Excerpt from Records of the Baron Court of Stitchill, 1655-1807 The other opinion is that of Cromwell himself, the chief personage in the State. He had sent for both Houses of Parliament to come to him in Whitehall to the Banqueting House, and thus he addressed them: 'and hath Scotland been long settled? Have not they a like sense of poverty? I speak plainly. In good earnest I do think the Scots nation have been under as great a suffering in point of livelihood and subsistence outwardly as any people I have yet named to you. I do think truly they are a very ruined nation. And yet, in a way (i have spoken with some gentlemen come from thence), hopeful enough; it hath pleased God to give that plentiful encouragement to the meaner sort in Scotland. The meaner sort in Scotland live as well, and are as likely to come into as thriving a condition under your government as when they were under their own great lords who made them work for their living (carlyle's Cromwell, vol. Iii. P. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.