a
second House, the members of which were to enjoy their seats for life and
exercise some of the functions of the former House of Lords. Cromwell was
asked to assume the title of king with the right of naming his own
successor. The kingship after considerable hesitation he declined (8 May):
"I cannot undertake this government with the title of king. And that is
mine answer to this great and weighty business."(1085) The rest of the
terms he accepted, and on the 28th June he was again installed as Lord
Protector in the presence of the mayor and aldermen, the mayor to the left
of the Protector bearing the civic sword, with the Earl of Warwick to the
right bearing the sword of state.(1086) On the 1st July public
proclamation was made in the city with great solemnity.(1087)

(M550)

In due course writs were issued to more than sixty persons--many of them
members of the House of Commons, whilst others were men of the lower
orders, Puritan officers or parliamentary supporters of Cromwell--to form a
new House, a "Peerage of fact," not of descent.(1088) Among them was Glyn,
the city's late Recorder, now a chief justice; two city aldermen, viz.,
Christopher Pack, the prime mover in the restoration of the second House,
and Robert Tichborne, who, in honour of his promotion, it may be,
presented in the following year a silver bason and ewer weighing 110 ozs.
to the City for the use of the lord mayor and his successors.(1089)
Colonels Pride and Skippon, soldiers of fortune who had done good service
both in parliament and on the field, also found seats among Cromwell's new
peers, as also did John Hewson, erstwhile a shoemaker and still a member
of the Cordwainers' Company, which honoured him with a banquet at which
special dishes, we read, were provided for "my lord Hewson."

(M551)

The new House was not a success. It soon began to give itself the airs of
the hereditary House of Lords and fell foul of the Commons. Cromwell saw
no other course open but to dissolve his second Protectorate Parliament,
which he did on the 4th February (1658).

(M552)

On Friday, the 12th March (1658), the civic authorities were sent for to
Whitehall, where they were informed by Cromwell that Charles meditated an
invasion, and that Ormond had recently been engaged in enlisting support
for the royalist cause in and about the city. They were asked to put the
city into a state of readiness for the suppression of tumult and disorder
if any should arise