The repose which Cromwell asked of God was approaching for him. It was on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of his victories of Dunbar and Worcester. He muttered now only broken words: "Truly God is good ... indeed He is ... I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable to God and His people, but my work is done ... yet God will be with His people." Some drink was offered to him, and he was urged to sleep. "It is not my design to drink or sleep," he said, "but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone." He fell into a profound stupor, from which he did not arouse again. A sigh alone announced to those present that he had expired. {280} A universal shudder ran through England at this news. Friends and enemies all felt that the true time of stirring events had come again. Only a few moments before his death the Protector had named his son Richard to succeed him; he was proclaimed without opposition. "It has pleased God," wrote Thurloe to Henry Cromwell, "to give to his Highness your brother a very easy and peaceful beginning in his government; there is not a dog who wags his tongue, so profound is the calm which we are in." The great head of European Protestantism was interred at Westminster with a magnificence which surpassed anything that had been seen in England at the funerals of kings; it was from the obsequies of the most "Catholic of monarchs," Philip II., King of Spain, that the ceremony was copied. Everything had succeeded with Cromwell; he had arrived at the summit of power and grandeur, and yet he died in sadness. Whatever may have been his selfishness, he was too high-souled for the highest fortune of a purely personal and ephemeral kind to afford him satisfaction. Weary of the destruction which he had accomplished, he desired in his heart to restore to his country a regular and stable government, the only kind which was suited to her, namely, monarchy with Parliament. At the same time carrying his ambition beyond the tomb, and thirsting for that permanent place in men's esteem which is the crown of greatness, he aspired to leave his name and race in the possession of power in the future. {281} In all these designs he was deceived. His daring enterprises had created around him obstacles which neither his powerful genius nor his obstinate will had sufficed to overcome. Overburdened with power and glory personally, he died deprived of his dearest hopes, leaving behind to succeed him only the two foes whom he had so ardently contended against--monarchy and the Stuarts. {282} Chapter XXVIII. Protectorate Of Richard Cromwell.