Excerpt from Old Northampton: An Address Delivered Before the Faculty and Students of Smith College, June 7, 1904, on the Occasion of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of Northampton Britain. Originally a Huntingdon farmer, he had risen with unexampled swiftness and by sheer force of will and insight to a position Of unquestioned primacy among English speaking men. He moved grandly through the most tortuous and tumultuous period of English history, audacious, adroit, masterful in the world of action, says the most judicial Of English historians, what Shake Speare was in the world of thought, the greatest because the most typical English man Of all times. While this most typical Englishman Of history was endeavoring to govern a turbulent state in a sea Of trouble, other Englishmen, sharing his beliefs and ambitions, were en gaged upon a work to be rated no less high in the long result of time. Cromwell himself is said to have been at one time on the point Of leaving England for America forever. He came not, but others came, and the great dispersion of the English race began, - the most momentous fact in modern history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.