heir intention to adopt the same discipline in
spiritual affairs. As to temporal rule, they thought a body of wise men,
elected by a free people, the likeliest way of rendering England
respectable among foreign nations, and happy in itself. He quoted the
examples of Greece and Rome in ancient times, and of the Italian
republic in modern, to illustrate his sentiments. Cromwell listened with
apparent conviction, professed that he had not studied these things,
being only in himself an ignorant sinful man, though chosen by
Providence to be a mighty instrument to level thrones and pull down the
ungodly. He then lamented that so able a counsellor as Bellingham should
hang like a bucket upon a peg, instead of being employed to draw water
from a cistern; and, promising to endeavour to set him again high among
the people, he took his leave. This interview having sufficiently
apprized him of the designs of the Rump-party, he resolved to keep Lord
Bellingham in safe custody, to remove their adherents from every office
of trust, and to prevent all attempts to appeal to the people by calling
a free Parliament. And as he intended that his campaign in Ireland
should not be protracted by any compunctious visitings of mercy, but
that it should more resemble the sweeping hurricane that devastates a
province, than the purifying wind that renovates a corrupted atmosphere,
he trusted that his habitual celerity, and the vigilance and fidelity of
the host of spies he so liberally paid, would enable him to return to
England before any measures could be taken to sap the dominion whose
foundations were laid in treachery and treason.

The progress of his bloody standard in Ireland was interrupted by the
young King's appearance in Scotland. Cromwell transported himself to
that kingdom with incredible dispatch, and assumed the command of that
division of the army which had been nominally retained by Fairfax, who,
tired of his guilty employment, had, since the murder of the King, been
evidently indisposed to the service, and now peremptorily refused to
continue to act as general. With these forces Cromwell met the army of
Scotch enthusiasts at Dunbar. There was indeed equal fanaticism in both
armies; but the difference was, the English were soldiers as well as
preachers, and their General used fanaticism as an engine to move
others, not as the rule of his own actions. He wore piety as a mask; he
used it to sharpen his sword, but he never converted it