Amongst petitions and other papers in the Record Office, Dom. Interreg., vol. 677, 371, is the following from the Earl of Worcester, shewing the style in which the Protector was addressed:—
"May it please your Excellency,
"The obstacle which hindered many your Excellency's just and laudable intentions for the common welfare being now by God's providence and your Excellency's unparalleled endeavours removed, I make these my most humble addresses to your Excellency (to whose ears were my condition rightly made known), not doubting of redress, and in deed and effectually to receive what the late Council of State put me in daily hopes [of], which my humble petition will in part declare. For I can aver that no subject in England hath been so hardly dealt with; but having recourse to the fountain head of mercy and nobleness, whose crystalline waters may now run without interruption, my heart is elevated with hopes, not only to receive obligations thereunto, but also an opportunity to make evident how much I am ambitious to appear your Excellency's most humble and obliged servant,
"Worcester."
There are several other petitions from this Earl and his Countess.
[71] I have honestly endeavoured to understand and describe this crisis in the Commonwealth affairs, uninfluenced by any ecclesiastical opinions of my own. But I must add that nothing said in these pages is to be taken as inconsistent with a firm belief that the voluntary support of religion is the Divine law of Christianity.
[72] Article xxxv., Parl. Hist., iii. 1425.
[73] "The clergy in Scotland refused to observe the fast day ordered by the Protector, it being their principle, not to receive any directions for the keeping fasts from the civil magistrates."—Whitelocke, 607.
[74] Harris, in his Life of Cromwell, 432, on Clarendon's authority, says that Cromwell, by a declaration, rendered all Cavaliers incapable of being elected, or of giving a vote.
[75] Scobell, 232, 288; Cromwellian Diary, i. cxviii., 17; ii. 253.