CROMWELL'S LUCKY DAY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 129, 7 January 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

CROMWELL'S LUCKY DAY.

On September .'5, 1058, when fiftynine years of age, Oliver CromweU died at Whitehall Palace, in London, on the day that he regarded as his fortunate one. becai,»o on it he had. gained two famous victories —one on September.' :t, lbTiU, at Dunbar, in the Scotch county of Haddington, where the Sots, when lighting for Charles llio Second, under Alexander l*esli?, first Karl of Lev m. were utterly defeated by bin. The other was on September "i. I(v>l. when tiie Scottish army had come to England to reinstate Charles li.. who, however, escaped with ;rr>at difficulty from *he battleheld near Worcester, hid in an oak tree at Ikseobel House, and finally fled to France. More than 2,000 of the Royalists were slain in this fight, and of bC! taken prisoners, most of them wore -old as slaves to the European colonists in America. Cromwell called that victory Irs "crowning nmrcy.'' Prior to his death he had for more than a month b*vn .suffering from tertian ague ei- lever, witii shivering (its that i occnred .very Lhird day. Whether ■ | therefore .regarded his linal releaE from them as a return of his lucHt

day will never be known. PerhapsTi> others it may be regarded as "lucky,'' because if he had li\ed til the restoration of Charles the Second, in 1(360, ho certainly would have been executed, for his | M ,dv was removed from Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey to Tyburn, where his head was cut oil. and his remains buried beneath Ihe gallows.

At a recruiting meeting recently held nt Lough-borough, Leicestershire, the Rev. R. .). Sturdee, vicar of §t. Peter's Loughborough, said that this was no ordinary war, because we were not light ng human beings hut Germans.

A member of the audience interject<d the word "Devils."

The sji 'aker retorted. "No. don't in--nlt the d< vil. W e are lighting Germans.

He : "As- : \ ; s to ho a rtvret engagement. dear.M, it would not he wis.- lor me to give vnu a ring at present." Sin "Ob. but 1 could wear it on the vi rung baud., you know!"