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.
This summary dealing did not cure the parliament of meddling with 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 ones, decreed by the protector and the council, to be confirmed or rejected by the 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 his 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 protectorate 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 were styled God. The parliament committed him to the gate-house, 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 ho 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 before that we may notice an incident which showed that Cromwell was prepared for them, resolved to sell his life manfully if attacked. On the 24th of September, immediately after compelling the parliament to subscribe the engagement, the protector was out in Hyde Park, taking a dinner under the shade of the trees, with Thurloe, the secretary, a man with whom he took much council 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 postilion 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.
And indeed he had great need. His mother, who died just now, on the 16th of November, and who was ninety-four years old, used, at the sound of a musket, says Ludlow, to imagine that her son was shot, and could not be satisfied unless she saw him once a day at least. Her last words to him do not give us any idea of hypocrisy in mother or son—"The Lord cause his face to shine upon you, and enable you to do great things for the glory of the Most High God, and to be a relief unto his people. My dear son, I leave my heart with thee. A good night!" Both mother and son undoubtedly believed him to be doing God's work. Amongst the plotters were both royalists and republicans.
The ejected members of parliament, in their different quarters, were stirring up discontent against Cromwell, and even declaring that it were better to have Charles Stuart back again. Colonel Overton, who had been questioned at the time of colonel Alured's dismissal, was once more called up and questioned. In Scotland, where he lay, the protector discovered an agitation to supersede Monk, and make the republican Overton commander-in-chief, and leaving only the garrisons, to march the rest of the army into England on the demand of pay and constitutional reform. Overton was committed to the Tower.
