observe, required him to summon a Parliament at an early day; and so controlling were his position and his popularity, that now, if at any time, it seemed that the step might be safely taken. Agreeably to the provision in the Articles, the Protector issued writs for a House to consist of four hundred and sixty members; two hundred and fifty-one for the counties, and a hundred and forty-nine for the cities and boroughs, of England and Wales, with thirty for Scotland and thirty for Ireland. The constituent body of voters was to consist of all holders of property to the amount of not less than two hundred pounds. The representatives were to be upright men, fearing God, and at least twenty-one years of age. The scheme of a Parliament was almost identically the same as the Rump of the Long Parliament had been about to prescribe at the time of its expulsion.

Cromwell's
Second Par-

liament.

Sept. 3.

And the result of the experiment was now what had been then anticipated. Cromwell and his friends could not have their way. The Parliament met on the appointed day, the day that revived the memory of his two great victories over the Scots. It was Sunday, and the Protector gave them only a formal reception at his palace, after sermon. The next day he went to Westminster Hall in regal state, and addressed them in one of his characteristic speeches. The reader of it at the present day easily forgives them, if they did not understand all of his meaning; but many of them well understood their own. They plunged immediately into a consideration of the frame of government, and on the third day decided, by a small majority, that at their next meeting they would take up the question, "whether the House shall approve of the system of ernment by a single person and a Parliament." The debate lasted two days, between which a Sunday intervened; and the Protector's party seemed to be losing ground. On the morning when the discussion was to

gov

have been resumed, three regiments were found to be disposed in the approaches to Westminster Hall, and Sept. 12. the members, as they arrived, were directed to attend the Protector in the Painted Chamber. He required them to subscribe a paper, acknowledging his authority. About three hundred set their names to it, and the rest were excluded from their seats.

Oct. 13.

Its dissolu

Even with this mutilation, the House was not found sufficiently submissive. By a vote of two hundred against eighty, it refused to declare the office of Protector hereditary; and, if it did not again concert active opposition to the sovereign's authority, it defeated his wishes by neglect and delay. A bill, comprehending some minor amendments of the actual frame of government, was on the point of being passed, tion. when he summoned the members to his presence, and with reproachful language abruptly dissolved their assembly. The Articles secured them a session of five months, and twelve days of that time were still wanting, if the reckoning were made by calendar months. But Cromwell professed to understand that lunar months had been intended.

1655.

Jan. 22.

Insurrec

Two insurrections presently followed. One, concerted by republicans, was early discovered, and defeated without bloodshed. The vigor with which the Protector suppressed and punished the other, known tions. as the conspiracy of Penruddock from the name of the principal person among the royalists engaged in it, strengthened the conviction of his invincibility.

February.

The next step was the formal organization of a military government in detail. All England was divided, first into ten, then into twelve districts, each occupied by troops commanded by a Major-General. Originally the professed object of this ment was a financial one. To replenish the exhausted treasury, persons who had borne arms for the

arrange

England divided into military

districts.

King, or had otherwise favored his cause, were doomed to a fine of one tenth of their estates; which fine the Major-Generals were to collect. But these officers were further intrusted with a large discretionary power, extending to whatever matters they might regard as relating to the public quiet.1

Another capital movement of this time has been thought to have been dictated by the necessities of an empty treasury. Spain had no feud with England, and had already too many quarrels on her hands to be willing to provoke a new one. She had even been the first foreign power to recognize the English republic. But her commerce was rich; her navy was not strong; her name,

It was in this year that William Aspinwall republished in London the work by Cotton, which had been issued from the press there fourteen years before, under the title of " An Abstract of the Laws of New England, as they are now established." (See above, p. 25, note.) The republication of this work probably was connected with a scheme, which was favored at this time by not a few men of consequence in England, for superseding the existing system of English law by a code founded on the law of Moses. The library of the American Antiquarian Society has a copy of a treatise on this subject, in a hundred and fifty closelyprinted quarto pages. A reference to "the Lord Protector" (p. 16) fixes its date as late as the year 1653. The title-page is wanting, as are eight pages of the body of the work, including the first two chapters. The title of the third chapter is, "That the Law of England, as now it is in use, is a departure from the law of God, and a taking of a law from heathens and idolaters." The work contains an elaborate survey, analytical and historical, of the whole field of English law. Whatever else the author was, and

whoever he was, he was a richly furnished general scholar, as well as largely read in jurisprudence and theology. He makes no allusion to Cotton's book, and, as far as appears, was not particularly acquainted with New England; though, in a marginal note, he refers to the practice there in respect to marriages and funerals, and quotes Lechford as his authority. The

Corollary, or Conclusion," is identical with the primitive theory approved by Eaton and Davenport at New Haven. It is, "that the written word of God, contained in the Old and New Testaments, manifesting the mind of God,

with necessary consequences from the word, are sufficient to overrule all cases, instruct all Magistrates and Judges, and to teach all duties towards God and man; and that there need no other laws, but what are founded upon this ground, and built upon the same foundation.” (p. 145.)

2 "To be able, with the help of Spanish gold, to carry on his design in England, without depending upon a Parliament for money, is thought was the true motive of his attempt upon St. Domingo." (Welwood, Memoir of Transactions in England, &c., 116.)

since the time of Philip the Second, had been odious in England; she had made it more so by denying Cromwell's request for a relaxation of the severities of the Holy Office; and, with a warlike people, foreign hostilities are a recognized safety-valve for internal ferments. Cromwell despatched Admiral Penn to the West Indies, with a fleet of thirty vessels. It conveyed troops under the command of General Venables;1 and Edward Winslow, formerly the Governor of Plymouth in New England, was associated with the General and Admiral in the conduct of the expedition.

Defeat at

Saint Do

mingo.

April 25.

Conquest of

The Spanish court had secret intelligence of the destination of this fleet, and its colonies in the Antilles were not taken wholly by surprise. Nine thousand seven hundred English soldiers were landed on the island of Saint Domingo,2 and were there disastrously defeated. An attempt was next made upon Jamaica, with different success. That island surrendered without resistance, and has ever since Jamaica. been an appurtenance of England. Worn out with the excitements and the disappointment of the enterprise, Winslow sickened and died, too soon to take possession of the soil, on which, in one glorious future day, the great country he was serving was to release four hundred thousand bondmen.3

1 Cromwell's commission to Venables (December 4, 1654) is in Hazard (I. 592-594.)

"Brief and Perfect Journal of the Late Proceedings and Success of the English Army in the West Indies," 16. Only three thousand men, however, had come from England. The rest were recruited in the islands. (Ibid., 9.)

3" About the 25 of 4th month [June], 1655, they sent three ships for provision to New England (and left twelve of the best ships at Jamaica, and the rest returned back for England); which

May 10.

May 3.

ships here safely arrived, and were supplied fully with what they came for, and returned laden to Jamaica." (Hull's Diary, in Archæolog. Amer., III. 177.) — Venables and Penn, on their return to England, were committed to the Tower, and Sedgwick, the conqueror of Acadie, having now been promoted by Cromwell to be a MajorGeneral, was sent to Jamaica, where he died, Governor of the island, June 24, 1656 (Thurloe, Collection, &c., IV. 4, 12, 40, 151, 158, 454, 600, 748, 751, V. 12, 48, 96, 138, 154);

"a

The war with Spain, instead of relieving the English exchequer, had laden it with a heavy burden. Other circumstances rendered the war unpopular. It had broken up a profitable commerce, and occasioned the capture of great numbers of English ships. Many, with Puritan conscientiousness, murmured against it as unprovoked and unjust; and several officers, on this plea, threw up their commissions. The discontent enhanced the difficulty of increasing the weight of unauthorized taxation, and made it appear the part of prudence to obtain authority from the representatives of the people for raising money; and the security of the government had been now so far confirmed by prescription and by the growing power and reputation of the Protector, as to promise that a popular assembly would, on another experiment, prove more tractable.

A third Parliament was summoned. The elections took place amidst strong excitement. The Major

1656. July 10.

Generals did their best to obtain votes for candidates friendly to their master. Numerous agents travelled through the country, preaching the duty of giving him a strenuous support. On the other hand, the Republicans, with Vane at their head, were not idle in plying the public mind with the tongue and the pen. The pulpit did vigorous service on both sides. The returns showed a wide-spread dislike to the existing administration. But it obtained a majority, which was made irresistible, when more than a hundred members, obnoxious to Cromwell's displeasure, were

Cromwell's Third Parliament.

Sept. 17.

very brave, zealous, and pious man, whose letters in Thurloe are of all others the best worth reading on this subject." (Carlyle, Cromwell, II. 198.)

1 "Divers conscientious men, who preferred the service of God before that of men, and treasure in heaven beyond riches and honor on earth, scrupled the design and deserted the service." (Brief

and Perfect Journal, &c., 3.) "Individuals, they maintained, in resigning to the public their natural liberty, could bestow on it only what they themselves were possessed of, a right of performing lawful actions, and could invest it with no authority of commanding what is contrary to the decrees of Heaven.” (Hume, Chap. LXI.)