D. 1659. May 15.]
limited to twelve months; freedom of worship was extended to all believers
in the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, with the usual exception
of prelatists and papists; and an act of oblivion, after many debates, was
passed, but so encumbered with provisoes and exceptions, that it served
rather to irritate than appease.[1] The officers had requested[a] that
lands of inheritance, to the annual value of ten thousand pounds, should be
settled on Richard Cromwell, and a yearly pension of eight thousand pounds
on her "highness dowager," his mother. But it was observed in the house
that, though Richard exercised no authority, he continued to occupy the
state apartments at Whitehall; and a suspicion existed that he was kept
there as an object of terror, to intimate to the members that the same
power could again set him up, which had so recently brought him down. By
repeated messages, he was ordered to retire; and, on his promise to obey,
the parliament granted him the privilege of freedom from arrest during six
months; transferred his private debts, amounting to twenty-nine thousand
six hundred and forty pounds, to the account of the nation, gave him two
thousand pounds as a relief to his present necessities, and voted that
a yearly income of ten thousand pounds should be settled on him and his
heirs, a grant easily made on paper, but never carried into execution.
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