, 77; Neal, IV. 31-41; Pamphlets
in Thomason Collection; Robert Barclay's _Apology for the
Quakers_ (ed. 1765), pp. 4, 48, 118, 309-310. This last is a
really able and impressive book--far the most reasoned exposition
even yet, I believe, of the principles of early Quakerism. Though
not written till twenty years after our present date, it was the
first accurate and articulate expression, I believe, of the
principles that had really, though rather confusedly, pervaded the
Quaker teachings and writings at that date.--There are many particles
of information about the early Quakers, and about other contemporary
English sects, in _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth_, published in 1878, the posthumous work of a second
Robert Barclay, two hundred years after the first. But the book,
though laborious, is very chaotic, and shows hardly any knowledge of
the time of which it mainly treats.]

Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as
for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the
Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his
brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament,
however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid
sooner than had been expected.

It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all
their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and
to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the
Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for
his assent. In particular they had postponed, as much as possible,
all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government. By
this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp. By the
instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve
them till they had sat five months,--which, by ordinary counting from
Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5. But, if they could
contrive that it should be Cromwell's interest not to dissolve them
then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while
longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had
themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament. To postpone
supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution
in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell's assent, to
wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as
possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of