Cassell's History of England, Vol. 3 (of 8): From the Great Rebellion to the Fall of Marlborough.Anonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 3 (of 8): From the Great Rebellion to the Fall of Marlborough.
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
The Wallingford House party of officers alone created serious
apprehension. They sent in a list of fifteen demands, which were
immediately taken into consideration, and the Rump successively voted,
in compliance therewith, that a form of government should be passed
calculated to preserve the liberties of the people, and that it should
contain no single person as Protector, nor House of Peers. They also
agreed that liberty of conscience should be allowed to all believers
in the Scriptures who held the doctrine of the Trinity, except Papists
and Prelatists. But one of these demands was for lands of inheritance
to be settled on Richard Cromwell to the value of ten thousand pounds
a year, and a pension on her Highness, his mother, of ten thousand
pounds a year. On this it was remarked that Richard was still occupying
Whitehall as if he were Protector, and they made it conditional that
he should remove thence. They proposed that if he retired from the
Protectorate, they would grant him twenty-nine thousand pounds for the
discharge of his debts, two thousand pounds for present necessities,
and ten thousand pounds to him and his heirs. Richard cheerfully signed
a formal abdication in May, 1659, but his pension was never paid.
After the Restoration he fled to the Continent, where he remained
for twenty years. He returned in 1680, and lived peaceably on his
estate at Cheshunt, or at Mardon, in Hursley, near Winchester, which
he received with Dorothy Mayor, and there spent a jolly life in old
English state, dying in 1712. During his father's life, he is said in
convivial hours to have drunk the health of his father's landlord,
Charles Stuart; and he possessed a chest which contained the addresses
and congratulations, even the protestations of profound fidelity from
corporations, congregations, and almost all the public men, and on this
chest he would seat himself in his jocund hours, amongst his convivial
friends, and boast that he was sitting on the lives and fortunes of
most of the leading men of England. Henry Cromwell also passed his life
as a quiet country gentleman on his estate of Swinney, near Soham, in
Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1673. His government of Ireland was,
on his resigning, put into the hands of five commissioners, and the
command of the army was given to Ludlow.
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