er opinion.[1]

Nor was this spirit confined to the army; in all companies men were heard
to maintain that, to set up monarchy again was to pronounce condemnation
on themselves, to acknowledge themselves guilty of all the blood which had
been shed to put it down. But nowhere did the proposal excite more cordial
abhorrence than in the conventicles of the Fifth-monarchy-men. In their
creed the protectorate was an impiety, kingship a sacrilegious assumption
of the authority belonging to the only King, the Lord Jesus. They were his
witnesses foretold in the Apocalypse; they had now slept their sleep of
three years and a half; the time was come when it was their duty to rise
and avenge the cause of the Lord. In the conventicles of the capital the
lion of Judah was chosen for their military device; arms were prepared, and
the day of rising was fixed. They amounted, indeed, to no more

[Footnote 1: For this extraordinary speech we are indebted to the industry
of Mr. Rutt.--Burton's Diary, i. 382.] than eighty men; but they were the
champions of Him who, "though they might be as a worm, would enable them
to thrash mountains." The projects of these fanatics did not escape the
penetrating eye of Thurloe, who, for more than a year, had watched
all their motions, and was in possession of all their secrets. Their
proceedings were regulated by five persons, each of whom presided in a
separate conventicle, and kept his followers in ignorance of the names
of the brethren associated under the four remaining leaders. A fruitless
attempt was made to unite them with the Levellers. But the Levellers
trusted too much to worldly wisdom; the fanatics wished to begin the
strife, and to leave the issue to their Heavenly King. The appointed day[a]
came: as they proceeded to the place of rendezvous, the soldiers of the
Lord were met by the soldiers of the protector; twenty were made prisoners;
the rest escaped, with the loss of their horses and arms, which were seized
in the depot.[1]

In the mean while the new form of government had received the sanction of
the house. Cromwell, when it was laid before him, had recourse to his usual
arts, openly refusing that for which he ardently longed, and secretly
encouraging his friends to persist, that his subsequent acquiescence might
appear to proceed from a sense of duty, and not from the lust of power. At
first,[b] in reply to a long and tedious harangue from the speaker, he told
them of "the consternat