Another matter in which a disagreement might have been feared between Cromwell and his Parliament was that of The Major-Generalships. This “invention” of Cromwell’s for the police of England and Wales generally, and specially for the collection of the Decimation or Militia Tax from the Royalists, had been so successful that he had congratulated himself on It in his opening speech to the Parliament.  He, doubtless, desired that Parliament should adopt and continue it.  On the 7th of January, 1656-7, accordingly, there was read for the first time “a Bill for the continuing and assessing of a Tax for the paying and maintaining of the Militia forces in England and Wales,” i.e. for prolonging Cromwell’s Decimation Tax of 1655, and virtually the whole machinery of the Major-Generalships.  That there would be serious opposition in the House had been foreseen since Dec. 25, when there had been two divisions on the question of leave to bring in the Bill, and leave had been obtained only by eighty-eight votes to sixty-three.  Among the opponents were Whitlocke and the other lawyers, all those indeed who wanted to terminate the time of “arbitrariness,” and objected to a tax now on old political delinquents as contrary to the Parliamentary Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2.  On the other hand, the Bill was strongly supported by Lambert.  Fiennes, Lisle, Pickering, Sydenham, other members of Council, and the Major-Generals themselves.  It was, in fact, a Government Bill, Nevertheless, after a protracted debate of six days, the second reading of the Bill was negatived Jan. 29 by 121 to 78, and the Bill absolutely rejected by 124 to 88.  Cromwell himself had helped to bring about this result.  Much as he liked his “invention,” he had perceived, in the course of the debate, that it must be given up; and he had given hints to that effect.  The House, in short, had understood that they were left to their own free will.  And so the Major-Generalships disappeared, the police of the country reverted to the ordinary magistracy, and Cromwell was to trust to Parliament for necessary supplies in more regular ways.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 327-331.]

What drew the Parliament and the Protector more closely together about this time was the explosion of a new plot against the Protector’s life.  At the centre of the plot was that “wretched creature, an apostate from religion and all honesty,” of whom Cromwell had spoken in his opening speech as going between Charles II. and the King of Spain, and negotiating for a Spanish invasion of England.  In other words, he was Edward Sexby, once a stout trooper and agitator in the Parliamentarian army (Vol.  III. p. 534), afterwards Captain and even Colonel in the same, but since then one of the fiercest Anabaptist malcontents.  He had been in the Wildman plot of Feb. 1654-5, but had then escaped abroad; and since then his occupation had been as described by Cromwell,—­now