Note 4 — Front matter
Reading edition
Voltaire, in his Siècle de Louis XIV., Chap. II (1752), says: "Cromwell ... portant l'Evangile dans une main; l'épée dans l'autre, le masque de religion sur le visage ... couvrit des qualités d'un grand roi tous les crimes d'un ursurpateur." In his Essai sur les Moeurs, Chap. clxxxi. (1757), Voltaire speaks of Cromwell as a man who "parvint a se faire roi sous un autre nom par sa valeur, secondée de son hypocrisie." Hume, in his History of England, Chap. lx. (1754) describes Cromwell as a man who, "transported to a degree of madness with religious ecstasies, never forgot the purposes to which they might serve ... secretly paving the way by artifice and courage to his own unlimited authority."