In a few days, however, their confidence was shaken.  For change of air he had removed to Whitehall, till the palace of St. James’s should be ready for his reception.  There his fever became[a] a double tertian, and his strength rapidly wasted away.  Who, it was asked, was to succeed him?  On the day of his inauguration he had written the name of his successor within a cover sealed with the protectorial arms; but that paper had been lost, or purloined, or destroyed.  Thurloe undertook to suggest to him a second nomination; but the condition of the protector, who, if we believe him, was always insensible or delirious, afforded no opportunity.  A suspicion, however, existed, that he had private reasons for declining to interfere in so delicate a business.[4]

The 30th of August was a tempestuous day:  during the night the violence of the wind increased till it blew a hurricane.  Trees were torn from their roots in the park, and houses unroofed in the city.  This extraordinary occurrence at a moment when it was thought that the protector was dying, could not fail

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, vii. 321, 340, 354, 355.  Bates, Elench. 413.]

[Footnote 2:  Thurloe, vii. 355, 367, 376.]

[Footnote 3:  Ludlow, ii. 151.]

[Footnote 4:  Thurloe, 355, 365, 366.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1658 August 28.]

of exciting remarks in a superstitious age; and, though the storm reached to the coasts of the Mediterranean, in England it was universally referred to the death-bed of the protector.  His friends asserted that God would not remove so great a man from this world without previously warning the nation of its approaching loss; the Cavaliers more maliciously maintained that the devils, “the princes of the air,” were congregating over Whitehall, that they might pounce on the protector’s soul.[1]

On the third night afterwards,[a] Cromwell had a lucid interval of considerable duration.  It might have been expected that a man of his religious disposition would have felt some compunctious visitings, when from the bed of death he looked back on the strange eventful career of his past life.  But he had adopted a doctrine admirably calculated to lull and tranquillize the misgivings of conscience.  “Tell me,” said he to Sterry, one of his chaplains, “Is it possible to fall from grace?” “It is not possible,” replied the minister.  “Then,” exclaimed the dying man, “I am safe; for I know that I was once in grace.”  Under this impression he prayed, not for himself, but for God’s people.  “Lord,” he said, “though a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee through thy grace, and may and will come to thee for thy people.  Thou hast made me a mean instrument to do them some good, and thee service.  Many of them set too high a value upon me, though others would be glad of my death.  Lord, however thou disposest of me, continue, and go on to do good for them.  Teach those who look too much upon thy instruments, to depend more upon thyself,