Well, thank goodness they have gone home. It is a zombie Parliament which in the past two and a half years has managed to achieve nothing, and has paralysed itself with a proxy war – arguing over Brexit issues as an excuse for argument on domestic matters left unaddressed.
Cromwell ejected the Long Parliament with pike and musket, and his words are famously given
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you .
A longer version of his speech sounds very familiar to our own days though:
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
…..
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone!
They will not be missed these next weeks. The only regret is that when they assemble again, it will be the same venal mob with little hope of their repentance in the interim.
See also
Books
- The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
- By John Milton:
- Paradise Lost
- Paradise Regained
- Areopagitica and Other Writings (as quoted by Geoffrey Cox)
- By Thomas Hobbes in the Civil War and Restoration era:
- Leviathan
- De Cive
- The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Parts I & II
- Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England
- Behemoth (Clarendon edition)
- Samuel Pepys:
- The Diary of Samuel Pepys (paperback)
- Samuel Pepys: The Diaries (complete)
- Historical:
- Killers of the King by Earl Spencer
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier by Earl Spencer
Charles I and the People of England by David Cressy
Cromwell, Our Chief of Men by Lady Antonia Fraser - The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes
- The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain by Ian Mortimer
- Civil War London by David Flintham
- Killers of the King by Earl Spencer
