, he buried her with
great pomp in Westminster Abbey. She could not be persuaded that his
power or person was ever in safety. At every noise which she heard, she
exclaimed that her son was murdered; and was never satisfied that he was
alive, if she did not receive frequent visits from him. She was a decent
woman; and by her frugality and industry had raised and educated a
numerous family upon a small fortune. She had even been obliged to set
up a brewery at Huntingdon, which she managed to good advantage. Hence
Cromwell, in the invectives of that age, is often stigmatized with
the name of the brewer. Ludlow, by way of insult, mentions the great
accession which he would receive to his royal revenues upon his mother's
death, who possessed a jointure of sixty pounds a year upon his estate.
She was of a good family, of the name of Stuart; remotely allied, as is
by some supposed, to the royal family.

CHAPTER LXII

THE COMMONWEALTH.

{1658.} All the arts of Cromwell's policy had been so often practised,
that they began to lose their effect; and his power, instead of being
confirmed by time and success, seemed every day to become more uncertain
and precarious. His friends the most closely connected with him, and
his counsellors the most trusted, were entering into cabals against his
authority; and with all his penetration into the characters of men, he
could not find any ministers on whom he could rely. Men of probity and
honor, he knew, would not submit to be the instruments of a usurpation
violent and illegal: those who were free from the restraint of
principle, might betray, from interest, that cause in which, from no
better motives, they had enlisted themselves. Even those on whom he
conferred any favor, never deemed the recompense an equivalent for the
sacrifices which they made to obtain it: whoever was refused any demand,
justified his anger by the specious colors of conscience and of duty.
Such difficulties surrounded the protector, that his dying at so
critical a time is esteemed by many the most fortunate circumstance
that ever attended him; and it was thought, that all his courage
and dexterity could not much longer have extended his usurped
administration.

But when that potent hand was removed which conducted the government,
every one expected a sudden dissolution of the unwieldy and ill-jointed
fabric. Richard, a young man of no experience, educated in the country,
accustomed to a retired life, unac