The Governor of England

"Of the two greatest concernments that God hath in the world, the one is that of religion and of the preservation of the professors of it; to give them all due and just liberty;...

On a certain day in November, a misty day with sharpness under the mist, a gentleman was walking out of the little town of St. Ives, which stood black and bleak above the bleak,...

"Sir," said the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been called hotly from that country to counsel the imperative needs of the King. "I am come to give you advice, and I tell yo...

When Mr. Cromwell had seen Lord Strafford ride away into the late summer dust of gold, he returned to his lodging and, packing up his effects, went back to Huntingdon. He was la...

Lady Strafford was admitted, without any delay, into the private apartment of the Queen, where Henriette Marie sat with two ladies in a sumptuous simplicity and elegant seclusio...

The moon's circle was half-filled with light, a mist rose and hung above the river, a sullen rain was falling through the windless air, as the gentlemen left the House and dispe...

For seventeen days had he, in this most momentous trial of his, defended himself, unaided, against thirteen accusers who relieved each other, and with such skill that his impeac...

The young man who spoke leant against the dark-blue and gold diapered wall of the antechamber to the House of Commons, in Westminster Hall; members and their friends were passin...

Mr. Cromwell was in his chamber writing letters; it was a few weeks before the expected return of the King and the opening of Parliament, and the Member for Cambridge had come u...

"This is Lord Falkland's advice," said the Queen, "and I do wonder you should so listen to one who was but lately in the forefront of your enemies and even now is close with them."

Half an hour later the Queen and Rupert found the King standing by the sundial; the sun had faded from the heavens, leaving them faintly purple, the trees were intertwining shap...

The commotion at Westminster was intense; never, even at the arrest of Sir John Eliot or at the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, or at the passing of the Great Remonstrance...

They were in an upper chamber of a house of the better sort in the town of Nottingham; the dark panelled walls, the dark floor and ceiling, the heavy furniture, with the fringes...

In June John Hampden had fallen in the fight at Chalgrove field, Lord Falkland had hurled himself on death in the front of the royalist ranks at Newbury, and now Pym, the bold a...

It was in the July following the winter when he had first come to discussion with my Lord Manchester that Oliver Cromwell, now the Earl's Lieutenant-General, flamed suddenly int...

That evening, while the King was reviewing his troops at Harborough and giving them the word for to-morrow--"Mary"--while General Sir Thomas Fairfax was holding a council at Nas...

The royalists, who had filled Harborough twenty-four hours before, were now scattered like dust before the wind; the house where the King and Queen had stayed the previous night...

"The King," replied Cromwell, "hath troubles of his own to mourn for. Up, mistress, and be going. This is no place for mourner and Papists. Tell me some friend's house and I wil...

The Parliamentarians followed up the victory at Naseby with victories at Langport, Bridgewater, Sherborne, and Bath. The King was desolate at Newark, relying on Rupert, who held...

Soon after Bristol surrendered, Winchester, that other loyal city, fell. Leicester, so lately taken from the Parliament, was by them recaptured soon after Naseby. Nearly twenty...

Lieutenant-General Cromwell lay encamped outside Oxford; Chester had lately fallen, and Gloucester, and when the Parliamentarians took Oxford, as they must certainly soon take i...

In June of that year two women sat together in an upper room of a humble, though decent, house in London, near the Abbey of Westminster and the Hall where the Parliament was now...

"Robin, be honest still. God keep thee in the midst of snares. Thou hast naturally a valiant spirit. Listen to God, and He shall increase it upon thee, and make thee valiant for...

On a summer afternoon in the year 1647, an officer, with a small escort of arquebusiers, rode from Putney to Hampton village, and turning briskly towards the palace, passed unch...

"That man," added Charles, in a tone of great agitation, "will make terms. He came abruptly and left abruptly, he spoke obscurely--but his meaning was to offer himself for my se...

"Ay!" said Cromwell, with the same patience; "but I think neither of my influence with the army nor of any other thing, friends, but of what the Lord hath put it in my heart to...

"I will wait," said the Lieutenant-General; and in the little room with the linen-pattern carving in the grey-coloured walls, the portrait of Mary Tudor, the red lacquer desk, a...

In a room of the house where Oliver Cromwell had moved his family from Ely, a mansion in Drury Lane, one of the least pretentious in that fashionable street, but stately and com...

Charles was a prisoner at Carisbrooke, more strictly guarded than ever before, but not any less dangerous to Parliament or the disrupting forces which stood for Parliament. In s...

The fifteen commissioners had left the King; Sir Harry Vane, perhaps the sincerest republican of all, had stayed behind a moment to entreat Charles--as Pym--as Cromwell--had ent...

It was the army who had ordered the King's removal to a place of greater security, the army who had now resolved to make an end of these long negotiations between King and Parli...

The Lords having rejected the ordinance for bringing the King to trial, the Commons, always under the influence of the army, declared themselves capable of enforcing their own a...

The Dutch Ambassador interceded for the King; the Queen and the Prince of Wales wrote, offering to accept any conditions Parliament might require if only the King might be spare...

"We are Englishmen; that is one good account. And if God give a nation valour and courage, it is honour and a mercy."--OLIVER P., 1656, _Speech to Parliament, Tuesday, 16th Sept...

On a soft golden blue day in September 1651, when the trees were still in full leafage in the Park, and the river reflected a sky veiled with delicate white clouds, when the las...

The Council of State had done well; great names were among the members. Sir Harry Vane had devoted his patriotism and his great gifts to the administration of the navy, which wa...

Behind them was always the army, demanding arrears of pay, work for the poor, and the suppression of the general lawlessness of the kingdom; there were many more conferences bet...

Soldiers could not do the work of lawyers, nor the veterans of Naseby, Preston, Dunbar, and Worcester rule England as well as they had defended her. Such measures as they carrie...

"Was England ever in a better way?" demanded the Lord-Protector. "Even under Elisabeth of famous memory (for so we may truly call her) was this country more quiet at home, more...

Major-General Harrison, in grim retirement, sternly rejected the Lord-Protector's half-wistful attempts to win him, and even refused to come to Whitehall as a friend and dine or...

Through the mingled splendour and distress, brightness and confusion of these years of the Lord-Protector's ruling in England, while the glory of England rose to a perilous heig...

When the Marchioness of Newcastle, after waiting long and vainly, returned at length to Hampton Court and asked for the Lady Elisabeth, she was told that the Protector's daughte...

From that day he sickened rapidly; his strength fell from him with a suddenness that amazed those about him. He attended business as usual, wearing the purple of royal mourning,...