1: Speech V. (Carlyle, III. 176).

Person. District.
1. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON. London.
2. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BARKSTEAD. Westminster and Middlesex.
3. MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS KELSEY. Kent and Surrey.
4. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM GOFFE. Sussex, Hants, and Berks.
5. FLEETWOOD (with MAJOR-GENERAL HEZEKIAH HAYNES as his deputy). Oxford, Bucks, Herts, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Cambridge.
6. MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD WHALLEY. Lincoln, Notts, Derby, Warwick, and Leicester.
7. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM BUTLER. Northampton, Bedford, Hunts, and Rutland.
8. MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES WORSLEY (succeeded by MAJOR-GENERAL TOBIAS BRIDGES). Chester, Lancaster, and Stafford.
9. LAMBERT (with MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT TILBURNE and MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES HOWARD as his deputies). York, Durham, Cumberland Westmorland, and Northumberland.
10. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN DESBOROUGH. Gloucester, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall.
11. MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES BERRY. Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and North Wales.
12. MAJOR-GENERAL DAWKINS. Monmouthshire and South Wales.1

1: Council Order Books, as digested by Godwin, IV. 228-229.

The powers intrusted to these Major-Generals and to their subordinate officers in the several counties were all but universal. They were to patrol the counties with horse and foot, but especially with horse. They were to guard against robberies and tumults and to bring criminals to punishment. They were to take charge of the public morals, and see the laws put in force against drunkenness, blasphemy, plays and interludes, profanation of the Lord's Day, and disorderliness generally. They were to keep a register of all disaffected persons, remove arms from their houses, note their changes of residence, and take security for the good behaviour of themselves, their families, and servants. All travellers and strangers were bound to appear before them, and give an account of themselves and their business. They were to arrest vagabonds and persons with no visible means of living. Above all, they were to see to the execution of a certain very severe and far-reaching measure which the Protector and the Council had determined to adopt in consequence of the late Royalist insurrection and conspiracy.

Either from information that had been received, or merely in terrorem, there had, during the past summer and autumn, been numerous arrests of persons of rank and wealth that had hitherto been allowed to live quietly in their country mansions, on the understanding that, though Royalists, they had ceased to be such, in any active sense. The Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Lindsey, the Earl of Newport, the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Rivers, the Earl of Peterborough, Viscount Falkland, and Lords Lovelace, St. John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, Lucas, and Willoughby of Parham, with a great many commoners of distinction, had been thus arrested. There was a general consternation among the peaceful Royalists throughout the country. It looked as if their peacefulness was to be of no avail, as if the Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2 was to be a dead letter, as if Cromwell had suddenly changed his policy of universal conciliation. In reality, Cromwell had no intention of reversing his policy of universal conciliation; but he wanted to teach the lesson that Royalist insurrections and conspiracies would fall heavily on the Royalists themselves, and he wanted particularly, at that moment, to make the Royalists pay the expenses of the police kept up on their account. Under cover of the consternation caused by the numerous arrests, he introduced, in fact, a Decimation upon the Royalists, i.e. an income tax of ten per cent, upon all Royalists possessing estates in land of £100 a year and upwards or personal property worth £1500. It was to be the main business of the Major-Generals to assess this tax within their bounds, and to collect it strictly and swiftly. It is astonishing with what ease they succeeded. It seems to have been even a relief to the Royalists to know definitely what their principles were to cost them, and to have arrest or the dread of it commuted into a fixed money payment. As soon as the tax was fairly in operation, all or most of those who had been arrested were liberated, and subsequent arrests by the Major-Generals themselves were only of vagabonds or suspicious persons. The only appeal from the Major-Generals was to his Highness himself and the Council.1

1: Godwin, 223-242; Carlyle, III. 101.

What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts, what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see. Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under ban. Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more closely looked after than they had been. But what shall we say about this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:—"Wednesday, 5th Sept., 1655—At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State"? The effect of the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz. Needham's Mercurius Politicus, published on Thursdays, and The Public Intelligencer, a more recent adventure, published on Mondays. Just after the order, I note, the Mercurius Politicus enlarged its size somewhat, to match with the Public Intelligencer, and in the first number of the new size (Sept. 22-Oct. 4, 1655) the Editor speaks with great approbation of the Order of Council "silencing the many pamphlets that have hitherto presumed to come abroad." Needham seems now to have assumed the editorship of both papers; and after the twenty-third number of the Intelligencer (March 3-10, 1655-6) the publisher of it, as well as of the Mercurius Politicus, was Thomas Newcome. The newspaper press of the Protectorate was thus pretty well consolidated by Mr. Thurloe. There were two papers only, under one management, or rather there was a single bi-weekly newspaper with alternative names.1

1: Council Order Books of 1655 and 1658 passim; Merc. Pol. and Public Intelligencer of dates given.

It was part of the duty of the Major-Generals to assist, so far as might still be necessary, in the execution of the Ordinance of Aug. 1654 for the ejection of scandalous and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (Vol. IV. p. 564 and p. 571), The County Committees of Ejectors under that Ordinance had already performed their disagreeable work in part, but were still busy. On the whole, though they turned out many, they seem not to have abused their powers. "I must needs say," is Baxter's testimony, "that in all the counties where I was acquainted, six to one at least, if not many more, that were sequestered by the Committees were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or both—especially guilty of drunkenness or swearing,—and those that, being able godly preachers, were cast out for the war alone, as for their opinions' sake, were comparatively very few. This, I know, will displease that party; but this is true." Baxter admits, indeed, that there were cases in which the Committees were swayed too much by mere political feeling, and ejected men from their pulpits whom it would have been better to retain. Other authorities assert the same more strongly, but rather fail in the proof. The most notorious instance produced of a blunder on the part of any of the Committees was in Berkshire. The Rector of Childrey in this county was the learned orientalist Pocock, who had lost his Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford for refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, but still held the Arabic lectureship there, because there was no one else who knew Arabic sufficiently. Not liking his look, or not seeing what Orientalism had to do with the Gospel, the rude Berkshire Committee were on the point of turning him out of his Rectory, when Dr. Owen interfered manfully and prevented the scandal. About the same time, it is said, Thomas Fuller was in some trepidation about his living of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, but acquitted himself before the Committee handsomely.1

1: Baxter, 74; Wood's Ath. IV. 319; Godwin, IV. 40-41.