commonwealth owed its preservation. At Ailesbury
Cromwell was met by a deputation of the two commissioners of the great
seal, the lord chief justice, and Sir Gilbert Pickering; to each of whom,
in token of his satisfaction, he made a present of a horse and of two
Scotsmen selected from his prisoners. At Acton he was received by the
speaker and the lord president, attended by members of parliament and of
the council, and by the lord mayor with the aldermen and sheriffs; and
heard from the recorder, in an address of congratulation, that he was
destined "to bind kings in chains, and their nobles in fetters of iron."
He entered[a] the capital in the state carriage, was greeted with the
acclamations of the people as the procession passed through the city, and

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1651. Oct. 12.]

repaired to the palace of Hampton Court, where apartments had been fitted
up for him and his family at the public expense. In parliament it was
proposed that the 3rd of September should be kept a holiday for ever in
memory of his victory; a day was appointed for a general thanksgiving; and
in addition to a former grant of lands to the amount of two thousand five
hundred pounds per annum, other lands of the value of four thousand pounds
were settled on him in proof of the national gratitude. Cromwell received
these honours with an air of profound humility. He was aware of the
necessity of covering the workings of ambition within his breast with the
veil of exterior self-abasement; and therefore professed to take no merit
to himself, and to see nothing in what he had done, but the hand of the
Almighty, fighting in behalf of his faithful servants.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 509. Ludlow, i. 372. Heath, 301. Journals, Sept.
6, 9, 11, 19. "Next day, 13th, the common prisoners were brought through
Westminster to Tuthill fields--a sadder spectacle was never seen except the
miserable place of their defeat--and there _sold_ to several merchants, and
sent to the Barbadoes."--Heath, 301. Fifteen hundred were granted as
slaves to the Guinea merchants, and transported to the Gold Coast in
Africa.--Parl. Hist. iii. 1374.]

CHAPTER V.

Vigilance Of The Government--Subjugation Of Ireland--Of
Scotland--Negotiation With Portugal--With Spain--With The
United Provinces--Naval War--Ambition Of Cromwell--Expulsion Of
Parliament--Character Of Its Leading Members--Some Of Its Enactments.

In the preceding chapter we have followed the fortunes