hope from your Highness's
happy expiration. To hasten this great good is the chief end of my
writing this paper; and if it have the effects I hope it will, your
Highness will quickly be out of the reach of men's malice, and your
enemies will only be able to wound you in your memory, which strokes you
will not feel."

The possession of life becomes dearest when its forfeiture is
threatened, and therefore Cromwell took all possible means to guard
against treachery--the only foe he feared, and feared exceedingly. "His
sleeps were disturbed with the apprehensions of those dangers the day
presented unto him in the approaches of any strange face, whose motion
he would most fixedly attend," writes James Heath, gentleman, in his
"Chronicles," published in 1675. "Above all, he very carefully observed
such whose mind or aspect were featured with any chearful and debonair
lineaments; for such he boded were they that would despatch him; to that
purpose he always went secretly armed, both offensive and defensive;
and never stirred without a great guard. In his usual journey between
Whitehall and Hampton Court, by several roads, he drove full speed in
the summer time, making such a dust with his life-guard, part before and
part behinde, at a convenient distance, for fear of choaking him with
it, that one could hardly see for a quarter of an hour together, and
always came in some private way or other." The same authority, in his
"Life of Cromwell," states of him, "It was his constant custom to shift
and change his lodging, to which he passed through twenty several locks,
and out of which he had four or five ways to avoid pursuit." Welwood, in
his "Memoirs," adds the Protector wore a coat of mail beneath his dress,
and carried a poniard under his cloak.

Nor was this all. According to the "Chronicle of the late Intestine
War," Cromwell "would sometimes pretend to be merry, and invite persons,
of whom he had some suspicion, to his cups, and then drill out of their
open hearts such secrets as he wisht for. He had freaks also to divert
the vexations of his misgiving thoughts, calling on by the beat of drum
his footguards, like a kennel of hounds to snatch away the scraps and
reliques of his table. He said every man's hand was against him,
and that he ran daily into further perplexities, out of which it was
impossible to extricate, or secure himself therein, without running
into further danger; so that he began to alter much in the tenou