ed by asterisks in the preceding list
of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of
those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele,
Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but
for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House
mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most
conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed
ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt
Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele,
Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the
absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had
not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he
would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member
for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded
thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same
seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he
reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile
for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with
Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had
mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the
Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the
prescribed oath of the _Petition and Advice_, by which they, as
well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other
things, "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector," &c., and not
to "contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or
lawful authority." It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to
the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be
stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early
hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many as
150 or 180 members in all, the formerly excluded and the old sitters
together, seem to have been in the House, thus sworn, about the time
when the forty-three were assembled in the adjacent Other House. The
Commons had then resumed business, on their own account, as met after
regular adjournment. They had appointed a Mr. John Smythe to be their
Clerk, in lieu of Mr. Henry Scobell, now made general "Clerk of the
Parliament" and transferred to the Other House, and they had fixed
that day week as a day of prayer for divine assistance, when the
Usher of the Black