Note 366 — Chapter III

Dr. Bates, who had been physician to Cromwell, intimates that this was foreseen from the beginning. He says, that the popular party offered command to some of the nobles, ‘not that they had any respect for the lords, whom shortly they intended to turn out and to level with the commoners, but that they might poison them with their own venom, and rise to greater authority by drawing more over to their side.’ Bates's Account of the late Troubles in England, part i. p. 76. Lord North too supposes, that almost immediately after the war began, it was determined to dissolve the House of Lords. See Somers Tracts, vol. vi. p. 582. Beyond this, I am not aware of any direct early evidence; except that, in 1644, Cromwell is alleged to have stated that ‘there would never be a good time in England till we had done with lords.’ Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. i. p. 217; and, what is evidently the same circumstance, in Holles's Memoirs, p. 18.