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 be more conveniently informed, and convinced, as farre as is possible by the equity of your Proceedings.

Wee cannot but expect to be delivered from the Norman bondage, whereof wee now as well as our Predecessours, have felt the smart by these bloody warres; and from all unreasonable Lawes made ever since that unhappy conquest; as wee have encouragement, wee shall informe you further, and guide you, as we observe your doings.

The Worke yee must note is ours, and not your owne, though ye are to be partakers with us in the well or ill doing thereof.

The spirit of the men who could write such a manifesto as this has hardly been assigned sufficient importance in the history of the Great Civil War. It is impossible to regard the men capable of conceiving of such democracy as mere fanatics; difficult to dismiss them as unprincipled self-seekers. Their ideas may with more truth be judged impracticable and useless for seventeenth-century England; yet Overton, at least, partly understood that such democracy could find its fruition only after an education of the people continued for generation after generation. It was useless to expect the seventeenth-century House of Commons to adopt the policy of the Remonstrance. The men who framed it were soon compelled to abandon the dream of a House of