two
and two before him. He was sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a
gallows thirty feet high, to have his head set on a spike in Edinburgh,
and his limbs distributed in other places, according to the old barbarous
manner. He said he had always acted under the Royal orders, and only
wished he had limbs enough to be distributed through Christendom, that it
might be the more widely known how loyal he had been. He went to the
scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at thirty-
eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out of his body when Charles
abandoned his memory, and denied that he had ever given him orders to
rise in his behalf. O the family failing was strong in that Charles
then!

Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command the army in
Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the sanguinary rebellion,
and made tremendous havoc, particularly in the siege of Drogheda, where
no quarter was given, and where he found at least a thousand of the
inhabitants shut up together in the great church: every one of whom was
killed by his soldiers, usually known as OLIVER'S IRONSIDES. There were
numbers of friars and priests among them, and Oliver gruffly wrote home
in his despatch that these were 'knocked on the head' like the rest.

But, Charles having got over to Scotland where the men of the Solemn
League and Covenant led him a prodigiously dull life and made him very
weary with long sermons and grim Sundays, the Parliament called the
redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish men on the head for setting
up that Prince. Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general in
Ireland in his stead (he died there afterwards), and he imitated the
example of his father-in-law with such good will that he brought the
country to subjection, and laid it at the feet of the Parliament. In the
end, they passed an act for the settlement of Ireland, generally
pardoning all the common people, but exempting from this grace such of
the wealthier sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any
killing of Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. Great
numbers of Irish were got out of the country to serve under Catholic
powers abroad, and a quantity of land was declared to have been forfeited
by past offences, and was given to people who had lent money to the
Parliament early in the war. These were sweeping measures; but, if
Oliver Cromwell had had his own way fully, and