of piety that the like is not to
be found in the stories of Princes." We have not exaggerated, it will
be seen, Cromwell's personal anxiety about his Established Church.
That, indeed, is farther proved, in a very interesting manner, by
certain entries in the Order Books of his Council which become more
and more frequent in this middle section of his Protectorate. They
refer to "augmentations of ministers' stipends." Thus, in December
1655, there is an order for the augmentation of the stipends of
seventy-five ministers in different counties, all in one batch; and
succeeding entries in 1656 show the steady progress of the same work
by repeated orders for other augmentations, batch after batch.
Clearly Cromwell had resolved that there should be a systematic
increase of the salaries of the parochial clergy all over England,
beginning with those who needed it most. The details of the business
were managed by that body of "Trustees for maintenance of ministers"
which had been appointed by Ordinance in Sept. 1654 (Vol. IV. p.
564); but the final Orders for Augmentations came from the Protector
and Council, and there was no part of his work in which the Protector
seemed to have more pleasure.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter, 96-97 and 180-188; Wood's Ath. III. 1083;
Council Order Books of dates; Neal, IV. Chap. 3; Marchamont Needham's
Book against John Goodwin, entitled _The Great Accuser Cast
Down_, published in July 1657. The information about Cromwell's
practice in his patronage of livings is from the last. The book was
dedicated to Cromwell.]

But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church
which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was
faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the
fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may
be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory
of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or
twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then
adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still
upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however,
rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even
with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he
had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring
himself for the Civil Magistrate's Authority in matters of Religion,
he still cherished the extrem