gentleman in debt, who was running away from
his creditors, and that he hoped they would
join him in persuading the captain to put
him ashore in France. As the King acted
his part very well indeed, and gave the
sailors twenty shillings to drink, they begged
the captain to do what such a worthy
gentleman asked. He pretended to yield to
their entreaties, and the King got safe to
Normandy.

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland
kept quiet by plenty of forts and soldiers
put there by Oliver, the Parliament would
have gone on quietly enough as far as fighting
with any foreign enemy went, but for getting
into trouble with the Dutch, who in the
spring of the year one thousand six hundred
and fifty-one, sent a fleet into the Downs
under their ADMIRAL VAN TROMP, to call
upon the bold English ADMIRAL BLAKE (who
was there with half as many ships as the
Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a
raging broadside instead, and beat off Van
Tromp, who, in the autumn, came back again
with seventy ships, and challenged the bold
Blake—who still was only half as strong—
to fight him. Blake fought him all day, but
finding that the Dutch were too many for him,
got quietly off at night. What does Van
Tromp upon this, but goes cruising and boasting
about the Channel, between the North
Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with a great
Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign
that he could and would sweep the English
off the sea!   Within three months, Blake
lowered his tone though, and his broom too;
for, he and two other bold commanders. Dean
and Monk, fought him three whole days, took
twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom
to pieces, and settled his business.

Things were no sooner quiet again than the
army began to complain to the Parliament
that they were not governing the nation
properly, and to hint that they thought they
could do it better themselves. Oliver, who
had now made up his mind to be the head
of the state, or nothing at all, supported them
in this, and called a meeting of officers and his
own Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in
Whitehall, to consider the best way of getting
rid of the Parliament. It had now
lasted just as many years as the King's
unbridled power had lasted, before it came into
existence. The end of the deliberation was
that Oliver went down to the House in his
usual plain black dress, with his usual grey
worsted stockings, but with an unusual party
of soldiers behind him. These last he left in
the lobby, and then went in and sat down.
Presently he got up, made the Parliament a
speech, told them that the Lord had done
with them, stamped his foot and said, " You
are no Parliament. Bring them in! Bring
them in!" At this signal the door flew
open, and the soldiers appeared, "This is
not honest," said Sir Harry Vane, one of the
members. "Sir Harry Vane!" cried Cromwell;
" O, Sir Harry Vane! The Lord deliver
me from Sir Harry Vane!" Then he pointed
out members one by one, and said this man
was a drunkard, and that man a dissipated
fellow, and that man a liar, and so on. Then
he caused the Speaker to be walked out
of his chair, told the guard to clear the
House, called the mace upon the table—
which is a sign that the House is sitting—" a
fool's bauble," and said, " Here, carry it
away!" Being obeyed in all these orders, he
quietly locked the door, put the key in his
pocket, walked back to Whitehall again, and
told his friends, who were still assembled
there, what he had done.

They formed a new Council of State after
this extraordinary proceeding, and got a new
Parliament together in their own way: which
Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon, and
which he said was the beginning of a perfect
heaven upon earth. In this parliament there
sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken
the singular name of Praise God Barebones,
and from whom it was called, for a joke,
Barebones's Parliament, though its general
name was the Little Parliament. As it soon
appeared that it was not going to put Oliver
in the first place, it turned out to be not at all
like the beginning of heaven upon earth, and
Oliver said it really was not to be borne with.
So he cleared off that Parliament in much the
same way as he had disposed of the other;
and then the council of officers decided that
he must be made the supreme authority of
the kingdom, under the title of the Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth.

So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand
six hundred and fifty-three, a great procession
was formed at Oliver's door, and he
came out in a black velvet suit and a big
pair of boots, and got into his coach and went
down to Westminster, attended by the judges,
and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and
all the other great and wonderful personages
of the country. There, in the Court of Chancery,
he publicly accepted the office of Lord
Protector. Then he was sworn, and the City
sword was handed to him, and the seal was
handed to him, and all the other things were
handed to him which are usually handed to
Kings and Queens on state occasions, and
handed back again. When Oliver had handed
them all back, he was quite made and
completely finished off as Lord Protector; and
several of the Ironsides preached about it
at great length, all the evening.