yment. On a motion for a
writ of _habeas corpus_ his case came on for trial in May 1655.
Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded so
effectively that they were committed to the Tower for what was
called language destructive to the Government. Cony himself then went
on with the pleading, and so sturdily that Chief Justice Rolle was
non-plussed, and had to confess as much to Cromwell. It was only by
delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision
was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to
defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate. Similarly the
Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and
even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had
been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the
consciences of Lawyers and Judges. There were such remonstrances to
Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench. He
removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in
their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their
Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while
by Commissionerships of the Treasury. For all this "arbitrariness"
Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea
of absolute necessity. The very existence of his Protectorate was at
peril; and that meant, he declared, the existence of the
Commonwealth.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 174-183; Whitlocke, through April, May,
June, and July, 1655.]

For such "arbitrariness" in some of the Protector's home-proceedings
there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels
of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England
a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the
world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and
potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and
embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme
for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments
might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable
through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His
dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the
subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad.
Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was
still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Govern