here else, a man so able to
govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled with a strong
hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists (but not until they
had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the times
required. He caused England to be so respected abroad, that I wish some
lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings and queens in later
days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell's book. He sent bold
Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to make the Duke of Tuscany pay
sixty thousand pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects, and
spoliation he had committed on English merchants. He further despatched
him and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English
ship and every English man delivered up to him that had been taken by
pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously done; and it began to be
thoroughly well known, all over the world, that England was governed by a
man in earnest, who would not allow the English name to be insulted or
slighted anywhere.

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to sea against
the Dutch; and the two powers, each with one hundred ships upon its side,
met in the English Channel off the North Foreland, where the fight lasted
all day long. Dean was killed in this fight; but Monk, who commanded in
the same ship with him, threw his cloak over his body, that the sailors
might not know of his death, and be disheartened. Nor were they. The
English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch that they sheered
off at last, though the redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his
own guns for deserting their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets
engaged again, off the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van Tromp
was shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and peace was made.

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domineering and
bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not only claimed a right to all
the gold and silver that could be found in South America, and treated the
ships of all other countries who visited those regions, as pirates, but
put English subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons of the
Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English ships
must be free to go wherever they would, and that English merchants must
not be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not for the pleasure of all
the priests in Spain. To this, the Spanish ambassador