barebone

[Eng. bare; bone.] A very lean person, one who looks as if he had no flesh on his bones. "Here comes lean Jack, here comes barebone:... how long is it ago, Jack, since thou sawest thy own knee?"-Shakesp.: 1 Henry IV . , ii. 4. Barebone's Parliament ( Hist .): A derisive nickname given to the first Parliament elected under the auspices of Oliver Cromwell. It was so called because it had as one of its members a Puritan leather-seller in Fleet Street known as "Praise God Barebone." It was not a properly representative a embly. Cromwell having requested the several ministers of religion to send in the names of the most pious members of their several congregations, he selected from the lists forwarded to him 139 English men, six Welsh men, four Scotsmen, and six Irish men, and invited or summoned them to the House of Commons. On the appointed day of meeting (July 4, 1653), a hundred and twenty of the selected members actually presented themselves. Five months subsequently, at the suggestion of Colonel Sydenham, they resigned their authority into the hands of Cromwell, who forthwith began to rule under the title of "His Highne the Lord Protector." Barebone's was sometimes called also the "Little Parliament." Some of its measures were enlightened. It was economic of the public money; it desired the codification of English law, an aim unhappily not yet accomplished; and it provided for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths.