peers with Hewson, once
a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer's drayman, and Berry, once a clerk
in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly
quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and
Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the
very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons
notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig
and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as
a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have
some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would
be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would
have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most
distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson,
were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if,
after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought
together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of
the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading
members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most
dangerous. For, by the _Petition and Advice_, were not the
Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety
or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let
or hindrance from the Protector?

Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his
Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a
Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of
the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his
own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House
take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and
orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might
increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own
broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now
come when the difficulty must be faced.

On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of
them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of
the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of
Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had
presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath
prescribed in the _Petition and Advice_, They were the
forty-three whose names are mark