brings in his Report or Ordinance for a Council of State, to be henceforth the Executive among us; which Council, to the number of Forty-one Persons, is thereupon nominated by Parliament; and begins its Sessions at Derby House on the 17th. Bradshaw, Fairfax, Cromwell, Whitlocke, Harry Marten, Ludlow, Vane the Younger, and others whom we know, are of this Council.
Second, That, after much adjustment and new-modelling, new Great Seals, new Judges, Sergeant's-maces, there comes out, on May 19th, an emphatic Act, brief as Sparta, in these words: 'Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament, and by the authority of the same: That the People of England, and of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging, are and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established and confirmed to be, A Commonwealth or Free-State; and shall from henceforth be governed as a Commonwealth and Free-State,—by the Supreme Authority of this Nation the Representatives of the People in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute officers and ministers under them for the good of the People; and that without any King or House of Lords.'[1]—What modelling and consulting has been needed in the interim, the reader shall conceive.
Strangely enough, among which great national transactions the following small family-matters again turn up; asserting that they too had right to happen in this world, and keep memory of themselves,—and show how a Lieutenant-General's mind, busy pulling-down Idolatrous Kingships and setting-up Religious Commonwealths, has withal an idle eldest Son to marry!—
There occurred 'a stick,' as we saw some time ago,[2] in this Marriage-Treaty: but now it gathers life again;—and, not to agitate the reader's sympathies overmuch, we will say at once
- ↑ Scobell, ii. 30; Commons Journals, 19th May.
- ↑ Letter LVI, vol. i. p. 306.
