Whilst these and other plots were exacting from the Protector a severe compensation for his high position, he was yet steadily prosecuting measures for the better administration of the national government. Being empowered by the Instrument of government, with his Council, not only to raise sufficient money for the necessary demands of government, but also "to make laws and ordinances for the peace and welfare of these nations," he actually made no less than sixty ordinances, many of them of singular wisdom and excellence. He and his Council, in fact, showed that they were in earnest to make the execution of justice cheap and prompt, and to revive a pure and zealous ministry of the gospel. In one of these ordinances they effected the Herculean labour which Barebone's Parliament had aimed at--the reformation of the Court of Chancery, the ordinance for this purpose consisting of no less than sixty-seven articles. Well might Cromwell, on the opening of Parliament, refer with pride to this great event, an event which would have taken our modern law-makers twenty years to accomplish, which, in fact, they have not accomplished yet. "The Chancery," he said in his speech, "is reformed." What a speech in four words, sufficient to have made the reign of any king famous! "The Chancery is reformed--I hope to the satisfaction of all good men." This had partly been done by distributing the causes through the other "courts of law at Westminster, where Englishmen love to have their rights tried." In order, too, to effect a most just and speedy discharge of the laws, he put better judges on the Bench, amongst them the pious Sir Matthew Hale, and made Thurloe, the friend of Milton, Secretary of State.