The next act in the swiftly-moving drama was the trial and execution of him who to this day is considered by some to have been a royal martyr, who only exchanged an earthly for a heavenly crown, and by others is looked upon as the man who deliberately made himself guilty of the worst of all blood-guiltiness, the guilt of civil war. That is a matter for each one to decide according to his own convictions, which, be it noted, some two and a half centuries of argument have not yet altered. Here we are only concerned with Cromwell’s share in it. There can be no doubt to an unbiassed mind that at one period he honestly tried for a monarchical settlement of the difficulty. It is equally undeniable that he considered Charles’s double-dealing responsible for what he held to be the unpardonable crime of the Second Civil War and therefore as having incurred for a second time the guilt of blood. That the execution, or murder, of the king met with his entire approval cannot be doubted, since before it happened he said to Algernon Sidney: “I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.” So, whether crime or act of justice, it was done, and Cromwell, perhaps more than any one else, was responsible for it. The next act is the Dictatorship, and the first scene in it the re-conquest of Ireland, with its massacres and bitter, pitiless persecutions in revenge or punishment, as you will, for other massacres which had gone before. It is a piteous story, and one of no great credit to any one, but, to borrow the maxim of Strafford, the former tyrant of Ireland, it was “thorough.” In nine months, with about fifteen thousand men, the Dictator had stamped the Irish rebellion out and made “the curse of Cromwell” a phrase that will dwell on Hibernian lips for many a generation. But no sooner was the Irish revolt drowned in blood and flame than Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II. of infamous memory, took the Oath to the Covenant, and the Scots rose to support him. Cromwell crossed the Border on July 22, 1650. As it happened, the Scottish general was Leslie, the old comrade who had fought at his side at Marston Moor. For some weeks the Scots played a waiting game, and Cromwell, with his men wearied and falling sick, and with no other base than his ships on the coast, hurled texts and biblical harangues at the enemy. In fact, as Mr. Harrison cleverly puts it, “it was not so much a battle between two armies as between two rival congregations in arms.”