ment.]

"Now that the king is dead and his son defeated," Cromwell said gravely
to the Parliament, "I think it necessary to come to a settlement." But
the settlement which had been promised after Naseby was still as distant
as ever after Worcester. The bill for dissolving the present Parliament,
though Cromwell pressed it in person, was only passed, after bitter
opposition, by a majority of two: and even this success had to be
purchased by a compromise which permitted the House to sit for three
years more. Internal affairs were almost at a deadlock. The Parliament
appointed committees to prepare plans for legal reforms or for
ecclesiastical reforms, but it did nothing to carry them into effect. It
was overpowered by the crowd of affairs which the confusion of the war
had thrown into its hands, by confiscations, sequestrations,
appointments to civil and military offices, in fact the whole
administration of the State; and there were times when it was driven to
a resolve not to take any private affairs for weeks together in order
that it might make some progress with public business. To add to this
confusion and muddle there were the inevitable scandals which arose from
it; charges of malversation and corruption were hurled at the members of
the House; and some, like Haselrig, were accused with justice of using
their power to further their own interests. The one remedy for all this
was, as the army saw, the assembly of a new and complete Parliament in
place of the mere "rump" of the old, but this was the one measure which
the House was resolute to avert. Vane spurred it to a new activity. In
February 1652 the Amnesty Bill was forced through after fifteen
divisions. A Grand Committee, with Sir Matthew Hale at its head, was
appointed to consider the reform of the law. A union with Scotland was
pushed resolutely forward; eight English Commissioners convoked a
Convention of delegates from its counties and boroughs at Edinburgh,
and, in spite of dogged opposition, procured a vote in favour of the
proposal. A bill was introduced which gave legal form to the union, and
admitted representatives from Scotland into the next Parliament. A
similar plan was proposed for a union with Ireland.

[Sidenote: War with Holland.]

But it was necessary for Vane's purposes not only to show the energy of
the Parliament, but to free it from the control of the army. His aim was
to raise in the navy a force devoted to the House, and to eclipse the