The politicians were now silenced; but a noisier and more troublesome body had still to be reckoned with.  In July, 1653, the General Assembly was closed, and Resolutioners and Remonstrants were sent to the right about together.  Some measures, however, had to be taken to prevent them, not from cutting each other’s throats, which would have suited the Government well enough, but from stirring up a religious war, which they would inevitably have done if left to the free enjoyment of their own humours.  It was necessary so to strengthen the hands of one of the two parties that the other should be compelled to refrain at least from open hostilities.  The Resolutioners, as the most tolerant and the mildest-mannered, would have been those Cromwell would have preferred to see in the ascendency.  But the Resolutioners had acknowledged Charles, and were, after their own fashion, in favour of the royal title.  The Remonstrants were accordingly preferred.  They, indeed, denied the authority of the Commonwealth over spiritual matters, but they also denied the authority of Charles; and it was felt that at such a crisis the civil allegiance was of more value than the religious.  A law was accordingly established dividing Scotland into five districts, in each of which certain members of the Remonstrant clergy were empowered to ordain ministers, as it were, to the exercise of their functions.  At the same time it was not the object of Cromwell to exalt one party at the expense of the other so much as to strike a balance between the two; and in doing this he was much served by the tact and good sense of James Sharp, whose name now first begins to be heard in Scottish history.  He was on the side of the Resolutioners, but he so managed matters as to be favourably regarded by the Government as a person likely to be of service to them in the event of any open disruption between the two bodies, without losing the confidence of his own party.  The Court of Session was the next to go, and in its place rose the Commission of Justice, of which James Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, the first Scottish lawyer of his day, was the most conspicuous member.  In 1654 the Act for incorporating the Union between England and Scotland was passed by the Commonwealth.  With that Commonwealth disappeared the Union, but the few years of its existence were fruitful of at least one great boon to Scotland.  In those years was established free-trade between the two countries:  a boon for Scotland which she never properly appreciated till she lost it by the Navigation Act of the Restoration:  an alleged grievance to England which had its share in bringing that Restoration to pass; for it was then, and for long after, a fixed principle in the philosophy of English commerce that free-trade between the two countries meant pillaging Englishmen to enrich Scotchmen.  A regular postal service was also established.  The abortive rising known as Glencairn’s Expedition was the only act of open hostility that broke those few years of comparative tranquillity; and the lenient terms granted by Monk to the Highland leader tended more than anything to show how weary of the long rule of disorder and bloodshed all the best of the two nations were growing.  On September 3rd, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died, and in November of the following year Monk began his famous march to London.  On May 25th, 1660, Charles the Second landed at Dover.