ephson
telling for the majority, and Major-General Whalley and Colonel
Talbot for the minority; on the main question there was a majority of
seventy-eight, with Admiral Montague and Sir John Hobart for tellers,
against sixty-five, told by General Desborough and Colonel Hewson. A
Committee having then prepared a brief paper representing to his
Highness the serious obligation he was under in such a matter, there
was a second Conference of the whole House with his Highness (April
8). His reply to Widdrington then (_Speech_ IX.) did not
withdraw his former refusal, but signified willingness to receive
farther information and counsel. To give such information and
counsel, and In fact to reason out the matter thoroughly with
Cromwell, the House then appointed a large Committee of
_ninety-nine_, composed in the main, one must fancy, of members
who were now eager for the Kingship, or at least had ceased to
object. Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne, Fiennes, Lenthall, Lord
Commissioner Lisle, Sir Charles Wolseley, and Thurloe, were to be the
most active members of this Committee; but it included also Admiral
Montague, Generals Howard, Jephson, Whalley, Pack, Goffe, and Berry,
with Sydenham, Rous, the Scotch Earl of Tweeddale, the Lord Provost
of Edinburgh, the poet Waller, and even Strickland. The Committee was
appointed April 9, and the House was to await the issue.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 218-228 (with Cromwell's _Speeches_
VII., VIII., and IX.); Commons Journals of dates.]

It seemed as if it would never be reached. The Conferences of the
Committee with Cromwell between April 11 to May 8, their reasonings
with him to induce him to accept the Kingship, his reasonings in
reply in the four speeches now numbered X.-XIII. of the Cromwell
series, his doubts, delays, avoidances of several meetings, and
constant adjournments of his final answer, make a story of great
interest in the study of Cromwell's character, not without remarkable
flashes of light on past transactions, and on Cromwell's theory of
his Protectorship and of Government in general. Speech XIII., in
particular, which is by far the longest, and which was addressed to
the Committee on April 21, is full of instruction. Having in his
previous speeches dealt chiefly with the subject of the Kingship, and
stated such various objections to the kingly title as the bad
associations with it, the blasting as if for ever which it had
received from God's Providence in England,