nsistent with reason
and Scripture. With a still carnalized fancy, she adorned the heaven
which she felt sure of eternally inhabiting, with the splendor and
luxury she had enjoyed on earth, and thus tricked out a Mahommedan
paradise rather than the pure and spiritual enjoyments of glorified
beings. With all the zeal and animosity of a new convert, she tried to
make her son and husband adopt these notions; and failing of success,
she thought herself at liberty to renounce them both; and could she have
secured a perpetual residence in this world, or transported her beloved
wealth and greatness to the other, the death of Lord Sedley would have
given her no more concern than that of the Earl of Bellingham; but
looking upon the former as the medium through which her name must be
conveyed to posterity, she felt an interest in his preservation, totally
distinct from maternal affection; and to this his fine qualities served
rather as an alloy, than an incentive. A youth weak enough to be really
a convert, or sufficiently base to have affected being one to her
opinions, a flatterer of her faults, and the tool of her designs, would
have been invested by her erroneous judgment with those high deservings
which actually adorned her noble offspring, though she wanted
penetration to discern them.

When the agitators arrested Lord Bellingham, he knew that his son had
been sent with Cromwell's detachment against the Duke of Hamilton, and
that the victorious General returned to London in triumph, while no sure
tidings of the illustrious youth's safety cheered the prison-hours of
the wretched father. Important events succeeded each other with such
rapidity, that there was no time to bring forward the charge against an
imprisoned General, whose rank only made him an object of curiosity,
while his conduct exposed him to contempt. New modelling the House of
Commons; expediting the vote of non-addresses; the trial and execution
of the King; the annihilation of the House of Peers; the sacrifice of
many illustrious and noble Loyalists, and the complete establishment of
military tyranny under the name of a republic, engaged the attention of
Cromwell, till a little time previous to his undertaking the reduction
of Ireland to the same yoke that England bore with silent but sullen
indignation, when he judged it expedient to endeavour to prevent his
enemies from taking advantage of his being at a distance from the chief
seat of political intrigue. H