dustry of Mark Noble, too, has brought to light many interesting facts respecting the genealogy and descendants of Oliver; and as he never rested satisfied without an authentic reference, the various notices which he has imbodied in his book may be confidently received as materials of history. There are, besides," Memoirs of Oliver Cromwell, and of his Sons Richard and Henry," by a gentleman who boasts of having sprung from the Protectoral stock. Of this work, a mere compilation, nothing very flattering can be said; and it is in a great degree superseded by a more recent performance, "Oliver Cromwell and his Times," which is at once more judicious and more impartial. It has been the study of the present author, while he availed himself of the labours of all his predecessors, to avoid the two extremes which have just been pointed out, and to give an unbiased view of Cromwell's conduct-in his early life; at his first entrance upon public business; in his achievements as a soldier; in his rise to political power; and, finally, in his government of the three kingdoms, which he was the first to conquer. His character throughout is made to depend upon his actions; and the reader, accordingly, is everywhere supplied with evidence by means of which he may at once form his own judgment, and also ascertain the accuracy of the opinions which have been propagated by others. LEITH, October 12, 1829. Containing an Account of his Family, as also of his Habits and Containing a short Account of the Political and Religious Prin- ciples which led to the Civil War in the Reign of Charles the Comprehending the Incidents which occurred from the meeting of the Long Parliament, in November, 1640, until the new- modelling of the Army, at the suggestion of Cromwell, in the LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL. CHAPTER I. Containing an Account of his Family, as also of his Habits and Domestic Pursuits until he entered upon his Military Career at the breaking out of the Civil War. AS CROMWELL occupied no distinguished place in society till he was well advanced in life, his biographers have all along been deprived of the advantage of enlivening their narrative by a relation of those minor circumstances of education, early habits, and propensities on which the interest of personal history has its main dependence. Not being born in that high rank which holds out to all its members the means and inducements for future eminence, he found no one to record his progress through the several stages of childhood and youth; the incidents of which, in most cases, not only afford indications of individual temper and disposition, but also, not unfrequently, form the character of the mass of human beings, and determine the line of their most ardent pursuits. He was nearly forty years of age before he attracted any particular notice beyond the limits of his own family or neighbourhood; and when at length he appeared like the sun at noonday, and assumed a place in the eye of the world which secured for him a lasting celebrity, the occur rences of his early days were already forgotten, or only remembered by those who, in describing the path through which he had advanced to power, were too much disposed either to flatter or to condemn. In writing the life of a man who owed every thing to his own abilities and good fortune, it may seem superfluous to occupy the attention of the reader with genealogical details. It is proper, however, to mention, that Oliver Cromwell belonged to a family which, several generations before his time, had attained to a considerable degree of wealth and reputation. The industry of Mr. Noble has discovered that the ancestor of the Protector, in the fourth remove, was Morgan Williams, or rather Morgan ap William, a Welsh gentleman of respectable property, whose father, William ap Yevan, held an honourable place in the household of Jasper Duke of Bedford, and even, it is said, in that of his nephew, King Henry the Seventh. Mr. Morgan Williams married a sister of Thomas Lord Cromwell, afterward Earl of Essex, through whose powerful interest at court he was enabled to lay the foundation of that opulence and rank which continued to throw lustre on his descendants during several subsequent reigns. His eldest son, under the auspices of the vicar-general, his uncle, rose rapidly into favour with Henry the Eighth, by whom he was elevated to the order of knighthood, and also enriched by the grant of some valuable estates, which, from time to time, fell to the disposal of the crown. An attempt on the part of the Roman Catholics, in the year 1536, to check the progress of the Reformation in some of the eastern counties, afforded to the king a pretext for demolishing, to a still greater extent than he had hitherto thought expedient, the various monastic establishments in that district of England, and for disposing of their revenues to his favourites and dependants. Among other lands bestowed upon Sir Richard, either as the reward of his military ser |
