II. Notes on the Life of Thomas Rainborowe, Officer in the Army and Navy in the service of the Parliament of England
The want of a really good biographical dictionary of Englishmen is, perhaps, more felt by those whose vocation it is to investigate the details of the great civil war of the seventeenth century than by students of any other class. The fame of three or four of the leading spirits of the time has eclipsed in the common memory almost all the other people who took an important part in the struggle between Charles the First and his Parliament. Such must be in a great degree the case whenever the dramatic interest of the story centres in the actions of one commanding intellect or the misfortunes and errors of a single sufferer; but there is, we believe, no other great crisis in modern history where the less known have been permitted to remain so entirely unknown as the time of which we speak.