Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation,
influence and attachment to the true Cause: these are assembled to shape
out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was
to come. They were scornfully called _Barebones's Parliament_: the man's
name, it seems, was not _Barebones_, but Barbone,--a good enough man. Nor
was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality,--a trial on the
part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the
Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some
quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them were. They failed,
it seems, and broke down, endeavoring to reform the Court of Chancery!
They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered up their power again
into the hands of the Lord General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked
and could.

What _will_ he do with it? The Lord General Cromwell, "Commander-in-chief
of all the Forces raised and to be raised;" he hereby sees himself, at this
unexampled juncture, as it were the one available Authority left in
England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is
the undeniable Fact of his position and England's, there and then. What
will he do with it? After deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_
it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow before God and men,
"Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it!"
Protectorship, Instrument of Government,--these are the external forms of
the thing; worked out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be,
by the Judges, by the leading Official people, "Council of Officers and
Persons of interest in the Nation:" and as for the thing itself,
undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there _was_ no
alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or not;
but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby!--I
believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the