.
Several of the Puritan clergy knocked at the door and offered to pray with
him, but he said that they had prayed against him too often for him to
wish to pray with them in his last moments. Meanwhile, in a small distant
room, Cromwell was signing the order to the executioner, and workmen were
employed in breaking a passage through the west wall of the Banqueting
House, that the warrant for the execution might be carried out which
ordained it to be held "in the open street before Whitehall."....

Almost from the time of Charles's execution Cromwell occupied rooms in the
Cockpit, where the Treasury is now, but soon after he was installed "Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth" (December 16, 1653), he took up his abode
in the royal apartments, with his "Lady Protectress" and his family.
Cromwell's puritanical tastes did not make him averse to the luxury he
found there, and, when Evelyn visited Whitehall after a long interval in
1656, he found it "very glorious and well furnished." But the Protectress
could not give up her habits of nimble housewifery, and "employed a
surveyor to make her some little labyrinths and trap-stairs, by which she
might, at all times, unseen, pass to and fro, and come unawares upon her
servants, and keep them vigilant in their places and honest in the
discharge thereof." With Cromwell in Whitehall lived Milton, as his Latin
Secretary. Here the Protector's daughters, Mrs. Rich and Mrs. Claypole,
were married, and here Oliver Cromwell died (September 3, 1658) while a
great storm was raging which tore up the finest elms in the Park, and
hurled them to the ground, beneath the northern windows of the palace.

In the words of Hume, Cromwell upon his deathbed "assumed more the
character of a mediator, interceding for his people, than that of a
criminal, whose atrocious violation of social duty had, from every
tribunal, human and divine, merited the severest vengeance." Having
inquired of Godwin, the divine who attended him, whether a person who had
once been in a state of grace could afterward be damned, and being assured
it was impossible, he said, "Then I am safe, for I am sure that I was once
in a state of grace." Richard Cromwell continued to reside in Whitehall
till his resignation of the Protectorate.

On his birthday, the 29th of May, 1660, Charles II returned to Whitehall.
The vast labyrinthine chambers of the palace were soon filled to
overflowing by his crowded court. The queen's rooms were fac