supreme authority in the nation; and
the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage,
insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate
authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate. But the country
was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland
and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and
Cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to
the advantage of the exiled king. As a last resource, the officers, by
an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding,
invited[a] the members of the long parliament to resume the trust of

[Footnote 1: See the Humble Remonstrance from four hundred Non-commissioned
Officers and Privates of Major-general Goffe's Regiment (so called) of
Foot. London, 1659.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. May 6.]

which they had been unrighteously deprived. With some difficulty,
two-and-forty were privately collected in the Painted Chamber; Lenthall,
the former speaker, after much entreaty, put himself at their head,[a] and
the whole body passed into the house through two lines of officers, some
of whom were the very individuals by whom, six years before, they had been
ignominiously expelled.[1]

The reader will recollect that, on a former occasion, in the year 1648, the
Presbyterian members of the long parliament had been excluded by the army.
Of these, one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, eighty of whom
actually resided in the capital. That they had as good a right to resume
their seats as the members who had been expelled by Cromwell could hardly
be doubted; but they were royalists, still adhering to the principles which
they professed during the treaty in the Isle of Wight, and from their
number, had they been admitted, would have instantly outvoted the advocates
of republicanism. They assembled in Westminster Hall;[b] and a deputation
of fourteen, with Sir George Booth, Prynne, and Annesley at their head,
proceeded to the house. The doors were closed in their faces; a company of
soldiers, the keepers, as they were sarcastically called, of the liberties
of England, filled the lobby; and a resolution was passed that no former
member, who had not subscribed the engagement, should sit till further
order of parliament.[c] The attempt, however, though it failed of success,
produced its effect. It served to countenance a belief that the sitting
members w