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] posed by the French cabinets, who told Louis that Dunkirk, once in the hands of the English, would prove another Calais to France. But without Dunkirk, which Cromwell deemed necessary as a check to the royalist invasions from the Netherlands, with which he was continually threatened, no aid was to be had from the protector, and it was conceded, whence came the angry declaration from the French, that "Mazarin feared Cromwell more than the devil."

The French court endeavoured to employ the English forces on other work than the reduction of these stipulated places. The young French king went down to the coast to see the British army, and having expressed much admiration of them, recommended them to lay siege to Montmédi, Cambray, and other towns in the interior. Cromwell was, however, too much of a man of business and a general to suffer this. He ordered his ambassador. Sir William Lockhart, who had married his niece. Miss Rosina Sewster, to remonstrate, and insist on the attack of Gravolines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk. He told the ambassador that to talk of Cambray and interior towns as guarantees, were "parcels of words for children. If they will give us garrisons, let them give us Calais, Dieppe, and Boulogne." He bade him tell the cardinal that if he meant any good from the treaty with him he must keep it, and go to work on Dunkirk, when, if necessary, he would send over two thousand more of his veterans. This had the necessary effect: Mardyke was taken after a siege of three days only, and put into the hands of the English on the 23rd of September. The attack was then turned on Gravelines; but the enemy opened their sluices, and laid all the country round under water. On this Turenne, probably glad of the delay, put his troops at that early period into winter quarters. During this time attempts were made to corrupt the English officers by the Stuart party. The duke of York was in the Spanish army with the English royalist exiles, and communications were opened as of mere civility with the English at Mardyke. As the English officers took their rides betwixt Mardyke and Dunkirk, they were frequently met by the duke's officers, and conversation took place. Sir John Reynolds was imprudent enough to pay his respects to the duke on these occasions, and he was soon ordered to London to answer for his conduct; but both he and a colonel White, who was evidence against him, were lost on the 5th of December on the Goodwin Sands. The duke of York now made a treacherous attack on Mardyke, but was repulsed, and the affairs of Charles II. appeared so hopeless, that Burnet asserts, and the same thing is asserted also in the Orrery letters, that he was now mean enough to offer to marry one of Cromwell's daughters, and thus settle all differences, but that Cromwell told lord Orrery that Charles was so damnably debauched, that he would undo them all. Cromwell, indeed, just now married his two remaining single daughters, Frances and Mary, to the lords Rich and Falconberg. Frances married lord Rich, the son of the earl of Warwick, and Mary, lord Falconberg, of the Yorkshire family of Bellasis, formerly so zealous for the royal party.

Before closing the events of 1657, we may notice the death of colonel John Lilburne, one of the most outré and undaunted republicans of the period. Lilburne, after his fiery and irritable career, adopted the principles of George Fox, and became a member of the peaceable Society of Friends, and his remains were attended by them to their graveyard in Moorfields, August 31st; some disturbance arising on the occasion from some of his worldly friends insisting on the coffin being covered by a pall, and the friends as stoutly refusing, so that contention seemed doomed to attend "John against Lilburne and Lilburne against John" even to the grave.

The year 1658 opened by the opening of the new parliament. It was a critical adventure, and not destined to succeed better than the former ones. To constitute the new house, called the other house, he had been obliged to remove to it most of the leading and best affected members of the commons. To comply with the "Petition and Advice," he had been obliged to admit into the commons many who had been expelled from the former ones for their violent republicanism. The consequences immediately appeared. The other house consisted of sixty-three members. It included six of the ancient peers, the earls of Manchester, Warwick, Mulgrave, Falconberg, Saye and Sele, and lord Eure. But none but Eure and Falconberg took their seats, not even the earl of Warwick, whose son and heir, lord Rich, had just married the protector's daughter. He and the others objected to sit in the same house with general Hewson, who had once been a shoemaker, and Pride, who had been a drayman. Amongst the members of this other house appeared a considerable number of the officers of the army, and the chief ministers of state. There the protector's two sons, Richard and Henry Cromwell, Fienncs, keeper of the great seal. Lisle, Fleetwood, Slonk, Whalley, Whitelock, Barkstead, Pride, Hewson, Goffe, Sir Christopher Pack, alderman of London, general Claypole, St. John, and other old friends of the protector, besides the lords already mentioned. As they had been called by writs, which were copies of the royal writs used on such occasions, the members immediately assumed that it made them peers, and gave them a title to hereditary rank. They were addressed by Cromwell in his opening speech as "My lords, and gentlemen of the house of commons." His speech was very short, for he complained of indisposition, the truth being, that the life of excitement, struggle, and incessant cares for twenty years had undermined his iron frame, and he was broken up; but he congratulated them on the internal peace attained, warned them, however, of danger from without, and exhorted them to unity and earnestness for the public good. Fiennes, after his retirement, addressed them in a much longer speech on the condition of the nation.

But all hopes of this nondescript parliament were vain. The other house no sooner met apart, than they began inquiring into their privileges, and assuming that they were not merely the other house, but the upper house, sent a message after the fashion of the ancient peers by the judges, to desire a conference with them on the subject of a fast. The commons, however, who were by the new instrument made judges of the other house, being authorised to approve or disapprove of it, soon showed that they meant the other house to be not an upper house, but a lower house than themselves. They claimed to be the representatives of the people; but who, they asked, had made the other house a house of peers, who had given them an authority and a