OF THE

GREAT REBELLION.

BY

JOHN LANGTON SANFORD,

OF LINCOLN'S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

"History comes like a beggarly gleaner in the field, after Death, the
great lord of the domain, has gathered the crop with his mighty hand,
and lodged it in his garner, which no man can open."-GODWIN.

PREFACE.

THE present volume embodies some of the results of a course of historical investigation commenced more than fifteen years ago.

My attention was then drawn to the great discrepancy in the estimates of the character of Oliver Cromwell in the pages of the historical authorities of that day. Being quite at a loss to arrive at any satisfactory conclusions as to the facts on which they based their several judgments of the Protector, I resolved to make for myself as complete a collection as possible of his letters, arranging them in chronological order, as a backbone to any farther investigations into his character. Having access to the library of the British Museum, I found this a less difficult but more extensive task than I had anticipated. Besides the standard books on the subject, such works as county histories and the early volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine, the Annual Register and the printed papers of the Antiquarian Society supplied me with not a few neglected records of interest; and the MSS. collections in the Museum yielded a rich additional harvest. At the end of two years I had thus brought together about 300 letters, published and unpublished, and had read through and re-punctuated into some sense most of the Protector's printed speeches. Of course