"Surely Your Highness hath no need to make any defence to us," said the Lord Lambert, one of his military council. Some number of them and other dignitaries were gathered in his apartment at Whitehall, listening to him.
His Highness, who had hitherto been pacing restlessly up and down the room, here came to a pause before the table at which the officers and councillors sat.
"I have need to defend myself before all men," he exclaimed vehemently, "for on every hand am I decried and blamed! I speak not of plots against my life and such little matters—the work of a few diabolic persons in the pay of Charles Stewart—but of the great discontent of the Prelatists, of the rage of the Papists, of the intolerance of all—yea, even of the sharpness and bitterness of many of God's people who go about saying that the ways of Zion are filled with money, that their gold is dim, and that there is a sharp wind abroad, but not to cleanse the land."
None of the officers offering to speak, Cromwell continued, still in an impassioned manner—
"Whoever speaks so is wrong! God put me here. My authority is from Him—I will come down for none of them."
He went to the window embrasure and stood there, with his back to the light, his hat pulled over his brows, his arms folded on his breast, gazing at his councillors and friends.
The Protectorship had lasted over a year, and Cromwell was now as absolute as ever any Stewart had dared to be.
His first Parliament had gone the way of the last of King Charles'; the members presuming to question the Instrument by which Cromwell had been elected, His Highness had again resorted to the file of soldiers with loaded snaphances, and, gathering the expelled members in the Painted Chamber, had made them swear fealty to the Instrument and to himself before he permitted them to return to their places.
The immovable Bradshaw, Sir Arthur Haselrig, one of the famous five members, and some others refused the oath; the rest took it and went back.
But so impossible was it to combine a military autocracy with the ancient methods of civil government, so impossible for soldiers and lawyers to work together, that the Parliament again displeased His Highness by revising the Instrument into a constitution which His Highness could not accept.