er in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the
report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too
strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our
narrative.

The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell's son-in-law since the
preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days
after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the
event himself, had found time even then to write letters of
condolence and comfort to the young man's grandfather, the Earl of
Warwick. The Earl's reply, dated March 11, is extant. "My pen and my
heart," it begins, "were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are
become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation,
and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising
letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand,
express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian
advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me." Then,
after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation,
he concludes with words that have a historical value. "My Lord," he
says, "all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which
gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen
being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship's many weighty and
noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and
honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my
grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a
whole country's, yea three kingdoms'--for which you justly possess
interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand
escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to
exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a
pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!" On the 19th of April
1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl
himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away,
and Cromwell's "prudent, heroic, and honourable managery" had again
been widely confessed.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 527-531, where Warwick's beautiful letter is
quoted in full, but where his death is postdated by a month. See
Thurloe, VII. 85.]

Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters
Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in
Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance