ther without a
Spanish invasion or in anticipation of it, was nearest to his heart.
Actually he had been in London just before the meeting of the
Parliament, trying to arrange for such "fiddling things"--so Cromwell
had called them--as shooting him in the Park or blowing him up in his
chamber at Whitehall. Before Thurloe had traces of him, he had again
decamped to Flanders; but he had left a substitute in Miles
Sindercombe, an old leveller and mutineer of 1647, but since then a
quarter-master in Monk's Army in Scotland, and dismissed for his
complicity in the Overton project. Sexby had left Sindercombe L1600;
and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with
Cromwell's guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots
at Cromwell's coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying
gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall. He had
been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8,
and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to
extinguish a slow-match that was to explode a mass of blazing
chemicals at midnight. All Whitehall having been roused, the
Protector with the rest, information led at once to Sindercombe. He
was arrested in his lodging, and sent to the Tower; and, his trial
having followed, Feb. 9, he was convicted on evidence given by
accomplices, and doomed to execution on the 14th. In the night
preceding he was found dead in his bed, having poisoned himself. He
had left intimation that he was under no concern about his immortal
soul, having passed out of any form of religion recognising such an
entity, and become a Materialist or Soul-sleeper. Meanwhile his plot
had raised a ferment of new loyalty round the Protector. On the 19th
of January, when Thurloe made a formal disclosure to the House of all
the particulars of the plot, a general thanksgiving throughout
England, Scotland, and Ireland, was ordered, and it was resolved that
the whole House should wait upon his Highness "to congratulate with
his Highness on this great mercy and deliverance." The interview was
on January the 23rd, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, when
Speaker Widdrington made the address for the House, and Cromwell
replied in a most affectionate speech (_Speech_ VI.). The
thanksgiving was on Feb. 20; on which day Principal Gillespie of
Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special
sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was
wo