OLIVER CROMWELL
Sta,—Mr. Hilaire Belloc objects to my reference to Cromwell as "this Cambridgeshire farmer." He was a farmer just as Mr. Belloc is a writer and I am a lawyer. Mr. Belloc tells us that Oliver was "brought up in the purple." Those who wish to see this conjecture of Mr. Belloc's elaborated (and more about "the loot of the monasteries ") can turn to Mr. Belloc's book on Cromwell. Those who are content with a statement of the known facts can turn to the pages of Sanford, Gardiner, Fisk and Buchan, or to the words of Cromwell himself, "I was by birth a gentleman; living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity."
"Everybody," says Mr. Belloc, "knows that Oliver's real name was Williams." Well, I don't know it, for one. I do know that his great-grandfather was called Williams, but that he took his wife's name of Cromwell about a hundred years before Oliver was born. Oliver naturally took the name which had been borne by his father and grandfather before him. I am myself content with the name of my father and grandfather. What my great-grandfather was called I have never had time to inquire. Mtalilaire Belloc is known by his name all the world over, and his name will be remembered as long as posterity cares for fine prose-and great verse. Even if posterity should discover that his great-grandfather, in or about the year 1770, changed his name from Brown or Plantagenet, it will still think gratefully of
Hilaire Belloc as the " real " name of the man who to his generation (amongst much else) Verses and Sonnets, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, Marie Antoinette, and The Path to Rome.—Yours
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