Sir Robert Cecil, as we have shown, was not always the possessor of
Cecil Place; and the secret of whatever course he had adopted, or crime
he had committed, to obtain such large possessions, was in the keeping
of Hugh Dalton.
Cromwell had not at all times watched as carefully over the private
transactions of individuals, as he was disposed to do during the later
years of his Protectorate. Persons obnoxious to the Commonwealth had
frequently disappeared; and though Oliver's system of espionage was
never surpassed, not even by Napoleon, the Cromwell of modern years, yet
it had been his policy to take little or no note of such matters:
uniting in himself the most extraordinary mixture of craft and heroism
that ever either disfigured or adorned the page of history.
Dalton and such men were no longer necessary to bear from the shores of
England the excrescences of royalty. Time, the sword, or stratagem had
greatly thinned their numbers; yet many recent events proved that
loyalists were imported, and assassins hired, and let loose in the
country by contraband ships; until, at length, the Protector was roused,
and resolved to check the pirates and smugglers of our English strands,
as effectually as the gallant and right noble Blake had exterminated
them on the open sea.
No one was better acquainted with the character, the deeds, and misdeeds
of Hugh Dalton, than the all-seeing Cromwell; and so firm a heart as the
Protector's could not but marvel at and admire, even though he could
neither approve nor sanction, the bravery of the Fire-fly's commander.
Dalton knew this, and, in endeavouring to obtain an authorised ship,
acted according to such knowledge. He felt that Cromwell would never
pardon him, unless he could make him useful; a few cruises in a
registered vessel, and then peace and Barbara, was his concluding
thought, whilst, resting on his oars, he looked upon his beautiful
brigantine, as she rode upon the waters at a long distance yet, the
heavens spangled with innumerable stars for her canopy, and the ocean,
the wide unfathomable ocean, spreading from pole to pole, circling the
round earth as with a girdle, for her dominion.
It was one of those evenings that seem "breathless with adoration;" the
gentleness of heaven was on the sea; there was not a line, not a ripple
on the wide waste of waters; "the winds," to use again the poet's
eloquent words, "were up, gathered like sleeping flowers." There was no
light in the vessel's bow--no twinkle from the shore--no ship in
sight--nothing that told of existence but his own Fire-fly, couching on
the ocean like a sleeping bird.