their uneasiness by prevarications and excuses.  Not so Scott.  “Though I know not where to hide my head at this time,” he said boldly, “yet I dare not refuse to own that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in that action”; and he concluded by declaring he should consider it the highest honour of his existence to have it inscribed on his tomb:  “Here lieth one who had a hand and a heart in the execution of Charles Stuart.”  Having thus spoken, he left the House, most of the Republicans accompanying him.  The Dissolution Act was passed, and there was an end of the Long Parliament.  Their last resolution was that the 6th of April should be a day of general fasting and humiliation.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates; Ludlow, 863-864; Noble’s Lives of the Regicides, II. 169-199 (Life of Scott, with evidence of Lenthall and others at his trial); Phillips, 694; Guizot, II. 167-168.]

Though the House was dissolved, the Council of State was to sit on, with full executive powers, till the meeting of the new Parliament.  Annesley was now generally, if not habitually, the President of the Council, and in that capacity divided the principal management of affairs with Monk.

The Parliament having provided for expenses by an assessment of L100,000 a month for six months, the Council could give full attention to the main business of preserving the peace till the elections should be over.  Conjoined with this, however, was the important duty of carrying out a new Militia Act which the Parliament had framed.  It was an Act disbanding all the militia forces as they had been raised and officered by the Rump, and ordering the militia in each county to be reorganized by commissioners of Presbyterian or other suitable principles.  The Act had given great offence to the regular Army, naturally jealous at all times of the civilian soldiery, but especially alarmed now by observing into what hands the Militia was going.  It would be a militia of King’s men, they said, and the Commonwealth would be undone!  So strong was this feeling in the Army that Monk himself had remonstrated with the House, and the Militia Act, though passed on the 12th of March, was not printed till the House had removed his objections.  This had been done by pointing to the clause of the Act which required that all officers of the new Militia should take an acknowledgment “that the war undertaken by both Houses of Parliament in their defence against the forces raised in the name of the late King was just and lawful.”  When Monk had professed himself satisfied, the re-organization of the Militia went on rapidly in all the counties.  Monk was one of the Commissioners for the Militia of Middlesex, and to his other titles was added that of Major-General and Commander-in-chief of the Militia of London.  Meanwhile the Council had issued proclamations over the country against any disturbance of the peace, and most of the active politicians had left town to look after their elections.  The Harringtonian or Rota Club, one need hardly say, was no more in existence.  After having been a five months’ wonder, it had vanished, amid the laughter of the Londoners, as soon as the secluded members had added themselves to the Rump.  Theorists and their “models” were no longer wanted.[1]