He seems to have looked upon dissimulation as the perfection of human wisdom, and to have made it the key-stone of the arch on which he built his fortunes.[1] The aspirations of his ambition were concealed under the pretence of attachment to “the good old cause;” and his secret workings to acquire the sovereignty for himself and his family were represented as endeavours to secure for his former brethren in arms the blessings of civil and religious freedom, the two great objects which originally called them into the field.  Thus his whole conduct was made up of artifice and deceit.  He laid his plans long beforehand; he studied the views and dispositions of all from whose influence he had any thing to hope or fear; and he

[Footnote 1:  See proofs of his dissimulation in Harris, iii. 93-103; Hutchinson, 313.]

employed every expedient to win their affections, to make them the blind unconscious tools of his policy.  For this purpose he asked questions, or threw out insinuations in their hearing; now kept them aloof with an air of reserve and dignity; now put them off their guard by condescension, perhaps by buffoonery;[1] at one time, addressed himself to their vanity or avarice; at another, exposed to them with tears (for tears he had at will), the calamities of the nation; and then, when he found them moulded to his purpose, instead of assenting to the advice which he had himself suggested, feigned reluctance, urged objections, and pleaded scruples of conscience.  At length he yielded; but it was not till he had acquired by his resistance the praise of moderation, and the right of attributing his acquiescence to the importunity of others instead of his own ambition.[2]

Exposed as he was to the continued machinations of the royalists and Levellers, both equally eager to precipitate him from the height to which he had attained, Cromwell made it his great object to secure to himself the attachment of the army.  To it he owed the acquisition, through it alone could he insure the permanence, of his power.  Now, fortunately for this purpose, that army, composed as never was army before or since, revered in the lord-protector what it valued mostly in itself, the cant and practice of religious enthusiasm.  The superior officers, the subalterns, the privates, all held themselves forth as professors of godliness.  Among them every public breach of morality was severely punished; the exercises of religious worship

[Footnote 1:  See instances in Bates, Elenc. 344; Cowley, 95; Ludlow, i. 207; Whitelock, 656; State Trials, v. 1131, 1199.]

[Footnote 2:  See Ludlow, i. 272; ii. 13, 14, 17.]