The Buccaneer - A Tale

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.