Canto Ii, 437:

He used to lay about and stickle Like ram or bull at conventicle

and Dryden, in The Medal (1682):—

A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints A conventicle of gloomy sullen saints.

p. 363 Pryn. William Prynne (1600-69) had been sentenced to severe punishment in February, 1634, for the scandals and libels contained in his dull diatribe, Histriomastix. He lost both his ears in the pillory.

p. 365 Needham. Marchamont Nedham, ‘the Commonwealth’s Didaper’, was a graduate of All Souls, Oxon, and sometime an usher at Merchant Taylors’ school. He also seems to have been connected with the legal profession. ‘The skip-jack of all fortunes’, neither side has a good word for this notorious pamphleteer, the very scum of our early journalism. When Mercurius Britannicus temporarily ceased publication with No. 50, 9 September, 1644, Nedham recommenced it on the 30th of the same month with No. 51 (not No. 52 as is sometimes stated). No. 92, 28 July-4 August, 1645, and the number 11-18 May, 1646, revile the King in such scurrilous terms that Nedham was haled to the bar of the House of Lords and imprisoned. Later he turned Royalist, but in 1650 published The Case of the Commonwealth Stated, a defence of the regicides, for which he received a pension of £100 a year. He fled to Holland, April, 1660, but being pardoned, returned to England. He died in Devereux Court, Temple Bar, November, 1678, and is buried in St. Clement Danes. Wood characterizes him as ‘a most seditious, mutable and railing author,’ whilst Cleveland terms him ‘that impudent and incorrigible reviler’.

p. 365 Ireton, my best of Sons. Noble, in his Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, says that the fact Fleetwood had not the abilities of her first husband gave his wife much concern, as she saw with great regret the ruin his conduct must bring on herself and her children.

p. 366 Richard’s Wife. Richard Cromwell at the age of 23 married Dorothy, daughter of Richard Major, of Hursley, Hampshire.

p. 366 glorious Titles. Cromwell’s wife was, as a matter of fact, very averse to all grandeur and state. The satires of the time laugh at her homeliness and parsimony.

455 p. 369 Ormond. James Butler, Duke of Ormond, was lord-lieutenant of Ireland, 1643-47.

p. 370 Exercise. A common term amongst the Puritans for worship; a sermon or extemporary prayer. As early as 1574. Archbishop Whitgift speaks of the exercises of ‘praying, singing of psalms, interpreting and prophesying’, cf. Davenant, The Wits (4to 1636):—

I am a new man, Luce; thou shalt find me In a Geneva band.... And squire thy untooth’d aunt to an exercise,

and also:—

divides The day in exercise.

— Mayne’s City Match (1639), iv, v.

p. 372 Duke of Glocester. Henry of Oatlands, Duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Charles I. Born 8 July, 1639, he died of smallpox at Whitehall 13 September, 1660. The Parliament sent him to the continent on 11 February, 1653.

p. 373 he should have been bound Prentice. A proposition was actually made in Parliament that the young Duke of Gloucester should be bound to a trade, in order, as it was impudently expressed, ‘that he might earn his bread honestly.’ Fortunately, saner counsels prevailed, in which his fate was happier than that of the Dauphin committed to the cruelties of Citizen Simon, cordwainer.

p. 373 Old Thurlo. John Thurloe (1616-68), Secretary of State to Cromwell; M.P. for Ely, 1654 and 1656. He died 21 February, 1668.