most
attached to Cromwell personally, e.g. Sir Charles Wolseley, appear to
have been acquiescent, or even zealous for the Kingship; and there
were at least some military Oliverians, out of the Council, of the
same mind. In the final vote of March 25, carrying the offer of
Kingship, the tellers for the majority were Sir John Reynolds
(Tipperary and Waterford), and Major-General Charles Howard
(Cumberland), while those for the minority were Major-General Butler
(Northamptonshire), and Colonel Salmon (Dumfries Burghs).
Undoubtedly, however, the chief managers of the _Petition and
Advice_ in the House from the first had been Whitlocke, Glynne,
and others of the lawyers, with Lord Broghill. The lawyers had been
long anxious for a constitutional Kingship: nothing else, they
thought, could restore the proper machinery of Law and State, and
make things safe. Accordingly, out of doors, in the whole civilian
class, and largely also among the more conservative citizens, the
idea of Oliver's Kingship was far from unwelcome. The Presbyterians
generally, it is believed, were very favourable to it, their
dispositions towards Cromwell having changed greatly of late; nor of
the old Presbyterian Royalists were all averse. There were Royalists
now who were not Stuartists, who wanted a king on grounds of general
principle and expediency, but were not resolute that he should be
Charles II. only. The real combination of elements against Oliver's
Kingship consisted, therefore, of the unyielding old Royalists of the
Stuart adhesion, regarding the elevation of the usurping "brewer" to
the throne as abomination upon abomination, the Army Oliverians or
Lambert and Fleetwood men, interested in the preservation of the
existing Protectorate, and the passionate Republicans and Levellers,
who had not yet condoned even the Protectorate, and whom the
prospect of King and House of Lords over again, with all their
belongings, made positively frantic.

How far Cromwell had been aware beforehand of such a project as that
of Sir Christopher Pack's paper may be a question. That he had let it
be known for some time that he was not disinclined to a revision and
enlargement of the constitution of the original Protectorate may be
fairly assumed; but that he had concocted Pack's project and arranged
for bringing it on (which is Ludlow's representation, and, of course,
that of all the Histories) is very unlikely. The project, as in
Pack's paper, and as agreed upo