scruples about plotting with any one against his life; although
there is reason to suppose that he would willingly have married one
of his daughters, if Oliver would have had such a son-in-law.
There was a certain COLONEL SAXBY of the army, once a great
supporter of Oliver’s but now turned against him, who was a
grievous trouble to him through all this part of his career; and
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who came and went between the discontented in England and Spain,
and Charles who put himself in alliance with Spain on being thrown
off by France. This man died in prison at last; but not until
there had been very serious plots between the Royalists and
Republicans, and an actual rising of them in England, when they
burst into the city of Salisbury, on a Sunday night, seized the
judges who were going to hold the assizes there next day, and would
have hanged them but for the merciful objections of the more
temperate of their number. Oliver was so vigorous and shrewd that
he soon put this revolt down, as he did most other conspiracies;
and it was well for one of its chief managers – that same Lord
Wilmot who had assisted in Charles’s flight, and was now EARL OF
ROCHESTER – that he made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes
and ears everywhere, and secured such sources of information as his
enemies little dreamed of. There was a chosen body of six persons,
called the Sealed Knot, who were in the closest and most secret
confidence of Charles. One of the foremost of these very men, a
SIR RICHARD WILLIS, reported to Oliver everything that passed among
them, and had two hundred a year for it.
MILES SYNDARCOMB, also of the old army, was another conspirator
against the Protector. He and a man named CECIL, bribed one of his
Life Guards to let them have good notice when he was going out –
intending to shoot him from a window. But, owing either to his
caution or his good fortune, they could never get an aim at him.
Disappointed in this design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall,
with a basketful of combustibles, which were to explode by means of
a slow match in six hours; then, in the noise and confusion of the
fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But, the Life Guardsman himself
disclosed this plot; and they were seized, and Miles died (or
killed himself in prison) a little while before he was ordered for
execution. A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few
more to be hanged, and many more, including those who rose in arms
against him, to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he were
rigid, he was impartial too, in asserting the laws of England.
When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the Portuguese
ambassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for another man with
whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a
jury of Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in spite of
the entreaties of all the ambassadors in London.
One of Oliver’s own friends, the DUKE OF OLDENBURGH, in sending him
a present of six fine coach-horses, was very near doing more to
please the Royalists than all the plotters put together. One day,
Oliver went with his coach, drawn by these six horses, into Hyde
Park, to dine with his secretary and some of his other gentlemen
under the trees there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into
his head to put his friends inside and to drive them home: a
postillion riding one of the foremost horses, as the custom was.
On account of Oliver’s being too free with the whip, the six fine
horses went off at a gallop, the postillion got thrown, and Oliver
fell upon the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his own
pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and
went off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until his foot
came out of the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under