OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT, TO THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES THE SECOND. BY WILLIAM GODWIN. TO ATTEND TO THE NEGLECTED, AND TO REMEMBER THE FORGOTTEN. PREFACE. DA 425 659 V.I CUM TABULIS ANIMUM CENSORIS SUMET HONESTI. HOR. THERE is no part of the history of this island which has been so inadequately treated, as the characters and acts of those leaders, who had for the most part the direction of the public affairs of England from 1640 to 1660. The men who figured during the Interregnum, were, immediately after the Restoration, spoken of with horror, and their memoirs were composed after the manner of the Newgate Calendar. What was begun from party-rage, has been continued from indolence. No research has been exercised; no public measures have been traced to their right authors; even the succession of judges, public officers, and statesmen, has been left in impenetrable confusion*. It is the object of the present * One instance, out of hundreds that might be selected, occurs in Dugdale, a plodding and laborious collector of records and dates: work to remedy this defect, to restore the just tone of historical relation on the subject, to attend to the neglected, to remember the forgotten, and to distribute an impartial award on all that was planned and achieved during this eventful period. If there be any semblance of truth in the dictum of Warburton, that, "when Cromwel subdued his country, the spirit of liberty was at its height, and its interests were conducted and supported by a set of the greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw embarked together in one common That author in a book entitled Origines Juridiciales, to which is appended a copious table of the succession of judges and public officers, when he comes to this period, interrupts his detail, and leaving one extensive blank, inscribes on the page, DOMINANTE PERDUELLIONE JUSTITIUM, in other words, Murder being triumphant, there was a suspension of order and law. As if that period was not adorned with able men and enlightened ministers of justice, or as if its judges and public functionaries did not form the subject of as laudable curiosity, as their predecessors and successors in office. In like manner the compilers of peerages, when they touch upon such persons of elevated birth as took part in the opposition to king Charles or in the affairs of the Commonwealth, pass them over with all imaginable celerity, believing that the heirs of their titles would blush to be told, that their progenitors ranked among the advocates of the rights of mankind. |