If Cromwell wished to emigrate, what was it that prevented him? The eighteenth century story that he was on board one of the ships stopped by order of council in May, 1638, is demonstrably false, for on the petition of the passengers they were allowed to continue their voyage. The contemporary story supplies a much more credible explanation. It is that a kinsman died leaving him a considerable fortune, and this kinsman is identified with Sir Thomas Steward, whose death took place in January, 1636. A story which fits in so well with ascertained facts, and is intrinsically so probable, should not be lightly put aside as a fiction.
There is another fact in Cromwell’s history during this period of which one of his letters gives us evidence. If he had ever written an account of his own early life, little conflicts with local authorities or any alterations in his worldly fortunes would have seemed to us of less moment than the change which took place within him. Before 1628 he had become a professor of religion, and in all externals a Puritan, but by 1638 a formal acceptance of the Calvinistic creed had become the perfect faith which casts out all fears and doubts. His conversion had been followed by a time of depression and mental conflict which lasted for many years. Other Puritans passed through the same struggle. Bunyan relates how he “fell to some outward reformation in his life,” and his neighbours thought him to be “a very godly man, a new religious man, and did marvel to see such a great and famous alteration.” And yet for a long time afterwards he was “in a forlorn and sad condition,” afflicted and disquieted by doubts. “How can you tell if you have faith?” said the inner voices. “How can you tell if you are elected? How if the day of grace be past and gone?” “My thoughts,” he says, “were like masterless hell-hounds; my soul, like a broken vessel, driven as with the winds, and tossed sometimes headlong into despair.”
By some such “obstinate questionings” Cromwell, too, was haunted and tormented. An unsympathetic physician who knew him at Huntingdon described him as splenetic and full of fancies; another whom he consulted at London wrote him down as “valde melancholicus.” A mind diseased and a soul at war with itself were beyond their art. This internal conflict was at its height between 1628 and 1636. A friend who knew Cromwell then, wrote, many years afterwards, the following account of it: