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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the position of the Westminster Assembly in 1644, as graphically 
described in Baillie’s “ Letters.” 
These letters of Baillie, apart from the object for which I refer to 
them now, are a perfect mine of historical anecdote at a very 
critical time. Baillie was Principal of the University of Glasgow; 
he wrote well, and was apparently a great correspondent. These, 
his familiar letters, contain many amusing descriptions of the im- 
pressions made on him by English institutions and manners. I 
stumbled on a passage of some interest in the present day. He 
says, writing in 1644, “The heat and clamorous confusion of the 
Assembly is ofttimes greater than with us, — the reason I think is 
their way both in Assembly and Parliament, to divest the speaker 
and prolocutor of all authority, and turn them into a very and mere 
Chair, as they call them,” an inconvenience which it seems two 
centuries and a half have not altogether removed. In another place 
he says that he finds the English a strange people, in wishing to be 
different from any other nation. In the midst of their labours on 
the Confession and the Catechism, the great grievance of the domi- 
nant Presbyterian party, was the pretensions of the Independents. 
They wanted, forsooth, to be tolerated, a thing not to be thought of. 
It is in his capacity of a champion of that party that Cromwell 
first appears on the scene, and greatly does he trouble the worthy 
Principal’s repose. He cannot disguise from himself, and his cor- 
respondents, that he is an able man. “The man,” he says “is a 
very wise and active head, universally well beloved as religious and 
stout ” — but he cannot forgive him his^ independency. He grudges 
him every battle he wins for the parliament. At the battle of 
Uaseby, he recounts with undisguised glee that Prince Bupert made 
“ the Independent Colonels Pickering and Montague flee like men,” 
as he expresses it ; and while he tells with some triumph of Crom- 
well’s victory, he cannot resist the reflection — “ Some fears the inso- 
lence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of 
that day.” It is plain that even then Cromwell had distinctly 
indicated his own democratic views. Speaking of the misunder- 
standing between the Earl of Manchester and Cromwell, which 
occurred about this time, Baillie says, “ Always my Lord of Man- 
chester has cleared himself in the Lords, and hath recriminate 
Cromwell as one who has avowed his desire to abolish the nobility 
