It was only by delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate.

Similarly the Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the consciences of Lawyers and Judges.

There were such remonstrances to Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench.

He removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while by Commissionerships of the Treasury.

For all this "arbitrariness" Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea of absolute necessity.