The new government, in the exhilaration of sudden success, and conscious that its strength lay in the awe which it inspired, ‘went on roundly with its business.’ Considering its position, however, it kept its hands strangely free from blood. It had the temptation, generally so fatal in times of revolution, of feeling irresistible force at its command for the moment without the least guarantee of permanent stability. Yet its severity was confined to inflicting banishment and confiscation on fifteen magnates who had been prominent in the second war, to imprisoning a few others, and to killing Hamilton, Holland, Capel, and colonel Foyer. Of these, Capel alone, according to the ideas of the time, could have hoped for a better fate, for he alone was exempt from the charge of treachery, but the very greatness of his character, as Cromwell with his usual explicitness stated, made it necessary for the commonwealth that he should die. Meanwhile the purged house of commons was constituting itself a sovereign power. Only such members were re-admitted to it who would declare dissent from the vote that the king’s concessions afforded a ground of settlement. First and last about a hundred and fifty members seem to have been admitted on these terms. Two days after the king’s death the lords sent a humble message to the commons inviting them to a conference on the condition of the state. The commons took no heed of the message, which was {326} repeated several times, till February 6, when they responded by a vote that the tipper house was ‘useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished.’ The next day ‘kingship’ was abolished by a formal vote, and soon afterwards the executive government was delegated to a council of state of forty members, to be nominated yearly by the commons. The accessories of republicanism were arranged mainly by Marten, who clearly did his work with glee. At his instance the old ‘great seal’ was broken, and a new one made with the arms of England and Ireland on one side, and a ‘sculpture or map of the commons sitting’ on the other. Under this new seal, and under oath to ‘the parliament and people,’ the judges were to hold their commissions, which six of the twelve agreed to do. A new coinage was also issued with a cross and harp and the motto ‘God with us’ on one side; the arms of England between a laurel and palm, with the legend ‘Commonwealth of England,’ on the other. At the same time the royal statues were all taken down, and on the pedestals was inscribed with the date, ‘Exit tyrannus regum ultimus.’ All these were the devices of Mr. Henry Marten. A more serious business was the issue of an ‘engagement’ to the new government. This, though at first promulgated in a severe retrospective form, was finally reduced to a promise of fidelity to the ‘commonwealth, as established without king or lords.’ Without taking this engagement, no one was to have the benefit of suing another at law, ‘which,’ says Baxter, ‘kept men a