positive declaration that the house should bring its labors to a close. When Vane, relying upon the effect of a brilliant victory1 won by the fleet,2 to whose organization he had greatly contributed, finally contended that the existing members should not only retain their places, but should act as a committee of revision to pass upon the validity of each election Cromwell and the fitness of the new members to be chosen, Cromwell finally dissolved both resolved to end the discussion by the power of the sword. the Rump Therefore, on the 20th of April, 1653, he called in a file of solcouncil diers, and after clearing the chamber he took the mace from the table and then closed and locked the doors. That afternoon he also dissolved the council of state, upon the ground that as the parliament was dissolved, its creature had died with Bradshaw's it. Then it was that Bradshaw, president of the council, dedeclaration. clared: "But, Sir, you are mistaken to think that the parlia and its by the sword, April 20, 1653; The mili ment is dissolved. No power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves. Therefore take you notice of that." Thus with the dispersion of what remained of the Long Parliament ended the first attempt made by the army to establish in England a sovereign republic, based upon the theory that the supreme powers of the state were vested in an assembly which in no sense represented the popular will. 3. Having thus torn away the veil by which the power of tary dicta- the sword had been for a time concealed, the military party torship organized under the direction of Cromwell, "as captain-general and com by Crom well "as captaingeneral," mander-in-chief of all the armies and forces raised and to be raised within the commonwealth," proceeded to construct a purely military dictatorship, whose executive organ was a selfappointed council of state composed of eight officers of high rank and four civilians, which, with Cromwell at its head, was who issued intended to be symbolic of Christ and his twelve apostles. In order to establish the reign of the saints thus begun upon a designated parliamentary basis, Cromwell resolved to issue writs in his by the con- own name, as "Captain-General," to a hundred and thirty-nine gregational churches; persons chosen on account of the holiness of their lives from writs as such to persons 1 Blake's victory over Tromp in February, 1653. 2 This arm of the service was specially devoted to the house, by which the admirals were appointed. See Guizot's Cromwell, p. 220. 8 Cf. Whitelock, p. 554; Ludlow, vol. ii. pp. 19, 23; Leicester's Journal, p. 139; Hutchinson, p. 332; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. p. 128; Heath's Chron icle, p. 628. 4 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 386; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. p. 151. uent as the "Bare lists furnished by the congregational churches. On the 6th of June the writs went out to the chosen, commanding them to meet at Westminster "upon the fourth of July next ensuing the date hereof; then and there to take upon you the said trust, unto which you are hereby called, and appointed to serve as a member for the county of And hereof you are not to fail." 1 Into the hands of this convention, which was the constitintended to act as a constituent assembly, whose authority was sembly thus to be transferred in fifteen months to another to be elected constituted under its mandate, the provisional councillors of state, with Cromwell at their head, resigned their self-imposed trust in acknowledgment of its supreme authority. This "Barebones known as Parliament," so called in derision after a leather-merchant who bones Parhappened to be a member, after naming a new council, at liament;" once boldly undertook the whole work of constitutional reform demanded by church and state. Specially notable among the commendable yet abortive schemes then proposed are its abortive those which were intended to improve the financial adminis- attempt at tration through an equalization of taxation and the practice of rigid economy, to simplify both the civil and criminal law through the substitution of a single code for the mass of statutes, customs, and precedents that composed the law of the country, a work which had been undertaken by a committee of the Long Parliament with Sir Matthew Hale at its head, and to suppress entirely the court of chancery, in which twentythree thousand cases were then waiting to be heard.2 The alarm thus excited among the lawyer class by what they con- alarmed all sidered a blind and iconoclastic attempt to destroy the law of the land extended itself to the landed proprietors and the clergy when proposals were made to destroy lay patronage, to establish civil marriage, and to abolish tithes through the substitution of voluntary congregational contributions. At the moment when it was thought that the convention had actually voted 1 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. ii. pp. 386, 387; Guizot's Cromwell, p. 219 and note 1; Commons' Journals, vol. vii. p. 282; Whitelock, P. 557. 2 "These measures were prepared by two committees, one of members of parliament, of whom Oliver Cromwell is first named, and the other of persons not in parliament, of whom Matthew reform classes; dissolved December 12, 1653; the abolition of tithes, Cromwell himself, alarmed by the tendencies of men who thought of nothing, he said, but "to overturn, overturn," resolved to put an end to its existence, which he accomplished through the adoption, on the 12th of December, of a motion, carried by his friends, "that the continuance of this parliament, as now constituted, would not be for the good of the Commonwealth; and that, therefore, it was requisite that the house, in a body, should repair to the Lord General, to deliver back into his hands the powers which they had received from him."1 Four days later, after the members had signed a formal act of abdication, a pompous cavalcade came to Westminster, under the lead of Major-General Lambert, who, in the name of the army and the three nations, prayed the lord general to accept the office of Protector of the ComCromwell monwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. After Cromthe office of well, with apparent reluctance, had announced his acceptance Protector of the offer, a new constitution, consisting of forty-two articles, constitution called the "Instrument of Government," was read, whereupon the new chief of the state signed an oath "to take upon him the protection and government of these nations, in the manner expressed in the form of government hereunto annexed." Then as a symbol of the change thus wrought, Lambert fell upon his knees and offered a civic sword in the scabbard, which the lord protector exchanged for his own as evidence of the fact that he would thereafter rule by constitutional and not by military means.2 tendered under a new called the "Instru ment of Government;" his installation; the "Instrument" vested the executive protector 4. The scheme of government embodied in the "Instrument" undertook to impose a twofold limitation upon the supreme powers of the chief of state, whom it designated as lord propower in a tector. The supreme executive power was vested in him, acting with the advice of a council of state whose members, though originally appointed by him, were irremovable save by the con sent of the rest. With the advice of the council the protector could treat with foreign states, with its consent he could make peace and war, while in it alone was vested the power to choose and council; 1 Commons' Journals, vol. vii. p. 363; Ludlow's Memoirs, pp. 199, 200; Somers' Tracts, vol. vi. pp. 266-284; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. pp. 239-244; Whitelock, p. 570. 2 A proclamation was then issued with the ceremonies usual upon the accession of a new monarch. Thurloe, vol. i. pp. 632, 639, 641, 644; Whitelock, pp. 571-578; Foster's Statesmen of the Commonw., vol. v. pp. 223-228; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. pp. 246–265. lative in a protector chamber assembled chise regu religious all future protectors. The supreme legislative power was the legis vested in the protector, and a parliament consisting of a single chamber to be composed of four hundred members from Eng- and single land, thirty from Scotland, and thirty from Ireland, accord- parliament, ing to the plan formulated by Vane at the close of the Long Parliament, but which that body failed to enact into law. No statutes were to be passed nor taxes imposed without the consent of this assembly, and all of its enactments were to become law within twenty days even without the protector's consent, unless he could persuade the house of the reasonableness of his objections. It was not to be adjourned, prorogued, or dis- to be solved without its own consent within the first five months triennially; after its meeting, and a new parliament was to be assembled the franevery three years. Every person possessed of real or personal lated and property of the value of two hundred pounds had the right to liberty vote for members, and all were eligible as electors or as mem- guaranteed; bers except malignants, delinquents, and Roman Catholics. Religious liberty was guaranteed to all Christians except prelatists, papists, and those who taught licentiousness under the name of religion. As the new chamber thus provided for was not to meet until the 3d of the following September, the protector was authorized in the mean time to raise all money necessary for the public service, and to make ordinances, which the proshould have the force of law until the subjects embraced in ordaining them could be provided for by parliamentary enactments. power; Under this provision, which gave to the protector a wide scope for the exercise of his administrative genius, he issued before the parliament met sixty-four ordinances, which embraced all sixty-four the more important questions then pressing for solution in ordinances church and state. tector's issued. ment of representatives from the three Few assemblies had ever met in England more truly repre- The parliasentative, or more justly entitled to the name of a "free par- 1654, in liament," than the one-chamber body which gathered, in which September, 1654, under the mandate of the "Instrument that brought together for the first time representatives from kingdoms England, Scotland, and Ireland in the form in which they sit sat as at at the present day.1 The difficulty was that this parliament, day; 1 "It was the first time, for fourteen years, that England had been called upon to elect a parliament, and the electoral system itself was altogether the present to military coercion ; dissolved conscious of its real nature, undertook to revise the protector's acts and to subject his policy to its will. His reply to that affront was a declaration of fundamental principles 1 which were not to be made the subject of discussion; and in order to subjected give effect to his announcement, a file of soldiers was placed at the door of the house with a parchment which all members were required to sign before admission, pledging themselves neither to combat those principles, nor "to alter the government as it is settled in a single person and a parliament." When the conflict thus begun deepened through the determination of the house to revise not only the protector's ordinances but the provisions of the "Instrument " itself, Cromwell resolved to cut it short by a dissolution, declared after a reproachful in January, address on the 22d of January, 1655. Having thus repudiated the constitutional régime which he had sworn to uphold, the protector, menaced by a republican conspiracy and a roy alist revolt, fell back upon the power of the sword, and in the hope of more perfectly securing order, he divided the country into twelve military governments, each under the command of a major-general, who was authorized to suppress tumults and insurrections, to collect taxes imposed by the protector's sole authority, to disarm all papists and cavaliers, to inquire into the conduct of schoolmasters and ministers, and to arrest, imprison, or bind over all suspected persons. The ejected clergy, who had been conspicuous in the insurrection, were prohibited from acting as tutors or chaplains, and the press was put under a stricter censorship. 1655; the major generals and their powers; press censorship. A new par While Cromwell thus subjected the realm to the rule of the liament met major-generals, he pressed on his ambitious foreign policy, September 17, 1656; which required the organization of fleets whose equipment exhausted the treasury. As his right to collect the ordinary revenue had already been resisted in the courts of law upon the ground that the parliamentary grants had expired, he 1 Printed by G. Sawbridge, 1654. 371. 8 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. iii. pp. 89-119; Whitelock, pp. 610618; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. pp. 403431; Godwin's Hist. of the Commonw., vol. iv. pp. 153-157. 4 Thurloe, vol. iii. p. 486; Ludlow, p. 559; Old Parl. Hist., vol. xx. p. 433. Sir Peter Wentworth had refused to pay the assessment in the country, and Coney, a merchant, the duties on imports in London. When the aggrieved persons sued the collectors who had distrained their goods, Cromwell suppressed the proceedings |