Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/330

296 well known. Originally of Chertsey, Surrey; his Grandfather, and perhaps his Father, a Physician there. His Uncle, Thomas Hammond, is now Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance; a man whom, with this Robert, we saw busy in the Army Troubles last year. The Lieutenant-General, Thomas Hammond, persists in his. democratic course; patron at this time of the Adjutator speculations; sits afterwards as a King’s-Judge.

In strong contrast with whom is another Uncle, Dr. Henry Hammond, a pattern-flower of loyalty, one of his Majesty’s favourite Chaplains. It was Uncle Thomas that first got this young Robert a Commission in the Army: but Uncle Henry had, in late months, introduced him to his Majesty at Hampton Court, as an ingenuous youth, repentant, or at least sympathetic and not without loyalty. Which circumstance, it is supposed, had turned the King’s thoughts in that bewildered Flight of his, towards Colonel Robert and the Isle of Wight.

Colonel Robert, it would seem, had rather disliked the high course things were sometimes threatening to take, in the Putney Council of War; and had been glad to get out of it for a quiet Governorship at a distance. But it now turns out, he has got into still deeper difficulties thereby. His ‘temptation’ when the King announced himself as in the neighbourhood, had been great: Shall he obey the King in this crisis; conduct the King whitherward his Majesty wishes? Or be true to his trust and the Parliament? He ‘grew suddenly pale’;—he decided as we saw.

The Isle of Wight, holding so important a deposit, is put under the Derby-House Committee, old ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms,’ some additions being made thereto, and some exclusions. Oliver is of it, and Philip Lord Wharton, among others. Lord Wharton, a conspicuous Puritan and intimate of Oliver’s; of whom we shall afterwards have occasion to say somewhat.

This Committee of Derby House was, of course, in con-