begun, or had quite finished that work, and stopped up his drain: for it seems to have much contributed toward shortening the days* of one of the most knowing of men, and one of the most sincere friends that ever lived.]

OLIVER CROMWELL.

Cromwell was inclined to spare the King till he found there was no trust to be put in him. It is said, at least, that there was a private correspondence carried on between them for some time. Cromwell was to restore the King to his royal power, and was himself to be made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with some other advantageous articles. The Queen heard of this, and wrote to the King to desire him not to yield too much to the traitor. The King in his an

* Mr. Holdsworth died in 1746, as appears from Mr. Spence's preface to his observations on Virgil, quarto, 1767. He there mentions that they first became acquainted at Florence in 1732. Mr. H. left all his papers to Charles Jennens, Esq. of Copthall, or Gobsal, in Leicestershire.-M.

swer said, she need not have any concern in her mind on that head, for whatever agreement they might enter into, he should not look upon himself as obliged to keep any promises made so much on compulsion, whenever he had power enough to break through them. Cromwell intercepted this answer, and from that moment acted always uniformly to take away the King's life *.-Mr. Pope.

*See Richardsoniana, p. 132, where the younger Richardson mentions that Lord Bolingbroke said in his presence, June 12, 1742, that Lord Oxford had often told him that he had seen and had in his hand the letter from King Charles to the Queen here alluded to; and that he had offered five hundred pounds for it. He adds, "Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Marchmont, and Mr. P-e [Pope], all believed that the story I heard or read to this purpose (and which occasioned Lord Bolingbroke's telling us the above), had its origin no higher than this story of Lord Oxford."

This story being entirely inconsistent with Charles's character is, in my opinion, wholly unworthy of credit; and so thinks Hume. It was first told in print, I find, as a report by Roger Cook, Charles, p. 398, and probably grew out of another story told by Maurice, in his memoirs of Roger, Earl of Orrery, of Cromwell in

The night after King Charles the First was beheaded, my Lord Southampton and

tercepting a letter from Charles to the Queen, by ripping open a packsaddle, in which the King told her he meant to throw himself into the hands of the Scotch presbyterians. This is evidently the same story in another form, to which Dugdale alludes in his Short View, &c. fol. 1681, p. 378, where he mentions that it had been reported, in order to blacken the King's memory, that after Charles had been brought from Holdenly to Hampton Court, a certain letter from the Queen to him was intercepted and opened by Cromwell, in which she acquainted him "that the Scots were raising an army in order to rescue him from his captivity;" that Cromwell having read this letter, and made it up so artificially that no violation of the seal could appear, conveyed it to the King, and the next morning sent Ireton to him to inquire whether he knew of any hostile preparations making by the Scots; to which inquiry the King replied, that " he neither knew nor believed any thing of it." Whereupon they both concluded that he was not to be further trusted, and determined to put him to death. This story Dugdale completely refutes.

With respect to Lord Oxford's pretended letter, it is only necessary to observe that if Charles had been so lax in his principles as this story represents him, and had thought himself at liberty to recede at a subsequent period from his engagements with the execra

T

a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body in the banqueting-house at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the morning they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly up stairs. By and by the door opened, and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite

ble wretches with whom he had to deal, he might on many occasions have closed with them, and saved both his crown and his life. But in his treaties with them he firmly adhered to the maintenance of episcopacy, and other points which he thought himself bound to maintain, and by this means these treaties were broken off.

This proves decisively that the letter in question is a forgery. And his answer on the Sunday before he died to the proposal then made to him by Cromwell, Ireton, and the rest, is also a strong evidence to the same point. As soon as he had read two or three of the propositions, he threw them aside with indignation, saying, that he would rather become a sacrifice for his people than thus betray their laws, liberties, lives, and estates, together with the church, the commonwealth and honour of the crown, to so intolerable a bondage of an armed faction.-See Clement Walker's History of Independency, P. II. p. 103.-M.

hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time, and then shook his head, and sighed out the words, "Cruel necessity!" He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in. Lord South

ampton used to say that he could not distinguish any thing of his face, but that by his voice and gait he took him to be Oliver Cromwell *.-The same.

* King Charles was murdered on Tuesday, January 30, at two o'clock. The body remained that night and the next at Whitehall, and on Thursday, February 1, was removed to St. James's. If Lord Southampton did sit up with the body on Tuesday night, the person who accompanied him in this sad office was without doubt Mr. Herbert. Herbert, who could not bear to see the stroke given, stood in the banqueting-house, near the scaffold, till the Bishop of London (Juxon) came from thence with the royal corpse, which was immediately put into a coffin, and carried by them to the backstairs to be embalmed. They then left the body to the surgeons, who were specially chosen by the faction, and care taken that they should not be the King's own surgeons, and Mr. Herbert then walked into the gallery, where he met both Fairfax (with whom he had an extraordinary conversation) and