ngland, either, and in that great uprising against principalities and
powers Dick Cromwell's father was to bear an important part.

We would like to know more of Richard Cromwell's boyhood. We would like
to know how he lived and what he did as a small boy on that cattle farm
among the fens at St. Ives, and at the more spacious homestead in the
shadow of the great gray towers of Ely Cathedral. We would like to know
whether he liked sport, as most boys do, or whether he was too lazy to
exert himself at play. We would like to know how he studied, and what he
learned at the Free Grammar School at Felsted, where, one after the
other, four of the Cromwell boys were sent; whether he loved football as
much as his father did, and became a champion full-back as his father
did when he was a boy.

I am afraid Richard Cromwell was just as careless at his books as at the
later duties that came to him; for, from things that have come down to
us, we know how his busy father, who was as ambitious for his boys as
all fathers are, had but little patience with lazybones anywhere, and
reproved boy Dick for his carelessness as he found fault with young Mr.
Dick, in later years, for his shiftless ways.

Troublesome times came to England. The people rose in defence of their
rights. The King fell. The throne and crown were abolished. The
Parliament bent before the iron will of the people's champion, and from
the Captain of a troop and the General of an army the determined farmer
of the fens took the helm and steered his country through reefs and
breakers, until, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the
commonwealth of England became the first power in Europe, unconquerable
on the land, invincible on the sea.

Step by step Cromwell rose to power. Against his own desire he rose, the
one strong man in England. And, as he advanced, his family rose with him
into notice and position. One by one the older boys died. Robert, a
promising lad of seventeen, died at Felsted School; Oliver, the second
son, named for his father and a Captain in the cavalry, died just before
the great victory of Marston Moor, and Richard Cromwell thus became the
eldest living son, heir to the estates, successor in power, but never
heir to the fame that his mighty father attained.

For there was in "lazy Dick" nothing of his father's masterful manner or
genius in leadership, nothing of the display and vast hospitality that
made famous his ancestor, known as "the Golden