All this
we hope from your Highness's happy expiration. To hasten this
great good is the chief end of my writing this paper; and if it
have the effects I hope it will, your Highness will quickly be
out of the reach of men's malice, and your enemies will only be
able to wound you in your memory, which strokes you will not
feel."
The possession of life becomes dearest when its forfeiture is
threatened, and therefore Cromwell took all possible means to
guard against treachery--the only foe he feared, and feared
exceedingly. "His sleeps were disturbed with the apprehensions
of those dangers the day presented unto him in the approaches of
any strange face, whose motion he would most fixedly attend,"
writes James Heath, gentleman, in his "Chronicles," published in
1675. "Above all, he very carefully observed such whose mind or
aspect were featured with any chearful and debonair lineaments;
for such he boded were they that would despatch him; to that
purpose he always went secretly armed, both offensive and
defensive; and never stirred without a great guard. In his usual
journey between Whitehall and Hampton Court, by several roads, he
drove full speed in the summer time, making such a dust with his
life-guard, part before and part behinde, at a convenient
distance, for fear of choaking him with it, that one could hardly
see for a quarter of an hour together, and always came in some
private way or other." The same authority, in his "Life of
Cromwell," states of him, "It was his constant custom to shift
and change his lodging, to which he passed through twenty several
locks, and out of which he had four or five ways to avoid
pursuit.
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