Meanwhile, the first parliament of the Protectorate had met in September 1654. A scheme of electoral reform had been carried by which members were taken from the small and corrupt boroughs and given to the large hitherto unrepresented towns, and which provided for thirty representatives from Scotland and from Ireland. Instead, however, of proceeding with the work of practical legislation, accepting the Instrument of Government without challenge as the basis of its authority, the parliament immediately began to discuss and find fault with the constitution and to debate about "Fundamentals." About a hundred members who refused to engage not to attempt to change the form of government were excluded on the 12th of September. The rest sat on, discussing the constitution, drawing up lists of damnable heresies and of incontrovertible articles of faith, producing plans for the reduction of the army and demanding for themselves its control. Incensed by the dilatory and factious proceedings of the House, Cromwell dismissed the parliament on the 22nd of January 1655. Various dangerous plots against his government and person were at this time rife. Vane, Ludlow, Robert Overton, Harrison and Major Wildman, the head of the Levellers, were all arrested, while the royalist rising under Penruddock was crushed in Devonshire. Other attacks upon his authority were met with the same resort to force. The judges and lawyers began to question the legality of his ordinances, and to doubt their competency to convict royalist prisoners of treason. A merchant named Cony refused to pay customs not imposed by parliament, his counsel declaring their levy by ordinance to be contrary to Magna Carta, and Chief Justice Rolle resigning in order to avoid giving judgment. Cromwell was thus inevitably drawn farther along the path of arbitrary government. He arrested the persons who refused to pay taxes, and sent Cony's lawyers to the Tower. Hitherto he had been scrupulously impartial in raising the best men to the judicial bench, including the illustrious Matthew Hale, but he now appointed compliant judges, and, alluding to Magna Carta in terms impossible to transcribe for modern readers, declared that "it should not control his actions which he knew were for the safety of the Commonwealth." The country was now divided into twelve districts each governed by a major-general, to whom was entrusted the duty of maintaining order, stamping out disaffection and plots, and executing the laws relating to public morals. They had power to transport royalists and those who could not produce good characters, and supported themselves by a special tax of 10% on the incomes of the royalist gentry. Enormous numbers of ale-houses were closed--a proceeding which excited intense resentment and was probably no slight cause of the royalist reaction. Still more serious an encroachment upon the constitution perhaps even than the institution of the major-generals was Cromwell's tampering with the municipal franchise by confiscating the charters, depriving the burgesses, now hostile to his government, of their parliamentary votes, and limiting the franchise to the corporation; thereby corrupting the national liberties at their very source, and introducing an evil precedent only too readily followed by Charles II. and James II.