...compliments', and when told of the purge replied disingenuously 'that he had not been acquainted with this design; yet since it was done he was glad of it, and would endeavour to maintain it'.2 In the following month he did quite the reverse. Blunting the radical edge of army policies,...

...indeed point to this providentialist attitude : he declared that he had not "been acquainted with this design; yet, since it was done, he was glad of it, and would endeavour to maintain it."11 And so last-minute had been some of the arrangements for the purge, that it was quite possible...

...way from Yorkshire to London when this occurred. " He had not," he said, " been acquainted with this design ; yet, since it was done, he was glad of it, and would endeavour to maintain it." There can hardly 'be any doubt that Cromwell had been consulted as to the proposed interference of...