[Footnote 2:  Journals, Aug. 5, Oct. 17, 23, 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 better 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 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 Fiennes and Lisle; Lenthall overcame his scruples, and remained in office.—­See the ordinance in Scobell, 324; the objections to it in Whitelock, 621.]

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 respecting treason and murder.[1] 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 fanatical 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, so much blood had been shed.[2]

4.  From men of professed sanctity much had been expected in favour of religion.  The sincerity of their seal 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

[Footnote 1:  Journals, Aug. 18, 19, Oct. 20.  Exact Relation, 15-18.]

[Footnote 2:  The charge of wishing to introduce the law of God was frequently repeated by Cromwell.  It owed its existence to this, that many 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.]