CROMWELL AN ENGLISHMAN.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.1
SIR,—I stand corrected, and I am delighted to do so. I rejoice to find that Cromwell was far more of an Englishman on the mother's side than I thought he was ; and from Nelson's own county too:—
"Hail to the blythe North-Easter.
• ...... •
'Tis the hard grey weather breeds hard Englishmen."
If " The mother makes the man," and Napoleon said she did, and with good reason, of a surety Cromwell was " the son of his mother." I find I fell into a further error, which I now beg leave to correct. Morgan Williams married the Chancellor's sister Catharine, not his niece. Her son assumed the name of Cromwell, which apparently was used by the family concurrently with that of Williams down to the Pro- tector's death. In both my mistakes I now acknowledge that I shared in a very widespread popular ignorance. .Afea culpa ! mea maxima culpa ! And now a strange thought arises. Both our greatest men have borne the name of " Williams,"—" the divine Williams " who wrote Bacon, and Oliver Williams, Lord Protector of England ; and he was not ashamed of his name either, for "it appears both in his marriage settlement and even in the inscription over the Protector's bed, where his effigy lay in state" (Frederic Harrison, " Oliver Cromwell," " Twelve English Statesmen"). Excuse my frivolity, but I am right glad to have been proved wrong, and to find that Oliver Williams, in spite of his name and all other temptations, remains "an Englishman." Living in Arcadia as I do, I had no opportunity of consulting up-to- date authorities when I last wrote ; but I do not trouble you with further quotations. Let the unbelieving, and there are many such, even as I was, humbly consult the up-to-date authorities, as has recently HAROLD B. HARRISON. Hotel York, Berners Street, W.
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