Page:Life of Oliver Cromwell.pdf/5

 suddenly to feel a compunction for the many follies and absurdities of which he had been guilty. He corrected his manners, abandoned the society of his former, companions, and displayed throughout his whole hearing a complete, and solid, reformation. The consequence of this change was that he quickly regained the good opinion of the world, and in particular of the orthodox clergy, who looked upon this sudden transition from vice to virtue as a remarkable occurrence, By the influence of one of his relations, Cromwell, who had now completed his twenty-first year, was introduced to, and married a lady of the name of Bourchier, who, in lieu of personal charms, of which she possessed but little, brought him the more solid advantages of fortune and good sense. This acquisition of wealth was immediately followed by its natural consequences that of investing Cromwell with some weight in the borough of Huntingdon; and, accordingly, we find him returned as one of its members to Parliament in 1625.

After various vicissitudes in his private fortune, we find Cromwell now an enthusiastic, bigoted, canting, and somewhat visionary Nonconformist, in close league with this: austere sect, and a marked favourite of their preachers, to whom his rigid course of life, and religious deportment, strongly recommended him. His house became the retreat of the persecuted teachers of that persuasion; he erected a chapel in which they performed their religious rites, where he himself frequently entertained them, with sermons, and at length came to be looked upon as the head of that party in the county. In the year 1238, he attracted still more attention by the strenuous and successful opposition which he made to a scheme of draining the fens of Lincolnshire extensive tracks of