“Truly, though kingship be not a title but a name of office that runs through the law, yet it is not so ratione nominis, but from what is signified. It is a name of office, plainly implying a Supreme Authority. Is it more, or can it be stretched to more? I say, it is a name of office, plainly implying the Supreme Authority, and if it be so, why then I would suppose, (I am not peremptory in any thing that is matter of deduction or inference of my own,) why then I should suppose that whatsoever name hath been or shall be the name, in which the Supreme Authority shall act; why, (I say) if it had been those four or five letters, or whatsoever else it had been, that signification goes to the thing. Certainly it does, and not to the name. Why then, there can be no more said, but this, why this hath been fixt, so it may have been unfixt.”

—  Oliver Cromwell

Answer to the Conference at the Committee at Whitehall, Second Protectorate Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36885 (13 April 1657), quoted in The Diary of Thomas Burton, esq., volume 2: April 1657 - February 1658 (1828), pp. 496-497

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English military and political leader 1599–1658

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