POLITICAL HISTORY In 1654 the members for the county elected under this scheme were Sir Richard Onslow, General Lambert, Arthur Onslow, Francis Drake, Robert Holman and Robert Wood. To the Parliament of 1656 the first four were again elected, with George Duncombe of Albury, and John Blackwell, jun. Sir Richard Onslow was called to Cromwell's House of Lords. 1 Arthur Onslow and Francis Drake sat in Richard Cromwell's Parliament. But meanwhile Parliamentary rule had really been suspended. The insurrections of 1654 had been attempted in several places, but had been nipped in the bud in Surrey by the arrest of Sir Humphrey Bennett. In 1655, when, in consequence of the plots and risings of both Republicans and Royalists against the new monarchy, the military power, which really ruled, had to show itself openly, and the country was divided into districts under fourteen major-generals. Surrey was in that controlled by Major-General Barkstead. The high sheriff of Surrey that same year was another soldier, Colonel Thomas Pride, who had
- purged 'the Parliament in 1648. He was a member of Cromwell's
House of Lords a little later. This control was close and rigorous. Suspected persons were closely watched, and their movements from place to place only allowed on sufficient reason being given. Persons against most of whom certainly no offence was provable were placed in the position of a modern ticket-of-leave man under police supervision. The Earl of Southampton, knights, gentlemen and so on of course appear in the lists preserved ; but how minute was the observation or how wide the discontent is shown by the inclusion of innkeepers, brewers, yeomen, a tailor, a labourer, a bricklayer, a waterman, a bodice maker, a man- milliner, gardeners, cordwainers, an oatmealman, a stone-cutter and so on. z Brewers and innkeepers were perhaps natural enemies of the ruling party. The village inn and the country feasts were centres of malignancy, and as such suppressed or controlled. The repression extended to the victims of popular sports, and the surviving bears of the Southwark bear-pits were put to military execution by the major-general or the sheriff, being ' shot to death by a company of soldiers,' * and the fight- ing cocks had their necks wrung. Southwark was no doubt more orderly in consequence. But it is often more dangerous to interfere with popular amusements than with more serious matters. In many ways the military despotism was doing its best to make the royal despotism forgotten. The vagaries of individual opinion were given scope for develop- ment by the Civil Wars, but were by no means allowed to flourish undisturbed. At the very outset of the Commonwealth Surrey had been the scene of a curious exhibition of eccentricity characteristic of the times. The ancient and probably everlasting doctrines of extreme 1 List given by Manning and Bray, but the writs and returns for 1656 are not extant. The Onslow Papers say that Sir Richard and Arthur Onslow were returned in 1656. See Letters and Lists in Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 19,516, 34,013, 34,015, and an article upon them in Surrey Arch Coll. 1899, by A. B. Bax, Esq. 3 Clarke Papers, iii. 64, R. Hist. S. 421
