Though this is the statement of an enemy, we can very well believe it, for Cromwell's life had been for years aimed at by assassins, both Royalist and Republican, by paid bravoes of Charles II., and by fanatics. These various fears and anxieties told strongly as his health failed. He reached his fifty-ninth year in April, and was therefore pretty advanced towards his sixtieth. For fourteen days before the death of Mrs. Claypole, the Protector was almost day and night by her bedside, not being able to attend to any business in his deep anxiety. Mrs. Claypole died on the 6th of August, and George Fox going to Hampton Court, to represent to Cromwell the persecutions of his friends, on the 20th of that month, met him riding in Hampton Court Park at the head of his Life Guards, and was so struck with his altered appearance, that he said "he felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when he came up to him he looked like a dead man." On hearing George's statement, he desired him to come to the palace to him; but next day, when Fox went thither, he was told that he was much worse, and that the physicians were not willing he should speak with anybody. Cromwell died on the 3rd of September, the day of Dunbar and Worcester, the day which he had set down as his fortunate day, and which was in nothing more so than in this last event. He laid down a burden which he had often said "was too heavy for man," and with the possession of that form of government which he sincerely deemed essential to truth and liberty still in his grasp. It was a form of government which had no foundation in the convictions of the people, and which sooner or later was bound to fall; and the old prejudices in favour of royalty bring back a fresh lesson of martyrdom to its votaries. The Dictatorship was at an end; it had been maintained by Cromwell's innate vigour, and could only last as long as he did. The day that he died was a day of terrible wind, and his enemies declared that the devil came in it to fetch him away; but his friends said that Nature could not witness the departure of so great a spirit without marking its strong emotion. Many are the sayings of his last hours reported by friends and foes, but it is certain that he expressed his firm belief that he died in the unbroken covenant with God.