One wishes there were a history of English Puritanism, the last of all our heroisms.  At bottom, perhaps, no nobler heroism ever transacted itself upon this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us in the elysium we English have provided for our heroes!  The Rushworthian elysium.  Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw.  Puritanism is not of the nineteenth century, but of the seventeenth; it is grown unintelligible, what we may call incredible.  Heroes who knew in every fibre, and with heroic daring laid to heart, that an Almighty justice does verily rule this world; that it is good to fight on God’s side, and bad to fight on the devil’s side.  Well, it would seem the resuscitation of a heroism from the past is no easy enterprise.

Of Biographies of Cromwell, there are none tolerable.  Oliver’s father was a country gentleman of good estate, not a brewer; grandson of Sir Richard Cromwell, or Williams, nephew of Thomas Cromwell “mauler of monasteries”; his mother a Stuart (Steward), twelfth cousin or so of King Charles.  He was born in 1599, went to Cambridge in the month that Shakespeare died.  Next year his father died, and Oliver went no more to Cambridge.  He was the only son.  In 1620 he married.

He sat in the Parliament of 1628-29; the Petition of Right Parliament; a most brave and noble Parliament, ending with that scene when Holles held the Speaker down in his chair.  The last Parliament in England for above eleven years.  Notable years, what with soap-monopoly, ship-money, death of the great Gustavus at Lutzen, pillorying of William Prynne, Jenny Geddes, and National Covenant, old Field-Marshal Lesley at Dunse Law and pacification thereafter nowise lasting.

To chastise the Scots, money is not attainable save by a Parliament, which at last the king summons.  This “Short Parliament,” wherein Oliver sits for Cambridge, is dismissed, being not prompt with supplies, which the king seeks by other methods.  But the army so raised will not fight the Scots, who march into Northumberland and Durham.  Money not to be had otherwise than by a Parliament, which is again summoned; the Long Parliament, which did not finally vanish till 1660.  In which is Oliver again, “very much hearkened unto,” despite “linen plain and not very clean, and voice sharp and untuneable.”

Protestations; execution of Strafford, “the one supremely able man the king had”; a hope of compromise being for a time introduced by “royal varnish.”  Then, in November, 1641, an Irish rebellion blazing into Irish massacre; and in Parliament, the Grand Remonstrance carried by a small majority.  In January, the king rides over to St. Stephen’s to arrest the “five members.”  Then on one side Commissions of Array, on the other Ordinance for the Militia.  In July and August, Mr. Cromwell is active in Cambridgeshire for the defence of that county, as others are elsewhere.  Then Captain Cromwell, with his troop of horse, is with Essex at Edgehill, where he does his duty; and then back in Cambridgeshire, organising the Eastern Association.  So we are at 1643 with the war in full swing.