CHAPTER IX EXIT HIS HIGHNESS

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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, but the heaviness of his spirit was noticed by all.

Towards the end of August, George Fox, the Quaker, came to Hampton Court to see His Highness about the persecution of the Friends; he went by river, and soon after he stepped ashore at Hampton he saw His Highness riding at the head of his Lifeguards, going towards the Palace under the shade of the riverside trees.

George Fox waited until the cavalcade, which was coming slowly towards him, into Hampton Court Park, had reached him, gazing steadily the while at that figure of His Highness, drooping a little in the saddle and looking ahead of him, with an extraordinary air of stillness.

"I felt and saw," wrote Fox afterwards, when he was back in his cobbler's shop in London, "a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead man."

His Highness was very courteous; he checked his horse when he saw the patient figure, russet-clad, with the broad-brimmed hat, waiting for him, and welcomed Fox as warmly as he had done two years before when the Quaker saw him at Hyde Park Corner among his Guards, and pressed to his carriage window, and spoke to him gravely—as he spoke to him now, warning him, and laying before him the sufferings of the Friends, even as the spirit moved him to do.

His Highness listened; the stillness of his demeanour, remarkable in one naturally so full of energy and eloquence, did not alter; he said very little, only kindly bade Fox come and see him at his house next day.

And so he rode on slowly towards the red palace, "and I," wrote Fox in his Journal, "never saw him more."

For the following day, when he came from Kingston to Hampton again, the doctors would let no one see His Highness, who was fallen worse—of a tertian ague, they said—and would never ride at the head of his famous Guard again, either through Hampton Court Park or anywhere else. George Fox had been the last to see the Lord-Protector on horseback, girt with a sword.

Soon after he was moved by coach to London, where the air was thought to be better for his complaint; St. James's Palace, that he intended to lodge at, not being immediately ready, he was taken to Whitehall, and on the Wednesday following half the nation was praying for him, and half waiting breathlessly, "for a great deliverance."

In Whitehall, a meeting of preachers and godly persons besought God with prayers and tears to spare His Highness, and all over the city were apprehension, expectation, hopes, fears, and supplication.

So it had come to this: the twenty years of great events, with all the toil, achievement, triumph, tumult, and sorrow, had swept up to this moment when the gentleman farmer from St. Ives, who had received a command from God, lay dying at Whitehall, with that command executed as far as it is in a man to accomplish a mission he conceives Divine, dying, with England breathless, and the son of the late tyrant breathless too, and watching and waiting from across the water.

It seemed to many valiant souls as if this England so violently shaped anew into something of the form which was the ideal of Puritanism, purged and glorified, was no more than the vivified dream of this one man, and that when he passed from the earth it would be as when a sleeper wakes—the dream would be dispelled and all things become as they had been.

What he himself might think, now that he knew the summons had come, none could tell, for he was mostly silent during the ebb and flow of his illness, and only spoke to pray; once or twice the passionate entreaties to God, which he heard rising around him, and the passionate affection of his family and friends, seemed to rouse in him a desire and hope of life. He could not but know that his work was not yet finished, and that this was not the best of times for him to die.

"Lord, Thou knowest," he said, "that if I do desire to live, it is to show forth Thy praise and declare Thy works!" and, "Is there none that says, Who will deliver me from this peril?" then, "Man can do nothing; God can do what He will."

And at times he fell into a kind of enthusiasm, speaking much of the Covenants of Works and of Grace and expounding them; to his wife and children, who felt their very life being torn from them, he spoke, too: "Love not this world"—he repeated the words with great vehemence, as was his wont—"I say, love not this world; it is not good that you should love this world—children, live like Christians. I leave you the Covenant to feed on!"

But for the most he had done with human affection; weeping did not seem to touch that heart that had once been so tender to tears.

He did not even look at those about him, but upwards at the dark canopy of his bed; and to that inner eye which had beheld the sword stretched out of the cloud in the barn at St. Ives, it was no covering of tapestry which hung above him, but the threshold of the eternal world.

The dry wind, which had begun before the Lady Elisabeth died, and blown for weeks across the Island from sea to sea, deepened and strengthened now from day to day, and at the end of this month of August, when His Highness was rapidly coming to the end of all storms and calms alike, a hurricane of wind arose—the most fearful, violent, and protracted any man could remember.

The angry seas sucked in ships and sailors and beat furiously on the coast, trees were uprooted, haystacks and barns overturned, tiles and chimneys cast down; in the cities men could scarcely stand in the streets for the wind which roared and piped round the corners.

The great man dying and the great storm raging became mysteriously connected in the minds of those watching and waiting breathlessly; there were not wanting those who said that it was the Devil come for His Highness, nor those who thought it was the sound of the wings of God's angels, nor those who thought that it was devils and angels both wrestling together.

It was drawing near to that most glorious day for Oliver Cromwell and his cause, the 3rd of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, and of the calling of the first Parliament of His Highness—a day of general thanksgivings and triumph to all Puritans.

As the stormy winds rocked Whitehall Palace and rattled at the window out of which Charles Stewart had stepped to die, and at the window of the room where the Lord Protector lay, His Highness rallied from his slumbers and sat upright in his great bed and listened to the tempest, as a soldier might sit up in the dark and listen the night before a battle.

"I think I am the poorest wretch alive," he said, "but I love God, or, rather, am beloved by Him—I am a conqueror and more than a conqueror—'through Christ which strengtheneth me'"—so he repeated again the words which had saved him once, long ago. But as he sat up, hearkening to the blowing winds without, his comfort seemed to go from him.

"It is a fearful thing," he said, "to fall into the hands of the Living God!"

He raised himself up and stretched out his hand towards the wind as if he appealed to something in that tumult outside his palace.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!" he cried again.

So high and loud the wind howled that those about him shivered as if they feared to be struck by some supernatural force; but Cromwell sat erect, and again cried out, "I say it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!"

One of the chaplains praying in the adjoining chamber heard His Highness' raised and agonized voice and entered the sick-room.

To him Oliver Cromwell turned eagerly.

"Tell me," he asked, in a voice of intense wistfulness, "is it possible to fall from Grace?"

"Nay," said the pastor, "it is not possible."

"Then," said the dying man, "I am saved, for I know that I was once in Grace."

He clasped his hands, and the family and friends about him, whom he seemed to have forgotten, heard, in the pauses of the wind, his prayer—

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant with Thee through Grace! And I may—I will—come to Thee, for Thy people! Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service—many of them have set too high a value on me, others wish and would be glad of my death—Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on and do good for them."

His voice rose now like the voice of a well man, almost as strong as the voice that had greeted with a psalm the rising sun before Dunbar.

"Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love—and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation—and make the Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on Thy Instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too.

"And pardon the folly of this short prayer—even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen!"

And after this he lay down among his pillows and slept, despite the storm.

And there began to be whispers about the succession, which hitherto no one had dared name.

It was vaguely believed that His Highness had named him, some while ago, and the sealed paper containing his wishes was at Hampton. Thurloe and the Lord Fauconberg sent there for it, but the paper could not be found; and His Highness' body was fast sinking into eternal slumber, and his spirit escaping them, and they were all confused and amazed at what might be before them.

The faithful Thurloe approached his bed and asked him who was to be his successor.

At which His Highness turned his head and was silent.

"The Lord Richard?" whispered Thurloe, and the Lord Protector was believed to answer, "Yes, yes," but no man could be sure of what he said. Henry Cromwell was absent; the rest of his family were near him, but he seemed to forget them. Only twice he asked intensely for "Robert, Robert, my eldest son."

He fell now into great pains, but with them came great cheerfulness of spirit.

"God is good," he was heard to say—"indeed, He is—God is good—my work is done. Yet God be with His people."

On the eve of the thanksgiving day, which shall never be kept as a thanksgiving day again, save by an oppressed people, secretly in their hearts, the victor of the battles which made the 3rd of September glorious was seen to be very near the end of his restlessness and his pain.

He spoke to himself continually, judging and abasing himself, and his eyes were continually turned upward to that rich canopy and rich ceiling, which was certainly neither covering nor concealment to him who saw the light beyond the palace roof.

His sad, forlorn wife (who saw but dark days ahead of her) besought him to drink and sleep and held out a cup to him.

"It is not my design to drink or sleep," he answered, "but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

All through the windy night he prayed brokenly; once he spoke of Harrison, and seemed troubled; once he asked God to spare Betty further pain, and again he said, "Is Robert dead?—and Oliver?"

When the sun was up over city and golden river, and the vast crowds waiting anxiously, His Highness had fallen to silence.

Neither to the God who waited for him, nor to his forlorn family, nor to the breathless nation did His Highness speak again in any earthly tongue.

That afternoon the Lord ungirt the sword with which He had invested his Captain twenty years before, and in Whitehall Palace Oliver Cromwell's lifeless body lay—and the nation flew asunder into confusion.

"My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.

"But Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever—and Thy remembrance throughout all generations....

"They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall wax old as doth a garment.

"And as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." Amen. Amen.

Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh






                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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