en he was going out--intending to shoot
him from a window. But, owing either to his caution or his good fortune,
they could never get an aim at him. Disappointed in this design, they
got into the chapel in Whitehall, with a basketful of combustibles, which
were to explode by means of a slow match in six hours; then, in the noise
and confusion of the fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But, the Life
Guardsman himself disclosed this plot; and they were seized, and Miles
died (or killed himself in prison) a little while before he was ordered
for execution. A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few
more to be hanged, and many more, including those who rose in arms
against him, to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he were rigid,
he was impartial too, in asserting the laws of England. When a
Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the Portuguese ambassador, killed a
London citizen in mistake for another man with whom he had had a quarrel,
Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of Englishmen and foreigners,
and had him executed in spite of the entreaties of all the ambassadors in
London.

One of Oliver's own friends, the DUKE OF OLDENBURGH, in sending him a
present of six fine coach-horses, was very near doing more to please the
Royalists than all the plotters put together. One day, Oliver went with
his coach, drawn by these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with his
secretary and some of his other gentlemen under the trees there. After
dinner, being merry, he took it into his head to put his friends inside
and to drive them home: a postillion riding one of the foremost horses,
as the custom was. On account of Oliver's being too free with the whip,
the six fine horses went off at a gallop, the postillion got thrown, and
Oliver fell upon the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his
own pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and went
off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until his foot came out
of the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under the broad body
of the coach, and was very little the worse. The gentlemen inside were
only bruised, and the discontented people of all parties were much
disappointed.

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell is a
history of his Parliaments. His first one not pleasing him at all, he
waited until the five months were out, and then dissolved it. The next
was better suited to his views; and