a young girl. Having heard much talk about the man, I looked at him with wonder. Being ordered to take a pan of coals, and air his bed, I could not, during the operation, forbear peeping over my shoulder several times to observe this extraordinary person, who was seated at the far side of the room untying his garters. Having aired the bed, I went out, and shutting the door after me, stopped and peeped through the keyhole, when I saw him rise from his seat, advance to the bed, and fall on his knees, in which attitude I left him for some time. When returning again, I found him still at prayer; and this was his custom every night so long as he stayed at our house; from which I concluded he must be a good man; and this opinion I always maintained afterwards, though I heard him very much blamed and exceedingly abused." No! we should say there would be no shaking this woman's faith in him. To her he would appear as what he was-genuine and transparent. How many of Cromwell's maligners, how many of us writers and readers, would stand the test of the keyhole? CHAPTER II. ANCESTRY, FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS. T cannot be an unimportant thing to glance at the IT ancestry of a powerful man; and that of Cromwell is very curious, more like that of the Tudors, whom he so much resembles, than like that of any other royal name of England. He was descended. from a Celtic stock by his mother's side. He was a ninth cousin of Charles I. Elizabeth Steward, Mrs. Robert Cromwell, the mother of Oliver, was descended from Alexander, the Lord High Steward of Scotland-the ancestor of the whole family of the Stewarts. This is one of the most singular coincidences occurring in history; but the family of Cromwell's father was from Wales. He was the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, himself eldest son and heir to Sir Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, who, as the issue of Morgan Williams, by his marriage with a sister of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Earl 1 For a stream of Cromwell's ancestry, and proof of this, see Forster's "Lives of British Statesmen," vol. vi. pp. 35-307. But more explicitly in "The Cromwell Family" of Mark Noble of Essex, assumed-like his father-the name of Cromwell. Morgan ap Williams is said to have derived his family from a noble lineage, namely, that of the Lords of Powys and Cardigan, who flourished during the period of the conquest. But of this we are not herald sufficient to declare the truth; however, all Welsh blood is royal or noble. The elevation of the Cromwell family is to be dated from the introduction of Richard Williams to the Court of Henry VIII., by Thomas Cromwell, the son of Walter Cromwell, some time a blacksmith, and afterwards a brewer at Putney, in Surrey, and a great favourite with the bluff old Hal. Richard Williams appears to have been-and he was-one of the few royal favourites who did not lose his head as the penalty for his sovereign's favouritism. We have an account of a great tournament, held by King Harry, where Richard acquitted himself right gallantly. There the king knighted him, and presented him with a diamond ring, exclaiming, "Formerly thou wast my Dick, but now thou art my Diamond," and bidding him for the future wear such a one in the fore gamb of the demi-lion in his crest, instead of a javelin as before. The arms of Sir Richard, with this alteration, were ever afterwards borne by the elder branch of the family; and by Oliver himself, on his assuming the Protectorship, though previously he had borne the javelin. Henry himself, it will be remembered, was of Welsh descent; and he strongly recommended it to the Welsh to adopt the mode of |