the kingdom. They were, therefore, solemnly abolished by statute; and
no relic of the ancient tenures in chivalry was allowed to remain except
those honorary services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to
the person of the sovereign by some lords of manors.

The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed to
the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world: and experience
seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much misery
and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every
street, or that they would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such
result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating
that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed into
the mass of the community. The Royalists themselves confessed that, in
every department of honest industry the discarded warriors prospered
beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery,
that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a
waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all
probability one of Oliver's old soldiers.

The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and enduring
traces in the public mind. The name of standing army was long held in
abhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling was even stronger
among the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads. It ought to be considered
as a most fortunate circumstance that, when our country was, for the
first and last time, ruled by the sword, the sword was in the hands,
not of legitimate princes, but of those rebels who slew the King and
demolished the Church. Had a prince with a title as good as that of
Charles, commanded an army as good as that of Cromwell, there would
have been little hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily that
instrument by which alone the monarchy could be made absolute became an
object of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party, and long
continued to be inseparably associated in the imagination of Royalists
and Prelatists with regicide and field preaching. A century after the
death of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour against every
augmentation of the regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of a
national militia. So late as the year 1786, a minister who enjoyed no
common measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome their
aversion to his scheme of fortifying