ed not to make himself any more
enemies; and at the same time that he restrained and mulcted the
Presbyterians, he endeavoured to persuade them to make common cause with
the fanatics. He received Lady Bellingham (who was the avowed patroness
of the latter) with much apparent respect, and at the same time he wrote
kindly to her Lord, promising that his party should be admitted to a
share in the government as soon as he could let the dove out of the ark
to fetch the olive branch, which could not be the case as long as the
floods of ungodliness covered the earth. He styled himself the servant
of the Commonwealth, and the assured friend of Lord Bellingham; but
nothing was further from Cromwell's heart than an intention of realizing
these promises. His only aim was to pacify and amuse his opponents till
he gained leisure to play his own game. He loaded Lady Bellingham with
flattering expressions, selected her to stand by his side, when, as he
called it, he rose in the congregation of the saints to give the word of
exhortation, and appealed to her as the judge and expounder of his
spiritual gifts. These, he observed, were all the refreshing attentions
which the necessity of pursuing the host of Sisera allowed him to pay to
the Deborah of the English Israel, except permitting her to reside in
Bellingham-Castle, and to plead his friendship and protection.

The victory at Worcester was of that decided nature, which enabled
Cromwell to throw off the mask, to dissolve that pantomime of a
Parliament in whose name he had hitherto governed, and to assume the
title of "Protector of the liberties of England." He now exercised a
more despotic tyranny than this nation suffered either from her Danish
or Norman conquerors. He confined the elective franchise to himself,
creating what he called Parliaments for the sole purpose of making them
ridiculous, and then turning out his mock-legislators with contempt. He
alternately punished and provoked every party; even his own agents and
creatures could not escape his apprehensive suspicions, which, by
indulgence, engendered an insatiable thirst of blood. Yet, combining
great qualities with the meanest vices--the policy of an Augustus and
the enterprize of a Trajan with the dissimulation of Tiberius and the
cruelty of Domitian, he at once awed and dazzled surrounding nations,
and while he subjugated, exalted his own. Never was England more
respected than when unlimited power, undaunted courage, and