tector said years afterwards. Whatever anxiety may have been felt at
the use which was like to be made of "the power of the sword," was in
great part dispelled by a proclamation of the officers. They professed
that their one anxiety was "not to grasp the power ourselves nor to keep
it in military hands, no not for a day," and their promise to "call to
the government men of approved fidelity and honesty" was to some extent
redeemed by the nomination of a provisional Council of State, consisting
of eight officers of high rank and four civilians, with Cromwell as
their head, and a seat in which was offered, though fruitlessly, to
Vane.

[Sidenote: The Convention.]

The first business of such a body was clearly to summon a new Parliament
and to resign its trust into its hands. But the bill for Parliamentary
reform had dropped with the expulsion of the Rump; and reluctant as the
Council was to summon a new Parliament on the old basis of election, it
shrank from the responsibility of effecting so fundamental a change as
the creation of a new basis by its own authority. It was this difficulty
which led to the expedient of a Constituent Convention. Cromwell told
the story of this unlucky assembly some years after with an amusing
frankness. "I will come and tell you a story of my own weakness and
folly. And yet it was done in my simplicity--I dare avow it was. . . .
It was thought then that men of our own judgement, who had fought in the
wars, and were all of a piece on that account--why, surely, these men
will hit it, and these men will do it to the purpose, whatever can be
desired! And surely we did think, and I did think so--the more blame to
me!" Of the hundred and fifty-six men, "faithful, fearing God, and
hating covetousness," whose names were selected for this purpose by the
Council of State from lists furnished by the Congregational churches,
the bulk were men, like Ashley Cooper, of good blood and "free estates";
and the proportion of burgesses, such as the leather-merchant,
Praise-God Barebones, whose name was eagerly seized on as a nickname for
the body to which he belonged, seems to have been much the same as in
earlier Parliaments. But the circumstances of their choice told fatally
on the temper of its members. Cromwell himself, in the burst of rugged
eloquence with which he welcomed their assembling on the fourth of July,
was carried away by a strange enthusiasm. "Convince the nation," he
said, "that as men fearin