[1] “Instrument of Government”:  The principal provisions of this constitution were:  (1) the government was vested in the Protector and a council appointed for life; (2) Parliament, consisting of the House of Commons only, was to be summoned every three years, and not to be dissolved under five months; (3) a standing army of thirty thousand was to be maintained; (4) all taxes were to be levied by Parliament; (5) the system of representation was reformed, so that many large places hitherto without representation in Parliament now obtained it; (6) all Roman Catholics, and those concerned in the Irish rebellion, were disfranchised forever.

Up to this time the Commonwealth had been a republic, nominally under the control of the House of Commons, but as a matter of facct governed by Cromwell and the army.  Now it became a republic under a Protector, or President, whowas to hold his office for life.

A few years later (1657), Parliament offered the title of King to Cromwell, and with it a new constitution called the “Humble Petition and Advice.”  The new constitution provided that Parliament should consist of two houses, since the majority of influential men felt the need of the restoration of the Lords (S450).  For, said a member of “Barebone’s Parliament,” “the nation has been hopping on one leg” altogether too long.  Cromwell had the same feeling, and endeavored to put an end to the “hopping” by trying to restore the House of Lords, but he could not get the Peers to meet.  He accepted the new constitution, but the army objected to his wearing the crown, so he simply remained Lord Protector.

456.  Emigration of Royalists to America.

Under the tyranny of the Stuart Kings, John Winthrop and many other noted Puritans had emigrated to Massachusetts and other parts of New England.  During the Commonwealth the case was reversed, and numbers of Royalists fled to Virginia.  Among them were John Washington, the great-grandfather of George Washington, and the ancestors of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Lees, Randolphs, and other prominent families, destined in time to take part in founding a republic in the New World much more democractic than anything the Old World had ever seen.

457.  Cromwell as a Ruler; Puritan Fanaticism.

When Cromwell’s new Parliament (S455) ventured to criticize his course, he dissolved it (1654) quite as peremptorily as the late King had done (S431).  Soon afterwards, fear of a Royalist rebellion led him to divide the country into eleven military districts (1655), each governed by a major general, who ruled by martial law and with despotic power.  All Royalist families were heavily taxed to support Cromwell’s standing army, all Catholic priests wre banished, and no books or papers could be published without permission of the government.