[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of days given; Neal, IV. 97-100; Baxter’s Life, 197-205.  On this visit to town, Baxter had the honour to preach before Cromwell, having never done so till then, “save once long before when Cromwell was an inferior man among other auditors.”  He had also the honour of two long interviews with Cromwell, the first with one or two others present, the second in full Council.  They seem to have been reciprocally disagreeable.  On both occasions, according to Baxter, Cromwell talked enormously for the most part “slowly” and “tediously” to Baxter’s taste, but with passionate outbreaks against the Parliament.  On the second occasion the topic was Liberty of Conscience, and what was being done in the Subcommittee and by the Divines on the subject.  Baxter ventured to hint that he had put his views on paper and that it might save time if his Highness would read them.  “He received the paper after, but I scarce believe that he ever read it; for I saw that what he learned must be from himself—­being more disposed to speak many hours than to hear one, and little heeding what another said when he had spoken himself.”  Cromwell had made up his mind about Baxter long ago (Vol.  III. p. 386), but had apparently now given him another trial, on the faith of his reputed liberality on the Toleration question.  But Baxter did not gain upon him.]

As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject, the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody.  Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year.  His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had continued in power.  At large since 1651, he had been living rather quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian congregation.  In accordance with the general policy of the Government since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested.  The orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of Biddle’s, called A Two-fold Catechism, published in 1654, had given them the opportunity they wanted.  For this book Biddle had been arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th.  The views which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr. Biddle’s body in the concrete.  His case came up again on the 15th of January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him.  The punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1]