had been thus arrested.  There was a general consternation among the peaceful Royalists throughout the country.  It looked as if their peacefulness was to be of no avail, as if the Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2 was to be a dead letter, as if Cromwell had suddenly changed his policy of universal conciliation.  In reality, Cromwell had no intention of reversing his policy of universal conciliation; but he wanted to teach the lesson that Royalist insurrections and conspiracies would fall heavily on the Royalists themselves, and he wanted particularly, at that moment, to make the Royalists pay the expenses of the police kept up on their account.  Under cover of the consternation caused by the numerous arrests, he introduced, in fact, a Decimation upon the Royalists, i.e. an income tax of ten per cent, upon all Royalists possessing estates in land of L100 a year and upwards or personal property worth L1500.  It was to be the main business of the Major-Generals to assess this tax within their bounds, and to collect it strictly and swiftly.  It is astonishing with what ease they succeeded.  It seems to have been even a relief to the Royalists to know definitely what their principles were to cost them, and to have arrest or the dread of it commuted into a fixed money payment.  As soon as the tax was fairly in operation, all or most of those who had been arrested were liberated, and subsequent arrests by the Major-Generals themselves were only of vagabonds or suspicious persons.  The only appeal from the Major-Generals was to his Highness himself and the Council.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Godwin, 223-242; Carlyle, III. 101.]

What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts, what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all England and Wales was wonderfully strict.  At no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see.  Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under ban.  Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more closely looked after than they had been.  But what shall we say about this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:—­“Wednesday, 5th Sept., 1655—­At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State”?  The effect of the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz.  Needham’s Mercurius Politicus, published on Thursdays, and The Public Intelligencer,