have quitted their means of preservation except upon some terms of advantage. He directed a strict enquiry into the matter by a court-martial, and the Colonel who had ordered the execution was cashiered. An obstinate adherence to his own purposes and resolutions was a conspicuous feature in Ireton's character. Clarendon says " he was of a melancholick, reserved, dark nature, who communicated his thoughts to very few; so that, for the most part, he resolved alone, but was never diverted from any resolution he had taken; and he was thought often, by his obstinacy, to prevail over Cromwell himself." According to Ludlow, in his latter years he was cured of this extreme pertinacity, which had been his greatest infirmity. That Ireton, as well as his father-in-law, made abundant use of hypocrisy, and every art of perfidious deception in their dealings with the King, the parliament, and the army, is a fact beyond contradiction. Considerable mystery and doubt obscure their proceedings, from the King's seizure by the army to his flight to the Isle of Wight. If they were sincere in the professions which they then made of a desire to restore Charles, they grossly deceived the officers and agitators of the army; if these professions were only intended to lull the King and the royalists to sleep, they were treacherous to the King and his friends; if, as seems probable (though more so as to Cromwell than to Ireton), they played the game of working out their own safety and power by dexterous management, and by a readiness to side with that party which should preponderate, there is little

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doubt that they alternately duped and deceived the King, the republicans, and the soldiers, as the circumstances and intrigues of the day demanded. Mr. Godwin, their admirer, offers an apology for their conduct, which resolves itself into the worn-out casuistry, that they conceived the ends they sought sanctified the means which they used. Having once sworn to deceive, the dimensions of their minds enabled them immediately to stand forth accomplished and entire adepts in the school of Machiavel. They were satisfied that the system they adopted was just, and they felt no jot of humiliation and self-abasement in the systematical pursuit of it." We are aware that the essence of such an excuse is, not that the objects at which they aimed were, in fact, just and righteous, but that they conscientiously believed them to be so. But in judging of such obliquities of proceeding, the world are ever tempted to ask, what, in truth, were the ends which were thus deemed sufficient to justify the departure from all morality and honesty of proceeding? No one can deny, that selfish ambition and personal aggrandisement entered largely into the objects of Cromwell. We acquit Ireton of selfish and personal views. Ireton played the dark and accomplished hypocrite, as he afterwards became the bloody regicide, in order to realise his vain dream of erecting a political and religious republic on the ruins of the monarchy and hierarchy of England.

We have seen Clarendon's charge against Ireton, of being bloody and unmerciful. Lord

1 Sir Philip Warwick, who of course hated him as the enemy of the King, says "he died in a delirium, cry

Broghill, a licentious soldier of fortune, says that when he marched against a certain barony in Ireland," he gave orders to kill man, woman, and child," and said that the Irish " did not deserve to live;" but he admits that his own expostulations induced Ireton to relax these severe orders. Ireton, in giving them, acted on the notion that the Irish were a conquered people rebelling against their governors, and waging exterminating war against all Protestants. When Limerick surrendered to Ireton after a long siege, twenty-two persons of influence in the city were excepted out of the capitulation; and of these, five, including the Mayor, the Catholic bishop, an incendiary friar, and the deputy governor, were executed by order of a court-martial, of which Ireton, Ludlow, and others, were members. The governor, O'Neal, saved his life by showing that he had earnestly recommended a timely surrender of the city. This proceeding, though severe, was, according to Ludlow, the act of all the members of the court-martial, adopted after great consideration, and an attentive hearing of each prisoner. It derives some palliation from the peculiar circumstances of the country, and the cruelties which had been committed on the English by the rebellious Irish; it is certainly not to be compared for injustice and hardship with the execution of Lord Derby and the other prisoners after the battle of Worcester, or with the shooting of Lucas and Lisle, at Colchester, under the orders of Fairfax. Cook (the regicide coun

ing out, Blood! blood! blood!" as to his ferocity of character.

As if this proved any thing

sel) extols Ireton as "a patron, father, and husband to the fatherless and widow;" and Whitlock, a much more unobjectionable witness, gives him credit for humanity. His rule was undoubtedly rigid and despotic in Ireland; but the circumstances of that unfortunate country seem to have required it. His severe character inclined him to stern discipline, and to an uncompromising execution of justice on all who offended; but there is little evidence of his showing any disposition to wanton and gratuitous cruelty; and the instances before cited evince that his stern nature could at times relent under the influence of compassion.

MEMOIR OF JOHN BRADSHAW.

JOHN BRADSHAW, the President of the Court which condemned Charles, was of a respectable gentleman's family, settled at Marple, in Cheshire, and was baptized at Stockport, on the 16th of December, 1602. He was the son of Henry Bradshaw, of Marple and Wyberslegh. His grandfather, Henry Bradshaw, first purchased those considerable estates from Sir Edmund Stanley, knight of the Bath, a few years after John Bradshaw's birth. Bradshaw received his school education at Bunbury, in Cheshire, and Middleton, in Lancashire; as he was the youngest son of his father he was articled to an attorney at Congleton, and afterwards entered as a student of law in Gray's Inn, where he appears diligently

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to have studied his profession. Clarendon says "his fortune was of his own making," and that at the time of his being appointed President of the Court "he was not much known in Westminster Hall, though of good practice in his chamber, and much employed by the factious. He was not without parts, and of great insolence and ambition." He was associated 2 with the famous William Prynne and Mr. Nudigate, as counsel appointed by the parliament to prosecute Lord Maguire and Hugh Ogee Macmahon, in 1645, for their treason and massacre in attempting to seize Dublin Castle, and destroy the Lords Justices and council. But he appears to have acted only as a junior counsel among many, for his name is not mentioned in the report of the trial; and the great question in the cause as to Lord Maguire's liability as an Irish peer to be tried for treason in the English Court of King's Bench, and not by his peers in Ireland, was successfully argued by Prynne (with a triumphant display of learning and pedantic zeal), and by Serjeant Rolle (afterwards Chief Justice), for the Crown, and by Hale (afterwards Sir Matthew) and Twisden (afterwards a Judge of the King's Bench) for the prisoners. In 1646, Bradshaw, by a vote of the Commons, in which the peers were desired to acquiesce, was joined with Sir Rowland Wandesford and Sir Thomas Bedingfield, as Commissioners of the Great Seal for six months;

1 The books of Gray's Inn do not give any traces of Bradshaw, as they are not complete further back than the Restoration.

2 Whitlock's Memorials.