[Footnote 1:  Sewel’s History of the People called Quakers (ed. 1834), I, I—­136; Rules and Discipline of the Society of Friends (1834), Introduction; Baxter, 77; Neal, IV. 31-41; Pamphlets in Thomason Collection; Robert Barclay’s Apology for the Quakers (ed. 1765), pp. 4, 48, 118, 309-310.  This last is a really able and impressive book—­far the most reasoned exposition even yet, I believe, of the principles of early Quakerism.  Though not written till twenty years after our present date, it was the first accurate and articulate expression, I believe, of the principles that had really, though rather confusedly, pervaded the Quaker teachings and writings at that date.—­There are many particles of information about the early Quakers, and about other contemporary English sects, in The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, published in 1878, the posthumous work of a second Robert Barclay, two hundred years after the first.  But the book, though laborious, is very chaotic, and shows hardly any knowledge of the time of which it mainly treats.]

Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket.  Of that Parliament, however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid sooner than had been expected.

It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for his assent.  In particular they had postponed, as much as possible, all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government.  By this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp.  By the instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve them till they had sat five months,—­which, by ordinary counting from Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5.  But, if they could contrive that it should be Cromwell’s interest not to dissolve them then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament.  To postpone supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell’s assent, to wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of the Anti-Oliverians.  The Bill, it will be remembered, had passed the second reading on Dec. 23, had then gone into Committee for amendments, and had come back to the House with these amendments.  On the 10th of January, 1654-5, when the Bill was almost ready to be engrossed, it was moved by the Oliverians that there should be a conference about