The rule of the Lord-General and his council of officers, governing in a form parliamentary, called "the little Parliament" was a failure complete and absolute.

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 carried were totally against the principles and policy of their leader, who passed from rapt enthusiasm to sad disillusion, and finally to gloomy anger again; the military saints, chosen of the Lord as they were, and the very cream of the elect, could not govern England.

In December 1653, after many consultations with his councils, Cromwell, who hesitated to break up another Parliament by force, persuaded the officers to hand back their powers to him from whom they had received them.

The soldiers, though fanatic, narrow, and intolerant, were neither self-seeking nor unreasonable; they saw that they were unable to govern the country, and that there was only one man who could undertake the task that had been too much for them.

Whether he had the courage, the daring, the firmness to seize this position, to step to the front and take the command so completely, to take upon himself the burden of rule in the present state of the country, after so many attempts at government had failed, was yet to be seen.

He had hitherto shown no personal ambition and no desire to thrust himself forward, his manner being rather to keep himself in the background and wait for God to bid him act.

The moment was serious, perilous, even awful; the Members of the last Parliament and the officers met constantly in prayer; conferences, meetings between all the able men available, were frequent; the people, sternly and austerely ruled for the last three years, with the Puritans triumphant and the Cavaliers utterly silenced and suppressed, waited in a quietude that concealed an intense excitement.

On Wednesday, the 15th of December, the Lord-General rode from one of these meetings to his home, now at Hampton Court. He arrived there bitten with the cold and covered with fine snow. He went straight to the fire in the room which his family used to dine in, and flung himself with the weariness of one spent in mind and body into the great wicker chair with arms and red cushions that he commonly used.

The noble, pleasant room was empty save for Elisabeth, his daughter (the Claypoles had a suite of apartments at Hampton Palace), and her youngest child, who was asleep on her knee. He had not noticed her at first, so quietly was she withdrawn into the shadows, and her low, pleased exclamation, "My father!" gave him a little start.

"Betty!" he impetuously flung out his hand to her; she softly laid the sleeping boy on the velvet couch from which she had risen, and, coming to his side, knelt beside him, and slipped her hand inside his.

He gazed with affectionate pleasure at her charming face, bright and delicate, sensitive and resolute, lifted to his, the brown, waving hair, the expressive blue eyes, the mouth a little wistful, the chin a little proud, the whole infinitely dear and loving.

"What has happened to-day?" she asked gently.

The look of heaviness her greeting had lightened returned to his countenance; he lifted his head and stared into the mellow flames that sprang from the great logs between the brass and irons.

"Betty, it hath come," he said; "it is to be laid on me, the burden, yea, the whole burden. Mine was the responsibility," his rough voice rose a little. "I put down the King, I broke the Parliament—I set up the officers who failed (the more blame to me)—and now it is I who must guide the State."

"Thou?" murmured Elisabeth.

"Who else?" he continued moodily, "who else? It is a call from God and the people, and no man could ask for more. Yea, I know the Lord hath called me as He called me ten years ago from St. Ives—this is thy work—get thou up and do it!"

"Thou—wilt thou be King?" asked Elisabeth, dropping his hand with a shiver of fear.

"Even so," he replied sombrely; "but not with the name of a thing so hated shall I be called. Some time ago this came to me as the thing to do—a flash out of a cloud—then darkness came again; but now it is before me, very clearly, that I must be the Governor of England."

"It is a high calling and an awful place to hold," said his daughter.

"And I am sick in the body, often and often tired in the soul. Thou dost know," he added, with a kind of passion, "how very, very willing I was to retire after Worcester fight; often upon riding the rough ways in Scotland, often when sick in Ireland, have I dreamt to come back to a meek, sweet retirement, but it was not to be. God sought me out again and bid me go forward. And now there is this come upon me. Betty, I shall soon be fifty-five years old. I feel myself, in many ways, old. But there is this work to do. And it is for England. Yet how shall I prevail where these upright and wise ones failed? For they strove earnestly, yet God would not have them. Will He forsake me also? 'Oh, that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest!' Lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest!"

And his head drooped on his breast as if he was discouraged.

Elizabeth took his inert hand again between her fresh, warm palms.

"Why should you fear a cold success in this great venture?" she asked. "Truly it is a great and awful thing to take a king's place, but shall not the Lord still support you as hitherto, and bless you with notable victories?"

Cromwell, still staring into the fire, answered slowly.

"I have some sparks of the light of His countenance, which keeps me alive—yet I see ahead difficulties greater than any I have yet met. What are charges in the field compared to factions in the State? I say the saints failed, and shall not I fail? Will not men say to me, as the Hebrew said to Moses—'Who made thee a Prince and a judge over us. Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?"

Elisabeth shuddered.

"Ay, I killed the Egyptian," continued Cromwell, glooming, "but there are many more out of Egypt ready to take his place, ready to confound us, yea, there are plenty of diabolic persons abroad, ready to set snares for the godly, even the devil and all his angels are lying in wait to thwart this England which the Lord hath elected for His own!"

"But thou canst meet and conquer them, if it be in the power of any man to do so," returned Elisabeth simply. "Again I say it is a high and fearful thing that thou must undertake, but I know that in all things thou wilt walk according to the Gospel."

The Lord-General turned to look at her as she knelt beside him in her rosy gown with the firelight glowing over her, her faced upturned, and her hands clasped on the arm of his chair—a sweet comforter truly, in her seriousness and loving encouragement, in her eager belief in him and rapt piety.

"That is not how many will speak of me, Betty," he said, with a sad tenderness. "Rather will they call me usurper and traitor, and say that I have put down others for carnal ambition. Many hard and contemptuous things will be said of me, Betty."

"I know," she answered bravely, "but need we care?"

As she spoke, a third came down the shadowy room, and joined them—Elisabeth Cromwell.

The Lord-General rose and went up to her.

"You are tired!" she cried, noting that before all, and she caught his arms and peered up into his face tenderly through the dim light.

"Mother," said Mrs. Claypole, rising from beside the empty chair—"the new orders are decided upon to-day——"

"Ah!" cried Cromwell's wife, "and thou?"

"My dear, my best," he said, "we must live at Whitehall now——"

"The king's palace?" she exclaimed, recoiling a little.

"Yea," he answered gently, "for I am called to be the new Governor of this country."

"Why, that is a fearful thing!" she said, with a half-terrified laugh. "Thou wilt never more be safe, nor I at peace!"

She let go her hold on his sleeves and moved to the fire.

"I was happier before it all began," she said abruptly; "this startles me." She gave again that piteous laugh, which was more like a sob. "I am too old to learn to be a Prince's lady," she said.

And she glanced in the mirror above the mantelpiece, looking at her grey hair and meek face.

"I would sooner not put this up in Whitehall for all the world to gape at!" she said.

"Ah, mother!" cried Betty Claypole, and embraced her and kissed her hand.

"Did you not expect this?" asked the Lord-General mournfully. "I did so—because," he added, with great simplicity, "I saw no other fitted for the place."

"There is no other" said his daughter. "He is one and only—is it not so, mother? And thou art one and only, too, dear, and wilt shine in Whitehall far higher than the French Queen."

The Lord-General turned with a little smile to both of them.

"By now you should be used to living in a palace," he said.

"What will they say of us?" asked Elisabeth Cromwell, still troubled. "They will say that we have put ourselves up in the King's place."

"There is no king," interrupted Cromwell firmly. "And as for the place I undertake to fill, the whole people have called me to it, yea, the whole people."

He repeated this statement as if to persuade and convince himself; he well knew that his authority came from a very few of the people, mainly from the army leaders, and that his election was not the result of a general demand on the part of the nation; only the minority had hailed him, the majority remained as always, passive, almost indifferent—or fiercely hostile.

He might be going to rule for the people's sake, purely, but he was not going to rule by their wish. He felt this a weakness in his case and strove to cover it, even to deceive himself in it; a general election, a genuine appeal to the country, might have resulted in bringing in the second Charles Stewart, and for the sake of the cause he had not dared risk it. Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, who in many ways represented the average Englishman, had pressed Cromwell to call in Charles after the crisis of a year ago, and no one knew better than the Lord-General that the three islands seethed with royalist plots and the restless intrigues of various fanatical sects. No one knew better than he, either, what a target for hatred and rage he would be, what undying fury he would arouse, how many and implacable his enemies would become.

His call might be from God, it certainly was not from the people of England.

Elisabeth Claypole knew something of all this, and to her there was something piteous in the strong man's attempt to belittle his difficulties and disguise the narrow basis on which his authority rested.

Elisabeth Cromwell broke the thoughtful silence.

"And thou wilt be Governor of England!" she said. "Scarcely can I believe it."

She voiced the incredulity of many; yet the thing was done.

On the following Friday, His Excellency the Lord-General of the Forces became His Highness the Lord-Protector of England, and was installed in that office with all ancient ceremonial, formerly used by kings, and kings alone.

There was an installation in the Chancery Court, Westminster Hall, His Highness appearing in a richer dress than he had ever worn before, even at his son's wedding—rich velvet, all black, with a band of gold round his hat, a fine sword, and sword band.

So he went in procession from Whitehall and back again, attended by the Lord Mayor, the judges, and other dignitaries, in robe of state, outriders, running footmen, guards of soldiers, and the usual shouting crowd, half-awed, half-jeering, and wholly curious, some wishing confusion to red-nosed Noll and some thanking the Lord that He had sent a gracious saint to reign over them.

The sergeants with their maces, the heralds in gold and scarlet, proclaimed, at Old Exchange, at Palace Yard, and in other places, Oliver Cromwell Lord-Protector, with the same dignity, and ceremony, and shouting as Charles Stewart had been proclaimed King. So a change so tremendous was accomplished with such little outward difference.

The new ruler had given his oath of fidelity to the new Constitution (an instrument drawn up in four days by the officers, with Lambert at their head) and had received the great seal and sword of State. By the afternoon all was over, and the man who little more than ten years ago had been a gentleman farmer, with no experience save that of the routine of a country estate, with no more knowledge of God and man than he could learn from his one Book, with no power, influence, or wealth at all, was now sole ruler, dictator, and symbol of one of the greatest nations in Europe and foremost champion of the Reformed Religion....

Elisabeth Claypole (Lady Elisabeth now) slept that next spring in Whitehall; the first night she lay on a bed with blue satin curtains brought by Henriette Marie from France, and not sold with the King's other effects by reason of the fine workmanship of the needlework on them.

A mirror once used by the Queen was in the room too, her fleurs-de-lis were embroidered in the hangings, and the whole chamber was still redolent of the perfumes she had kept in the caskets and cupboards. Elisabeth, who had less than any of her family the stern belief in fatalism, which was the central doctrine of their austere and heroic creed, and less blind reliance on the justice of the Puritan cause, felt a faint horror and a regretful remorse at lying among these splendours when the woman to whom they had belonged (to whom they still belonged, Elisabeth thought) dwelt in poverty and loneliness, unfortunate as Queen and wife.

That first night she dreamt dismal things, and woke up in the dark, oppressed with confused remembrances of the excitement of the day.

And with other remembrances, more awful; often had she heard an account of the execution of the King and listened with horrified and reluctant ears.

Now, as she sat up in the great bed, shivering in the winter night, she pictured, all too clearly, the late King as he had been described to her—the slender figure in the pale blue silk vest, with the George on the breast, and the hair gathered up under a white satin cap.

She thought that she saw him glimmer across the dark, looking down at his feet—he wore the wide shoes with silk roses, which had gone out of fashion since his death—and then at her, smiling bitterly.

He came, without moving his limbs, gliding to the bed, passed it, rose up a man's height from the floor, and disappeared in a shaft of shaking light.

"We are intruders here!" said Elisabeth, cold to the heart. She got out of bed (her husband was still asleep; she could hear his even breathing) and stood shivering in the keen air.

A chill like a presage of death crept through her veins; the whole place seemed to exhale an air of hate and misery.

So strong was this feeling that she fumbled for a gown in the dark, and stole to the next chamber to look at her infant son.

The moonlight was in his room, and she saw him sleeping peacefully beside his nurse. Elisabeth crept back, dreading lest she should conjure up another awful image of the late King.

"I am not going to be happy here," she kept saying to herself. "I am not going to be happy here."

The next day she did not leave her bed, and before long it was known that the Protector's favourite daughter was stricken with a lingering, nameless illness.