r did it
fail to obtain credit among men who believed that "in other instances he
had been favoured with similar assurances, and that they had never deceived
him."[2] Hence his chaplain Goodwin exclaimed, "O Lord, we pray not for his
recovery; that thou hast granted already; what we now beg is his _speedy_
recovery."[3]

In a few days, however, their confidence was shaken. For change of air he
had removed to Whitehall, till the palace of St. James's should be ready
for his reception. There his fever became[a] a double tertian, and his
strength rapidly wasted away. Who, it was asked, was to succeed him? On the
day of his inauguration he had written the name of his successor within a
cover sealed with the protectorial arms; but that paper had been lost,
or purloined, or destroyed. Thurloe undertook to suggest to him a second
nomination; but the condition of the protector, who, if we believe him,
was always insensible or delirious, afforded no opportunity. A suspicion,
however, existed, that he had private reasons for declining to interfere in
so delicate a business.[4]

The 30th of August was a tempestuous day: during the night the violence of
the wind increased till it blew a hurricane. Trees were torn from their
roots in the park, and houses unroofed in the city. This extraordinary
occurrence at a moment when it was thought that the protector was dying,
could not fail

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, vii. 321, 340, 354, 355. Bates, Elench. 413.]

[Footnote 2: Thurloe, vii. 355, 367, 376.]

[Footnote 3: Ludlow, ii. 151.]

[Footnote 4: Thurloe, 355, 365, 366.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1658 August 28.]

of exciting remarks in a superstitious age; and, though the storm reached
to the coasts of the Mediterranean, in England it was universally referred
to the death-bed of the protector. His friends asserted that God would not
remove so great a man from this world without previously warning the nation
of its approaching loss; the Cavaliers more maliciously maintained that the
devils, "the princes of the air," were congregating over Whitehall, that
they might pounce on the protector's soul.[1]

On the third night afterwards,[a] Cromwell had a lucid interval of
considerable duration. It might have been expected that a man of his
religious disposition would have felt some compunctious visitings, when
from the bed of death he looked back on the strange eventful career of his
past life. But he had adopted a doctrine admirably calculated