IV. 1654. BOOK things, that he who conquers another's liberty, in the very act loses his own; he becomes, and justly, the foremost slave. But indeed, if thou, the patron of our liberty, and (if I may so speak) its tutelar divinity,-if he, of whom we have held that no mortal was ever more just, more saintlike and unspotted, should undermine the freedom, which he had but so lately built up, this would prove not only deadly and destructive to his own fame, but to the entire and universal cause of religion and virtue. The very substance of piety and honour will be seen to have evaporated, and the most sacred ties and engagements will cease to have any value with our posterity; than which a more grievous wound cannot be inflicted on human interests and happiness, since the fall of the first father of our race. Thou hast taken on thyself a task which will probe thee to the very vitals, and disclose to the eyes of all how much is thy courage, thy firmness, and thy fortitude; whether that piety, perseverance, moderation, and justice, really exist in thee, in consideration of which we have believed that God hath given thee the supreme dignity over thy fellows. To govern three mighty states by thy counsels, to recal the people from their corrupt institutions to a purer and a nobler discipline, to extend thy thoughts and send out thy mind to our.remotest shores, to foresee all, and provide for all, to shrink from no labour, to trample under foot and tear to pieces II. 1654. all the snares of pleasure, and all the entangling CHAP. seducements of wealth and power;-these are matters so arduous, that in comparison of them the perils of war are but the sports of children. These will winnow thy faculties, and search thee to the very soul; they require a man, sustained by a strength that is more than human, and whose meditations and whose thoughts shall be in perpetual commerce with his Maker." OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR. Installed, December the Sixteenth, 1653. LORDS OF COUNCIL, as appointed by the Instrument, called the Government of the Philip Viscount Lisle. John Lambert. Edward Montagu. John Desborough. Henry Lawrence. Commonwealth. Sir Gilbert Pickering, Bart. Sir Charles Wolseley, Bart. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. William Sydenham. Philip Jones. Richard Major. Francis Rous. Philip Skippon. To these were added, February 7, 1654, Humphrey Mackworth; April 27, Nathaniel Fiennes; and, June 30, Edmund Sheffield earl of Mulgrave. The salary of each counsellor was one thousand pounds per annum. See Thurloe, Vol. III, p. 581. 23 CHAPTER III. CROMWEL'S PROCEEDINGS AS TO THE JUDGES.- MENT. CHAP. HAVING been installed in the office of lord protector, and taken the oath of office accordingly, it was Cromwel's firm determination to assume without delay all the functions and prerogatives which sures of he regarded as annexed to his new dignity. 1654. Early mea Cromwel. One of the first of these related to the judges His proof the land. ceedings respecting Cromwel, as we have already seen, considered the judges. himself, by the act of his inauguration, as seated on the throne of England, and though, in consequence of obstacles which he could not conquer, he waived the title of king, he by no means intended to depart from any of the claims which might justly be advanced by the person who held that office. The king, as has been repeatedly seen in the course of this work, was pronounced by the expounders of the law to be the fountain of executive and administrative justice; and, of IV. 1654. BOOK consequence, it had always been held, that the demise of the crown vacated the appointments of the judges, and that they could only resume the exercise of their functions by means of a new patent to be made out in the name of the successora. Their patents. Upon this dictum Cromwel acted. The first law-term of the year commences on the twentythird of January; and accordingly, four days before, a fresh patent was issued to Rolle, chief justice of the upper, and Atkins, one of the puisne judges of the common bench; and, on the day itself, a similar patent was granted to St. John, chief justice of the common bench, and before a Blackstone, Book I, Chapter 7. b Docquet Book of the Crown Office. St. John says of himself (Case, p. 3), "It is said, that I was the dark lanthorn and privy counsellor in setting up and managing affairs in the late Oliver Protector's time.-This wholly denied, and the contrary true, and many witnesses of my manifesting my dislike. In October I fell sick so dangerously, that from that time till the end of May, my friends expected death; I think in December or January he was set up, when I was at the worst." The Case of Oliver St. John was drawn up by him after the Restoration, with the view of extenuating what he had done previously to the return of the king. It is to be examined therefore with a considerable degree of suspicion. When Cromwel came back from the battle of Worcester, St. John was one of the deputation appointed by parliament to meet him on the road; and, in the evening they spent at Aylesbury, Whitlocke says, they had much discourse with Cromwel, and St. John more than all the rest. (See above, Vol. III, p. 278.) On the day before the dispersion of |