Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/17

Cromwell in Ireland horrors to come greater even than those which the seven preceding years had brought forth. To one party alone it had given increased strength and energy. The Royalists were cowed; the Presbyterians were scattered and disorganised; but the party of the Sectaries and the Republicans (known under the name of Independents, and embracing in that general title Levellers, Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, Antinomians, Familists, Brownists, Vanists, and many other sects and circles), having, by the murder of their King, drawn between themselves and their opponents a line which seemed impossible of compromise, and being now in possession. of all the resources of the Kingdom, were bent upon using the power they had gained to the utter extermination of their opponents. Brilliant fortune in the field, and an extraordinary capacity for intrigue in camp and council chamber, had already marked one man in this Independent party for supreme place.

Oliver Cromwell, born April 25th, 1599, in Huntingdon, educated at the Free School in that town, entered Sidney College, Cambridge, at 17; went to London a year later to study law in Lincoln’s Inn; ran riot for a year or two in the purlieus of the Strand and Holborn; married before he was quite of age a respectable lady, 5