"TO HIS EMINENCY CARDINAL MAZARIN "

Whitehall," 26th December 1656.

The obligations, and many instances of affection, which I have received from your Eminency, do engage "me" to make returns suitable to your merits. But although I have this set home upon my spirit, I may not (shall I tell you, I cannot ?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer to your call for Toleration.1

I say, I cannot, as to a public Declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my Government your Eminency, in the behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint as to rigour upon men's consciences than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to the truth of what I affirm) made a difference; and, as Jude speaks, plucked many out of the fire," -the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that press me down, to make a farther progress, and discharge my promise to your Eminency in relation to that.

And now I shall come to return your Eminency thanks for your judicious choice of that Person to whom you have intrusted our weightiest Affair: an Affair wherein your Eminency is concerned, though not in an equal degree and measure with myself. I must confess that I had some doubts of its success, till Providence cleared them to me by the effects. I was, truly, and to speak ingenuously, not without doubtings; and shall not

1 To the Catholics here.

2 Verses 22, 23: a most remarkable Epistle, to which his Highness often enough solemnly refers, as we have seen.

be ashamed to give your Eminency the grounds I had for much doubting. I did fear that Berkley would not have been able to go through and carry-on that work; and that either the Duke would have cooled in his suit, or condescended to his Brother. I doubted also that those Instructions which I sent over with 290 were not clear enough as to expressions; some affairs here denying me leisure at that time to be so particular as, regard" to some circumstances, I would.—If I am not mistaken in his "the Duke's" character, as I received it from your Eminency, that fire which is kindled between them will not ask bellows to blow it, and keep it burning. But what I think farther necessary in this matter I will send "to" your Eminency by Lockhart.

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And now I shall boast to your Eminency my security upon a well-builded confidence in the Lord: for I distrust not but if this breach "be" widened a little more, and this difference fomented, with a little caution in respect of the persons to be added to it, I distrust not but that Party, which is already forsaken of God as to an outward dispensation of mercies, and noisome to their countrymen, will grow lower in the opinion of all the world.

If I have troubled your Eminency too long in this, you may impute it to the resentment of joy which I have for the issue of this Affair; and "I" will conclude with giving you assurance that I will never be backward in demonstrating, as becomes your brother and confederate, that I am, your servant,

OLIVER P.*

His suit, I understand, was for leave to continue in France; an AntiSpanish notion.

2 Cipher for some Man's Name, now undecipherable; to all appearance Bamfield.

* Thurloe, v. 735. In the possession of a 'Mr. Theophilus Rowe of Hampstead in Middlesex,' says Birch. Where did Rowe get it? Is it in the original hand, or only a copy? Birch is silent even as to the latter point. The style sufficiently declares it to be a genuine Letter.

SPEECH VI

SINDERCOMB

THE Spanish Invasion and Royalist Insurrection once more came to no effect on mature judgment of the case, it seemed necessary to have Oliver Protector assassinated first; and that, as usual, could not be got done. Colonel Sexby, the frantic Anabaptist, he and others have been very busy; riding among his Highness's escort' in Hyde Park and elsewhere, with fleet horses, formidable weapons, with 'gate-hinges ready filed through,' if the deed could have been done; but it never could. Sexby went over to Flanders again, for fresh consultations; left the assassination-affair in other hands, with 1,600%. of ready money, on the faith of a Christian King.' Quarter-master Sindercomb takes Sexby's place in this great enterprise; finds, he too, that there is nothing but failure

in it.

Miles Sindercomb, now a cashiered Quartermaster living about Town, was once a zealous Deptford lad, who enlisted to fight for Liberty, at the beginning of these Wars. He fought strongly on the side of Liberty, being an earnest fierce young fellow; then gradually got astray into Levelling courses, and wandered ever deeper there, till daylight forsook him, and it became quite dark. He was one of the desperate misguided Corporals, or Quartermasters, doomed to be shot at Burford, seven years ago: but he escaped overnight, and was not shot there; took service in Scotland; got again to be Quartermaster; was in the Overton Plot, for seizing Monk and marching into England, lately: whereupon Monk cashiered him and he came to Town; lodged himself here, in a sulky threadbare manner, —in Alsatia or elsewhere. A gloomy man and Ex-Quartermaster; has become one of Sexby's people, on the faith of a Christian King'; nothing now left of him but the fierceness, groping some path for itself in the utter dark. Henry Toope,

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one of his Highness's Lifeguard, gives us, or will give us, an inkling of Sindercomb; and we know something of his courses and inventions, which are many. He rode in Hyde Park, among his Highness's escort, with Sexby; but the deed could not then be done. Leave me the 1,6007., said he; and I will find a way to do it. Sexby left it him, and went abroad.

Inventive Sindercomb then took a House in Hammersmith; Garden-House, I think, which had a banqueting-room looking into the road'; road very narrow at that part;-road from Whitehall to Hampton Court on Saturday afternoons. Inventive Sindercomb here set about providing blunderbusses of the due explosive force,―ancient 'infernal-machines,' in fact, -with these he will blow his Highness's Coach and Highness's self into small pieces, if it please Heaven. It did not please Heaven, probably not Henry Toope of his Highness's Lifeguard. This first scheme proved a failure.

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Inventive Sindercomb, to justify his 1,6007., had to try something. He decided to fire Whitehall by night, and have a stroke at his Highness in the tumult. He has a hundred swift horses, two in a stable, up and down':-set a hundred stout ruffians on the back of these, in the nocturnal fire; and try. Thursday 8th January 1656-7; that is to be the Night. On the dusk of Thursday January 8th, he with old-trooper Cecil, his second in the business, attends Public Worship in Whitehall Chapel; is seen loitering there afterwards, near the Lord Lambert's seat.' Nothing more is seen of him: but about half-past eleven at night, the sentinel on guard catches a smell of fire ;—finds holed wainscots, picked locks; a basket of the most virulent wildfire, fit almost to burn through stones,—with lit match slowly creeping towards it, computed to reach it in some half-hour hence, about the stroke of midnight! His Highness is summoned, the Council is summoned; -alas, Toope of the Lifeguard is examined, and Sindercomb's lodging is known. Just when the wildfire should have blazed, two Guardsmen wait upon Sindercomb; seize him, not without hard defence on his part, wherein his nose was nearly cut off';

bring him to his Highness. Toope testifies; Cecil peaches: -inventive Sindercomb has failed for the last time. To the Tower with him, to a jury of his country with him!--The emotion in the Parliament and in the Public, next morning, was great. It had been proposed to ring an alarm at the moment of discovery, and summon the Trainbands; but his Highness would not hear of it.1

This Parliament, really intent on settling this Nation, could not want for emotions in regard to such a matter! Parliament adjourns for a week, till the roots of the Plot are investigated somewhat. Parliament, on reassembling, appoints a day of Thanksgiving for the Nation; Friday come four weeks, which is February 20th, that shall be the general Thanksgiving Day: and in the mean time we decide to go over in a body, and congratulate his Highness. A mark of great respect to him.2

Parliament accordingly goes over in a body, with mellifluous Widdrington, whom they have chosen for Speaker, at their head, to congratulate his Highness. It is Friday 23d January 1656-7; about Eleven in the morning; scene, Banqueting - house, Whitehall. Mellifluous Widdrington's congratulation, not very prolix, exists in abstract; but we suppress it. Here is his Highness's Reply ;-rather satisfactory to the reader. We have only to regret that in passing from the Court up to the Banqueting-house, 'part of an ancient wooden staircase,' or balustrade of a staircase, 'long exposed to the weather, gave way in the crowding; and some honourable Gentlemen had falls, though happily nobody was seriously hurt. Mellifluous Widdrington having ended, his

Highness answers:

1 Burton, i. 322-3, 355; Official Narrative (in Cromwelliana, pp. 160, 161); State-Trials, v. § Sindercomb.

2 Commons Journals, vii. 481, 484, 493; Burton's Diary, i. 369, 377.

* Burton, ii. 488.

Cromwelliana, p. 162. See Thurloe (vi. 49), and correct poor Noble (i. 161), who, with a double or even triple blunder, says my Lord Richard Cromwell had his leg broken on this occasion, and dates it August 1657.