n who performed it in a
situation suited to his character. He soon found Monthault to be as
perfidious and unprincipled as he was daring and ready to undertake any
office which would gratify his passions, which (being now past the
heyday of youth) were diverted from licentious indulgence by the more
substantial enjoyments of avarice and ambition.

At this time Cromwell was secretly panting to add the name and
paraphernalia of a King to the authority which he actually exercised.
The fanatics, whom he had so long courted, were the most active
opponents of this project. The other sectaries had been long convinced,
by experience, that their views of republican felicity and perfection
were illusory. The respectable dissenters always professed themselves
friends of a limited monarchy; many staunch royalists thought the
renewal of kingly power would gradually turn the public eye on their
exiled Prince; and some selfish ones would have been content with such
an approach to the old order of things as would give them back their
sequestered estates. Some parties would be brought over by seeming to
fall in with their views, others cajoled by bribing their leaders, but
the levellers and fanatics were invincible. They had been Cromwell's
agents in subduing his enemies, and a consciousness of their power made
them unmanageable; they were determined on owning no King but Jesus, and
on thinking the regal title, when assumed by man, the mark of the beast
and the seal of reprobation to its supporters. "The Protector's
son-in-law, Fleetwood, kneeled and prayed publickly, that the Lord might
spit in his face if the unrighteous mammon tempted him into this sin;
and his brother Desborough anathematized him, and vowed to devote his
own sword to Charles Stewart sooner than to him, if he persevered in
longing for the forbidden spoil." Lambert, who was in the entire
confidence of these two, had seduced the affections of the army;
Cromwell, therefore, had a difficult game to play. His passionate desire
of royalty combated those secret fears that arose from a mysterious
warning which he received when he first meditated on the designs
afterwards realized by his lucky and unprincipled ambition. A vision, or
day-dream, impressed his enthusiastic imagination, detailing the steps
by which he was to rise, and assuring him, "that he should be the
greatest man in England, and near being King." Yet, though this seemed
to warn him of an impassable bound to h