" He then goes on to give the reasons
assigned by different persons for the act. Some said that the General
"scented their purpose" to declare themselves perpetual, and to get rid
of him by ordering him to Scotland. "Others say this, that the cries of
the oppressed proveiled much with him.... & hastned the declaracion of
that ould principle, _Salus populi suprema lex_ &c." The General, in the
heat of his wrath, himself snatching the keys and locking the door, has a
look of being drawn from the life. Cromwell, in a letter to General
Fortescue (November,1655), speaks sharply of the disorders and
debauchedness, profaneness and wickedness, commonly practised amongst the
army sent out to the West Indies. Major Mason gives us a specimen: "It is
here reported that some of the soldiers belonging to the ffleet at Boston
ffell upon the watch: after some bickering they comanded them to goe
before the Governour; they retorned that they were Cromwell's boyes."
Have we not, in these days, heard of "Sherman's boys"?
Belonging properly to the "Winthrop Papers," but printed in an earlier
volume (Third Series, Vol. I. pp. 185-198), is a letter of John
Maidstone, which contains the best summary of the Civil War that I ever
read. Indeed, it gives a clearer insight into its causes, and a better
view of the vicissitudes of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, than any
one of the more elaborate histories.
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