St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-03-22
CROMWELL THE LITTLE.
Vicissitudes in the Life of the Son OF
England's Great Dictator
and Warrior.

The wheel of fortune has strange
turnings but it has not often turned so
completely round as in the spring OF
1859. In April Richard Cromwell sat
on the throne of England, king in all
but name, master of two palaces, with
an allowance of 10000 year. In
May he wandered homeless in. a
strange land, fugitive, not from JUS
tice, but from the law. In his trunks
were the congratulations he had re-
ceived month or two before from the
crowned heads of Europe. A dozen
years before his fathers name had
made the world tremble; now it was a
name to which his son dared not an
swer, says the st. James Gazette. His
wife waited Is years for his return,
and died without seeing him again;
his favorite daughter, Dorothy, was
married and buried in a few months.
She was the only Cromwell somebody
has said, "born in the purple"
Cromwell came home at last to live
in lodgings at ten shillings a week
Nobody guessed that the Mr.. Clarke
who liver simply and quietly at Chesh-
unit was the man who had been the
protector of the commonwealth. Mrs.
Pengelly, his landlady, kept his ac-
counts in great detail, and Sir Richard
Tangye has unearthed many of them,
which give US strange glimpses of the
life led by Cromwell's son. He smoked
great deal, paying two shillings and
eightpence per gross for his 'pypes,"
and he was generous even in his pow
erty. On one occasion he borrowed s2
from his landlady, who entered it down
for the day when you had your feast"
When his daughters came to sec him
from Hursley his home in better days.
Richard would treat them to a COM
Portable dinner at Westminster, bor-
rowing the money from good Mrs. Pen
gelly, who seems to have done some
thing to soften the hard fate to which
an ungrateful country had doomed
the son of Cromwell.
More than once Richard had come to
his last shilling. Once, when visiting
at Hursley, he had to put off his re-
turn for want of shirt. But gener-
ally he seems to have been a tolerably
happy man, blessing everybody in spite
of circumstances, and blaming none.
When Queen Mary died he spent half a
crown, we are told, on a pair of mourn
ing gloves. His last days were made
unhappy by a painful quarrel with his
daughters concerning the property at
Hursley. The daughters did their ut
most to deprive their father of his
rights, as though his life had not been
hard enough, and in his old age Rich
ard, who had left Whitehall palace
freely years before, was driven from
his own home. A lawsuit established
his rights at last, and before his death
the family was at peace again. Give
in love; am going to the God of love-"
he said to his daughters, as he lag dy-
ing at Hursley in 1912.
There is story told of great cere.
monial in which Queen Anne was the
central figure. The queen was sur
rounded by host of gayly dressed
courtiers, and in the throng was an
old man of 81, wearing the plain
dress of country farmer. "Have you
ever seen such sight before ?" asked
[ooker-on, and the throng was startled
to hear the old man say: "Never since
sat in her chair" It was Cromwell's
son,