of them being Liberty of Conscience, another the Control of the Militia as belonging to the Protector in conjunction with the Parliament, and a third the provision, that every Parliament should sit but for a fixed period.  In all other matters he was content with a negative for twenty days only; but on bills trenching on these fundamentals he required a negative absolutely.  The question had come to the vote in a very subtle form.  The motion of the Opposition was that Bills should become Law without the Protector’s consent after twenty days, “provided that such Bills contain nothing in them contrary to such matters wherein the Parliament shall think fit to give a negative to the Lord Protector,” while the amendment of the Oliverians or Court-party altered the wording into “wherein the Single Person and the Parliament shall declare a negative to be in the Single Person,” thus giving Cromwell himself, and not the Parliament only, a right of deciding where a negative should lie.  On this question the Oliverians were beaten by 109 votes to 85, and the decision would probably have caused a rupture had not the Opposition conceded a good deal when they went on to settle the matters wherein Parliament would grant the Protector a negative.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Journals of dates and Godwin, IV. 134-139.]

As we have said, almost the sole occupation of the Parliament was this revision of the flooring on which itself and the Protectorate stood.  They did, however, some little pieces of work besides.  They undertook a revision of the Ordinances that had been passed by the Protector and his Council, and also of the Acts of the Barebones Parliament; and they proposed Bills of their own to supersede some of these,—­especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery.  But of all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy.  Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul of the Lord-Protector.

After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be called incidental.  It was part and parcel of their main work of revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question of Cromwell’s negatives.  Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of preaching outside the Established Church to “such as profess faith in Jesus Christ,” and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as one of the “fundamentals” he was bound to preserve.  How did the Parliament meet the difficulty?  Very ingeniously.  They said that the phrase “such as profess faith in Jesus Christ” was a vague phrase, requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into a Committee