Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/320

306 to foreign states. The custody of the new great seal was intrusted to three lawyers—namely, Whitelock, Keble, and Lisle; they were to hold it during good behaviour, and to be called keepers of the liberties of England, by authority of parliament. The King's Bench was henceforth named the Upper Bench, and came to be called the Commons Bench, and Oliver St. John, who had done so much to bring about this revolution, was made chief justice.

Oliver Cromwell.

The next great measure was to dissolve the executive council, which had sate at Derby House, and revive it in a more extended form as the Executive Council of State, to consist of forty members. Three-fourths of these had seats in the house, and several of the late peers—Mulgrave, Pembroke, Denbigh, Fairfax, Lisle, Grey of Groby, Salisbury, and Grey of Wark. The chief heads of the law and officers of the army were included. The principal names were, the late peers already mentioned, and Whitelock, St. John, Cromwell, Skippon, Hazelrig, Milchnay, Vane, Marten, Bradshaw, Ludlow, colonel Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham, &c. Milton, the great national poet, was appointed its secretary, and henceforth prepared its public acts, and employed his mighty talents in the defence of the measures of the republican government.

It was necessary to have an oath, and one was constructed which approved of the king's trial, of the vote against the Scots and their English associates, and of the abolition of monarchy and the house of lords. But as this would not only exclude all conscientious presbyterians, but called on the lords to pass an act of censure on themselves, as well as on all to approve of acts of parliament in which they had had no concern, Fairfax and twenty-one others refused to take it, and it was obliged to be reduced to the undertaking "to be true and faithful to the government established without king or house