The History of England - 1839 Author:Thomas Keightley 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: CHAPTER XII. THE COMMONWEALTH RESTORED. 1658—1660. The Protector's funeral.—State of parties.—Dissolution of parliament.—The Rump recalled.—Royalist insur... more »rection.—Despotism of the officers.—Proceedings of general Monk.—Restoration of the king. Immediately after the death of the protector, his council met, and it was resolved to proclaim his son Richard, whom he was said (but the fact is very doubtful) to have nominated as his successor. Richard was proclaimed in the usual manner; not a murmur was heard; and addresses poured in from the army and navy, the churches, the cities, and the boroughs. The royalists and the republicans, who had hoped to see the whole frame of government fall to pieces when the vigorous mind of Oliver was gone, looked on in amazement. Richard Cromwell was a man of the most amiable, generous temper, but utterly deficient in the energy requisite for the situation in which he was placed. He had never been a soldier, and he made no pretensions to the character of a saint. He had spent his early days in the Temple, and when he married he retired to the house of his father- in-law and led the life of a country gentleman. His father, when protector, made him a lord of trade, then chancellor of Oxford, and finally a member of his house of peers. The funeral of the late protector was celebrated on a scale of expense such as England had never witnessed before. The model adopted was that of the funeral of Philip II. of Spain. Somerset-house was hung with black ; the effigy of the protector, clad in royal robes, with the seeptre in one hand, the globe in the other, was placed on a bed of state; a crown lay on a cushion behind the head ; the only light in the apartment proceeded from waxen tapers. After two months (Nov. 1) the effigy was removed to the g...« less