Cromwell was not the man to suffer this. He sent to the Lord Mayor, and ordered him to take measures to preserve the peace of the City, marched three regiments into it, and then summoned Lenthall, and bade him meet him in the Painted Chamber, on Tuesday, the 12th of September, with the Commons. Harrison, who was zealously getting up petitions for the support of the inquiry into the constitution, was clapped into the Tower. When Cromwell met the Commons, he expressed his surprise that a set of men from whom so much healing management had been expected, should immediately attempt to overturn the Government which called them together. The Instrument consisted of incidentals and fundamentals. The incidentals they were at liberty to discuss, but the fundamentals—of which the article that the power resided in one person and a Parliament was one—were out of their range. He very zealously asserted that he had been called to the head of the nation by God and the people, and that none but God and the people should take his office from him. His own wish had been to lead the life of a country gentleman, but necessity had forced him thence, and three several times he had found himself placed by the course of events at the head of the army, and by them at the head of the Government. As to the dismissal of the Long Parliament, he had been forced to that by its endeavouring to perpetuate itself, and by its tyranny and corruption. He said "that poor men, under its arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep, by forty on a morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates, without any man being able to give a reason why two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling." He had twice resigned the arbitrary power left in his hands, and having established a Government capable of saving the nation, he would sooner lie rotting in his grave and buried with infamy than suffer it to be broken up. They had now peace at home and abroad, and it would be a miserable answer to give to the people, "Oh, we quarrelled for the liberty of England; we contested and went to confusion for that."

To prevent any such evil consequences, he informed them that he had caused a stop to be put to their entrance into the Parliament House; he did not turn them out this time, he shut them out—and that none would be readmitted that did not first sign an Engagement to be true and faithful to the Protector and Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, not to propose or consent to alter the Government, as settled in a single person and Parliament.

On hearing this, the honourable members looked at one another in amazement, but one hundred and forty thought well to sign the Engagement, which lay in the lobby of the House that day, and within a month three out of the four hundred had signed. Of course all the ultra Republicans refused to sign, and were excluded—Bradshaw, Haselrig, Scott, Wildman, and the rest.

JOHN MILTON. (After the Miniature by Samuel Cooper.)

[[See larger version]]

This summary dealing did not cure the Parliament of considering the question for touching which they had thus been purged of a hundred members. On the 19th of September, only a week after the check they had received, they went into committee to discuss the "Instrument of Government." They took care not to touch the grand point which they had now pledged themselves not to meddle with—the government by a Protector and Parliament; but they affected to consider all the other articles as merely provisional, decreed by the Protector and the Council, but to be confirmed or rejected by Parliament. They discussed these one by one, and on the 16th of October proceeded to the question, whether the office of Protector should be elective or hereditary. Lambert advocated the office being hereditary, and pointed out the many disadvantages of the elective form. He strongly recommended the office being confined to the Cromwell family, and this, of course, was attributed to the instigation of Cromwell himself. They decided for the elective form. On the 11th of December they voted that the Protector should have a veto on Bills touching liberty of conscience, but not such as suppressed heresies, as if what they called suppressing heresies were not direct attacks on liberty of conscience. Thus they crept round the very roots of the Protectoral authority, nibbling at the powers he had forbidden them to discuss, and they proceeded to give proof of their intention to launch into all the old persecutions for religion, if they possibly could, by summoning before them John Biddle, who may be regarded as the father of the Unitarians. He had been thrice imprisoned by the Long Parliament, for holding that he could not find in Scripture that Christ or the Holy Ghost was styled God. The Parliament committed him to the Gatehouse, and ordered a Bill to be prepared for his punishment.

It was high time that they were stopped in their incorrigible spirit of persecution; and by now proceeding to frame a Bill to include all their votes on the articles of the Instrument they were suddenly arrested in their progress. The Instrument provided that Parliament should not be adjourned under five months. On the 22nd of January, 1655, the Protector chose to consider that the months were not calendar but lunar months, which then expired. The Parliament, counting the other way, deemed themselves safe till the 3rd of February, but on the 22nd of January Oliver summoned them to the Painted Chamber, and observed to them, that though he had met them at first with the hope that their hearts were in the great work to which they had been called, he was quite disappointed in them. He complained that they had sent no message to him, taken no more notice of his presence in the Republic than if he had not existed, and that with all patience he had forborne teasing them with messages, hoping that they would at length proceed to some real business. "But," added he, "as I may not take notice of what you have been doing, so I think I have a very great liberty to tell you that I do not know what you have been doing; that I do not know whether you have been dead or alive. I have not once heard from you all this time. I have not, and that you all know."

He then reminded them that various discontented parties—the Royalists, the Levellers, and others—had been encouraged by their evident disposition to call in question the Government, to raise plots, and that if they were permitted to sit making quibbles about the Government itself, the nation would soon be plunged again into bloodshed and confusion. He, therefore, did then and there dissolve them as a Parliament.

The plots to which the Protector alluded had been going on for some time, and even yet were in full activity. We shall trace their main features, but we may first notice an incident which showed that Cromwell was prepared for them, resolved to sell his life manfully if attacked. On the 24th of September, 1654, immediately after compelling the Parliament to subscribe the Engagement, the Protector was out in Hyde Park, taking dinner under the shade of the trees, with Thurloe, the secretary, a man whom he constantly consulted on the affairs of the nation. After this little rural dinner, which gives us a very interesting idea of the simplicity of the great general's habits and tastes, he tried a team of six fine Friesland coach horses, presented to him by the Duke of Oldenburg. Thurloe was put into the carriage, Cromwell mounted the coachman's seat, and a postillion rode one of the fore horses. The horses soon became unruly, plunged, and threw the postillion, and then, nearly upsetting the carriage, threw the Protector from his seat, who fell upon the pole and had his legs entangled in the harness. On went the mad horses at full gallop, and one of Cromwell's shoes coming off, which had been held by the harness, he fell under the carriage, which went on without hurting him, except by some bruises. In the fall, however, a loaded pistol went off in his pocket, thus revealing the fact that he went armed.