"There is little to hope for from such men for a settlement of the nation," he concluded.
The war with Holland precipitated the result. This war acted as a barometer for the Parliament. It was a naval combat. In the first meeting of the two fleets the Dutch were defeated, and the mercury of Parliamentarian pride rose. In the next combat Van Tromp, the veteran Dutch admiral, drove Blake with a shattered fleet into the Thames. Van Tromp swept the Channel in triumph, with a broom at his mast-head. The hopes of the members went down to zero. They agreed to disband in November. Cromwell promised to reduce the army. But Blake put to sea again, fought Van Tromp in a four days' running fight, and won the honors of the combat. Up again went the mercury of Parliamentary hope and pride. The members determined to continue in power, and not only claimed the right to remain members of the new Parliament, but even to revise the returns of the elected members, and decide for themselves if they would have them as fellows.
The issue was now sharply drawn between army and Parliament. The officers met and demanded that Parliament should at once dissolve, and let the Council of State manage the new elections. A conference was held between officers and members, at Cromwell's house, on April 19, 1653. It ended in nothing. The members were resolute.
"Our charge," said Haslerig, arrogantly, "cannot be transferred to any one."
The conference adjourned till the next morning, Sir Harry Vane engaging that no action should be taken till it met again. Yet when it met the next morning the leading members of Parliament were absent, Vane among them. Their absence was suspicious. Were they pushing the bill through the House in defiance of the army?
Cromwell was present,—"in plain black clothes, and gray worsted stockings,"—a plain man, but one not safe to trifle with. The officers waited a while for the members. They did not come. Instead there came word that they were in their seats in the House, busily debating the bill that was to make them rulers of the nation without consent of the people, hurrying it rapidly through its several stages. If left alone they would soon make it a law.
Then the man who had hurled Charles I. from his throne lost his patience. This, in his opinion, had gone far enough. Since it had come to a question whether a self-elected Parliament, or the army to which England owed her freedom, should hold the balance of power, Cromwell was not likely to hesitate.
"It is contrary to common honesty!" he broke out, angrily.
Leaving Whitehall, he set out for the House of Parliament, bidding a company of musketeers to follow him. He entered quietly, leaving his soldiers outside. The House now contained no more than fifty-three members. Sir Harry Vane was addressing this fragment of a Parliament with a passionate harangue in favor of the bill. Cromwell sat for some time in silence, listening to his speech, his only words being to his neighbor, St. John.
"I am come to do what grieves me to the heart," he said.