in Flanders, now in Madrid, shuttling alliance between Spain and the Stuarts.  But, though a Spanish invasion of England to restore the Stuarts was his great game, an assassination of Cromwell anyhow, whether without a Spanish invasion or in anticipation of it, was nearest to his heart.  Actually he had been in London just before the meeting of the Parliament, trying to arrange for such “fiddling things”—­so Cromwell had called them—­as shooting him in the Park or blowing him up in his chamber at Whitehall.  Before Thurloe had traces of him, he had again decamped to Flanders; but he had left a substitute in Miles Sindercombe, an old leveller and mutineer of 1647, but since then a quarter-master in Monk’s Army in Scotland, and dismissed for his complicity in the Overton project.  Sexby had left Sindercombe L1600; and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with Cromwell’s guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots at Cromwell’s coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall.  He had been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8, and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to extinguish a slow-match that was to explode a mass of blazing chemicals at midnight.  All Whitehall having been roused, the Protector with the rest, information led at once to Sindercombe.  He was arrested in his lodging, and sent to the Tower; and, his trial having followed, Feb. 9, he was convicted on evidence given by accomplices, and doomed to execution on the 14th.  In the night preceding he was found dead in his bed, having poisoned himself.  He had left intimation that he was under no concern about his immortal soul, having passed out of any form of religion recognising such an entity, and become a Materialist or Soul-sleeper.  Meanwhile his plot had raised a ferment of new loyalty round the Protector.  On the 19th of January, when Thurloe made a formal disclosure to the House of all the particulars of the plot, a general thanksgiving throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, was ordered, and it was resolved that the whole House should wait upon his Highness “to congratulate with his Highness on this great mercy and deliverance.”  The interview was on January the 23rd, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, when Speaker Widdrington made the address for the House, and Cromwell replied in a most affectionate speech (Speech VI.).  The thanksgiving was on Feb. 20; on which day Principal Gillespie of Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special sermons before the House in St. Margaret’s, Westminster.  The day was wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and instrumental, in the part of the Palace called the Cockpit.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 18; Carlyle, III. 204-211; Godwin, IV. 331-333; Merc.  Pol. No. 349 (Feb. 12-19, 1656-7); Whitlocke, IV. 286; Parl.  Hist.  III. 1490.]