the exterminating knife and rope of bigotry, yet finding themselves fronted even

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