poet's mother, was niece to Sir John Pickering; and thus his son Sir
Gilbert was _her_ cousin-german also.

[34] In one lampoon, he is called "fiery Pickering." Walker, in his
"Sufferings of the Clergy," prints Jeremiah Stevens' account of the
Northamptonshire committee of sequestration in which the character of
Pickering, one of the members of that oppressive body, is thus drawn:--
"Sir G---- P---- had an uncle, whose ears were cropt for a libel on
Archbishop Whitgift; was first a presbyterian, then an independent, then
a Brownist, and afterwards an anabaptist. He was a most furious, fiery,
implacable man; was the principal agent in casting out most of the
learned clergy; a great oppressor of the country; got a good manor for
his booty of the E. of R. and a considerable purse of gold by a plunder
at Lynn in Norfolk." He is thus characterized by an angry limb of the
commonwealth, whose republican spirit was incensed by Cromwell creating
a peerage:--"Sir Gilbert Pickering, knight of the old stamp, and of
considerable revenue in Northamptonshire; one of the Long Parliament,
and a great stickler in the change of the government from kingly to that
of a commonwealth;--helped to make those laws of treason against
kingship; has also changed with all changes that have been since. He was
one of the Little Parliament, and helped to break it, as also of all the
parliaments since; is one of the Protector's council (his salary £1000
_per annum_, besides other places), and as if he had been pinned to this
slieve, was never to seek; is become high steward of Westminster; and
being so finical, spruce, and like an old courtier, is made
lord-chamberlain of the Protector's household or court; so that he may
well be counted fit and worthy to be taken out of the House to have a
negative voice in the other House, though he helped to destroy it in the
king and lords. There are more besides him, that make themselves
transgressors by building again the things which they once destroyed."