people into subjection than any general before him. Nothing can screen him from the charge of atrocious cruelty in the conduct of this campaign. The royalist generals endeavoured to set him a better example. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the same to me, if any of mine should fall into his power. But he little valued my civility, for in a few days after he besieged Gouvan, and the soldiers mutinying and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the governor Hammond and some other officers to be put to death." Cromwell avows this in one of his letters. "The next day the colonel, major, and the rest of the commissioned officers were shot to death; all but one, who, being very earnest to have the castle delivered, was pardoned." And this, he admits, was because they refused to surrender at his first summons. He seemed to consider a refusal to surrender, at once and unconditionally, a deadly crime, and avenged it most bloodily. Were all war to be carried on on this principle, it would be a war, not of saints, but of devils. On the other hand, Ormond, in one of his letters, says, "Rathfarnham was taken by our troops by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and, though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels' making use of a victory."

The charge is exceedingly heavy-the conduct of Cromwell often approaching to savagism. While the soil was still wet with the blood he had shed he penned and published "A Declaration for the Undeceiving of Deluded and Seduced People, which will be satisfactory to all that do not wilfully shut their eyes against the light: in answer to certain late Declarations and Acts framed by the Irish Popish Prelates and Clergy in a conventicle at Clonmacnoise," in which he sets forth that all Christians belong to the spiritual estate, and that there is no other difference between them than in the functions they discharge; that the term clergy and laity is antiChristian, and leads to discontent and division; that men should never have recourse to carnal means for the advancement of religion; that the people were the last objects of the care and solicitude of the priesthood; that if the people were a flock, they could be but badly fed under such pastors; that the mass was an unmeaning ceremony, and therefore not to be tolerated; that the priesthood, in the propagation of Catholicism,

had made use chiefly of fire and sword; that not an instance could be given of any one man since his coming into Ireland, not in arms, being massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning whose massacre or destruction justice had not been done; that he should not willingly take, or suffer

to be taken away, the life of any man not in arms, but by the trial to which the people are subject by law; that if the people should run to arms by the instigation of their clergy or otherwise, they could receive no mercy at his hands; that England had experience of the blessing of God in prosecuting just and righteous causes, and that if ever men were engaged in a

righteous cause in the world, this war would hardly be second to it; that he had come to ask an account of the innocent blood that had been shed, and bring to an account all who, by appearing in arms, had sought to justify the same; to break the power of a company of lawless rebels, and, by the assistance of God, hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty; that such as had been formerly in arms might, by submitting themselves, have their cases presented to the State of England, which no doubt would be ready to take into consideration the nature and quality of their actings, and deal mercifully with them, and so with those who were still in arms; while such as persisted and continued in arms could expect nothing else but what in the providence of God (in what is falsely called the chance of war) might come upon them; that such of the nobility, gentry, and Commons of Ireland, as had been actors in the rebellion, might depend on the protection of their property, liberties, and lives; but that if after all this the people should headily run on after the counsels of their prelates and clergy, and other leaders, he hoped to be free from the misery and desolation, blood and ruin, that should befall them, and that he should rejoice to exercise the utmost severity against them!

Cromwell was received at Bristol on his return from Ireland with royal state. Civic officers, local dignitaries, the troops, multitudes of people turned out to give him welcome-salvoes were fired in his honour-he was the hero of the hour-the man who had smitten Ireland into subjection, and left on that unhappy land "the Curse of Cromwell." His progress to London was an ovation. Some one remarking what crowds went out to see his triumph, he answered-" But if they came to see me hanged, how many more would there be !"

N Scotland, after the death of the first Charles, the Prince of Wales-Charles the Second-was proclaimed King by order of the Scottish Parliament. The young king was at the Hague when Sir Joseph Douglas brought him intelligence of what had taken place. He immediately quitted Holland, and after passing some time in Paris, went to Jersey, where he learned that his acceptance of the Scottish crown was burdened with certain conditions-conditions not in any way congenial to his humour. It was thought proper that he should separate himself from his dissolute companions, of whom there were many; that he should renounce Episcopacy and swear to the Covenant-in fact, that he should accept all the terms concerning which his father had in the first place offended the Scottish nation. Still Charles was privately assured by the gallant but sanguinary Montrose, and others, that his

acceptance of the terms would be merely temporary. The Covenanters represented only a section of Scottish loyalists-a large section, but still not all-and with foreign help much might be done, if Charles should at once become monarch of the land.

So Charles agreed to meet the Commissioners at Breda, and Montrose having been created a marquis and received the George, raised the royal standard in the Highlands, and called upon the clans to rise and defend their king before the Covenanters could sell him to the English as they

(From a Painting by Vandyke, in the collection of his grace the Marquis of Montrose.)

had done his father. He exhibited a banner bearing a representation of the beheaded monarch with the inscription, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord." The name of Montrose was associated with many brilliant actions but actions fraught with terror. He was represented by his partizans as a demi-god, and by his enemies as a monster. He was the idol of his soldiers, "his course was brief and bright; but the brightness was that of a blood red comet crossing the shuddering midnight, and not of a calm and steady star." The few followers who surrounded him when he unfurled his standard for the young king were totally incompetent to