Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/54

 a convenience for malting or brewing, among other things. Some vague but confident tradition as to Brewing attaches itself to this locality; and traces of evidence, I understand, exist that before Robert Cromwell’s time, it had been employed as a Brewery: but of this or even of Robert Cromwell’s own brewing, there is, at such a distance, in such an element of distracted calumny, exaggeration and confusion, little or no certainty to be had. Tradition, ‘the Rev. Dr. Lort’s Manuscripts,’ Carrion Heath, and such testimonies, are extremely insecure as guides! Thomas Harrison, for example, is always called ‘the son of a Butcher’; which means only that his Father, as farmer or owner, had grazing-lands, down in Staffordshire, wherefrom naturally enough proceeded cattle, fat cattle as the case might be,—well fatted, I hope. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex in Henry Eighth’s time, is in like manner called always ‘the son of a Blacksmith at Putney’;—and whoever figures to himself a man in black apron with hammer in hand, and tries to rhyme this with the rest of Thomas Cromwell’s history, will find that here too he has got into an insolubility. ‘The splenetic credulity and incredulity, the calumnious opacity, the exaggerative ill-nature, and general flunkyism and stupidity of mankind,’ says my Author, ‘are ever to be largely allowed for in such circumstances. We will leave Robert Cromwell’s brewing in a very unilluminated state. Uncontradicted Tradition, and old printed Royalist Lampoons, do call him a Brewer: the Brook of Hinchin, running through his premises, offered clear convenience for malting or brewing;—in regard to which, and also to his Wife’s assiduous management of the same, one is very willing to believe Tradition. The essential trade of Robert Cromwell was that of managing those lands of his in the vicinity of Huntingdon: the grain of them would have to be duly harvested, thrashed, brought to market; whether it was as corn or as malt that it came to market, can remain indifferent to us.

For the rest, as documents still testify, this Robert Cromwell, did Burgh and Quarter-Session duties; was not slack but moderately active as a country-gentleman; sat once in Parlia-