Mrs. Hutchinson, in her memoirs, alluding to the condition and treatment of the king at Hampton Court, after he was delivered up to the Parliamentary Commissioners by the Scots, says, “The king, by reason of his daily converse with the officers, began to be trinkling with them, and had drawn in some of them to engage others to fall in with him;” but to speak the truth of all, Cromwell was at that time so uncorruptibly faithful to his trust, and to the people’s interest, that he could not be drawn in to practice even his own usual and natural dissimulations on that occasion. His son-in-law, IRETON, that was as faithful as he, was not so fully of opinion (till he had tried it and found to the contrary) but that the king might have been managed to comply with the public good of his people, after he could no longer uphold his own violent will; but, upon some discourses with him, the king uttering these words to him, “I shall _play my game_ as well as I can,” IRETON replied, “if your Majesty have _a game_ to play, you must give us liberty also to play ours.” Colonel Hutchinson discoursing privately with his cousin (IRETON) about the conversations he had with the king,--the latter made use of these expressions: “He gave us words, and we paid him in his own coin, _when we found he had no real intention to the people’s good_, but to prevail by our factions, to regain by art what he had lost in fight.” This conviction of the king’s insincerity, and this alone, appears to have determined IRETON to accomplish his death. The public good he evidently believed required it: and, as in this cause, he was prepared to lay down his own life; so he was resolved that no individual’s life should be an obstacle to its furtherance. That “he was perhaps more than any other man the cause of the king’s death,” may be readily believed: but that his conduct in that solemn affair proceeded upon the despicable principle of private revenge, because the king had secretly resolved, previously, upon his destruction and that of Cromwell, may be safely denied. His motives are better explained in the following extract from the speech made by him upon the motion that no more addresses be made to the King, from Parliament, nor any messages received from him; wherein he says, “Subjection to the king is but in lieu of protection from him, which being denied, we may settle the kingdom without him.” With his rooted antipathy to the government of a single person, and his bold and decisive character; at the same time possessing a mind fitted for the most daring resolves, and capacious of enterprizes requiring boldness, and skill in their accomplishment, there can be no wonder that he was amongst the foremost in bringing about the death of the king. This perfectly agrees with the character given of him by NEAL, in his history of the Puritans, where he remarks, “Lieutenant-General Ireton was bred to the law, and was a person of great integrity; bold and intrepid in