CHAPTER XVII: Praise God

Barebones

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N April 21, 1653, England was entirely without any form of government. A Council of State was established which consisted of a dozen men with Cromwell at their head, since Vane refused the post. A freely elected Parliament was out of the question, and as a temporary expedient Cromwell decided to summon a Convention consisting of "divers persons fearing God, and of approved Fidelity and Honesty." They were bidden to appear at the Council Chamber in Whitehall in the beginning of July. They were for the most part the nominees of Puritan ministers, without the slightest knowledge of Parliamentary business -virtue alone was the qualification for statesmanship. One hundred and forty members were thus chosen, Cromwell's son Henry among them. Fairfax declined to sit, but Blake and Monk accepted, as did eighteen members of the Long Parliament. There was great surprise that so many consented to come, and from such hands "to take upon them the supreme Authority of the Nation: considering how little right Cromwell and his officers had to give it, or these gentlemen to take it." It is interesting to

know that Irish and Scottish interests were represented by special nominees.

For the most part the members were men of some distinction, though one, Mr Praise God Barebones, rested his sole claim to notoriety on giving the assembly its nickname. The members of the Convention soon after meeting declared they were a Parliament-and as "The Little Parliament" the assembly is also known.

The first meeting was held on July 4, 1653. Each person was given a ticket with his name on his entrance. The members were seated round a table while Cromwell stood near the window. To keep the assembly in the right note of godliness, Frederic Rouse, who had written a second-rate metrical version of the Psalms, was elected Speaker. When all was in readiness Cromwell addressed the members in a remarkable speech, the main purport of which was that they were summoned by God's will to do God's business, and that in doing it they should above all be tolerant of other men's views. He spoke of "that series of Providences wherein the Lord hath appeared, dispensing wonderful things to these nations from the beginning of our troubles to this very day. . . . The King removed and brought to justice and many great ones with him. The House of Peers laid aside. The House of Commons itself the representative

of the people of England winnowed, sifted, and brought to a handful. ... I think I may say for myself and my fellow-officers, that we had rather desired and studied healing and looking forward than to rake into sores and to look backward.

"Truly God hath called you to do this work, by, I think, as wonderful Providences as ever passed upon the sons of men in so short a time. And truly, I think, taking the argument of necessity for the Government must not fall; taking the appearance of the hand of God in this thing I think you would have been loath it should have been resigned into the hands of wicked men and enemies!"

The assembly was convinced that it had instituted the Reign of the Saints on earth. It was the first and only attempt to govern the country entirely by the precepts of the Bible, to have Christianity in the saddle riding forth to redress human wrongs. But since politics, like other callings, requires special training, it was a government by amateurs, leavened by a few old parliamentary hands. The members knew in a general way the reforms required, but they failed to grasp the necessity of advancing slowly. The new brooms swept too clean. The Church, property, law, and society were all to be set on a new and better basis. Parliament reckoned without the vested interests that were imperilled.

Too much reform got on the nation's nerves. The members were charged with acting on a design to ruin property with "enmity to knowledge and a blind and ignorant fanaticism."

"I am more troubled now by the knave than the fool," declared Cromwell, who grew alarmed at their diligence and their one policy of "Overturn, Overturn!" By nature a Conservative, in the stress of public affairs a practical politician -an opportunist, as we should call him nowhe knew that they were going too far and that "root and branch" reform was impracticable.

He opened his mind freely in a letter to his new son-in-law, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood: "Truly I never more needed all helps from my Christian friends than now! Fain would I have my service accepted of the Saints, if the Lord will; but it is not so. Being of different judgments, and 'those' of each sort seeking most to propagate their own, that spirit of kindness that is to them all, is hardly accepted

of any. I hope I can say it, my life has been a willing sacrifice and I hope, for them all." For a moment he then forgot his public preoccupations in the thought of his daughter and her newly born child: "My love to thy dear Wife -whom indeed I entirely love, both naturally, and upon the best account; and my blessing, if it be worth anything, upon thy little Babe."

The Barebones Parliament sat for five months. Carlyle, in his trenchant vein, declares that "the farther it advanced toward real Christianism in human affairs, the louder grew the shrieks of Sham-Christianism." This is as it may be. The fact is that, unless sanctity be allied to a rare genius for statesmanship, the children of this world are wiser in politics than the children of light, since they understand men as they are and not as they would have them be. At least these Saints had wisdom enough to know that they did not carry the country with them. On December 2, 1653, it was moved that the sitting of the Parliament was no longer for the good of the Commonwealth, and that the members should deliver back to the Lord General Cromwell the powers they had received from him. A minority dissented and remained in their seats. The Serjeant shouldered the mace, and, accompanied by the Speaker and the majority, left the House and proceeded to Whitehall, where Cromwell expressed-some said simulated-surprise and emotion when they announced the formal resignation of their office. When this had been accepted a file of soldiers, with a couple of colonels to lead them, turned out the sitting members.

The country was once more without a government, but the Council of State, appointed