【英文文学】Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England.docx
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1、【英文文学】Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in EnglandCHAPTER I EARLY LIFE 15991629“I was by birth a gentleman living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity,” said the Protector to one of his Parliaments. Cromwells family was one of the many English families which rose to wea
2、lth and importance at the time of the Reformation. It owed its name and its fortune to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the minister of Henry VIII., and the destroyer of the monasteries. In 1494, Thomas Cromwells sister Katherine had married Morgan Williams, a wealthy brewer of Putney, whose family s
3、prang from Glamorganshire. Her eldest son Richard took the surname of Cromwell, entered the service of Henry VIII., and assisted his uncle in his dealings with refractory Churchmen. Grants of land flowed in upon the 2lucky kinsman of the Kings vicegerent. In 1538, he was given the Benedictine priory
4、 of Hinchinbrook near Huntingdon. In 1540, the site of the rich Benedictine abbey of Ramsey and some of its most valuable manors were added to his possessions. Honour as well as wealth fell to his lot. At the tournament held at Westminster on May Day, 1540, to celebrate the espousals of Henry VIII.
5、and Anne of Cleves,a marriage which was to unite English and German Protestantism,Richard Cromwell was one of the six champions who maintained the honour of England against all comers. Pleased by his prowess with sword and lance, the King gave him a diamond ring and made him a knight.Six weeks later
6、 fortune turned against the all-powerful Earl of Essex. He had pushed forward the Reformation faster than the King desired and bound the King to a woman he detested. “Say what they will, she is nothing fair,” groaned Henry, and suddenly repudiated wife, policy, and minister. On June 10th, Thomas Cro
7、mwell was arrested in the Council Chamber itself and committed to the Tower on the charge of high treason. “He had left,” it was said, “the mean, indifferent, virtuous, and true way” of reforming religion which his master trod. In his zeal to advance doctrinal changes, he had dared to say that if th
8、e King and all his realm would turn and vary from his opinions, he would fight in the field in his own person with his sword in his hand against the King and all others; adding that if he lived a year or two he trusted “to bring things to that frame that it should not lie in the Kings power to resis
9、t or let 3it.” On July 28th, Cromwell passed from the Tower to the scaffold.Few pitied him and only one mourned him. Sir Richard Cromwell, said tradition, dared to appear at the Court in the mourning raiment which the King hated, and Henry, respecting his fidelity, pardoned his boldness. He retained
10、 the Kings favour the rest of his life, was made a gentleman of the Privy Chamber and constable of Berkeley Castle, got more grants of lands, and died in 1546.Sir Richards son Henry built Hinchinbrook House, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, whom he entertained during one of her progresses, and was f
11、our times sheriff of Huntingdonshire. As marshal of the county he organised its forces at the time of the Spanish Armada, raised, besides the four soldiers he was bound to furnish, twenty-six horsemen at his own cost, and called on the trained bands to practise “the right and perfect use of their we
12、apons,” and fight for “the sincere religion of Christ” against “the devilish superstition of the Pope.” In their mixture of military and religious ardour his harangues recall the speeches of his grandson. People called him “the golden knight” because of his wealth and his liberality, and he matched
13、his children with the best blood of the eastern counties. One daughter was the mother of Major-General Edward Whalley, one of the Regicides; another married William Hampden, and her son was John Hampden.Of Sir Henrys sons, Oliver, his heir, was a man who from love of ostentation pushed his fathers l
14、iberality to extravagance. When James I. came to 4England he was received at Hinchinbrook, “with such entertainment as had not been seen in any place before, since his first setting forward out of Scotland.” James made him a Knight of the Bath at the coronation, and paid him three other visits durin
15、g his reign.Robert, Sir Henrys second son, inherited from his father an estate at Huntingdon, worth in those days about 300 a year, equal to three or four times as much now. He sat for Huntingdon in the Parliament of 1593, filled the office of bailiff for the borough, and was one of the justices of
16、the peace for the county. Robert Cromwell married Elizabeth, widow of William Lynn, and daughter of William Steward of Ely. Her family were well off, and she brought with her a jointure of 60 a year. The Stewards were relatives of the last prior and first Protestant dean of Ely, who had obtained goo
17、d leases of Church lands, and were farmers of the tithes of the see. Tradition, which loves curious coincidences, has connected them with the royal House of Stuart that their descendant overthrew, but history traces their origin to a Norfolk family originally named Styward. Oliver, the future Lord P
18、rotector, was the fifth child of Robert Cromwell, and the only one of his sons who survived infancy. He was born at Huntingdon, on April 25, 1599, baptised at St. Johns Church in that town on April 29th, and christened Oliver after his uncle, the knight of Hinchinbrook. Little is known of his boyhoo
19、d. A royalist biographer says that he was of “a cross and peevish disposition” from his infancy, while a contemporary panegyrist 5credits him even then with “a quick and lively apprehension, a piercing and sagacious wit, and a solid judgment.”Stories are told of his marvellous deliverances from dang
20、er, and of strange prognostications of his future greatness. It was revealed to him in a dream or by an apparition “that he should be the greatest man in England, and should be near the King.” Another story was that he had acted the part of a king in a play in his school days, placing the crown hims
21、elf upon his head, and adding “majestical mighty words” of his own to the poets verses. These are the usual fictions which cluster round the early life of great men. All that is certain is that Cromwell was educated at the free school of Huntingdon under Dr. Thomas Bearda Puritan schoolmaster who wr
22、ote pedantic Latin plays, proved that the Pope was Antichrist, and showed in his Theatre of Gods Judgments that human crimes never go unpunished by God even in this world. Beard was an austere man who believed in the rod, and a biographer describes him as correcting the manners of young Oliver “with
23、 a diligent hand and careful eye,” which may be accepted as truth. But these disciplinings did not prevent pupil and master from being friends in later life.At the age of seventeen, Cromwell was sent to Cambridge, where on April 23, 1616, he was admitted a fellow commoner of Sidney Sussex College. T
24、he College, founded in 1598, was one of those two which Laud subsequently complained of as nurseries of Puritanism. Its master, Samuel Ward, was a learned 6and morbidly conscientious divine; a severe disciplinarian, who exacted from his scholars elaborate accounts of the sermons they heard, and had
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