and take his place. Next day
Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already,
besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord
Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family,
all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of
July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at
Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on
Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions
was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such
injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his
cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day
seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a
dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call
them to account again, which had for some time been growing in
Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested
the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the
meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her
death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as
"of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come
to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's
remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for
them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to
Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of
confinement, attended by his physicians--on one of which days (the
13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made
baronets--he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till
Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others
thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his
illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it
may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he
showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court
Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that
George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his
Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of
condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her
illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to
Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he
had come to have a talk wi