the credit of this extraordinary
man, that though a great master of fraud and dissimulation, he judged it
superfluous to employ any disguise in conducting this bold enterprise.
He summoned a general council of officers; and immediately found, that
they were disposed to receive whatever impressions he was pleased to
give them. Most of them were his creatures, had owed their advancement
to his favor, and relied entirely upon him for their future preferment.
The breach being already made between the military and civil powers,
when the late king was seized at Holdenby, the general officers regarded
the parliament as at once their creature and their rival; and thought,
that they themselves were entitled to share among them those offices
and riches, of which its members had so long kept possession. Harrison,
Rich, Overton, and a few others, who retained some principle, were
guided by notions so extravagant, that they were easily deluded into
measures the most violent and most criminal. And the whole army had
already been guilty of such illegal and atrocious actions, that they
could entertain no further scruple with regard to any enterprise which
might serve their selfish or fanatical purposes.

In the council of officers it was presently voted to frame a
remonstrance to the parliament. After complaining of the arrears due to
the army, they there desired the parliament to reflect how many years
they had sitten, and what professions they had formerly made of their
intentions to new model the representative, and establish successive
parliaments, who might bear the burden of national affairs, from which
they themselves would gladly, after so much danger and fatigue, be at
last relieved. They confessed that the parliament had achieved great
enterprises, and had surmounted mighty difficulties; yet was it an
injury, they said, to the rest of the nation to be excluded from bearing
any part in the service of their country. It was now full time for them
to give place to others; and they therefore desired them, after settling
a council, who might execute the laws during the interval, to summon a
new parliament, and establish that free and equal government which they
had so long promised to the people.

The parliament took this remonstrance in ill part, and made a sharp
reply to the council of officers. The officers insisted on their advice;
and by mutual altercation and opposition, the breach became still wider
between the army and the