Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/75

 an interesting little fact, since it is an indisputable one. For the rest, Henry Cromwell was already a Colonel in the Army in 1651; in 1654, during the spring months he was in Treland; in the month of June he was at Chippenham in Cambridgeshire with his father-in-law, being already married; and next year he went again on political business to Ireland, where he before long became Lord Deputy: if for a while, in the end of 1654, he did attend in Gray’s Inn, it can only have been, like his predecessor the Malleus, to gain some inkling of Law for general purposes; and not with any view towards Advocateship, which did not lie in his course at all, and was never very lovely either to his Father or himself. Oliver Cromwell’s, as we said, is not a name found in any of the Books in that period.

Whence is to be inferred that Oliver was never of any Inn; that he never meant to be a professional Lawyer; that he had entered himself merely in the chambers of some learned gentleman, with an eye to obtain some tincture of Law, for doing County Magistracy, and the other duties of a gentleman citizen, in a reputable manner. The stories of his wild living while in Town, of his gambling and so forth, rest likewise exclusively on Carrion Heath; and solicit oblivion and Christian burial from all men. We cannot but believe he did go to Town to gain some knowledge of Law. But when he went, how long he stayed, cannot be known except approximately by years; under whom he studied, with what fruit, how he conducted himself as a young man and law-student, cannot be known at all. Of evidence that he ever lived a wild life about Town or elsewhere, there exists no particle. To assert the