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616 Thousands were massacred, and thousands more were transported to the West Indies to be sold as slaves.

While the resolute and despotic character of Cromwell's government secured obedience at home, its strength and vigor awakened the fear as well as the admiration of foreign nations. He gave England the strongest, and in many respects the best, government she had had since the days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.

Cromwell's Death.—Notwithstanding Cromwell was a man of immovable resolution and iron spirit, he felt sorely the burdens of his government, and was deeply troubled by the perplexities of his position. With his constitution undermined by overwork and anxiety, fever attacked him, and with gloomy apprehensions as to the terrible dangers into which England might drift after his hand had fallen from the helm of affairs, he lay down to die, passing away on the day which he had always called his "fortunate day"—the anniversary of his birth, and also the anniversary of his great victories of Dunbar and Worcester (Sept. 3, 1658).

Richard Cromwell (1658–1659).—Cromwell with his dying breath had designated his son Richard as his successor in the office of the Protectorate. Richard was exactly the opposite of his father,—timid, irresolute, and irreligious. The control of affairs that had taxed to the utmost the genius and resources of the father was altogether too great an undertaking for the incapacity and inexperience of the son. No one was quicker to realize this than Richard himself, and after a rule of a few months, yielding to the pressure of the army, whose displeasure he had incurred, he resigned the Protectorate. Had he possessed onehalf the energy and practical genius that characterized his father, the crown would probably have become hereditary in the family of the Cromwells, and their house might have been numbered among the royal houses of England.

The Restoration (1660).—For some months after the fall of the Protectorate the country trembled on the verge of anarchy. The gloomy outlook into the future, and the unsatisfactory experiment of the Commonwealth, caused the great mass of the