her respect he carried fairly out his pledge of "healing
and settling." The series of administrative reforms planned by the
Convention had been partially carried into effect before the meeting of
Parliament in 1654; but the work was pushed on after the dissolution of
the House with yet greater energy. Nearly a hundred ordinances showed
the industry of the Government. Police, public amusements, roads,
finances, the condition of prisons, the imprisonment of debtors, were a
few among the subjects which claimed Cromwell's attention. An ordinance
of more than fifty clauses reformed the Court of Chancery. The anarchy
which had reigned in the Church since the breakdown of Episcopacy and
the failure of the Presbyterian system to supply its place, was put an
end to by a series of wise and temperate measures for its
reorganization. Rights of patronage were left untouched; but a Board of
Triers, a fourth of whom were laymen, was appointed to examine the
fitness of ministers presented to livings; and a Church board of gentry
and clergy was set up in every county to exercise a supervision over
ecclesiastical affairs, and to detect and remove scandalous and
ineffectual ministers. Even by the confession of Cromwell's opponents
the plan worked well. It furnished the country with "able, serious
preachers," Baxter tells us, "who lived a godly life, of what tolerable
opinion soever they were"; and, as both Presbyterian and
Congregationalist ministers were presented to livings at the will of
their patrons, it solved so far as practical working was concerned the
problem of a religious union among Protestants on the base of a wide
variety of Christian opinion. From the Church which was thus reorganized
all power of interference with faiths differing from its own was
resolutely withheld. Save in his dealings with the Episcopalians, whom
he looked on as a political danger, Cromwell remained true throughout to
the cause of religious liberty. Even the Quaker, rejected by all other
Christian bodies as an anarchist and blasphemer, found sympathy and
protection in the Protector. The Jews had been excluded from England
since the reign of Edward the First; and a prayer which they now
presented for leave to return was refused by a commission of merchants
and divines to whom the Protector referred it for consideration. But the
refusal was quietly passed over, and the connivance of Cromwell in the
settlement of a few Hebrews in London and Oxford was so cl