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Nothing could exceed the well-bred dogism or utter curishness of the Commons on this occasion, for not one of them offered the smallest resistance to the violence of Cromwell. When they had all sneaked out, he locked and double locked the door, put the keys in his pocket, and carried them to his lodgings. He admitted that he had not intended to have gone so far when he first entered the House, but the mean-spiritedness of the members had urged him on to the course he had adopted.
Thinking that he might as well make a day of it, he proposed to Harrison and Lambert to walk with him to Derby House, and the three stalked into the room where the Council of State was sitting. Cromwell at first pretended to listen with attention to what was going on, and gave an occasional loud ejaculation of "Hear!" but Bradshaw, who was presiding, soon felt that the cheer was ironical. Business was permitted to proceed in this way for a few minutes, when the Council felt it was being "quizzed," and Bradshaw, giving an incredulous look at Cromwell, the latter made no longer a secret of his intention. "Come, come," he cried, "there's been enough of this; go home, and get to bed, and don't come here again until you've a message from me that you're wanted." The hint was immediately taken by Bradshaw, who started up and ran for it—for he was afraid of rough treatment—and he presently had close at his heels the whole of his colleagues. Thus, within the space of a few hours, Cromwell had broken up the Council of State, and dissolved the Long Parliament.
Cromwell, having made short work of the Long Parliament, proceeded to supply its place by a legislature of his own composition, and the enemy of absolute monarchy proved himself an absolute humbug by acts of the most arbitrary and designing character. His pretended patriotism had in fact been a struggle on his part to decide whether the business of despotism should remain in the hands that were "native and to the manner born" to it, or whether he should start on his own account as a monopolist of tyranny to be practised for his own aggrandisement. The new Parliament was a miscellaneous collection of impostors and scamps, with a slight mixture of honest men, but these were too few to make the thing respectable. Cromwell now began to put on the external semblance of religion, with an extravagance of display that gives us every reason to doubt his sincerity. As the man of straw frequently covers himself with jewellery, a good deal of which may be sham; so Cromwell enveloped himself in all the externals of sanctity, which we firmly believe penetrated no further than the surface.
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One of the principal members of the new Parliament was a fellow named Barbone or Barebone, a leather-seller and currier, who attempted to curry favour by an affectation of extreme holiness. The legislative assembly subsequently got the name of the Barebones Parliament from the person we have named, and the whole pack of humbugs usurped the powers of the State by pretending they "had a call" to take upon them the duties of government.
It may generally be observed that they who make piety a profession look very sharply out for professional profits, and if they are desirous of taking what is not justly their own, they soon get up an imaginary "call" to urge them to the robbery. Cromwell formally handed over to them the supreme authority—which, by-the-by, was not his to give—and the first day of their meeting was devoted to praying and preaching, with a view to giving the public an idea of their excessive sanctity. They soon set to work in their career of mischief, and began by abolishing the Court of Chancery, on account of its delays, which was like killing a horse because it did not happen to go at full gallop. They certainly expedited the suits, and brought them to a conclusion about as effectually as one would accelerate a steam-engine by shutting up the safety valve, and allowing it to go to smash with the utmost possible rapidity. They nominated as judges a new set of lawyers, whose qualification was that they were not in the law; and there is no doubt the Parliament would have dissolved every institution in the kingdom if the members had not dissolved themselves on the 12th of December, 1654, at the suggestion of Cromwell.