in the Government of Ireland with his military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood.  He had been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.

4.  THE LADY ELIZABETH:  aetat. 28:  married in her seventeenth year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family.  He had been made the Lord Protector’s “Master of Horse,” and had therefore been known for some time by the courtesy-title of “Lord Claypole.”  He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the late Installation.  Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court; and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.

5.  THE LADY MARY:  aetat. 21.  She was unmarried when the Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of the old nobility.  He was about thirty years of age, had been abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as “a person of extraordinary parts.”  On his own account, and also because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady Mary was thought an excellent match.

6.  THE LADY FRANCES:  aetat. 19.  This, the youngest of Cromwell’s children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the Second Protectorate.  The fond dream of the wealthy old Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and Cromwell’s ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell’s pupil at Eton with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances, as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol.  IV. pp. 616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in due time.[1] For the Lady Frances, his Highness’s youngest daughter, there might well be greater destinies.  There had been vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick.  That this great and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means indifferent