Towards the Lady Constance, his sentiments of respect and regard had
been frequently and markedly expressed. When he beheld the fading beauty
of the mother reviving with added graces and attraction in the fair form
and expressive countenance of the daughter, it was with feelings of
pride, unusual to him, that he remembered his wife had been among the
first to cherish and estimate the promise which the youth had given, and
which the coming womanhood of Constance was surely about to fulfil.
Moreover, two sons of Sir Robert had fought and died by the side of the
Protector, having been schooled in arms under his own eye; and had there
been no other motive for his interference, he was not a man to have
looked on the dead features of his brave companions, and have felt no
interest in the relations who survived them. To the only remaining
scion of a brave and honourable race, Cromwell, therefore, had many
reasons for extending his protection and his regard. Sir Robert,
perhaps, he considered more as an instrument than as a friend; for
Cromwell, like every other great statesman, employed friends sometimes
as tools, yet tools never as friends--a distinction that rulers in all
countries would do well to observe. It is an old and a true saying,
"that a place showeth the man;" few, at that time, could look upon the
Protector, either in a moral or political point of view, without a
blending of astonishment and admiration at his sudden elevation and
extraordinary power; and, more especially, at his amazing influence over
all who came within the magic circle of which he was the centre. Burrell
of Burrell he regarded as a clever, but a dangerous man; and was not,
perhaps, sorry to believe that his union with so true a friend to the
Commonwealth as Constance Cecil would convert him from a doubtful
adherent, into a confirmed partisan, and gain over to his cause many of
the wavering, but powerful families of Kent and Sussex, with whom he was
connected.
Burrell, however, had succeeded in satisfying Cromwell that the proposed
union had the full consent and approbation, not only of Sir Robert
Cecil, but of his daughter. The protracted illness of Lady Cecil had
much estranged Constance from her friends; and, as the subject was never
alluded to in any of the letters that passed between her and her
godmother, it was considered that the marriage was not alone one of
policy, but to which, if the heart of Constance were not a party, her
mind was by no means averse. Of the Protector's views upon these several
topics, Burrell was fully aware; and he dreaded the discovery, not only
of his own conduct, but of the feelings that existed towards him on the
part of his affianced bride; there were other topics that did not so
readily occur to the mind of Burrell, but that would have been of
themselves sufficiently weighty to have confirmed his worst fears for
his own safety--the Protector's stern love of justice, and his especial
loathing of that vice of which the villain had been guilty. Had the Jew,
Ben Israel, and the maiden, Constance Cecil, been indifferent persons in
his sight, the double treachery of Burrell would have been requited upon
his head.