A senate of mature property owners were to make
and debate the laws while an assembly elected by universal
suffrage was to vote on them because "a popular assembly without a
senate cannot be wise and a senate without a popular assembly will
not be honest". A third of the Senate would turn over every year.
John Milton defended the execution of the King in "The Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates" in which he maintained that the people may
"as often as they shall judge it for the best either to choose
him or reject him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the
liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to the
best". He also wrote in favor of liberty of the press. Ordinary
speech found its way into prose writing.
Lands of more than 700 Royalists, including church lands, were
confiscated and sold or leased by county committees. Many
Royalists put their lands into trusts or turned them over to
relatives or sold them outright to prevent confiscation. It was an
upheaval comparable to the dissolution of the monasteries. Also,
specified Papists who had taken up arms against the realm lost
their lands and goods and money and rents and two-thirds of their
personal estates. But allowance was made for the maintenance of
their wives and children.
The Book of Common Prayer was abolished because of its burdensome
ceremonies. It was replaced by a Directory for Public Worship.
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