d
distinguished himself highly as a Parliamentary Colonel. Henceforth
the sea was to be his chief element; and, as Admiral or General at
sea, he was to become very famous.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV, 214-217 and 298-300; Guizot, II. 231-234;
Thomason copy of the Declaration against Spain, dated Nov. 9, 1655;
Council Order Books, Oct. 2, 1655; Article on Lockhart in Chambers's
Biographical Dictionary of Scotsmen; Carlyle, III. 309-310.]

It was just about this time of change and extension in the foreign
relations of the Commonwealth that the people of England and Wales
became aware that they were, and had been for some time, under an
entirely new system of home-government, called _Government by
Major-Generals_.

The difficulties of the home-government of the Protectorate were
great and peculiar. The power of the Lord-Protector and his Council
to pass ordinances had been called in question. Judges and lawyers
were not only pretty unanimous in the opinion that resistance to
payment of imposts not enacted by Parliamentary authority might be
made good at law, and that the Ordinance for Chancery Reform was also
legally invalid; they doubted even whether, in strict law, there
could be proceedings for the preservation of the public peace, by
courts and magistrates, under any Council ordinance about crimes and
treasons. All this Cromwell had been meditating. How was revenue to
be raised? How were Royalist and Anabaptist plottings to be
suppressed? How were police regulations about public manners and
morals to be enforced? How was the will of the Central Government at
Whitehall, in any matter whatsoever, to be transmitted to any spot in
the community and made really operative? Meditating these questions,
Cromwell, as he expressed it afterwards, "did find out a little poor
invention": "I say," he repeated, "there was a little thing
invented."[1] The little invention consisted in a formal
identification of the Protector's Chief Magistracy with his Headship
of the Army. He had resolved to map out England and Wales into
districts, and to plant in each district a trusty officer, with the
title of Major-General, who should be nominally in command of the
militia of that district, but should be really also the executive
there for the Central Government in all things. A beginning had been
made in the business as early as May 1655, when Desborough was
appointed Major-General of the Militia in the six southwestern
counties; and the di