arduous labours he seldom passed a day, as long as he was at Whitehall, on which he did not dine and sup in the family circle, and up till his aged mother's death in 1654 he was in the habit of visiting her every night before she retired to rest. Of his four daughters two were already married, the eldest, Bridget, after the death of her first husband, Ireton, having become the wife of Fleetwood; and the second, the sprightly and graceful Elizabeth, had married John, otherwise Lord Claypole, whom the Protector had entrusted with the charge of his stables, under the style of Master of the Horse. On November 11, 1657, some months after the commencement of the second Protectorate, Frances, the youngest of the four, was married to Robert Rich, the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, the Lord High Admiral of the Long Parliament, and in the following week her sister Mary was married to Lord Fauconberg. The first of these two marriages was long delayed by the Protector's doubts as to the character of the suitor, as well as by his dissatisfaction with the proposed settlementOliver's moral sense once more entwining itself with his practical decisions. It was said at the time that he valued the Fauconberg alliance more than that with the Warwick family, as winning over a Royalist peer to his side.

Not one of Oliver's four daughters ever gave their father cause for real anxiety. Though they were less

strenuous than himself and sometimes needed, in his judgment, to be spurred on to higher spiritual aims, he never seems to have addressed them otherwise than as those who were worthy of parental love. If he really preferred Lady Claypole to his other daughters, it was most likely because she was more sprightly and less outwardly pious than her sisters. "Your sister Claypole," he had written to Bridget soon after she had become Ireton's wife, “is, I trust in mercy, exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind; bewailing it. She seeks after-as I hope also-what will satisfy: and thus to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder; and such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker, happy finder! Who ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some sense of self, vanity, and badness? Who ever tasted that graciousness of His, and could go less in desire-less than pressing after full enjoyment?" Bridget herself he writes with fuller assurance. "Dear Heart," he continues, "press on; let no husband, let not anything cool thy affections after Christ. I hope he will be an occasion to inflame them. That which is best worthy of love in thy husband is that of the image of Christ he bears. Look on that, and love it best, and all the rest for that. I pray for thee and him; do so for me." Yet even Bridget was far from answering to the modern conception of the Puritan

Of

lady, as is testified by the splendid yellow silk petticoat which has been handed down from generation to generation in the family of her eldest daughter. Nevertheless it was not Bridget's vanity which was most on her father's mind. Five years later, in writing to his wife from Edinburgh, he begs her to 'mind poor Betty,' i.e. Elizabeth, Lady Claypole, 'of the Lord's great mercy,' and to urge her to take heed of a departing heart and of being cozened with worldly vanities and worldly company, which I doubt she is too subject to'. The liveliness which caused such searchings of heart was doubtless the tie which bound. more firmly Oliver's love to her. One day we hear of her demurely assuring Whitelocke that it was fear of his great influence which had caused her father to send him out of the way to Sweden when he was about to assume the Protectorate. At another time we are told of her driving with her cousin Ingoldsby and two of her sisters, all the three ladies dressed in green, whilst the courtier-like crowd watch their movements and bow as they pass. Then we hear of the scornful language in which, with the pride of a lady by birth as well as by her father's advancement, she accounted for the absence of the wives of some of the Major-Generals from an entertainment at which she took part: "I warrant you they are washing their dishes at home as they used to do". Yet withal she had an open ear for trouble, and a ready tongue to

plead not in vain the cause of the innocent with her father. By the summer of 1657 her health had been failing, and at one time her life had been despaired of.

Oliver's own health was far from being such as to promise length of days. Though he had had no serious illness since the time when his life was in danger in Scotland after the toils and anxiety of the Dunbar campaign, short spells of ill-health are frequently mentioned, and the Venetian Ambassador, presented to him in the autumn of 1655, noticed the shaking hand with which he held his hat in welcoming him, a symptom of weakness which left its mark on his hand-writing during the later period of his life. In the summer of 1657 he was detained at Hampton Court by illness, apparently of the character of malarial fever, for more than a week. Yet his spirit was as high, his resolution as strong as ever. At no time had the state of public affairs made larger demands upon his mental powers than in the last fourteen months of his life. It is true that the adoption of the new Parliamentary constitution had appeared for a moment to have solved the problem of domestic government, but his sagacity would have been far less than it was if he had imagined that all his difficulties were at an end.

If, on the other hand, the Protector looked abroad, fortune appeared to smile. Whilst Parliament was still in session, news arrived that Blake had destroyed

the Spanish treasure fleet under the protection of forts in the harbour of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. It was the

most glorious Worn out by

most hazardous, and consequently the action of a noble and patriotic life. toils and exposure, Blake sought and obtained leave to come home in search of the rest he so sorely needed. Before the vessel that bore him reached Plymouth his spirit had passed away. The great admiral was honoured with a public funeral in Westminster Abbey.

Spain, with her supply of treasure from the Indies cut short, was incapacitated from serious warlike effort, and already the alliance was forged which was to force her into submission. Even before the victory was won at Santa Cruz a treaty had been signed between Oliver and Louis XIV., arranging for a joint attack on the Spanish fortresses of Dunkirk, Mardyke and Gravelines, the first two to fall to the share of England, the last to that of France. An English force of 6,000 men was to be combined with a French force of 20,000, the blockade at sea being entrusted to an English fleet. Half the English contingent was at once despatched under Sir John Reynolds, but either the necessities of war, or the reluctance of Mazarin to carry out his engagements, led him to prefer the distant siege of Montmédy to an attack on the coast towns, and it was only after a warm expostulation from the Protector that measures were taken