lay was a complete success; everybody was puzzled, players,
spectators, and the gentlemen of the press; not one even guessed at the
true meaning of the performance; though a few 'men of wicked spirits'
would try to peep behind the curtain. But they never found him out; they
all danced to Cromwell's tune, but none discovered that the pipe they
heard was in their Protector's mouth. Even Ludlow, with all the
proverbial opportunities of a bystander, though most anxious to know his
great opponent's game, never guessed that he had patched up the
Insurrection of March 1655, from the beginning to the end.

And such was Cromwell's power of deception, that though dead, he still
deceived; his works did follow him, as he desired, out of sight. He
seems to have anticipated that the records of his detective department
might remain as a witness against him, and to have cast over the
'Thurloe Papers' a spell, that has hitherto rendered them invisible. For
nearly 150 years these evidences of his 'hidden works of darkness' have
been before the world; but Cromwell has preserved his secret; he has
humbugged every historian as effectually as he hoodwinked his
contemporaries. The 'Thurloe Papers' were published in 1742, well
edited and indexed; they contain the documents which Cromwell himself
read and handled, the notes of his speeches, the information of his
spies, the letters of his enemies and of his clerks. Though called after
Thurloe, those papers are, in fact, Cromwell's own. Yet such is the
glamour that he has cast over all that has approached him, that they
have accepted his words without question, or, if they have read his
writings, they have read them according to his inspiration.

Yet there was much even in that Insurrection itself to arouse suspicion.
Cromwell, in January 1655, assured his Parliament that he had crushed
the various conspiracies which were then on foot against him, all most
'real dangers,' and that he had disarmed and rendered powerless those
conspirators; yet within six weeks they had organized a universal
revolt, and had secreted stores of arms and ammunition all over England.
This universal revolt broke out at Salisbury, 'bold and dangerous'; and
it was put down by a single troop of horsemen, after the rebels had
paraded, disheartened and deserted, across England. Except on that
occasion, the vast design was suppressed without the aid of a single
soldier or even a beadle. And, strangely enough, the Protector h