ive indictments from the council of state.
This court was composed of men devoted to the ruling party, without name
or character, determined to sacrifice every thing to their own safety
or ambition. Colonel Eusebius Andrews and Colonel Walter Slingsby were
tried by this court for conspiracies, and condemned to death. They were
royalists, and refused to plead before so illegal a jurisdiction. Love,
Gibbons, and other Presbyterians, having entered into a plot against the
republic, were also tried, condemned, and executed. The earl of Derby,
Sir Timothy Featherstone, Bemboe, being taken prisoners after the battle
of Worcester, were put to death by sentence of a court martial; a method
of proceeding declared illegal by that very petition of right, for which
a former parliament had so strenuously contended, and which, after great
efforts, they had extorted from the king.

Excepting their principles of toleration, the maxims by which the
republicans regulated ecclesiastical affairs no more prognosticated
any durable settlement, than those by which they conducted their
civil concerns. The Presbyterian model of congregations, classes, and
assemblies was not allowed to be finished: it seemed even the intention
of many leaders in the parliament to admit of no established church, and
to leave every one, without any guidance of the magistrate, to embrace
whatever sect and to support whatever clergy were most agreeable to him.

The parliament went so far as to make some approaches, in one province,
to their Independent model. Almost all the clergy of Wales being ejected
as malignants, itinerant preachers with small salaries were settled,
not above four or five in each county; and these, being furnished with
horses at the public expense, hurried from place to place, and carried,
as they expressed themselves, the glad tidings of the gospel.[*] They
were all of them men of the lowest birth and education, who had deserted
mechanical trades, in order to follow this new profession. And in this
particular, as well as in their wandering life, they pretended to be
more truly apostolical.

* Dr. John Walker's Attempt, p. 147, et seq.

The republicans, both by the turn of their disposition, and by the
nature of the instruments which they employed, were better qualified
for acts of force and vigor, than for the slow and deliberate work
of legislation. Notwithstanding the late wars and bloodshed, and
the present factions, the power of En