Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/83

 and there, with emphasis enough, and heavy damages, amid huge rumour from the public, suppressed them. This was in 1633; a somewhat strong measure. How would the Public take it now, if,—we say not the gate of Heaven, but the gate of the Opposition Hustings were suddenly shut against mankind,—if our Opposition Newspapers, and their morning Prophesyings, were suppressed!—That Cromwell was a contributor to this Feoffee Fund, and a zealous forwarder of it according to his opportunities, we might already guess; and by and by there will occur some vestige of direct evidence to that effect.

Oliver naturally consorted henceforth with the Puritan Clergy in preference to the other kind; zealously attended their ministry, when possible;—consorted with Puritans in general, many of whom were Gentry of his own rank, some of them Nobility of much higher rank. A modest devout man, solemnly intent ‘to make his calling and his election sure’; to whom, in credible dialect, the Voice of the Highest had spoken. Whose earnestness, sagacity, and manful worth gradually made him conspicuous in his circle among such.—The Puritans were already numerous. John Hampden, Oliver’s Cousin, was a devout Puritan, John Pym the like; Lord Brook, Lord Say, Lord Montague,—Puritans in the better ranks, and in every rank, abounded. Already, either in conscious act or in clear tendency, the far greater part of the serious Thought and Manhood of England had declared itself Puritan.

Mark Noble, citing Willis’s Notitia, reports that Oliver appeared this year as Member ‘for Huntingdon’ in King Charles’s first Parliament. It is a mistake; grounded on mere blunders and clerical errors. Browne Willis, in his Notitia Parliamentaria, does indeed specify as Member for Huntingdonshire an “Oliver Cromwell, Esq.,” who might be