upon the merits of cases when the administration was in power: the only difference was that formerly they had feared dismissal from the service of an angry sovereign as the result of an independent opinion, whereas now they feared impeachment at the hands of the angrier Commons. Under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate the bench fared no better. In October 1649 all judges and other officers of the law, down to the very clerks of the courts, who had shown themselves hostile to the Parliament and in sympathy with the monarchy, were summarily dismissed, and their posts filled by men in whom trust could be reposed. Even this was not sufficient. In affairs of state justice was at a still greater discount under the Protectorate than under the monarchy. The cause of right was pleaded in vain when it came into collision with the power and plans of the Protector. “For not observing his pleasure” judges were rebuked, suspended, dismissed. Special judicial commissions were appointed to do his work; obnoxious attorneys and critical counsel were imprisoned.[494] The jury which acquitted Lilburn after “the furious hurley-burleys” of his second trial were sharply examined on their conduct by the Council of State.[495] Moreover the new appointments to the bench in spite of all care were not entirely satisfactory to Cromwell’s government. The judges still exhibited a bent which must have been far from pleasing to the republicans. Sir Matthew Hale withdrew as far as possible from all political trials and refused to sit on Penruddock’s trial after the collapse of the rising at Salisbury.[496] Surely it is this rather than the respectability of their characters that should explain how it came about that at the Restoration nine out of the fifteen republican judges then in office were found acceptable to the new government.