who, having sacrificed no inconsiderable fortune to the
cause of what he considered constitutional liberty, was one of the
violent ejected members of the Long Parliament, and perished in prison,
a victim to honest, unbending principles. His "History of Independency"
is a rich legacy bequeathed to posterity, of all their great misdoings,
and their petty villanies, and, above all, of their secret history. One
likes to know of what blocks the idols of the people are sometimes
carved out.

Clement Walker notices "the votes and acts of this _fag end_; this RUMP
of a parliament, with corrupt maggots in it."[325] This hideous, but
descriptive image of "The Rump" had, however, got forward before, for
the collector of "the Rump Songs"[326] tells us, "If you ask who named
it _Rump_, know 'twas so styled in an honest sheet of prayer, called
'The Bloody Rump,' written _before the trial_ of our late sovereign; but
the word obtained not _universal notice_, till it flew from the mouth
of Major-General Brown, at a public assembly in the days of Richard
Cromwell." Thus it happens that a stinging nickname has been frequently
applied to render a faction eternally odious; and the chance expression
of a wit, when adopted on some public occasion, circulates among a whole
people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of
the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It
probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate?
and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to
witness its own ridiculous extinction.

Our Rump passed through three stages in its political progress.
Preparatory to the trial of the sovereign, the anti-monarchical party
constituted the minority in "the _Long_ Parliament:" the very name by
which this parliament is recognised seemed a grievance to an impatient
people, vacillating with chimerical projects of government, and now
accustomed, from a wild indefinite notion of political equality, to pull
down all existing institutions. Such was the temper of the times, that
an act of the most violent injustice, openly performed, served only as
the jest of the day, a jest which has passed into history. The forcible
expulsion of two hundred of their brother members, by those who
afterwards were saluted as "The Rump," was called "Pride's Purge," from
the activity of a colonel of that name, a military adventurer, who was
only the blind and brutal instrument o