three years there had been discussed, but never with any real result, the question of the time for dissolving such a makeshift for a Parliament and electing a new Representative House of 400 members, on some such basis as that Draft Agreement of the People by Ireton which still remained the published theory of a right constitution for the English Commonwealth. Was the question again to be adjourned, or was it to be faced before the third year was out? On the one hand, there was the old argument that the existing Government, however anomalous, had answered remarkably well. Though small, it was a survival of the fittest. On the other hand, it was argued that pledges, considerations of theory, and public expectations, must go for something, and that it would be the greatest of blunders to wait till public opinion was enraged. It might have been argued also, and indeed was argued, that the existing Parliament had been a fighting Parliament, and that the exigencies of English politics that now lay ahead were of a different kind from those for which it had proved its fitness. The harmonious reunion of all classes of English society; the termination of the system of Sequestrations for Delinquency and of the harassing machinery of Committees, &c., that had been necessary to work that system; the review of the acts for a Presbyterian Church-Establishment; the whole question of the proper organization of a Preaching Ministry; the included question of the extent to which good and pious men of the old Church of England persuasion, hitherto outcast, might be welcomed back, and admitted into the National Preaching Ministry, with some indulgence for their more innocent peculiarities; the questions of University extension and of the Reformation of Schools; the much needed Reform of English Law and of English Law-Courts: did not all these, and much miscellaneous business besides, lie in that more quiet future to which, after the hard fighting of the last three years, the Commonwealth might now look forward? For these problems of peace the existing fragment of a Parliament was obviously insufficient. Recognising this, let it fix some period for its own dissolution, and close its illustrious career honourably by arrangements for the election of its successor. The Army, it seems, was of this latter way of thinking. Now, as the Army had made the Republic, as the so-called Commonwealth was fundamentally a Stratocracy, this fact came to be of great importance after the Battle of Worcester. But, again, the Army, now more than ever, was preeminently Cromwell. What he thought the Army had come to think; and what the Army thought he singly could express. When, therefore, on the 16th of September, Cromwell reappeared in the House, twice-laurelled as the first of Englishmen since his last brief appearance there fifteen months before, and when, that very day, after the extraordinary applauses and thanks rendered to him, he moved the question of a new Representative, it was clear to the House, whatever were its own dispositions, that the question could no longer be evaded. "That "the House do, tomorrow morning, take into debate concerning "an equal Representative in Parliament, the first business, nothing to intervene," was the Resolution that day. Next day, accordingly, there was the debate, with an adjournment to that day week for a Report from the Grand Committee of the House of what had already at various times been done on the subject; and, such Report having been duly made and debated, the result appeared (Sept. 25), thus: "The question "being propounded that a Bill be brought in for setting a "time certain for the sitting of this Parliament, and for calling a new Parliament, with such rules, qualifications, "proportions, and other circumstances, as this Parliament "shall think fit, and shall be for the good and safety of this "Commonwealth, the House divided. The Yeas went forth: '(Lord General, Mr. Scott, Tellers for the Yeas) with the Yeas thirty-three; (Sir Henry Mildmay, Sir James Harrington, "Tellers for the Noes) with the Noes twenty-six." In other words, in a House of fifty-nine, Cromwell carried his motion by a majority of seven. A Committee, including Cromwell, Vane, Marten, St. John, and Whitlocke, having been appointed to prepare the Bill, it was read the first time Oct. 8; on the 10th the House went into Grand Committee on it; and, after thirteen sittings in Grand Committee, the House was asked to debate, as the most immediate question, "Whether 66 "it be now a convenient time to declare a certain time for the "continuance of this Parliament, beyond which it shall not "sit." On Nov. 14, after discussion, there were two divisions on this question, the affirmative being carried in both on the previous question by fifty to forty-six, and on the main question by forty-nine to forty-seven. In both divisions the tellers for the majority were Cromwell and St. John, and for the minority Colonel Morley and Mr. Bond. The attendance of a House of as many as ninety-six on the occasion, the maximum attendance in the whole year previously having been sixty-five, proves the interest taken in the question; and the closeness of the divisions is also significant. It was probably this closeness of the divisions that induced Cromwell to be content with his victory so far, and not press another division on the question of the particular date that should be fixed for the dissolution. Resolved, that the time for the continuance "of this Parliament, beyond which they resolve not to sit, "shall be the 3rd of November 1654," was the unanimous agreement on this subject Nov. 18. The House had given themselves a long lease, but it was something gained that the country could look forward with certainty to a new Parliament at the end of three years more of this one.1 66 The day after this Resolution, the Council of State having reported to the House that, by the arrangement made for this year of the Commonwealth, their power was to expire on the 1st of December, the House entered on the business of the election of a new Council. On the 24th of November, 120 members being present in the House, one and twenty members of the existing Council were re-elected by ballot, confirmed by open resolution in each case. Cromwell was at the top of the poll with 118 votes (a unanimous vote, for, though 120 members were present, only 118 voting papers were given in); Whitlocke came next, with 113; St. John next, with 108; Vane next with 104; and so down to Mr. Carew and Mr. Love, the lowest of the twenty-one, who had sixty votes each. The ballot for the twenty new members was taken the same day; but the result was not declared till next day, when it 1 Commons Journals of days named. was found that Colonel Morley came first of the twenty with ninety votes, and Henry Marten last with forty-one. Of these twenty, ten had sat in one or more of the preceding Councils, and ten were quite new men. Among these was Robert Blake. The proceedings in the election of the new Council were closed on Nov. 26 by a very remarkable regulation, which occasioned three divisions. The regulation, as ultimately carried by forty-four votes against forty-two, was that in future no one should be President of the Council of State, or of any Committee of Parliament, for more than one month. Possibly Cromwell's hand may be discerned here too. Bradshaw had been President of the Council of State for three years, and his permanent Presidency, or any permanent Presidency, may have seemed undesirable. It is to be remembered, however, that Bradshaw himself had, at the beginning of the previous year, desired to be relieved from the Presidency.1 1 Commons Journals of dates given; Milton's Cromwell Letters, p. 65, where there is a letter of Feb. 18, 1650-1, from Bradshaw to Cromwell, then in Scotland, in which he says, "We are now beginning with a new Council another year. I might have hoped, either for love or something else, to have been spared from the chair; but I could not obtain that favour." CHAPTER VI. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP FROM FEB. 1650-51 To DEC. 1651. PUBLICATION OF MILTON'S PRO POPULO ANGLICANO DEFENSIO SUPERINTENDING EDITORSHIP OF THE MERCURIUS PO- |