Barebone’s Parliament, the Nominated Parliament summoned by the English soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell, which met July 4, 1653. It was derisively nicknamed for one of the members, Praise-God Barbon or Barebone, a leather merchant. The assembly was made up of 140 members selected from lists of nominees submitted by Congregational churches in each county. Although the legislative measures enacted by this assembly were subjected to ridicule by contemporary jurists, their provisions were related to the contemporary laws of the New England colonies and anticipated some essential principles of the modern British legal system by nearly 200 years. Included in the program, for example, was the abolition of ecclesiastical tithes, and among the ordinances was one providing for a civil marriage celebration before justices of the peace and for civil marriage registration by elected parish registrars. Cromwell dissolved the Nominated Parliament on December 12, 1653.