I do not know if it ever occurred to any one that hats had something to do with the dissolution of the Long Parliament; but such is the fact. As soon as Cromwell had declared that assembly non-existent, he flung on his hat, and paced up and down the Parliament Chamber. The members, however, were piqued by such truly cavalier swagger, and would not budge an inch. Cromwell called in Major Harrison and the guard. The Major saw how matters stood, and he felt at once that he could get the ex-deputies out much sooner by courtesy than carbines. Accordingly he approached the Speaker, and taking off his own hat with much ceremony, he bowed low, kissed the fallen official’s hand, detaining it at the same time with such gentle violence that the deposed dignitary was constrained to follow whither the very polite but unwelcome republican chose to conduct him. The Major led him out of the Hall, we are told, “as a gentleman does a lady, the whole Parliament following.” Thus a hat in hand helped to do what a hat on head failed to accomplish; and the Long Parliament resisting rudeness, yielded to gallantry, and was demolished for ever. The close of the last national Parliament held in Scotland has something in connection with the hat. On the 22nd April, 1707, that illustrious but sometimes turbulent assembly adjourned never to meet again. There must have been some aching hearts under the old-fashioned dresses of many of the members; but there was no sorrow to be read on the brow of Seafield the Chancellor. He put on his hat as he pronounced, with brutal levity, the annihilation of the parliamentary body. Had he done it to hide confusion or to mark contempt, there might have been some excuse for him, but it was a mere formality; and he unfeelingly added thereto, words which were the cruel knell of the dying victim. “There,” said he, “there is the end of an auld sang!” It was a song that, in its day, had been sung to some tune, despite some harshness and occasional discord; but, as the Chancellor remarked when he put on his hat, there was an end of it.