lso that there
was an Officers' Petition in the interim. It was brought to the doors
of the House, by "divers officers of the Army," on the 8th, just as
the House was adjourning to the Banqueting House; and the Journals
only record that the officers were admitted, and that, a Colonel
Mason having presented the Petition in their name and his own, they
withdrew. The rest is guess; but two main facts cannot be doubted.
One is that Cromwell's great, if not sole, reason at last for
refusing the Crown was his knowledge of the persistent opposition of
a great number of the Army men. The other is that he remembered
afterwards who had been the chief _Contrariants_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 586-591; Commons Journals of dates. There had
been public pamphlets against the Kingship: e.g. one by Samuel
Chidley, addressed to the Parliament, and called "Reasons against
choosing the Protector to be King."]

While the great question of the Kingship had been in progress there
had been a detection of a conspiracy of the Fifth-Monarchy Men.

Ever since the abortive ending of the Barebones Parliament these
enthusiasts had been recognisable as a class of enemies of the
Protectorate distinct from the ordinary and cooler Republicans. While
Vane and Bradshaw might represent the Republicans or Commonwealth's
men generally, the head of the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans was
Harrison. The Harrisonian Republic, the impassioned dream of this
really great-hearted soldier, was the coming Reign of Christ on
Earth, and the trampling down, in anticipation of that reign, of all
dignities, institutions, ministries, and magistracies, that might be
inconsistent with it. In the Barebones Parliament, where the
Fifth-Monarchy Men had been numerous, and where Harrison had led
them, they had gone far, as we know, in conjunction with the
Anabaptists, in a practical attempt to convert Cromwell's interim
Dictatorship, with Cromwell's assent or acquiescence, into a
beginning of the great new era. They had voted down Tithes,
Church-Establishments, and all their connexions, and only the
steadiness of Rons, Sydenham, and the other sober spirits, in making
that vote the occasion of a resurrender of all power into Cromwell's
hands, had prevented the consequences. And so, Cromwell's
Protectorate having come in where Harrison wanted to keep a vacuum
for the Fifth Monarchy, and that Protectorate having not only
conserved Tithes and an Established Church, but professed them to