Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: was easily moved to believe that an empty title, omitted for the purpose of avoiding a practical absurdity, was omitted for the purpose of slighting textit{him. He rejected the appointment in disgust. More easily still was his ambition played with3 since the lord general threw out obscure hints of the necessity that would arise of fixing some order of succession in case of any recasting of the supreme power: and who so fit to succeed the firstman of the army, as he who was indisputably the second ? the hands of a person secured to his interest by the marriage of his daugh. ter; and, drawing major-general Lambert into an enmity towards the parliament, prepared him to join with him in opposition to them, when he should find it convenient to put his design in execution. Mrs, Hutchinson, in her memoirs, gives the following account of this transaction, and of an incident of royalist report, which is mentioned in my next page. The account is only correct in the general impression it conveys.
After the death of Ireton, says Mrs. Hutchinson,
Lambert was voted deputy of Ireland, and commander-in-chief there, who being at that time in the north, was exceedingly elevated with the honour, and courted all Fairfax’s old commanders, and other gentlemen, who, upon his promises of preferment, quitted their places, and many of them came to London and made him up there a very proud train, which still exalted him, so that too soon he put on the prince, immediately laying out 5000/. for his own particular equipage, and looking upon all the parliament men, who had conferred this honour upon him, as underlings, and scarce worth the great man’s nod. This untimely declaration of his pride gave great offence to the parliament, who having only given him a commission for six months for his de…