creed so much earlier and so much
more tenaciously than any other public man? Seven years ago Milton
had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on
whose firm hand she could lean in peace. Now that he was again in
power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary
body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a
Constitution _de novo_, what might he not accomplish? That Vane
did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with
Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also
that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the
lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane,
and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was
substantially Whitlocke's. It was on the 6th of December that this
draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy
delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after
modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's
than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved
and ratified. A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet
in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be
appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up,
and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample
State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of
Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more
was the parturition after all. If Ludlow was in despair because no
sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be
true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were
disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted,
Milton's regret can have been no less. Government after government,
but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the
heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary
state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of
Hirelings!

So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange
phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion
which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution
nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop
Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just
been announced. Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done
the work without the need of his advance