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lxxvi and to keep them up to their work. He and the chief members of his Council were usually on the Commissions of the Peace for and the Border Counties.

The Lord President was, usually, Lord-Lieutenant of the Counties of Wales and the Border Counties. In this capacity he performed military duties. In the seventeenth century, especially after the Restoration, his duties were merely those of a modern Lord-Lieutenant on an extensive scale.

In 1640, the fifth Parliament of the First (the Long Parliament) was elected. Oliver Cromwell, a Welshman by descent, was one of its members. By this victorious Parliament a sweeping measure of constitutional reforms was carried out. The principal supports of the government of the Stuart kings were attacked and destroyed. The Star Chamber and its kindred institutions, viz., the Court of High Commissions, the Council of the North, and the Council of the Marches were the first dealt with. They had all degenerated into submissive instruments of the royal prerogative and the Stuart pretensions to absolute power. A special committee was appointed to consider their extraordinary jurisdiction. The knights and burgesses of the Counties of and of the four adjoining English shires, the Marches of, together with all the lawyers in the House of Commons, formed part of this committee. With a promptitude and decision not generally found in modern parliamentary commissions relating to, this committee resolved that—

"(1) The jurisdiction of the Courte of the President and Counsell of the Marches of as it is now exercised is a grievance of the subjects of those partes."

"(2) That the Courte of ye President and Counsell of the Marches of is useless to the subjects of the 13 Countyes and fitt to be taken away by bill."

Following this report the Act, 16 1, c. 10, involving the suppression of the Star Chamber and the