and his conversations about it at the
same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting.
Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a
restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e. an
Episcopacy not professing to be _jure divino_, but only for
ecclesiastical conveniency,--the Bishops to be permanent Presidents
of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise
Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods. They were
willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider
the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other
matters of Anglican ceremonial. Enough all this to rouse the angry
souls of _Smectymnuus_, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch
Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution. But, as times
change, men change, and it is not impossible that Cromwell, the first
real mover of the Root-and-Branch Bill of 1641, may now, fifteen
years later, have looked speculatively sometimes at the old trunk in
the timberyard. It is certain that he treated with profound respect
the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have
been the most authoritative generally. Ex-Primate Usher had lived in
London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest
honour, pensioned at the rate of L400 a year, and holding also the
preachership to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Cromwell had shown him
every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions. He had
retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on
the 21st of March, 1655-6. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum
of L200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and
Council. Eight months after his death there was published from his
manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard,
that famous _Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical
Government_ which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol. II.
229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever
since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted
to Presbyterian forms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110;
Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656
(date of publication of Usher's _Reduction_); Wood's Fasti, I. 446.]

(3) _Anti-Trinitarians._ The crucial test of Cromwell's
Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as
regarded al