eir
impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the
instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of
peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which
many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late
Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as
verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father
(whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of
these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were
constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to
another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my
nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the
sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the
carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I
cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late
Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept
me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to
withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died."
Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells
then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of
July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered
that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish
affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire
himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own
occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the
mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject
of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts,
as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have
a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther
inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the
understanding that his income should receive such an increase as
should raise it to L10,000 a year in all.--Monk, Lockhart, and the
Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there
could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the
Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and
Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as
extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received
credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Go