d, of course, in the
circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There
was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by
request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or
six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee
of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and
Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the
one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a
restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the
majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the
Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission
of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and
conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As
Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the
Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his
lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether
the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his.
And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single
House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but
in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for
keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive
from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme
Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by
Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised;
Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but
still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and
extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and
the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was
even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an
extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and
if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared,
to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword,
let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few
fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under
the name of _Conservators of Liberty_, twenty-one men to be
guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three
fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in
perpetuity, without King, Single Pers