preamble, and
conclusion, and read over the whole, and consider the coherence, and
make it perfect." All which having been done that same day, and the
House having given some last touches, the document was ready to be
engrossed for presentation to Cromwell. By recommendation of the
Committee, the title had been changed from _Address and
Remonstrance_ into _Petition and Advice_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and between March 5 and March
25.]

Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through
the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious
vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the
introduction of Sir Christopher Pack's paper and the conversion of
the same into the _Petition and Advice_, with the distinct offer
of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the
affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even
horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had
hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate.
Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military
opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals,
and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their
motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion
of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a
Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have
to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still
lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to
a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It
had been some of the Oliverian Army-men in Parliament, at all events,
that had first resisted Pack's motion. Ludlow's story is that they
very nearly laid violent hands on Pack when he produced his paper;
and the divisions in the Commons Journals exhibit Lambert and various
Colonels, with Strickland, as among the chief obstructors of the
_Petition and Advice_ in its passage through the House.
Strickland, it will be remembered, was an eminent member of the
Protector's own Council; and, as far as one can gather, several
others of that body, besides Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and
Strickland--perhaps half of the whole number of those now habitually
attending the Council--were opposed to the Kingship. On the other
hand, the more enthusiastic Oliverians of the Council, those