His first recorded intervention in debate in the Long Parliament was on the 9th of November 1640, a few days after the meeting of the House, when he delivered a petition from the imprisoned John Lilburne.
Cromwell had no patience with formal pedantry of this sort; and in point of strict legality "The Rump" of the Long Parliament had little better title to authority than the officers who expelled it from the House.
The Long Parliament had ordered a strict observance of Sunday, punished swearing severely, and made adultery a capital crime; Cromwell issued further ordinances against duelling, swearing, racemeetings and cock-fights - the last as tending to the disturbance of the public peace and the encouragement of "dissolute practices to the dishonour of God."
The earliest commentator of note was Sir Edward Coke, who published his Second Institute, which deals with Magna Carta, by order of the Long Parliament in 1642.
On the reassembling of the Long Parliament he was superseded; he took no part in the Restoration, and died at Newton Tony in Wiltshire on the 16th of December 1669.
