31 DECEMBER 1910, Page 16

CROMWELL NOT A WELSHMAN.

[To Tire EDITOR OF TER " SPECTATOR:1 do not know what proportion of the fluid goes to compose "a nearly full-blooded Welshman" (see Spectator, December 24th, p. 1132), but " Cromwell, our chief of men," only held one-sixteenth Welsh in solution in his own person, being fifth in descent from his great-great-grandfather, Williams the Welshman, who married the niece of Wolsey's secretary, and assumed the name of Cromwell. I regret to have to acknowledge, however, that he was most certainly a half-blooded " feeble and nerveless " Stuart on the mother's side, she being Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of Sir Richard Stuart of that ilk, Scotch cousin to the Royal house. Doubt- less many of your readers are acquainted with the late S. R. Gardiner's monograph on Cromwell, wherein he labours the point that Cromwell was the typical Englishman with the disagreeable gift of ruling " the lesser tribes" for their own good. How many are there in England this day who do Cromwell lip-service, but act directly contrary to his example ! As regards Milton, " God's Englishman," everybody knows that his forbears ware Oxfordshire and West Middlesex front