Cromwell listened patiently. When Whitelocke, rather confused and breathless, had brought his speech to an end he answered mildly—
"Neither the law nor the constitution gave authority for the execution of a king. Yet we did it. Therefore we may do other things for which there is no warrant in charter or Parliament roll, but for which the warrant cometh from God. Yet for the moment I have no more to say."
CHAPTER III
EXIT THE PARLIAMENT
During these days the Lord-General and his colleagues, Harrison and Lambert, waited much on the Lord, confessing their sinfulness and asking for Divine help.
Behind them was always the army, demanding arrears of pay, work for the poor, and the suppression of the general lawlessness of the kingdom; there were many more conferences between the lawyers and the soldiers; towards the close of 1652 Cromwell gently, and Lambert and Harrison not at all gently, began to say that it was the Lord's will that the Parliament should go. Parliament, they declared, should call a convention and then abdicate.
The gentlemen at Westminster, seeing the military saints were in earnest, set themselves to prepare a scheme of government which should meet the approval of the army; the wise and valiant Sir Harry Vane, the younger, drew up a bill to provide for a provisional government, the nucleus of which was to be the members now sitting, they who had been ever in the forefront of the fight since that fight had begun.
This scheme to give perpetuity to a body which they wished to completely abolish only further exasperated the army; Cromwell and Harrison pushed forward their own bill.
On the 19th of April, Vane and Cromwell and their several supporters held another conference in the suite of apartments in Whitehall Palace, now given to the Lord-General, at which both parties agreed to stay their hands until the discussion should be resumed and brought to some conclusion. The next day Cromwell was more cheerful than had been usual with him of late; he loved polemics and to measure his rhetoric with others; yesterday's long argument with Sir Harry Vane had enlivened him; he looked forward to a resumption of the conference and to a final triumph for the Cause; he had recently communed much with himself, brooded and considered in his soul, and he was convinced that God had further work for him; part of that work he believed to be to settle the nation—and not by way of the Parliament.