was not likely to go, and matters were brought to a crisis by a resolution passed on November 17 for the abolition of patronage, and still more by the decision of the House on December 10-though only by a majority of two-to reject a scheme of Church government founded in the main on the lines drawn by Owen, in which the payment of tithes was taken as a financial basis. Some time before the last vote was taken, the principal officers, under Lambert's leadership, had had under consideration a plan of a written. constitution in which the executive power was to be strengthened and conferred upon Cromwell under the title of King, whilst the legislative power was to be conferred on an elected assembly, thus embodying the ideas which had been enunciated by Cromwell in his conference with the lawyers and politicians at the end of 1651. When this constitution was complete it was shown to Cromwell, who objected to the royal title, and seems also to have been unwilling to have anything to do with another violent dissolution. On December 10, when the vote on Church organisation was taken, Lambert and his allies found their opportunity. It is probable that they promised Cromwell that the House should be dissolved by its own action, and that, on receiving this assurance, he preferred not to be informed of the course by which this desirable end was to be attained. The course indeed was simple enough. The conservative reformers, if they chose to attend in anything like their full strength, were in a majority, and on the 12th they got up early and flocked to the House, where, before their bewildered opponents could rally in force, they immediately voted that Parliament should resign its powers into the hands of the Lord General. Then, starting for Whitehall in procession with the Speaker at their head, they announced to Cromwell the decision they had taken. Their advanced colleagues kept their seats, but upon attempting to remonstrate, were expelled by a body of soldiers. As in the absence of the Speaker they could not technically be considered to be a House, those who interfered were able to aver, without literary untruthfulness, that there had been no forcible dissolution of Parliament. In a very short time Cromwell had agreed with the officers on the constitution to be adopted under the name of The Instrument of Government. The executive power was to reside in a Lord Protector and Council, Cromwell being named as the first Protector. The legislative power was assigned without restriction to a Parliament elected by constituencies formed, so far as the counties were concerned, upon a new franchise, the franchise in the boroughs being left in its old anomalous condition. This latter concession to prejudice was, however, of less importance, as a sweeping redistribution of seats, copied with little alteration from the scheme put forward in The Agreement of the People, largely increased the number of the county members, and disfranchised in equally large numbers the smaller boroughs which had fallen under the influence of the country gentlemen. The Parliament thus constituted was to meet once in three years and to sit at least for five months. Bills passed by this body were to be suspended for twenty days. to give an opportunity for the Protector to explain any objections he might entertain to them. If Parliament refused to listen to his objections, the Bill became law in spite of him, provided that it contained nothing contrary to the Instrument itself. The negative voice about which so much had been heard in the last years of Charles I. was, therefore, not assigned to the Protector. For all that, the control over the executive is of greater importance to the development of representative institutions than legislative independence, and in this respect the hold of Parliament over the executive was of the flimsiest description, consisting merely of the right to propose six names whenever there was a vacancy in the Council, out of which the Council would select two, between which the Protector Even the financial arrangements, through to make his choice. which Parliaments usually make their way to power, were settled in such a way as to debar the elected House from obtaining even indirect control. It is true that the Instrument started with the sweeping generalisation that "no tax, charge, or imposition" was to be laid upon the people but by common consent in Parliament," but this statement was followed by was a clause assigning to the Protector £200,000 for civil expenses, and as |