Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the Anabaptists.

He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate Episcopalians, as distinct from the High-Church Prelatists or Laudians.

Among others, Baxter was extremely zealous for such a project; and his accounts of his correspondence about it with ex-Bishop Brownrigg in 1655, and his conversations about it at the same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting.
Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e.an Episcopacy not professing to be _jure divino_, but only for ecclesiastical conveniency,--the Bishops to be permanent Presidents of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods.

They were willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other matters of Anglican ceremonial.

Enough all this to rouse the angry souls of _Smectymnuus_, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution.