"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 respected abroad? Nay, there is no malignant in the land can say it——"

"Surely Your Highness hath no need to make any defence to us," said the Lord Lambert, one of his military council. Some number of them and other dignitaries were gathered in his apartment at Whitehall, listening to him.

His Highness, who had hitherto been pacing restlessly up and down the room, here came to a pause before the table at which the officers and councillors sat.

"I have need to defend myself before all men," he exclaimed vehemently, "for on every hand am I decried and blamed! I speak not of plots against my life and such little matters—the work of a few diabolic persons in the pay of Charles Stewart—but of the great discontent of the Prelatists, of the rage of the Papists, of the intolerance of all—yea, even of the sharpness and bitterness of many of God's people who go about saying that the ways of Zion are filled with money, that their gold is dim, and that there is a sharp wind abroad, but not to cleanse the land."

None of the officers offering to speak, Cromwell continued, still in an impassioned manner—

"Whoever speaks so is wrong! God put me here. My authority is from Him—I will come down for none of them."

He went to the window embrasure and stood there, with his back to the light, his hat pulled over his brows, his arms folded on his breast, gazing at his councillors and friends.

The Protectorship had lasted over a year, and Cromwell was now as absolute as ever any Stewart had dared to be.

His first Parliament had gone the way of the last of King Charles'; the members presuming to question the Instrument by which Cromwell had been elected, His Highness had again resorted to the file of soldiers with loaded snaphances, and, gathering the expelled members in the Painted Chamber, had made them swear fealty to the Instrument and to himself before he permitted them to return to their places.

The immovable Bradshaw, Sir Arthur Haselrig, one of the famous five members, and some others refused the oath; the rest took it and went back.

But so impossible was it to combine a military autocracy with the ancient methods of civil government, so impossible for soldiers and lawyers to work together, that the Parliament again displeased His Highness by revising the Instrument into a constitution which His Highness could not accept.

On the earliest opportunity he dismissed them, and had since ruled entirely on his own authority with such help as he might get from the Council of officers.

So when all the ancient landmarks had been carried away, the power of the sword remained standing and the army and their general ruled England; it was a strange ending to the long, earnest, and bloody struggle, an ending neither Pym nor Hampden had ever foreseen, nor Cromwell himself, when the Parliament he was afterwards to break had sent him down to Cambridge to raise a troop for the defiance of the King.

In ruling without a Parliament he was doing what Strafford and Charles had perished for attempting, in keeping a huge standing army (it was now twice the number named in the Instrument) he was doing what no king of England had been permitted to do; he had, in fact, the power at which Charles had aimed, and he had what Charles had never been able to attain—the armed force to maintain him in that power.

When he dealt with the Parliament he had used the methods Strafford would have used had he dared, and he was ruling now with the absolutism which Strafford had always passionately hoped would one day belong to his master.

But what had not been possible to a descendant of many kings, with all tradition behind him, had been achieved easily enough by a soldier produced by a revolution, who had nothing to rely on but the gifts within himself.

Cromwell was too clear-sighted not to discern the illogical position he was occupying, but it did not disturb him, nor did he find it very wonderful; his fatalism (which his enemies termed opportunism) accepted without question all that the Lord should be pleased to send; his enthusiasm for the cause of liberty disguised, even from himself, the arbitrary nature of his authority, and the victorious soldier, who had fought God's battles from Naseby to Worcester, was not to be frightened from the position he held by any malignant talk of his unlawful right. Nor was the wise patriot and ardent statesman to be argued from the point of vantage from whence he could do the best for England.

But the plots, agitations, upheavals, intolerances, and violences about him, even among his own one-time friends (some of whom, including the lofty-minded Vane, were in the Tower), did shake and trouble him. These, more than anything, thwarted him in his honest and strenuous attempt to set up an orderly government on the ruins left by the violence of war and the wreckage of social upheaval.

"I will not have intolerance!" he broke out now, suddenly at his Council. "I say I will not have it—let every man who is not a Prelatist or a Papist—who doth not preach licentious doctrines in the name of Christ—let him worship in peace!"

"In this way many damnable heresies will creep into the land," answered one of the officers.

"I would rather," cried His Highness, "permit Mahometanism in the land than have one of God's people persecuted!"

His Council remained silent; not one of these men agreed with him, and it was a notable tribute to the respect and affection they had for him that none of them raised a voice in dissent.

He felt, however, their opposition, as indeed he felt the opposition of the entire nation to this dearest of his ideals—toleration.

It seemed as if men never would agree to leave their neighbour in peace on the question of religious belief; and the extraordinary bitterness of the feeling between the various sects was more and more vexing to Cromwell, who had always held tolerance as a matter of principle, and now, as he advanced more and more in greatness and power, recognised it as being a necessary element of wise government at home and useful alliances abroad.

"God," he continued, driving home his point with a certain labour, as if he struggled to put into words what no words would convey, "hath elected England—He hath made us the instruments of some work of His. He wishes us to go forward—to fight heresies and Antichrist—but also He wisheth us to remain united in brotherly love, not to be too nice and strict about the religion of the man next us, so long as he be working clearly in due fear of Him—were we not all kinds in the army? Did any fight the worse for being an Anabaptist? Nay, I do not think so. God hath need of all of us who love Him."

General Lambert answered—

"This is very well here, among sober men, but how shall Your Highness get such a doctrine accepted among the general?"

"Yea," said the Lord-Protector gloomily. "Truly the fools trouble me more than the knaves—most of all do the lukewarm vex me, for nought will bring them to any reason—give me a Saul sooner than a Gallio!"

"Sir," replied one of the officers, "there are Sauls, and plenty too, and maybe the Lord calleth us to combat these sooner than to smooth over heresies and live peaceably with those who are little better than the heathen and the infidel."

Cromwell groaned.

"There is much to do," he answered. "I say there is much to do—yea, serious and mighty things; and shall we stop on the way to argue upon trivial matters?"

"Trivial matters!" echoed several voices at once.

The Lord-Protector flashed upon them—

"Yea, so I say! Study how a man may serve the State, not how he may be persuaded from his proper beliefs—this is enough for any man. 'With my whole heart have I sought Thee—O let me not go wrong out of Thy commandments!'—he who can say that from his heart, leave him in peace. Even these poor people the Quakers—what harm is there in them that they should be so roughly used? What hath God said?—'I have loved thee with an everlasting love—with loving kindness have I drawn thee!' Shall we, too, not strive for a little of this kindness? What have we not had to contend with of late? A Parliament that was but a clog and a hindrance, rebellions such as that at Salisbury, godly men such as Major-General Harrison led astray, rising of Anabaptists—all manner of trouble and confusion—and shall we add to it by persecuting those who differ from us in small matters of doctrine?"

The Council remained silent; the Keepers of the Great Seal glanced at one another. These men were not in dread of His Highness as his Parliament had been; they were not his creation to be scattered at his will—nay, he was rather their creation—yet they knew that when it came to a struggle he always prevailed, gently or roughly, directly or indirectly, and they were aware of his whirlwind resolutions and believed that if occasion arose they, too, might be smitten and cast aside, even though they were the very foundations on which his power stood.

The Protector, eyeing them keenly, was silent too.

The Master of the Rolls, Lenthall (the Speaker whom Harrison had helped from the chair when Cromwell had dismissed the remnant of Charles' last Parliament), propping his grim face on his thin hand, asked His Highness what he was discontented with.

"Surely," he said, with some austerity, "the work of Christ is being accomplished in England? Abroad we have good respect—I think General Blake hath made the name of English respected on the seas—all Europe hath recognized this Commonwealth. Why is Your Highness so vexed and troubled?"

He spoke with some sternness, for he believed, in common with many of his colleagues, that the Protector aimed at an even greater personal power, and to make himself king in name as he was in fact—an ambition which was intensely displeasing to the army and to their leaders, nearly all of whom were staunch Republicans.

"I am vexed and troubled because there is so much confusion and littleness at home," replied Cromwell. "There is more lamenting over the putting down of cock-fighting, play-acting, and horse-racing, gambling, and such lewd sports than ever I heard over the loss of any good thing. There are plots and confusions manifold, and the Lord hath veiled the future from me, therefore I am vexed and troubled. Yet," he added, with a change of voice and a bright flash in his eyes, "I am not discouraged nor disheartened—ye must not so misread me—'in the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and in the night with a pillar of fire'—so it hath always been with me—do not think that that hath ever failed me."

No man had any speech with which to answer him, and the little assembly broke up with the usual courtesies. Only Lambert said as he was leaving: "'He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'"

When they had all gone His Highness went to the table where they had been sitting, and sat down in his great chair of honour and dropped his head on his breast.

Many and great thoughts oppressed him; the melancholy that was such a close companion to his enthusiasms overcame him. He saw himself old, weary, faced with an impossible situation, with unsurmountable difficulties.

For some while he sat so, his head sinking lower, his hands clasped on his knees; then he was aroused by the gentle opening of the door, and Elisabeth Claypole came softly into the Council Chamber.

"Forgive me," she said. "I did see that the others had gone, and, knowing that you must be alone, I feared you had fallen into sad thoughts." She approached him. "It is not well, my father—nay, it is not well—that you should sit alone with melancholy thoughts."

She sank into the chair that the stern Lambert had just left; the dark wood and leather now framed a very different picture from that the austere soldier had made.

Long ill-health, which physicians could not cure, and intervals of lingering illness, which physicians could not ease, had robbed Elisabeth Claypole of much of her vivacity and much of her fresh comeliness, but she still remained, despite her languor, her paleness, a certain sadness caused by constant pain, a creature choice and rare, and, despite all, cheerful and courageous. As the Lord-Protector lifted his tired eyes to gaze at her dear face he saw in her youthful features a sudden startling likeness to his mother, who had died, still valiant and serene, a few months after she had moved into the King's palace.

This curious resemblance between one dead, so full of years, and one young and living gave him a feeling of horrid presage; he rose abruptly.

"Betty, I wish you would get well," he said.

She smiled faintly.

"That is what Bridget says," she answered (Bridget Ireton was Bridget Fleetwood now, the wife of one of her father's most honoured generals. Mary and Frances were still to wed, and great matches were foretold for them); "but you must not think so much of me—I shall soon be well enough."

Her father gazed at her, yearning over that lost brightness which he had condemned once as evidence of a carnal mind; her grey gown, her modest laces, her smooth ringlets—all were plain enough now; though her father had put on great state and lived almost with the ceremonial of a king, the Lady Elisabeth had no longer any heart for pretty vanities.

"Methinks," said Cromwell bluntly, "thou art not happy when thou art at Whitehall."

"I love Hampton better," she replied evasively.

It was not difficult for him to divine what her thoughts were—what they always had been.

"Thou dost think thy father liveth in another man's house by living in the King's palace," he said, with whimsical tenderness.

"No, no," she answered, with an effort; "but it remindeth me of old, unhappy times—of all the blood that was shed—of the King himself (poor, wretched King)——"

Cromwell interrupted vehemently.

"He did not die for nothing, neither he nor the others—that judgment on the tyrant was the fruit and crown of all our efforts and prepared the way for such of Christ's work as we have been able to do since. Betty"—he turned to his daughter with the same half-anxious, half-proud air of defence with which he had turned to his Council a little before—"is not this country better at home and abroad than it was under the late King?"

"All bear witness to that," she replied quickly; "and that is the reason why you should be more uprised in spirits, sir."

"I have much to overcome," he answered.

"What hath the Lord said?" rejoined the Lady Elisabeth—"'With him that overcometh will I share My throne.'"

"Dear one, thy rebuke is well," answered His Highness gently, "and do not doubt that I shall go forward to the end. But at present there are some things hard to bear—mostly the estrangement from some Christians of my acquaintance. I did never think to be parted from Major-General Harrison and John Bradshaw, those godly men. Albeit I have tried my best to remain with them, and I hope yet to win Major-General Harrison."

"He is hard, father—he is hard and fierce," replied Elisabeth Claypole. "He was cruel to many poor men—I have heard notable talk of it——"

"Thou art too pitiful," said Cromwell, "and judge as a woman. There is no man among us—not thy brother Henry, not Lambert, nor Dishowe, nor my son Fleetwood, a finer soldier or a truer Christian than Thomas Harrison."

"I do not like him," insisted the Lady Elisabeth, with a sparkle of her former spirit. "Methinks he smells of his father's trade, and it is credibly believed that he hath plotted against you with the Anabaptists—Richard told me as much."

"As to that I will demand an answer of these charges from him," returned Cromwell gloomily. "Believe me that I love him."

For answer and comfort she rose and went up to him; as she took him lovingly by the upper arm she started. She felt something hard beneath the rich black velvet which he wore.

"You have armour on!" she murmured.

"Since young Major Gerrard set the precedent there have been many ready to follow his example," replied His Highness. "And in this way I would not die—nay, I would not die shot like a beast."

"O Christ, preserve us all!" cried Lady Elisabeth, and fell weeping over the heart that her father had to guard with a steel corselet from the assassin's bullet or knife.

He put his arm round her as if she had been a child (so, indeed, she still seemed to him); and the thoughts of both went back to the happy home in St. Ives, before they had known sickness or death among them, when she had not gone in silk nor he in secret armour, when they had not known the perils of great positions nor the magnificence of kings' palaces.