Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/63

 shields and genealogical marine-stores; let it remain for ever doubtful! The Fates themselves have appointed it even so. Let the uncertain Simulacrum of a Glothian, prior or posterior to Noah’s Deluge, hover between us and the utter Void; basing himself on a dust-chaos of ruined heraldries, lying genealogies, and saltires checky, the best he can!’

The small Hamlet and Parish Church of Cromwell, or Crumwell (the Well of Crum, whatever that may be), still stands on the Eastern edge of Nottinghamshire, not far from the left bank of the Trent; simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of divine service every Sunday. From this, without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell kindred all got their name,—in very old times indeed. From torpedo rubbish-records we learn also, without great difficulty, that the Barons Cromwell were summoned to Parliament from Edward Second’s time and downward; that they had their chief seat at Tattershall in Lincolnshire; that there were Cromwells of distinction, and of no distinction, scattered in reasonable abundance over that Fen-country,—Cromwells Sheriffs of their Counties there in Richard’s own time. The Putney Blacksmith, Father of the Malleus, or Hammer that smote Monasteries on the head,—a Figure worthy to take his place beside Hephaistos, or Smith Mimer, if we ever get a Pantheon in this Nation,—was probably enough himself a Fen-country man; one of the junior branches, who came to live by metallurgy in London here. Richard, also sprung of the Fens, might have been his kinsman in many ways, have got the name of Williams in many ways, and even been born on the Hill behind Cardiff, independently of Glothian. Enough: Richard Cromwell, on a background of heraldic darkness, rises clearly visible to us; a man vehemently galloping to and fro, in that sixteenth century; tourneying successfully before King Harry, who loved a man; quickening the death-agonies of Monasteries;