s ecstasies, he never
forgot the political purposes to which they might serve. Hating monarchy
while a subject, despising liberty while a citizen, though he
retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the
parliament, he was secretly paving the way, by artifice and courage, to
his own unlimited authority.

The parliament,--for so we must henceforth call a small and
inconsiderable part of the house of commons,--having murdered their
sovereign with so many appearing circumstances of solemnity and justice,
and so much real violence, and even fury, began to assume more the air
of a civil legal power, and to enlarge a little the narrow bottom
upon which they stood. They admitted a few of the excluded and absent
members, such as were liable to least exception; but on condition that
these members should sign an approbation of whatever had been done in
their absence with regard to the king's trial; and some of them were
willing to acquire a share of power on such terms: the greater part
disdained to lend their authority to such apparent usurpations. They
issued some writs for new elections, in places where they hoped to have
interest enough to bring in their own friends and dependents. They named
a council of state, thirty-eight in number, to whom all addresses were
made, who gave orders to all generals and admirals, who executed the
laws, and who digested all business before it was introduced into
parliament.[*] They pretended to employ themselves entirely in adjusting
the laws, forms, and plan of a new representative; and as soon as
they should have settled the nation, they professed their intention of
restoring the power to the people, from whom they acknowledged they had
entirely derived it.

* Their names were, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave,
Pembroke, Salisbury, Lords Grey and Fairfax, Lisle, Rolles,
St. John, Wilde, Bradshaw, Cromwell, Skippon, Pickering,
Massam, Haselrig, Harrington, Vane, Jun., Danvers, Armine,
Mildmay, Constable, Pennington, Wilson, Whitlocke, Martin,
Ludlow, Stapleton, Hevingham, Wallop, Hutchinson, Bond,
Popham, Valentine, Walton, Scott, Purefoy, Jones.

The commonwealth found every thing in England composed into a seeming
tranquillity by the terror of their arms. Foreign powers, occupied in
wars among themselves, had no leisure or inclination to interpose in the
domestic dissensions of this island. The young king, poor and neglected,
livi