[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates.  The speech of Cromwell in assenting to the Petition and Advice, May 25, 1657, had been accidentally omitted in the earlier editions of Carlyle’s Cromwell; but it was given in the Appendix to the edition of 1657.  It may stand as Speech XIV*. in the numbering.]

The “perfecting of those things” occupied a good deal of time.  What was necessary was to cast the resolutions already come to in supplement to the Petition and Advice, or those that might yet suggest themselves, into a valid legal form; and it was agreed, June 4, that, except in as far as it might be well to pass express Bills on specific matters, the best way would be to frame and submit to his Highness a Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice.  The due framing of this, and the preparation of the necessary Bills, were to be work for three weeks more.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of date, and afterwards.]

Meanwhile, in evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this point, notwithstanding the great business of the Petition and Advice and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed, but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body.  On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, “some of the public, and the others of a more private, concernment,” were presented to his Highness by the whole House, assembled in the Painted Chamber, the Speaker, “after a short and pithy speech,” offering them as some grapes preceding the full vintage, and his Highness ratifying all by his assent.—­Among these was one very comprehensive Act with this preamble:  “Whereas, since the 20th of April, 1653, in the great exigences and necessities of these nations, divers Acts and Ordinances have been made without the consent of the People assembled in Parliament—­which is not according to the fundamental laws of the nations and the rights of the People, and is not for the future to be drawn into example—­yet, the actings thereupon tending to the settlement of the estates of several persons and families and the peace and quiet of the nations:  Be it enacted by his Highness the Lord Protector and this present Parliament,” &c.  What is enacted is that about a hundred Acts and Ordinances, all duly enumerated, out of those made by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 or by Oliver and his Council after the establishment of the Protectorate in Dec. 1656, together with all acts and ordinances of the same touching customs and excise, shall by this Act be confirmed and made good, either wholly and absolutely (which is the case with nearly all) or with specified modifications—­“all other Acts and Ordinances, and every branch and clause therein contained, not confirmed by these presents, which have been made or passed between the 20th day of April 1653 and the 17th day of September 1656” to be absolutely null and void.  In other words,