n, as many can bear me witness,)
while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness--the soldiery
were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all
government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus
dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can
be no doubt of it--the soldiery were a very considerable part of the
nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second
parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same
events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor
army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political
motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation,
mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the
one case than the other.

In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in
the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained
evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall
and other honourable members should attribute the victories he
announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He
might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these
self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their
battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor
diminish from his claims; might perhaps--though we will not say this was
present to his thoughts--induce the parliament to presume that _he_
would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so
anxious to disclaim. We will quote one instance of this self-denying
style; and perhaps the following passage contains altogether as much of
a certain fanatical mode of reasoning as could be well found in so short
a compass. Prince Rupert, then at Worcester, had sent two thousand men
across the country, to his majesty at Oxford, to convoy his majesty's
person and the artillery over to him at Worcester. Cromwell attacked and
routed this convoy; he also took Bletchington House. After giving an
account of the transaction, he continues:--"This was the mercy of God;
and nothing is more due than a real acknowledgment. And though I have
had greater mercies, yet none clearer: because, in the first place, God
brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered
them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise
them, and which we carefully en