The thing was passed on Saturday night, and on Monday morning Rous
came and said, "We cannot carry on the affair any longer, and we
remit it into the hands of your Highness." Oliver in that way became
Protector a second time.
I give you this as an instance that Oliver felt that the Parliament
that had been dismissed had been perfectly right with regard to
Chancery, and that there was no doubt of the propriety of abolishing
Chancery, or reforming it in some kind of way. He considered it, and
this is what he did. He assembled sixty of the wisest lawyers to be
found in England. Happily, there were men great in the law--men who
valued the laws as much as anybody does now, I suppose. (A laugh.)
Oliver said to them, "Go and examine this thing, and in the name of
God inform me what is necessary to be done with regard to it. You will
see how we may clean out the foul things in it that render it poison
to everybody." Well, they sat down then, and in the course of six
weeks--there was no public speaking then, no reporting of speeches,
and no trouble of any kind; there was just the business in hand--they
got sixty propositions fixed in their minds of the things that
required to be done.
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