Members of the Parliament of England

"Fish and guests in three days are stale."

"Cupid and my Campaspe play'd At cards for kisses—Cupid paid: He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, His mother's doves, and team of sparrows; Loses them too; then down he throws The coral of his lips, the rose Growing one's cheek (but none knows how); With these, the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple of his chin: All these did my Campaspe win. At last he set her both his eyes— She won, and Cupid blind did rise. O Love! has she done this for thee? What shall, alas! become of me?"

"How at heaven's gates she claps her wings, The morne not waking til she sings."

"There can no great smoke arise, but there must be some fire."

"A clere conscience is a sure carde."

"As lyke as one pease is to another."

"Be valyaunt, but not too venturous. Let thy attyre bee comely, but not costly."

"Though the Camomill, the more it is trodden and pressed downe the more it spreadeth."

"The finest edge is made with the blunt whetstone."

"I cast before the Moone."

"It seems to me (said she) that you are in some brown study."

"The soft droppes of rain perce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks."

"He reckoneth without his Hostesse. Love knoweth no lawes."

"That honourable estate of Matrimony, which was sanctified in Paradise, allowed of the Patriarches, hallowed of the olde Prophets, and commended of al persons."

"Did not Jupiter transforme himselfe into the shape of Amphitrio to embrace Alcmæna; into the form of a swan to enjoy Leda; into a Bull to beguile Io; into a showre of gold to win Danae?"

"Lette me stande to the maine chance."

"I mean not to run with the Hare and holde with the Hounde."

"Rather fast then surfette, rather starue then striue to exceede."

"Is it not true which Seneca reporteth, that as too much bending breaketh the bowe, so too much remission spoyleth the minde?"

"It is a world to see."

"Goe to bed with the Lambe, and rise with the Larke."

"A comely olde man as busie as a bee."

"Maydens, be they never so foolyshe, yet beeing fayre they are commonly fortunate."

"Where the streame runneth smoothest, the water is deepest."

"Your eyes are so sharpe that you cannot onely looke through a Milstone, but cleane through the minde."

"Fishe and gesse in three dayes are stale."

"I am glad that my Adonis hath a sweete tooth in his head."

"For experience teacheth me that straight trees have crooked roots."

"A Rose is sweeter in the budde than full blowne."

"If the remonstrance had been rejected I would have sold all I had the next morning and never have seen England more, and I know there are many other modest men of the same resolution."

"I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is nothing else."

"A few honest men are better than numbers."

"The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it – that satisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with men of different minds from yourself:"

"God made them as stubble to our swords."

"Truly England and the church of God hath had a great favour from the Lord, in this great victory given us."

"We study the glory of God, and the honour and liberty of parliament, for which we unanimously fight, without seeking our own interests... I profess I could never satisfy myself on the justness of this war, but from the authority of the parliament to maintain itself in its rights; and in this cause I hope to prove myself an honest man and single-hearted."

"I could not riding out alone about my business, but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that are."

"It's a blessed thing to die daily. For what is there in this world to be accounted of! The best men according to the flesh, and things, are lighter than vanity. I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them....and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord; and he that is established in this shall ( being conformed to Christ and the rest of the Body) participate in the glory of a resurrection which will answer all."

"This is our comfort, God is in heaven, and He doth what pleaseth Him; His, and only His counsel shall stand, whatsoever the designs of men, and the fury of the people be."

"We declared our intentions to preserve monarchy, and they still are so, unless necessity enforce an alteration. It’s granted the king has broken his trust, yet you are fearful to declare you will make no further addresses... look on the people you represent, and break not your trust, and expose not the honest party of your kingdom, who have bled for you, and suffer not misery to fall upon them for want of courage and resolution in you, else the honest people may take such courses as nature dictates to them."

"Since providence and necessity has cast them upon it, he should pray God to bless their counsels."

"I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it."

"Cruel necessity."

"If we do not depart from God, and disunite by that departure, and fall into disunion among ourselves, I am confident, we doing our duty and waiting upon the Lord, we shall find He will be as a wall of brass round about us till we have finished that work which he has for us to do."

"This is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood."

"Do not trust to that; for these very persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged."

"I need pity. I know what I feel. Great place and business in the world is not worth looking after."

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

"Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it."

"No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going."

"I am neither heir nor executor to Charles Stuart."

"The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is for aught I know, a crowning mercy."

"Shall we seek for the root of our comforts within us; what God hath done, what he is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort. In this is stability; in us is weakness. Acts of obedience are not perfect, and therefore yield not perfect peace. Faith, as an act, yields it not, but as it carries us into him, who is our perfect rest and peace; in whom we are accounted of, and received by, the Father, even as Christ himself. This is our high calling. Rest we here, and here only."

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

"When I went there, I did not think to have done this. But perceiving the spirit of God so strong upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood."

"You are as like the forming of God as ever people were... you are at the edge of promises and prophecies."

"God has brought us where we are, to consider the work we may do in the world, as well as at home."

"Though peace be made, yet it's interest that keep peace."

"There are some things in this establishment that are fundamental... about which I shall deal plainly with you... the government by a single person and a parliament is a fundamental... and... though I may seem to plead for myself, yet I do not: no, nor can any reasonable man say it... I plead for this nation, and all the honest men therein."

"In every government there must be somewhat fundamental, somewhat like a Magna Charta, that should be standing and unalterable... that parliaments should not make themselves perpetual is a fundamental."

"Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities... are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by."

"I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several employments in the nation — to serve in parliaments, — and ( because I would not be over tedious ) I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man in those services, to God, and his people’s interest, and of the commonwealth; having, when time was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and some evidence thereof."

"I desire not to keep my place in this government an hour longer than I may preserve England in its just rights, and may protect the people of God in such a just liberty of their consciences..."

"Weeds and nettles, briars and thorns, have thriven under your shadow, dissettlement and division, discontentment and dissatisfaction, together with real dangers to the whole."

"We are Englishmen; that is one good fact."

"Truly, though kingship be not a title but a name of office that runs through the law, yet it is not so ratione nominis, but from what is signified. It is a name of office, plainly implying a Supreme Authority. Is it more, or can it be stretched to more? I say, it is a name of office, plainly implying the Supreme Authority, and if it be so, why then I would suppose, (I am not peremptory in any thing that is matter of deduction or inference of my own,) why then I should suppose that whatsoever name hath been or shall be the name, in which the Supreme Authority shall act; why, (I say) if it had been those four or five letters, or whatsoever else it had been, that signification goes to the thing. Certainly it does, and not to the name. Why then, there can be no more said, but this, why this hath been fixt, so it may have been unfixt."

"And let God be judge between you and me."

"Men have been led in dark paths, through the providence and dispensation of God. Why, surely it is not to be objected to a man, for who can love to walk in the dark? But providence doth often so dispose."

"You have accounted yourselves happy on being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside."

"That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in, was the Petition and Advice given me by you, who, in reference to the ancient Constitution, did draw me here to accept the place of Protector. There is not a man living can say I sought it, no not a man, nor woman, treading upon English ground."

"I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than undertook such a Government as this is."

"I would be willing to live and be farther serviceable to God and his people; but my work is done. Yet God will be with his people."

"It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

"Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can."

"Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it."

"Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry."

"A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going."

"Being comes before well-being."

"During a great part of the eighteenth century most Tories hated him because he overthrew the monarchy, most Whigs because he overthrew Parliament. Since Carlyle wrote, all liberals have seen in him their champion, and all revolutionists have apotheosized the first great representatives of their school; while, on the other side, their opponents have hailed the dictator who put down anarchy. Unless the socialists or the anarchists finally prevail — and perhaps even then — his fame seems as secure as human reputation is likely to be in a changing world."

"The commonest charge against Cromwell is hypocrisy — and the commonest basis for that is defective chronology."

"A born soldier of humble origins, Cromwell's military record in the Civil Wars was second to none. His 'reign' as Lord Protector from 1653 to 1658 has marked him for later generations as either a visionary political figure or a loathsome tyrant, and both cases are equally arguable; his religious bigotry, and the bitter fruit it bore in Ireland, are sadly beyond dispute. He remains secure in his reputation as one of the most extraordnary Englishmen who ever lived."

"Oliver Cromwell had certainly this afflatus. One that I knew was at the battle of Dunbar, told me that Oliver was carried on with a Divine impulse; he did laugh so excessively as if he had been drunk; his eyes sparkled with spirits. He obtain’d a great victory; but the action was said to be contrary to human prudence. The same fit of laughter seized Oliver Cromwell just before the battle of Naseby; as a kinsman of mine, and a great favourite of his, Colonel J. P. then present, testified. Cardinal Mazerine said, that he was a lucky fool."

"A perfect master of all the arts of dissimulation: who, turning up the whites of his eyes, and seeking the Lord with pious gestures, will weep and pray, and cant most devoutly, till an opportunity offers of dealing his dupe a knock-down blow under the short ribs."

"To give the devil his due, he restored justice, as well distributive as commutative, almost to it’s ancient dignity and splendour; the judges without covetousness discharging their duties according to law and equity... His own court also was regulated according to a severe discipline; here no drunkard, nor whoremonger, nor any guilty of bribery, was to be found, without severe punishment. Trade began again to prosper; and in a word, gentle peace to flourish all over England."

"He thought secrecy a virtue, and dissimulation no vice, and simulation, that is in plain English, a lie, or perfideousness to be a tolerable fault in case of necessity."

"He was of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man is when he hath drunken a cup too much."

"The next morning I sent Colonel Cook to Cromwell, to let him know that I had letters and instructions to him from the King. He sent me word by the same messenger, that he dared not see me, it being very dangerous to us both, and bid me be assured that he would serve his Majesty as long as he could do it without his own ruin; but desired that I should not expect that he should perish for his sake."

"When he quitted the Parliament, his chief dependence was on the Army, which he endeavoured by all means to keep in unity, and if he could not bring it to his sense, he, rather than suffer any division in it, went over himself and carried his friends with him into that way which the army did choose, and that faster than any other person in it."

"A devotee of law, he was forced to be often lawless; a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, his task was chiefly to destroy; the most scrupulous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others; the tenderest, he had continually to harden his heart; the most English of our greater figures, he spent his life in opposition to the majority of Englishmen; a realist, he was condemned to build that which could not last."

"Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion."

"Cromwell had delivered England from anarchy. His government, though military and despotic, had been regular and orderly. Under the iron, and under the yoke, the soil yielded its produce."

"His ambassador in France at this time was Lockhart... [who] told me, that when he was sent afterwards ambassador by king Charles, he found he had nothing of that regard that was paid him in Cromwell's time."

"[H]is maintaining the honour of the nation in all foreign countries gratified the vanity which is very natural to Englishmen; of which he was so careful, that though he was not a crowned head, yet his ambassadors had all the respects paid them which our king's ambassadors ever had: he said, the dignity of the crown was upon the account of the nation, of which the king was only the representative head; so the nation being still the same, he would have the same regards paid to his ministers."

"Cromwell...said, he hoped he should make the name of Englishman, as great as ever that of a Roman had been."

"The king Charles II] told him...how they had used both himself and his brother. Borel, in great simplicity, answered: Ha! sire, c'estoit une autre chose: Cromwell estoit un grand homme, et il se faisoit craindre et par terre et par mer ['Ha! sire, it was another thing: Cromwell was a great man, and he made himself feared both by land and by sea.']. This was very rough."

"Sylla was the first of victors; but our own The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he Too swept off the senates while he hewed the throne Down to a block — immortal rebel! See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages."

"I confess I have an interest in this Mr. Cromwell; and indeed, if truth must be said, in him alone. The rest are historical, dead to me; but he is epic, still living. Hail to thee, thou strong one; hail across the longdrawn funeral-aisle and night of time!..."

"Oliver Cromwell, who astonished mankind by his intelligence, did not derive it from spies in the cabinet of every prince in Europe; he drew it from the cabinet of his own sagacious mind. He observed facts, and traced them forward to their consequences. From what was, he concluded what must be, and he never was deceived."

"Cromwell rode in from the Army to his duties as a Member of Parliament. His differences with the Scots and his opposition to Presbyterian uniformity were already swaying Roundhead politics. He now made a vehement and organised attack on the conduct of the war, and its mismanagement by lukewarm generals of noble rank, namely Essex and Manchester. Essex was discredited enough after Lostwithiel, but Cromwell also charged Manchester with losing the second Battle of Newbury by sloth and want of zeal. He himself was avid for the power and command which he was sure he could wield; but he proceeded astutely. While he urged the complete reconstitution of the Parliamentarian Army upon a New Model similar to his own in the Eastern Counties, his friends in the House of Commons proposed a so-called "Self-Denying Ordinance," which would exclude members of either House from military employment. The handful of lords who still remained at Westminster realised well enough that this was an attack on their prominence in the conduct of the war, if not on their social order. But there were such compelling military reasons in favour of the measure that neither they nor the Scots, who already dreaded Cromwell, could prevent its being carried. Essex and Manchester, who had fought the king from the beginning of the quarrel, who had raised regiments and served the Parliamentary cause in all fidelity, were discarded. They pass altogether from the story."

"During the winter months the Army was reconstituted in accordance with Cromwell's ideas. The old personally raised regiments of the Parliamentary nobles were broken up ad their officers and men incorporated in entirely new formations. These, the New Model, comprised eleven regiments of horse, each six hundred strong, twelve regiments of foot, twenty-two hundred strong, and a thousand dragoons, in all twenty-two thousand men. Compulsion was freely used to fill the ranks. In one district of Sussex the three conscriptions of April, July, and September 1645 yielded a total of 149 men. A hundred and thirty-four guards were needed to escort them to the colours. At the King's headquarters it was thought that these measures would demoralise the Parliamentary troops; and no doubt at first this was so. But the Roundhead faction now had a symmetrical military organisation led by men who had risen in the field and had no other standing but their military record and religious zeal. Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed Command-in-Chief. Cromwell, as Member for Cambridge, was at first debarred from serving. However, it soon appeared that his Self-denying Ordinance applied only to his rivals. The urgency of the new campaign and military discontents which he alone could quell forced even the reluctant Lords to make an exception in his favour. In June 1645 he was appointed General of the Horse, and was thus the only man who combined high military command with an outstanding Parliamentary position. From this moment he became the dominant figure in both spheres."

"By the end of 1648 it was all over. Cromwell was Dictator. The Royalists were crushed; Parliament was a tool; the Constitution was a figment; the Scots were rebuffed, the Welsh back in their mountains; the Fleet was reorganized, London overawed. King Charles, at Carisbrooke Castle, where the donkey treads the water wheel, was left to pay the bill. It was mortal."

"We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides and of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams. It was the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or wished. Long years and unceasing irritations were required to reverse it. Thus the struggle, in which we have in these days so much sympathy and part, begun to bring about a constitutional and limited monarchy, had led only to the autocracy of the sword. The harsh, erratic, lightning-charged being, whose erratic, opportunist, self-centred course is laid bare upon the annals, was now master, and the next twelve years are the record of his well-meant, puzzling plungings and surgings."

"Above all, the conscience of man must recoil from the monster of a faction-god projected from the mind of an ambitious, interested politician on whose lips "righteousness" and "mercy" were mockery. Not even the hard pleas of necessity or the safety of the State can be invoked. Cromwell in Ireland, disposing of overwhelming strength and using it with merciless wickedness, debased the standards of human conduct and sensibly darkened the journey of mankind. Cromwell's Irish massacres find numberless compeers in the history of all countries during and since the Stone Age. It is therefore only necessary to strip men capable of such deeds of all title to honour, whether it be the light which plays around a great captain of war or the long repute which covers the severities of a successful prince or statesman."

"We have seen many ties which at one time or another have joined the inhabitants of the Western islands, and eve in Ireland itself offered a tolerable way of life to Protestants and Catholics alike. Upon all of these Cromwell's record as a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. "Hell or Connaught" were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred, "the curse of Cromwell on you." The consequences of Cromwell's rule in Ireland have distressed and at times distracted English politics even down to the present day. To heal them baffled the skill and loyalties of successive generations. They became for a time a potent obstacle to the harmony of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world. Upon all of us there still lies "the curse of Cromwell.""

"His grandeur he deriv’d from heaven alone, For he was great e’er fortune made him so And wars like mists that rise against the sun Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.No borrow’d bays his temple did adorn, But to our Crown he did fresh jewels bring; Nor was his virtue poison’d soon as born, With the too early thoughts of being King."

"His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest, His name a great example stands to show How strangely high endeavours may be blest, Where piety and valour jointly go."

"He made us Freemen of the Continent, Whom Nature did like Captives treat before, To nobler Preys the English Lyon sent, And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar."

"Arguing over the legacy of Oliver Cromwell has provided fine sport for historians since the day he died. Was he a defender of English liberty? A military dictator? A genocidal maniac? A republican visionary? An uncompromising religious zealot? A perfectly willing-to-compromise religious zealot? Depending on your point of view, it’s easy to put Cromwell in a box labeled good or bad and walk away. But having gone through all of this, he turns out to be one of the more ambiguous historical leaders I’ve come across. Genuinely hesitant about amassing greater power while simultaneously amassing greater power. A devout man of God who concluded it was necessary to make way for freedom of worship. A ruthless general who took great pride in limiting the body count in his battles because he hated throwing lives away for nothing. The pacification of Ireland was obviously appalling, but Cromwell neither started that brutal process nor did he finish it. There is more than enough blame to go around on that front. He killed the king, but only after he spent years trying to figure out a way to put the king back on the throne. He dissolved or purged practically every legislative assembly he encountered, but then he just kept going back for more because maybe the next one will work out. He is portrayed as a dictator, but he kept supporting constitutions that denied anyone or anything unlimited political power. He was an obscure country gentleman who became king in all but name. And we will never stop arguing about who he really was, what he really did, or why he really did it."

"Things will shortly happen which have been unheard of, and above all would open the eyes of those who live under Kings and other Sovereigns, and lead to great changes. Cromwell alone holds the direction of political and military affairs in his hands. He is one who is worth all the others put together, and, in effect, King."

"Saw the superb funeral of the Protector:...but it was the joyfullest funeral that I ever saw, for there were none that cried, but dogs, which the souldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise; drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went."

"This day (to the stupendous and inscrutable Judgements of God) were the Carcasses of that arch-rebell Cromwell and Bradshaw the judge who condemned his Majestie & Ireton, son-in-law to the Usurper, dragged out of their superbe tombs (in Westminster among the Kings), to Tyburn & hanged on the Gallows there from 9 in the morning til 6 at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument, in a deepe pitt: Thousands of people who (who had seen them in all their pride and pompous insults) being spectators: look back at November 22, 1658, & be astonish’d - And fear God & honour the King, but meddle not with those who are given to change."

"Oliver Cromwell carried the reputation of England higher than it ever was at any other time."

"He lived a hypocrite and died a traitor."

"When I came in I was moved to say, "Peace be in this house"; and I exhorted him to keep in the fear of God, that he might receive wisdom from Him, that by it he might be directed, and order all things under his hand to God's glory. l spoke much to him of Truth, and much discourse I had with him about religion; wherein he carried himself very moderately. But he said we quarrelled with priests, whom he called ministers. I told him I did not quarrel with them, but that they quarrelled with me and my friends. "But," said I, "if we own the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, we cannot hold up such teachers, prophets, and shepherds, as the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared against; but we must declare against them by the same power and Spirit." Then I showed him that the prophets, Christ, and the apostles declared freely, and against them that did not declare freely; such as preached for filthy lucre, and divined for money, and preached for hire, and were covetous and greedy, that could never have enough; and that they that have the same spirit that Christ, and the prophets, and the apostles had, could not but declare against all such now, as they did then. As I spoke, he several times said, it was very good, and it was truth. I told him that all Christendom (so called) had the Scriptures, but they wanted the power and Spirit that those had who gave forth the Scriptures; and that was the reason they were not in fellowship with the Son, nor with the Father, nor with the Scriptures, nor one with another. Many more words I had with him; but people coming in, I drew a little back. As I was turning, he caught me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes said, "Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other"; adding that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul. I told him if he did he wronged his own soul; and admonished him to hearken to God's voice, that he might stand in his counsel, and obey it; and if he did so, that would keep him from hardness of heart; but if he did not hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. He said it was true. Then I went out; and when Captain Drury came out after me he told me the Lord Protector had said I was at liberty, and might go whither I would. Then I was brought into a great hall, where the Protector's gentlemen were to dine. I asked them what they brought me thither for. They said it was by the Protector's order, that I might dine with them. I bid them let the Protector know that I would not eat of his bread, nor drink of his drink. When he heard this he said, "Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can." It was told him again that we had forsaken our own possessions; and were not like to look for such things from him."

"With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with ourselves. Royalists painted him as a devil. Carlyle painted him as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness and spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what Shakespeare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring sense, is Cromwell's place in history. He stands there, not to be implicitly followed as a model, but to hold up a mirror to ourselves, wherein we may see alike our weakness and our strength."

"That slovenly fellow which you see before us, who hath no ornament in his speech; I say that sloven, if we should ever come to have a breech with the King (which God forbid) in such case will be one of the greatest men of England."

"Generally he respected, or at least pretended a love to, all ingenious persons in any arts, whom he arranged to be sent or brought to him. But the niggardliness and incompetence of his reward shewed that this man was a personated act of greatness, and that Private Cromwell yet governed Prince Oliver."

"His character does not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent ambition, and such enraged fanaticism with so much regard to justice and humanity."

"In a word, as he was guilty of many crimes against which Damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some good qualities which have caused the memory of some men in all Ages to be celebrated; and he will be look’d upon by posterity as a brave bad man."

"A complex character such as that of Cromwell, is incapable of creation, except in times of great civil and religious excitement, and one cannot judge of the man without at the same time considering the contending elements by which he was surrounded. It is possible to take his character to pieces, and, selecting one or other of his qualities as a corner-stone, to build around it a monument which will show him as a patriot or a plotter, a Christian man or a hypocrite, a demon or a demi-god as the sculptor may choose."

"In the common course of selfish policy, Oliver Cromwell should have cultivated the friendship of foreign powers, or at least have avoided disputes with them, the better to establish his tyranny at home. Had he been only a bad man, he would have sacrificed the honour of the nation to the success of his domestic policy. But, with all his crimes, he had the spirit of an Englishman. The conduct of such a man must always be an exception to vulgar rules. He had abilities sufficient to reconcile contradictions, and to make a great nation at the same moment unhappy and formidable."

"I am," said he, "as much for a government by consent as any man; but where shall we find that consent? Amongst the Prelatical, Presbyterian, Independent, Anabaptist, or Leveling Parties?"… then he fell into the commendation of his own government, boasting of the protection and quiet which the people enjoyed under it, saying, that he was resolved to keep the nation from being imbrued in blood. I said that I was of the opinion too much blood had already been shed, unless there were a better account of it. "You do well," said he, "to charge us with the guilt of blood; but we think there is a good return for what hath been shed."

"The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time, and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself, be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar."

"The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent."

"The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian."

"His body was wel compact and strong, his stature under 6 foote ( I beleeve about two inches) his head so shaped, as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of vast tresury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fyery as I have known, but the flame of it kept downe, for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distresse, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little roume for any feare, but what was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards suffrerers. A larger soule, I thinke, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was."

"Of late I have not given so free and full a power unto (Cromwell) as formerly I did, because I heard that he used his power so as in honour I could not avow him in it....for his expressions were sometimes against the nobility, that he hoped to live to see never a nobleman in England, and he loved such (and such) better than others because they did not love Lords. And he further expressed himself with contempt of the Assemberly of Divines...these he termed persecutors, and that they persecuted honester men than themselves."

"So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious Arts of Peace, But through adventrous war, Urged his active star... To ruine the great work of time, And cast the kingdom old Into another Mold..."

"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud, Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way has ploughed And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Has reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester’s laureate wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war: new foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains: Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw."

"The figure of Cromwell has emerged from the floating mists of time in many varied semblances, from bloodstained and hypocritical usurper up to transcendental hero and the liberator of mankind. The contradictions of his career all come over again in the fluctuations of his fame. He put a king to death, but then he broke up a parliament. He led the way in the violent suppression of bishops, he trampled on the demands of presbytery, and set up a state system of his own; yet he is the idol of voluntary congregations and the free churches. He had little comprehension of that government by discussion which is now counted the secret of liberty. No man that ever lived was less of a pattern for working those constitutional charters that are the favourite guarantees of public rights in our century. His rule was the rule of the sword. Yet his name stands first, half warrior, half saint, in the calendar of English-speaking democracy."

"I've been dreaming of a time when the English are sick to death of Labour and Tories and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salutes him and will salute him forever."

"Was not Oliver's name dreadful to neighbour nations?"

"He has arrogated to himself despotic authority and the actual sovereignty of these realms under the mask of humility and the public service....Obedience and submission were never so manifest in England as at present,...their spirits are so crushed..yet...they dare not rebel and only murmur under their breath, though all live in hope of the fulfilment one day of the prophecies foretelling a change of rule ere long."

"At dinner we talked much of Cromwell, all saying he was a brave fellow and did owe his crown he got to himself, as much as any man that ever got one."

"[E]very body do now-a-days reflect upon Oliver, and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour princes fear him."

"It is Cromwell's chief merit to have ruled the British kingdoms for a succession of years on a uniform principle, and to have united their forces in common efforts. It is true that this was not the final award of history: things were yet to arrange themselves in a very different fashion. But it was necessary perhaps that the main outlines should be shaped by the absolute authority of a single will, in order that in the future a free life might develop within them."

"He was a practical mystic, the most formidable and terrible of all combinations, uniting an aspiration derived from the celestial and supernatural with the energy of a mighty man of action; a great captain, but off the field seeming, like a thunderbolt, the agent of greater forces than himself; no hypocrite, but a defender of the faith; the raiser and maintainer of the Empire of England."

"Move forward to Oliver Cromwell and you encounter an extraordinarily complex man driven by absolutely warring impulses – you could say with some truth that there was a civil war going on inside him. Here was someone to whom people were prepared to deliver power, but who obviously hated the idea of accepting office. He clearly never felt he was worthy of God's appointment. On the other hand, he was so good at doing what he did, at being a general. One half of him is a country gentleman, a political pragmatist who understands the machinery of state in a clear, Peter Mandelson-like way. But he's also – if not quite Ian Paisley – someone who at least listens to voices in his head."

"The beady-eyed, hard-headed men of state business wanted him to be a king they could trust. They needed a Chief Executive Officer to run Britannia Inc, the most ferocious, most heavily capitalised enterprise the world had ever seen. Then suddenly Cromwell saw the people who wanted him to do this, and saw that they were godless. When he dissolved the Rump Parliament he looked at one of its members and called him a whoremaster and drunken libertine. He was appalled that the people who were supposed to embody the sovereignty of parliament were these low-lifes, appalled to think political intelligence could be tied up with moral wretchedness. He thought he was accountable to God for having a clean England as well. But you can't have a clean England and be the CEO. It was just never going to happen."

"Under Cromwell the union of the three kingdoms was for the moment realised, and as the country chanced to have not only a powerful fleet but also a disciplined army and a habit of war, the new Britain took the lead of all states, and seemed on the point of succeeding to the ascendency so recently forfeited by Spain. At this moment Cromwell died, and forthwith the prospects of Britain were altered."

"Cromwell has never had justice done him. Hume and almost all the historians have seized upon some prominent circumstances of his character, as painters and actors lay hold of the caricature to ensure a likeness. He was not always a hypocrite. Mr. Hume does not do justice to Cromwell's character in supposing him incapable of truth and simplicity on every occasion. His speeches to his Parliament give, I am persuaded, a very true picture of the times... It must be allowed that, while he had power, short as the moment was, he did set more things forward than all the Kings who reigned during the century, King William included. England was never so much respected abroad; while at home, though Cromwell could not settle the Government, talents of every kind began to show themselves, which were immediately crushed or put to sleep at the Restoration. The best and most unexceptional regulations of different kinds are to be found in his ordinances and proclamations remaining to this day unexecuted; and during his life he not only planned but enforced and executed the greatest measures of which the country was then susceptible."

"Lieutenant-General Cromwell...a member of the House of Commons, long famous for godliness and zeal to his country, of great note for his service in the House, accepted of a commission at the very beginning of this war, wherein he served his country faithfully, and it was observed God was with him, and he began to be renowned."

"Stalin: The Communists base themselves on rich historical experience which teaches that obsolete classes do not voluntarily abandon the stage of history. Recall the history of England in the seventeenth century. Did not many say that the old social system had decayed? But did it not, nevertheless, require a Cromwell to crush it by force? Wells: Cromwell acted on the basis of the constitution and in the name of constitutional order. Stalin: In the name of the constitution he resorted to violence, beheaded the king, dispersed Parliament, arrested some and beheaded others!"

"It was three hundred years ago, in October 1656, that George Fox had a memorable interview with Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England. It was one of the great moments of a great century, for here, face to face, were two of the most powerful personalities of the age, the one the military dictator of the British Isles at the pinnacle of his worldly power, the other a crude, rustic preacher who had just spent eight months in one of England's foulest prisons. They met in Whitehall, at the very heart of the British government. Fox bluntly took the Protector to task for persecuting Friends when he should have protected them. Then characteristically he set about trying to make a Quaker out of Cromwell, to turn him to "the light of Christ who had enlightened every man that cometh into the world." Cromwell was in an argumentative mood and took issue with Fox's theology, but Fox had no patience with his objections. "The power of God riz in me," he wrote, "and I was moved to bid him lay down his crown at the feet of Jesus." Cromwell knew what Fox meant, for two years earlier he had received a strange and disturbing missive in which he had read these words:"

"As for that famous and magnanimous commander, Lieutenant-General Cromwell, whose prowess and prudence, as they have rendered him most renowned for many former successful deeds of chivalry, so in this fight they have crowned him with the never withering laurels of fame and honour, who with so lion-like courage and impregnable animosity, charged his proudest adversaries again and again, like a Roman Marcellus indeed....and at last came off, as with some wounds, so with honour and triumph inferior to none."

"Our dying-Hero, from the Continent, Ravish't whole Towns; and Forts, from Spaniards rest, As his last Legacy, to Brittain lest. The Ocean which so long our hopes confin'd Could give no limits to His vaster mind; Our Bounds inlargment was his latest toyle; Nor hath he left us Prisoners to our Isle; Under the Tropick is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke. From Civill Broyls he did us disingage, Found nobler objects for our Martiall rage; And with wise Conduct to his Country show'd Their ancient way of conquering abroad: Ungratefull then, if we no Tears allow To Him that gave us Peace, and Empire too."

"Whilst he was curious of his own words, (not putting forth too many lest they should betray his thoughts) he made others talk until he had, as it were, sifted them, and known their most intimate designs."

"I... had occasion to converse with Mr Cromwell’s physician, Dr Simcott, who assured me that for many years his patient was a most splenetick man and had phansies about the cross in that town; and that he had been called up to him at midnight, and such unseasonable hours very many times, upon a strong phansy, which made him belive he was then dying; and there went a story of him, that in the day-time, lying melancholy in his bed, he belived the spirit appeared to him, and told him he should be the greatest man, (not mentioning the word King) in this Kingdom. Which his uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, who left him all the little estate Cromwell had, told him was traiterous to relate."

"I came into the House one morning, well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little band which was not much larger than his collar. His hat was without a hat-band. His stature was of a good size; his sword stuck close to his side; his countenance swoln and reddish; his voice sharp and untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervor."

"As to your own person the title of King would be of no advantage, because you have the full Kingly power in you already... I apprehend indeed, less envy and danger, and pomp, but not less power, and real opportunities of doing good in your being General than would be if you had assumed the title of King."

"He would sometimes be very cheerful with us, and laying aside his greatness he would be exceeding familiar with us, and by way of diversion would make verses with us, and everyone must try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco himself; then he would fall again to his serious and great business."

"In short, every beast hath some evil properties; but Cromwell hath the properties of all evil beasts."

"The English monster, the center of mischief, a shame to the British Chronicle, a pattern for tyranny, murder and hypocrisie, whose bloody Tyranny will quite drown the name of Nero, Caligula, Domitian, having at last attained the height of his Ambition, for Five years space he wallowed in the blood of many Gallant and Heroick Persons."

"The mettle and superiour genius of Cromwell subdued faction and rebellion, by the very power they had put into their hands against the lawful sovereign. He supported his state and terrified all Europe, as well as the three nations, by the grandeur of his courage, and the spirit of his army; which he made, in effect, his parliament."

"The Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and of the Dominions thereunto belonging, shall be and reside in one person, and the people assembled in parliament; the style of which person shall be "The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth"… That Oliver Cromwell, Captain General of the forces of England, Scotland and Ireland, shall be, and is hereby declared to be, Lord Protector...for his life."

"Moche Crye and no Wull."

"Muche crye and litil woll."

"Some men haue said that it were good for the kyng, that the commons of Englande were made pore, as be the commons of Fraunce. For than thai wolde not rebelle, as now thai done oftentymes; wich the commons of Fraunce do not, nor mey doo; for thai haue no wepen, nor armour, nor good to bie it with all. To theis maner of men mey be said with the phylosopher, ad pauca respicientes de facili ennnciant. This is to say, thai that see but few thynges, woll sone say thair advyses. For soth theis folke consideren litill the good of the reaume of Englond, wherof the myght stondith most vppon archers, wich be no ryche men. And yf thai were made more pouere than thai be, thai shulde not haue wherwith to bie hem bowes, arroes, jakkes, or any other armour of defence, wherby thai myght be able to resiste owre enymes, when thai liste to come vppon vs; wich thai mey do in euery side, considerynge that we be a Ilelonde; and, as it is said before, we mey not sone haue soucour of any other reaume. Wherfore we shull be a pray to all owre enymyes, but yf we be myghty of owreself, wich myght stondith most vppon owre pouere archers; and therfore thai nedun not only haue suche ablements as now is spoken of, but also thai nedun to be much excersised in shotynge, wich mey not be done withowt ryght grete expenses, as euery man experte therin knowith ryght well. Wherfore the makyng pouere of the commons, wich is the makyng pouere of owre archers, shalbe the distruccion of the grettest myght of owre reaume."

"It is cowardisse and lakke off hartes and corage, wich no Ffrenchman hath like vnto a Englysh man. It hath ben offten tymes sene in Englande, that iij. or iiij. theves ffor pouerte haue sett apon vj or vij trewe men, and robbed hem all. But it hath not bene sene in Ffraunce, þat vj. or vij. theves haue be hardy to robbe iij. or iiij. trewe men. Wherfore it is right selde þat Ffrenchmen be hanged ffor robbery, ffor thai haue no hartes to do so terable an acte. Ther bith therfore mo men hanged in Englande in a yere ffor robbery and manslaughter, then þer be hanged in Ffraunce ffor such maner of crime in vij yeres."

"Comparisons are odious."

"One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."

"In a word, he had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischieve, and his death appeared to be a great deliverance to the nation."

"He many times cast himself upon the ground, with a desperate and obstinate resolution to rest there till the morning, that he might shift with less torment, what hazard soever he run."

"[H]e spake well, his style had no flaw in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he sometimes shewed more wit than discretion."

"[H]e was a man that knew England well, and was lawyer good enough to be an able chancellor, and was certainly a very incorrupt man."

"He was apt to talk very imperiously and unmercifully, so that his manner of dealing with people was as provoking as the hard things themselves were; but upon the whole matter he was a true Englishman and a sincere protestant, and what has passed at court since his disgrace has sufficiently vindicated him from all ill designs. In one thing it appeared that he had changed his mind much; he penned the declaration at Breda, in which the king promised indulgence and ease to tender consciences, and pursuant to that he penned a long declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs after the king was restored, which was drawn up with that prudence and temper, that by all appearance, if the king had stuck to it, both church and state had been very quickly happy; but it was observed that immediately after the duke's marriage broke out Clarendon changed his measures, and set on his own creatures to arraign that declaration in the house of commons, of which this account was given me: the bishops had stuck to him in the matter of that marriage, by letting the king know, that it could not be broken neither by the laws of God nor man, that he thereupon delivered himself up to their counsels in the affairs of the church and so did whatever they had mind to do."

"The truth is, his behaviour and humour was growne so insupportable to my self, and to all the world else, that I could not longer endure it, and it was impossible for me to live with it and do those things with the Parliament that must be done, or the Government will be lost."

"It is true he was of a jolly temper, after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation."

"King and minister held fundamentally different views as to religious policy. Charles II desired to make toleration for Catholics and Nonconformists an integral part of the restoration settlement, partly because it seemed essential to the peace of the nation, and partly because he was a Catholic at heart. In the Church as in the State, Clarendon's one aim was to re-establish the state of things which existed before the war began. The Church was to be restored unconditionally as well as the monarchy. This policy the minister successfully carried out. In a few months, almost before the King realised what was happening, the bishops were in possession of their old power, and the Catholics and Nonconformists were under their feet again... In political as in religious matters Clarendon was more conservative than his master, and this conservatism had been increased by the fourteen years he had passed out of England... He never realised the new conditions the Rebellion had created, or the new forces which had grown up during the Interregnum. And, above all, he failed to appreciate the change which had taken place in the position of the House of Commons."

"His soul could never enter into the secrets of enthusiasts, or, indeed, into any region beyond the range of the Thirty-nine Articles. Just as he fails to understand the nature of the Puritans so he fails to understand Puritanism in general, and his History of the Rebellion has the fundamental defect, that it is a history of a religious revolution in which the religious element is omitted."

"If we turn to historians of the more ordinary type, the most notable name is that of Clarendon. His work suggests a comparison with Thucydides, in that he was himself a prominent actor in the events that he describes; and there are, especially in his character-sketches, passages that will bear comparison with the great Athenian master. As with Thucydides, too, banishment from his native country gave him an opportunity for calm and detached contemplation of the events through which he had lived. But there the comparison ends. The inner spirit of the two men is entirely different. Neither his double exile nor advancing years brought philosophic calm or intellectual fairness to Clarendon. He writes now as a partisan of the monarchy, now of the Church, now of his own administration, and the later books are mainly autobiographical. But none the less Clarendon's work is epoch-making in the development of English historical writing. Here the nation's story is told by a man of practical knowledge, in language well suited to the subject, and in a tone of honest conviction. For a century and a half it fixed the ideas of Englishmen with regard to the prominent actors in the great Puritan revolution. Its prestige was destroyed, as by a sledge-hammer, by the publication of Carlyle's Cromwell; but the book remains one of the foremost of English historical classics."

"Clarendon was unquestionably a lover of truth, and a sincere friend to the free constitution of his country. He defended that constitution in parliament, with zeal and energy, against the encroachments of prerogative, and concurred in the establishment of new securities necessary for its protection. He did indeed, when these had been obtained, oppose with equal determination those continually increasing demands of parliament, which appeared to him to threaten the existence of the monarchy itself: desirous, if possible, to conciliate the maintenance of public liberty with the preservation of domestic peace, and to turn aside from his country all the evils, to which those demands immediately and manifestly tended."

"At the restoration the same virtuous statesman protected the constitution against the blind or interested zeal of excessive loyalty: and, if Monk had the glory of restoring the monarchy of England, to Clarendon is ascribed the merit of re-establishing her laws and liberties. A service no less advantageous to the crown than honourable to himself; but which was numbered among the chief of those offences for which he was afterwards abandoned, sacrificed, and persecuted by his unfeeling, corrupt, and profligate master."

"I cannot think that the temperate and constitutional language of the royal declarations and answers to the house of commons in 1642, known to have proceeded from the pen of Hyde, and as superior to those on the opposite side in argument as they are in eloquence, was intended for the willing slaves of tyranny."

"Clarendon was a great historian. His profound social insight, tempered by acute penetration in analysing individual character; his lack of illusions, his scepticism, tempered by recognition of the fact of human progress even if he disliked the means which brought it about: all this fitted him to understand the conflicts of his age better than any contemporary, and most later, historians. But above all it is his style that we remember: that style which again reflects the idealised feudal society of his youth. It lacks the conversational urgency and directness, the utilitarian values, of the Parliamentarian pamphlets (especially the Levellers' and Diggers') whose forthright appeal to the man in the street prepared for the prose of Bunyan and Defoe. Clarendon's prose is thoroughly conservative – stately, leisured, opulent, hospitable, with a tang of allusive humour possible because the only readers he envisages are cultured gentlemen certain of their superiority to the common herd. Like the man himself, Clarendon's style is the old world, the world of Sir Thomas Browne and Hooker, looking back to the Middle Ages: the future, in prose as in politics, lay with the ex-Parliamentarian civil servants Samuel Pepys and Andrew Marvell, and with the ex-Cromwellian soldier John Bunyan."

"He stood for strong executive government, exclusive Anglicanism and a pacific foreign policy, since he felt this would make it easier for Charles to bring "his own dominions into that temper of obedience, they ought to be in". But events were greater than the man, and Clarendon was the ironic witness of the war against the Dutch, and associated with its failure. The nation demanded a sacrifice and so did the politicians."

"I am mad in love with my Lord Chancellor, for he do comprehend and speak out well, and with the greatest easiness and authority that ever I saw man in my life. I did never observe how much easier a man do speak, when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him; for, though he spoke, indeed, excellent well, yet his manner and freedom of doing it, as if he played with it, and was informing only all the rest of the company, was mighty pretty."

"I first read Clarendon at home in an old Boehm edition and then found the majestic folio edition in the public library. Through the long summer of 1927 I read it day after day. It was like wandering in a cathedral – majesty everywhere, not only in the prose but in the thought, in the almost superhuman capacity for empathy and distance which are perhaps Clarendon's greatest qualities both as man and writer."

"Clarendon displayed a political strength and rectitude rare if not unique amongst British statesmen, and by so doing made the Restoration possible... In exile he wrote the History wherein is displayed the true greatness of Clarendon: his astonishing capacity to take an even and magnanimous view of the men of his age – Cromwell as well as Charles I; his deep and equally remarkable sense of the tides and turns of political feeling not only in Parliament but in the nation at large. Few men have possessed larger or better judgments when confronted with critical political issues. Few, if any, can doubt that Clarendon is one of Britain's greatest men."

"In the same month of May [1702], Rochester issued from the Oxford University Press the first folio volume of his father Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, doing thereby a greater service to High Tory principles than any he was ever likely to do by direct intervention in politics. That epic record of great events, written by one of the chief actors, in the grave and stately speech of an elder world, has a perennial value for all Englishmen, not to be touched by the changing tides of time and faction. But when it first appeared in the early months of the reign of the Tory Queen, it was bound to have a political effect, stimulating the cult of King Charles and Martyr, stirring up anger against the Dissenters as the heirs of the Puritan fanatics, and against the Whigs as the heirs of the Roundhead rebels."

"The most unpopular Ministers in England, were the Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Robert Walpole, during their respective Administrations; the former a true, a steady, and equal Friend to a limited Monarchy, and the just civil Rights of the People; and the latter the best commercial Minister this Country ever had, and the greatest Promoter of its real Interests."

"Eminent as he was in council, it is as the historian of his time that Clarendon will be ever remembered. His book has its faults and limitations, no less than the masterpieces of Thucydides and Tacitus. Those who look upon history as a mere means of strengthening the Whig position will doubtless convict Clarendon of monstrous partiality, and it may be confessed that he thought it no part of his duty to look back upon events with the eyes of a Roundhead. It has been pointed out that he had little sense of natural scenery or of history's dramatic elements. He did not set the persons of his drama against any background, natural or artificial. His world has not houses, nor courts, nor fields. The personages of his drama seem to move hither and thither in vast, vacant spaces. He was interested supremely in men, not things, in the conflict of wills and the passions of the mind. Above all, he was interested in character. History for him was ‘character in action,’ and as he had known all the actors in the drama which unfolded itself before his eyes, and in which he had played a foremost part, he could measure their motives and discern their traits."

"On all counts his memory is entitled to our respect. He was a faithful public servant, a sound Tory, the vivid painter of a vivid age."

"Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason."

"We can judge the intent of the parties only by their words."

"Of justice yet must God in fine restore, This noble crowne unto the lawful heire For right will alwayes live, and rise at length, But wrong can never take deepe roote to last."

"The wrathfull winter proching on apace, With blustering blasts had all ybarde the treene, And olde Saturnus, with his frosty face With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene."

"And sorrowing I to see the sommer flowers, The lively greene, the lusty lease, forlorne, The sturdy trees so shattred with the showers, The fieldes so fade, that florisht so beforne: It taught mee well, all earthly things be borne To dye the death: for nought long time may last: The sommer's beauty yeeldes to winter's blast."

"His drinke, the running streame, his cup, the bare Of his palme cloasde, his bed, the hard cold ground: To this poore life was Misery ybound."

"Crookebackt hee was, toothshaken, and blere eyed, Went on three feete, and somtyme, crept on fowre, With olde lame boanes, that ratled by his syde, His scalpe all pild, and hee with eld forlore: His withred fist still knocking at Death's dore, Fumbling, and driveling, as hee drawes his breath, For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death."

"So in this way of writing without thinking, Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking."

"Perish may that man and his posterity that will not deny himself in the greatest part of his fortune (rather than the king shall want) to make him both potent and beloved at home, and terrible to his enemies abroad, if he will be pleased to leave those evil counsells about him, and take the wholesome advice of his great counsell the parliament."

"Mr. John Hambden was one that Friends and Enemies acknowledged to be most Eminent, for Prudence, Piety, and Peaceable Counsels, having the most universal Praise of any Gentleman that I remember of that Age. I remember a moderate, prudent aged Gentleman, far from him but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, That if he might choose what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hambden."

"The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave."

"He was not a man of many words, and rarely began the discourse, or made the first entrance upon any business that was assumed; but a very weighty speaker, and, after he had heard a full debate and observed how the House was like to be inclined, took up the argument, and shortly and clearly and craftily so stated it that he commonly conducted it to the conclusion he desired; and if he found he could not do that, he never was without the dexterity to divert the debate to another time, and to prevent the determining any thing in the negative which might prove inconvenient in the future."

"He was rather of reputation in his own country than of public discourse or fame in the kingdom before the business of ship-money: but then he grew the argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who and what he was that durst at his own charge support the liberty and property of the kingdom, and rescue his country from being made a prey to the Court. His carriage throughout that agitation was with that rare temper and modesty that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony."

"When this Parliament began, (being returned knight of the shire for the county where he lived,) the eyes of all men were fixed on him as their Patriæ pater, and the pilot that must steer their vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. And I am persuaded his power and interest at that time was greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or, than any man of his rank hath had in any time: for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided that no corrupt or private ends could bias them."

"After he was amongst those members accused by the King of high treason, he was much altered, his nature and carriage seeming much fiercer than it did before. And without question, when he first drew his sword he threw away the scabbard; for he passionately opposed the overture made by the King for a treaty from Nottingham, and, as eminently, any expedients that might have produced an accommodation in this that was at Oxford; and was principally relied on to prevent any infusions which might be made into the earl of Essex towards peace, or to render them ineffectual if they were made; and was indeed much more relied on by that party than the general himself."

"He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been made a friend, and as much to be apprehended where he was so as any man could deserve to be. And therefore his death was no less congratulated on the one party than it was condoled on the other. In a word, what was said of Cinna might well be applied to him; Erat illi consilium ad Jacimis aptum; consilio aulem, neque lingua neque manu[s] deerat; he had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute, any mischieve. His death therefore seemed to be a great deliverance to the nation."

"All his thoughts and endeavours of his life was zealously in for this cause of Gods, which he continued in all his sickness, even to his death; for all I can heere the last words he spake was to mee, though he lived six or 7 howers after I came away as in a sleepe: truly Jenny (and I know you may easily be persuaded to it) he was a gallant man, an honest man, an able man, and take all, I know nott to any man liveinge second, God now in mercy hath rewarded him."

"The loss of Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that loves the good of his king and country, and makes some conceive little content to be at the army now he is gone... The memory of this deceased colonel is such that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and esteem."

"We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well proportioned, so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties, so easily expanding itself to the highest, so contented in repose, so powerful in action. Almost every part of this virtuous and blameless life which is not hidden from us in modest privacy is a precious and splendid portion of our national history."

"This is evidently the writing not only of a man of good sense and natural good taste, but of a man of literary habits. Of the studies of Hampden little is known. But, as it was at one time in contemplation to give him the charge of the education of the Prince of Wales, it cannot be doubted that his acquirements were considerable. Davila, it is said, was one of his favourite writers. The moderation of Davila's opinions and the perspicuity and manliness of his style could not but recommend him to so judicious a reader. It is not improbable that the parallel between France and England, the Huguenots and the Puritans, had struck the mind of Hampden, and that he already found within himself powers not unequal to the lofty part of Coligni."

"Poor Hampden is dead, and I profess to you I have scarce strength to pronounce that word. Never kingdom received a greater loss in one subject. Never man a truer and faithfuller friend."

"Mr. Hambden is a great Brother, and the very Genius of that Nation of People leads them always to oppose as well civilly as ecclesiastically all that ever Authority ordains for them; but in good faith were they right served, they should be whipt Home into their right Wits, and much beholden they should be to any that would thoroughly take Pains with them in that Kind."

"He was certainly a person of the greatest abilities of any of that Party. He had a great knowledge both in Scholarship and in the Law. He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest, speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it, as first put. He was very well read in history; and I remember the first time I ever saw that of D'Avila of the Civil Warrs of France, it was lent me under the title of Mr. Hambden's Vade mecum; and I beleive no copy was liker an originall, than that rebellion was like ours."

"STRANGER, Ere thou pass, contemplate this cannon, Nor regardless be told That near its base lies deposited the dust Of John Bradshaw; Who, nobly superior to selfish regards, Despising alike the pageantry of courtly splendor, The blast of calumny, And the terrors of royal vengeance, Presided in the illustrious band of Heroes and Patriots, Who fairly and openly adjudged CHARLES STUARD Tyrant of England To a public and exemplary death; Thereby presenting to the amazed world, And transmitting down through applauding ages, The most glorious example Of unshaken virtue, Love of Freedom, And impartial justice, Ever exhibited on the blood-stained theatre Of human actions. Oh, Reader, Pass not on, till thou haft blest his memory! And never, never forget, That REBELLION TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD."

"The cause of undertaking a work of this kind was a good will in this scribling age not to do nothing, and a disproportion in the powers of my mind, nothing of mine owne invention being able to passe the censure of mine owne judgement, much less, I presumed, the judgement of others.... If thy stomacke be so tender as thou canst not disgest Tacitus in his owne stile, thou art beholding to one who gives thee the same food, but with a pleasant and easie taste."

"The kingdome of Benin [has] a very proper towne of that name, and an haven called Gurte. The inhabitants live in idolatry, and are a rude and brutish nation; notwithstanding that their prince is served with such high reverence, and never commeth in sight but with great solemnity, and many ceremonies: at whose death his chiefe favorites count it the greatest point of honour to be buried with him, to the end (as they vainly imagine) they may doe him service in another world."

"Holding up his right hand, [he] said: "This hand did I put to the plow and got my living by it many years. If it would have pleased Her Highness to have pardoned it and have taken my left hand, or my life, she had dealt more favorably with me, for now I have no means to live; but God, which is the father of us all, will provide for me. I beseech you all to pray for me that I may take this punishment patiently." And so [he] laid his hand upon the block and prayed the executioner quickly to dispatch him; and so at two blows his hand was smitten off, and so, lifting up the stump, [he] said to the people, "I have left there a true Englishman's hand," and so went from the scaffold very stoutly and with a very great courage."

"England hath been accounted hitherto the most renowned kingdom for valour and manhood in all Christendom; and shall we now lose our old reputation? If we should, it had been better for England we had never been born."

"So you, great lord, that with your counsel sway The burden of this kingdom mightily, With like delights sometimes may eke delay The rugged brow of careful policy."

"If any tongues more malicious, then discreet, will disable our martialists, and defame our souldiours, and then make a false conclusion, against the profession it selfe: let those malignant spirites confesse the renowmed value of our nation in the olde time, and grant (in spight of their beards) that we are the sonnes of those our Fathers, whose strength and courage in martiall actiuitie, neither Scots, French, nor Spanyards, were able to resist...And as all Souldiers of worthinesse and knowledge are to bee highly estéemed and mainteined, so are the gentlemen, and worthie people of our nation that haue pursued the defensory warres in the lowe Countrie, specially to be praised: for they haue approued that the olde English valiancy is not so extinguished in the English nation through long securitie, and corrupt idlenesse, but it is soone stirred vp to a double force, when it hath a while acquainted it selfe with the exercise of the fielde."