tion by
withdrawing the powers of the major-generals.

[Sidenote: Offer of the Crown to Cromwell.]

But the defeat of the tyranny of the sword was only a step towards a far
bolder effort for the restoration of the power of the law. It was no
mere pedantry, still less was it vulgar flattery, which influenced the
Parliament in their offer to Cromwell of the title of king. The
experience of the last few years had taught the nation the value of the
traditional forms under which its liberties had grown up. A king was
limited by constitutional precedents. "The king's prerogative," it was
well urged, "is under the courts of justice, and is bounded as well as
any acre of land, or anything a man hath." A Protector, on the other
hand, was new in our history, and there were no traditional means of
limiting his power. "The one office being lawful in its nature," said
Glynne, "known to the nation, certain in itself, and confined and
regulated by the law, and the other not so--that was the great ground
why the Parliament did so much insist on this office and title." Under
the name of Monarchy, indeed, the question really at issue between the
party headed by the officers and the party led by the lawyers in the
Commons was that of the restoration of constitutional and legal rule. In
March 1657 the proposal was carried by an overwhelming majority, but a
month passed in endless consultations between the Parliament and the
Protector. His good sense, his knowledge of the general feeling of the
nation, his real desire to obtain a settlement which should secure the
ends for which Puritanism fought, political and religious liberty,
broke, in conference after conference, through a mist of words. But his
real concern throughout was with the temper of the army. Under whatever
spurious disguises he cloaked the true nature of his government from the
world, Cromwell knew well that it was a sheer government of the sword,
that he was without hold upon the nation, and that the discontent of
his soldiery would at once shake the fabric of his power. He vibrated to
and fro between his sense of the political advantages of such a
settlement, and his sense of its impossibility in face of the mood of
the army. His soldiers, he said, were no common swordsmen. They were
"godly men, men that will not be beaten down by a worldly and carnal
spirit while they keep their integrity"; men in whose general voice he
recognized the voice of God. "They are honest and fa