have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the
Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a
Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have
passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been
founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution
of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's
Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the
natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question
whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but
calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone
with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to
revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact
answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now
pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be
than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had
dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat
the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the
Government.--With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours
that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane,
Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council
itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered.
They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such
Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old
Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme
magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour,
moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible
to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from
that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been
extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a
list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had
been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between
1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then
meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther
differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the
payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and
dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also
demanded that, besides the Representativ