Ormond, furnished with a commission from the Prince, who now calls himself Charles ii., reappeared there last year; has, with endless patience and difficulty, patched-up some kind of alliance with the Papists, Nuncio Papists and Papists of the Pale; and so far as numbers go, looks very formidable. One does not know how soon one ‘may be called into the field.’ However, there will several things turn up to be settled first.
On the Saturday 17th February 1648-9, more properly on Monday 19th, the Council of State, first met, to constitute itself and begin despatch of business.[1] Cromwell seems to have been their first President. At first it had been decided that they should have no constant President; but after a time, the inconveniences of such a method were seen into, and Bradshaw was appointed to the office.
The Minute-book of this Council of State, written in the clear old hand of Walter Frost, still lies complete in the State-Paper Office; as do the whole Records of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, of the Committee of Sequestrations in Goldsmiths’ Hall, and many other Committees and officialities of the Period. By the long labour of Mr. Lemon, these waste Documents, now gathered into volumes, classed, indexed, methodised, have become singularly accessible. Well read, the thousandth or perhaps ten-thousandth part of them well excerpted, and the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine parts well forgotten, much light for what is really English History might still be gathered there. Alas, if the Half-million of money, or but the twentieth part of it, wasted in mere stupidities upon the old-parchment Record Commission, had been expended upon wise labours here!—But to our ‘Order.’
Sir Oliver Fleming, a most gaseous but indisputable historical Figure, of uncertain genesis, uncertain habitat, glides through the old Books as ‘Master of the Ceremonies,—
- ↑ Commons Journals, vi. 146.
