liament, and locked the doors of the house of commons. Whitelock says, that "all honest and prudent indifferent men were highly distasted at this; that the royalists rejoiced; that divers fierce men, pastors of churches and their congregations, were pleased," as were the army in general, officers as well as soldiers; and he illustrates the principles upon which some of the officers were pleased with the change, by what one of them said to a member of the ejected parliament, whose son was a captain, that "this business was nothing but to pull down the father and set up the son, and no more but for the father to wear worsted, and the son silk stockings," so sottish, says Whitelock, were they in the apprehensions of their own risings!*-but he has not thought proper to observe, how much more sottish and less excusable were those persons who had set them the example of pulling down authority. Some of the severest republicans in the army served Cromwell in this his first act of explicit despotism. Ludlow, who was in Ireland, had some distrust; yet, he says that he and they who were with them thought themselves obliged, by the rules of charity, to hope the best, and, therefore, continued to act in their places and stations as before. They had never exercised that rule of charity toward Charles I.

[* Whitelock, p. 555, ed. 1732.]

The lord general, such was his title now, called a meeting of officers to deliberate concerning what should next be done. Lambert was for intrusting the supreme power to a few persons, not more than ten or twelve. Harrison would have preferred seventy, being the number of which the Jewish Sanhedrim consisted. The deliberation ended in summoning to a parliament a hundred and twentyeight persons chosen by the council of officers, from the three kingdoms. The members thus curiously chosen, and notorious by the name of Praise-God Barebones' parliament, met accordingly (4th July, 1653), and were harangued by Cromwell, who acknowledged the goodness of the Lord, in that he then saw the day wherein the saints began their rule in the earth! They began their business in a saintly manner, by "a day of humiliation in which God did so draw forth the hearts of the members both in speaking and prayer, that they did not find any necessity to call for the help of any minister." They were, indeed, for dispensing with ministers as well as kings, looking upon the function as anti-christian, and upon tithes as absolute Judaism; and the better to insure the abolition of that odious order, they proposed to sell all the college lands, and apply the money in aid of taxes. It had been intended that they should sit fifteen months, and that, three months before [* 8th June, 1653. See a summons in Whitelock, p. 557.]

their dissolution, they should make choice of others to succeed them for a year, the three kingdoms being then to be governed by annual parliaments, each electing its successor. Five months, however, convinced Cromwell that the only use to be made of them was, to make them surrender their power into his hand, acknowledge their own insufficiency (which they might do with perfect truth), and beseech him to take care of the commonwealth. The council of officers were now again in possession of the supreme power; and they declared that the government of the commonwealth should reside in the single person of Oliver Cromwell, with the title of lord protector, and a council of one-and-twenty to assist him.*

Constitutions were made in that age as easily as in this, and the articles were not more durable then than they are now, though wiser heads were employed in making them. The name, however, which Oliver chose for his piece of parchment was the Instrument of Government. It was there ordained, that the protector should call a parliament once in every three years, and not dissolve it till it had sat five months; that the bills which were presented to him, if he did not confirm them

[* He was installed lord protector 16th December, 1653, and proclaimed the 19th. The Barebones' parliament ended 12th December, 1653.]

[† See at length in Whitelock, pp. 571-577, ed. 1732.]

within twenty days, should become laws without his confirmation; and his select council should not be more in number than twenty-one, nor less than thirteen; that with their consent, he might make laws which should be binding during the intervals of parliament; that he should have power to make peace and war; that immediately after his death, the council should choose another protector, and that no protector after him should be general of the army. The first use which he made of his power was to make peace with the Dutch and with Portugal, in both cases upon terms honorable and advantageous to England; nor could any measures have been more popular than these, which delivered the nation in the first instance from an expensive and bloody contest, and in the other, restored to it its most productive foreign trade. France and Spain were emulously courting the friendship of the fortunate usurper: Ireland and Scotland thoroughly subdued, their governments united with that of England, by the right of conquest, and both countries undergoing that process of civilization which Cromwell, like the Romans, carried on by the sword. When Charles I., was treating with the Scotch, before he put himself into their hands, he said in a letter to the French agent, whom they authorized to promise him protection, "Let them never flatter themselves so with their good successes; without pretending to prophecy, I will

foretell their ruin, except they agree with me, however it shall please God to dispose of me." They had reason to remember this when they were under Cromwell's government. His orders to Monk, whom he left to complete the subjugation of the country, were, that if he found a stubborn resistance at any place, he should give no quarter, and allow free plunder; orders which Monk observed with the utmost rigor, and "made himself as terrible as man could be."* "He subdued them," says Clarendon, "to all imaginable tameness, though he had exercised no other power over them than was necessary to reduce that people to an entire submission to that tyrannical yoke. In all his other carriage toward them, but what was in order to that end, he was friendly and companionable enough; and as he was feared by the nobility and hated by the clergy, so he was not unloved by the common people, who received more justice and less oppression from him, than they had been accustomed to under their own lords." A more thorough conquest was never effected: everything was changed, the whole frame of government new-modelled, the Kirk subjected to the sole order and direction of the commander-inchief; the nobles stripped of their power; the very priests tamed and muzzled—and all this was submitted to obediently!—in reality, it had brought

[* Clar. Hist., vi., 494, ed. 1826.]