put that and more within reach.  It had also been ascertained in general that, in a House of Commons larger than had been seen in Westminster for many years, Richard’s Government was stronger, on vital questions, than the Republicans and all other Anti-Cromwellians together.  For there had been discussions affecting the foreign policy of the Protectorate, and in these the Republicans and Anti-Cromwellians had been equally beaten.  It had been, carried, for example, on Thurloe’s representation, to persevere in the despatch of a strong fleet to the Baltic in the interest of the Swedish King; and such a fleet, now under Admiral Montague’s command, had actually sailed before the end of March.  It was in the Sound early in April.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates, and Guizot, I. 46-72 (where the extracts from speeches are from Burton’s Diary); also Commons Journals of Feb. 21 and 24; and Thurloe, VII. 636-637 and 644-645.]

In minor matters the House had shown some independence.  On the 23rd of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver, accepting the Duke’s own word of honour, and Fairfax’s bail of L20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth.  So, on the 16th of March, they had released Milton’s friend, the Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years’ imprisonment, declaring Cromwell’s mere warrant for the same to have been insufficient and illegal.  This was a most popular act, and the liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations.  Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with all reverence for Oliver’s memory, were ready to take any occasion for signifying that his more “arbitrary” acts must be debited to himself only.  There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in it, to question the late Protector’s liking for unlimited religions toleration.  They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with “heresies and blasphemies.”  Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were especially threatened.  Here, indeed, the House meant rather to indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for, though.  Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father’s religious liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of Richard’s Protectorate.  The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind, people said, on the part of some of them.  Had not Mr. Henry Neville, for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible?  If heathenism like that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest Christian do but support the Protectorate?[1]