Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/465



ROMWELL had fallen: the shock which, at the news, once vibrated through Europe, the exulting hopes, the speculations, the terrors which that brief sentence stirred at every English fireside, we, who read of the catastrophe as but one event in a revolution, a fact long completed in the far-distant past, can never, except languidly, realize. Cromwell was the spirit of evil who had thrown a spell over the King, and entangled him in a war against Heaven. Cromwell was the upstart adventurer who had set his foot upon the necks of the Norman nobles. Cromwell was 'the hammer of the monks,' who had uncovered the nakedness of the abbeys, and had exposed the servants of God to ignominy and spoliation. And some few there were to whom he appeared as a champion raised up by Providence to accomplish a mighty work, and overthrown at last by the wiles of Satan. 'Now,' said Lord Surrey, 'is that foul churl dead, so ambitious of others' blood; now is he stricken with his own staff.'