he collection of the taxes they proceeded to the administration of
the law. In almost every petition presented of late years to the supreme
authority of the nation, complaints had been made of the court of Chancery,
of its dilatory proceedings, of the enormous expense which it entailed on
its suitors, and of the suspicious nature of its decisions, so liable to be
influenced by the personal partialities and interests of

[Footnote 1: In some places men paid but two; in others, ten or twelve
shillings in the pound.--Exact Relation, 10. The assessments fell on the
owners, not on the tenants.--Thurloe, i. 755.]

the judge.[1] The long parliament had not ventured to grapple with the
subject; but this, the little parliament, went at once to the root of the
evil, and voted that the whole system should be abolished. But then, came
the appalling difficulty, how to dispose of the causes actually pending
in the court, and how to substitute in its place a less objectionable
tribunal. Three bills introduced for that purpose were rejected as
inapplicable or insufficient: the committee prepared a fourth; it was read
twice in one day, and committed, and would probably have passed, had
not the subsequent proceedings been cut short by the dissolution of the
parliament.[2]

3. But the reformers were not content with the abolition of a single court;
they resolved to cleanse the whole of the Augean stable. What, they asked,
made up the law? A voluminous collection of statutes, many of them almost
unknown, and many inapplicable to existing circumstances; the dicta of
judges, perhaps ignorant, frequently partial and interested; the reports of
cases, but so contradictory that they were

[Footnote 1: "It was confidently reported by knowing gentlemen of worth,
that there were depending in that court 23,000 (2 or 3,000?) causes; that
some of them had been there depending five, some ten, some twenty, some
thirty years; and that there had been spent in causes many hundreds,
nay, thousands of pounds, to the utter undoing of many families."--Exact
Relation, 12.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, Aug. 5, Oct. 17, 23, Nov. 3. Exact Relation, 12-15.
The next year, however, Cromwell took the task into his own hands; and, in
1655, published an ordinance, consisting of sixty-seven articles, "for
the better regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the high court of
Chancery." Widrington and Whitelock, the commissioners of the great seal,
and Lenthall, master o