There was no time to spare. The Lord General, dressed in a rich suit of black velvet, appeared, and the procession was formed. The Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Judges and Barons of the Exchequer in all the splendour of their insignia, preceded it. Then came the Council of State and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their scarlet robes. Cromwell followed. He was alone in a magnificent coach with outriders, but he was attended by the chief officers of the army, and by an imposing military escort. His family and friends in conveyances of equal splendour were behind, and were also attended by a military guard of honour. "Is it a dream, Jane?" said Mrs. Swaffham to her daughter. "Am I asleep or awake? Are these the very Cromwells we used to know? Did you see that little chit, Frank, whom I have birched and stood in the corner, and scolded more times than I can remember?—did you see her? Did you see her curtsying to her mother and calling her, ’Your Highness’? and Mary Cromwell giving orders like a very Queen? and even Elizabeth Claypole looking as if England belonged to them? After this, Jane, nothing can astonish me." Jane was as silent as her mother was garrulous; the crowds, the excitement, the poignant crash and blare of martial music, the shining and clashing of steel, the waving of flags, the shouts and huzzas of the multitudes, the ringing of innumerable bells, the overpowering sense of the brotherhood of humanity in a mass animated by the same feeling, these things thrilled and filled souls until they were without words, or else foolishly eloquent. A place of honour had been reserved for the Cromwell party, and the great General’s mother found a throne-like chair placed for her in such a position that she could see every movement and hear every word of that august ceremony which was to acknowledge her son "the greatest man in England." And as she sat there, watching him stand uncovered beside the Chair of State, and listened to him taking the solemn oath to rule England, Scotland and Ireland justly, she thought of this battle-scarred man as a baby at her breast, fifty-four years before, pressing her bosom with his tiny fingers, and smiling up in her face, happily unconscious of the travail of body and soul he was to undergo for the sake of England, and of all future free peoples. And she thought also of one cold winter day, when, a lad of twelve, he had come in from his lessons and his rough play at football and thrown himself upon his bed, weary with the buffeting; and as he lay there, wide-awake in the broad daylight, how he had seen his angel stand at his feet, and heard him say, "_Thou shalt be the greatest man in England_." And there in her sight and hearing, the prophecy was fulfilled that day, for she had never doubted it. The boy had been scolded and flogged for persisting in this story, but she had comforted him and always known that it was a vision to be realised.