ABSTRACT
Cromwell opened his fi rst parliament on 4 September 1654. Just as he had been on 4 July 1653 when he opened the Little Parliament, Cromwell was optimistic. By now he was perhaps more prepared to believe that he would ‘see such a day as this’, after all this parliament had been planned for about nine months: nevertheless, he greeted the MPs with ‘You are met here on the greatest occasion that, I believe, England ever saw’. For to Cromwell the occasion was an opportunity. The MPs had upon their ‘shoulders the interest of three great nations’. More than that they had ‘the interest of all the Christian people in the world’. The job was highly personal to Cromwell because it was all about ‘settlement and healing’. It was clearly to be a conservative settlement focussed on strong government, arguing that in the past years of war magistracy had been trampled under foot. Then in a fairly rambling piece of the speech Cromwell turned to discussing the Levellers. His view of them now seemed to have consolidated around an erroneous and very basic conservative view of the venality of political opponents: a politics of envy.
