of soldiers in the immediate vicinity; quartered three regiments of infantry, and one of cavalry, in the city; and or dered a numerous force to march towards the metropolis. The particulars of the trial are lost. We only know that the prosecutors were content with showing that Lilburne was the person named in the act; and that the court directed the jury to speak only to that fact; that the prisoner made a long and vehement defence, denying the authority of the late parliament to banish him, because legally it had expired at the king's death, and because the house of commons was not a court of justice; and, maintaining to the jury, that they were judges of the law as well as of the fact; that, unless they be lieved him guilty of crime, they could not conscientiously return a verdict which would consign him to the gallows; and that an act of parliament, if it were evidently unjust, was essentially void, and no justification to men, who proAug. 20. nounced according to their oaths. At a late hour at night, the jury declared him not guilty; and the shout of triumph, received and prolonged by his partisans, reached the ears of Cromwell at Whitehall. It was not, however, the intention of the lord-general that his victim should escape. The examination of the judges and jurymen before the council, with a certified copy of certain opprobrious expressions, used by Lilburne in his de-. Aug. 22. fence, was submitted to the house, and an order was obtained that, notwithstanding his acquittal, he should be confined in the Tower, and that no obedience should be paid to any writ of habeas corpus issued from the court of upper bench in his behalf. These measures gave great offence. It was complained, and with justice, that the men who pretended to take up arms against the king in support of the liberties of Englishmen, now made no scruple of trampling the same liberties under foot, whenever it suited their resentment or interest.* Aug. 27. Nov. 26. parlia In the prosecution and punishment of Lilburne, the parliament was unanimous ; on most other points Parties in it was divided into two parties distinctly marked; ment. that of the independents, who, inferior in number, superior in talents, adhered to the lord-general and the council; and that of anabaptists, who, guided by religious and political fanaticism, ranged themselves under the banner of major-ge *He was sent from the Tower to Elizabeth castle in Jersey, and discharg ed a little before his death, in 1657. He died a quaker. See Thurloe, i. 324. 367, 8, 9. 429, 430. 435. 441, 2, 451. 453. Exact Relation, p. 5. State Trials, v. 415-450. Whitelock, 558, 560, i. 3. 591. Journals, July 13, 14; Aug. 2,29, 27; Nov. 26. neral Harrison as their leader. These "sectaries" anticipated the reign of Christ with his saints upon earth; they believed themselves called by God to prepare the way for this marvellous revolution; and they considered it their duty to commence by reforming all the abuses which they could discover either in church or state." * In their proceedings there was much to which no one who had embarked with them in the same cause, could reasonably object. They established a system of the most rigid economy; the regulations of the excise were revised; the constitution of the treasury was simplified and improved; unnecessary offices were totally abolished, and the salaries of the others considerably reduced; the public accounts were subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny; and new facilities were given to the sale of the lands now considered as national property. But the fanaticism of their language and the extravagance of their notions exposed them to ridicule; their zeal for reform, by interfering with the interests of several different bodies at the same time, multiplied their enemies; and, before the dissolution of the house, they had earned, justly or unjustly, the hatred of the army, of the lawyers, of the gentry, and of the clergy. 1. It was with visible reluctance that they voted Taxes. the monthly tax of 120,000l. for the support of the military and naval establishments. They were, indeed, careful not to complain of the amount their objections were pointed against the nature of the tax, and the inequality of the assessments:† but this pretext could not hide their real object from the jealousy of their adversaries, and their leaders were openly charged with seeking to reduce the number of the army that they might lessen the influence of the general. law. 2. From the collection of the taxes they proceedReform of ed to the administration of the law. In almost every petition presented of late years to the supreme authority of the nation, complaints had been made of the court of chancery, of its dilatory proceedings, of the enormous expense which it entailed on its suitors, and of the suspicious nature of its decisions, so liable to be influenced by the personal partialities and interests of the judge. The long parliament Thurloe, i 392. 6. 501. 515. 523. t In some places men paid but two; in others, ten or twelve shillings in the pound. Exact Relation, p. 10. The assessments fell on the owners, not on the tenants. Thurloe, i. 755. "It was confidently reported by knowing gentlemen of worth, that there were depending in that court 23,000 (2 or 3000?) causes; that some of them did not venture to grapple with the subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished. But then came the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending in the court, and how to substitute in its place a less objectionable tribunal. Three bills introduced for that pose were rejected as inapplicable or insufficient: the committee prepared a fourth: it was read twice in one day, and committed, and would probably have passed, had not the subsequent proceedings been cut short by the dissolution of the parliament.* pur But the reformers were not content with the abolition of a single court: they resolved to cleanse the whole of the Augean stable. What, they asked, made up the law? A voluminous collection of statutes, many of them almost unknown, and many inapplicable to existing circumstances; the dicta of judges, perhaps ignorant, frequently partial and interested; the reports of cases, but so contradictory that they were regularly marshalled in hosts against each other; and the usages of particular districts, only to be ascertained through the treacherous memories of the most aged of the inhabitants. Englishmen had a right to know the laws by which they were to be governed; it was easy to collect from the present system all that was really useful; to improve it by necessary additions, and to comprise the whole within the small compass of a pocket volume. With this view it was resolved to compose a new body of law: the task was assigned to a committee; and a commencement was made by a revision of the statutes re specting treason and murder. But these votes and proceedings scattered alarm through the courts at Westminster, and hundreds of voices, and almost as many pens, were employed to protect from ruin the venerable fabric of English jurisprudence. They ridiculed the presumption of these ignorant and fanatieal had been there depending five, some ten, some twenty, some thirty years; and that there had been spent in causes many hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds to the utter undoing of many families." Exact Relation, 12. **Journals, Aug. 5; Oct. 17. 22; Nov. 3. Exact Relation, 12-15. The next year, however, Cromwell took the task into his own hands; and, in 1655, published an ordinance, consisting of sixty-seven articles "for the betr ter regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the high court of chancery." Widrington and Whitelock, the commissioners of the great seal, and Lenthall, master of the rolls, informed him by letter that they had sought to the Lord, but did not feel themselves free to act according to the ordinance. The protector took the seals from the two first, and gave them to Fiennes and Lisle; Lenthall overcame his scruples, and remained in office. See the ordinance in Scobell, 324: the objections to it in Whitelock, 621. + Journals, Aug. 18, 19; Oct. 20. Exact Relation, 15-18. VOL. XI. 15 legislators, ascribed to them the design of substituting the law of Moses for the law of the land, and conjured the people to unite in defence of their own "birthright and inheritance," for the preservation of which so many miseries had been endured and so much blood had been shed.* Zeal for religion. 4. From men of professed sanctity much had been expected in favour of religion. The sincerity of their zeal they proved by the most convincing test, an act for the extirpation of popish priests and jesuits, and the disposal of two-thirds of the real and personal estates of popish recusants. After this preliminary skirmish with antichrist, they proceeded to attack satan himself" in his strong hold" of advowsons. It was, they contended, contrary to reason, that any private individual should possess the power of imposing a spiritual guide upon his neighbours; and, therefore, they resolved that presentations should be abolished, and the choice of the minister be vested in the body of the parishioners; a vote which taught the patrons of livings to seek the protection of the lord-general against the oppression of the parliament. From advowsons, the next step was to tithes. At the commencement of the session, after a long debate, it was generally understood that tithes ought to be done away, and in their place a compensation be made to the impropriators, and a decent maintenance be provided for the clergy. For five months the committee entrusted with the subject was silent: now, to prevent, as it was thought, the agitation of the question of advowsons, they presented a report, respecting the method of ejecting scandalous, and settling godly ministers; to which they appended their own opinion, that incumbents, rectors, and impropriators, had a property in tithes. This report provoked a debate of five days. When the question was put on the first part, though the committee had mustered all the force of the independents in its favour, it was rejected by a majority of two. The second part, respecting the property in tithes, was not put to the vote: its fate was supposed to be included in that of the former; and it was rumoured through the capital that the parliament had voted the *The charge of wishing to introduce the law of God was frequently repeated by Cromwell. It owed its existence to this, that they would not allow of the punishment of death for theft, or of the distinction between manslaughter and murder, because no such things are to be found in the law of Moses. Exact Relation, 17. To procure ready money for the treasury, it was proposed to allow recusants to redeem the two-thirds for their lives, at four years' purchase. This amendment passed, but with great opposition, on the ground hat it amounted to a toleration of idolatry. Ibid. 11. Thurloe, i. 558. abolition of tithes, and with them of the ministry, which derived its maintenance from tithes.* Here it should be noticed that, on every Monday during the session, Feakes and Powell, two anabap- tist Anabaptist preachers, had delivered weekly lectures to nu- preachers. merous audiences at Blackfriars. They were eloquent enthusiasts, commissioned, as they fancied, by the Almighty, and fearless of any earthly tribunal. They introduced into their sermons most of the subjects discussed in parliament, and advocated the principles of their sect with a force and extravagance which alarmed Cromwell and the council. Their favourite topic was the Dutch war. God, they maintained, had given Holland into the hands of the English; it was to be the landing place of the saints, whence they should proceed to pluck the w-of Babylon from her chair, and to establish the kingdom of Christ on the continent; and they threatened with every kind of temporal and everlasting woe the man who should advise peace on any other terms than the incorporation of the United Provinces with the commonwealth of England. When it was known that Cromwell had receded from this demand, their indigantion stripped the pope of many of those titles with which he had so long been honoured by the protestant churches, and the lord-general was publicly declared to be the beast in the Apocalypse, the old dragon, and the man of sin. Unwilling to invade the liberty of religi ous meetings, he for some time bore these insults with an air of magnanimity; at last he summoned the two preach- Dec. 6. ers before himself and the council. But the healds of the Lord of Hosts quailed not before the servants of an earthly commonwealth: they returned rebuke for rebuke, charged Cromwell with an unjustifiable assumption of power, and departed from the conference unpunished and unabashed.‡ By the public the sermons at Blackfriars were considered as explanatory of the views and principles of the anabaptists in the house. The enemies of these reformers multiplied daily ridicule and abuse were poured upon them from every quarter ; Dissolu tion of parlia ment Dec. 12. * Journals, July 15—19; Nov. 17; Dec. 1, 6—10, Exact Relation, 41824. f Beverningk, one of the Dutch ambassadors, went to the meeting on one of these occasions. In a letter, he says: "the scope and intention is to preach down governments, and to stir up the people against the United Netherlands. Being then in the assembly of the saints, I heard one prayer, two sermons. But, good God! what cruel and abominable, and most horrid trumpets of fire, murder, and flame." Thurloe, i. 442. Thurloe, i. 442. 534. 545. 560.591: 621. |