the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have been the most authoritative generally.  Ex-Primate Usher had lived in London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest honour, pensioned at the rate of L400 a year, and holding also the preachership to the Society of Lincoln’s Inn.  Cromwell had shown him every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions.  He had retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on the 21st of March, 1655-6.  He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum of L200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and Council.  Eight months after his death there was published from his manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard, that famous Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical Government which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol.  II. 229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted to Presbyterian forms.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110; Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656 (date of publication of Usher’s Reduction); Wood’s Fasti, I. 446.]

(3) Anti-Trinitarians. The crucial test of Cromwell’s Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr. John Biddle.  The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped and he had been set at liberty (March 1655).  But it was only to get into fresh trouble.  The orthodox in London were determined that he should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, “in the new meeting-house at Paul’s, commonly called Captain Chillingdon’s church meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about 500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday.”  Cromwell himself was present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague, Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland.  What were they to do?  They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous.  The affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648.  Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term.  Meanwhile