[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1657.  Feb. 28.] the “drudge” of the officers, had done the work which they imposed on him, and had sacrificed his opinion to theirs.  If the present parliament had been called, it was in opposition to his individual judgment; if the bill, which proved so injurious to the majors-general, had been brought into the house, it was contrary to his advice.  But the officers had overrated their own strength:  the country called for an end to all arbitrary proceedings; the punishment of Naylor proved the necessity of a check on the judicial proceedings of the parliament, and that check could only be procured by investing the protector with additional authority.  This answer made several proselytes; but the majority adhered pertinaciously to their former opinion.[1]

Nor was this spirit confined to the army; in all companies men were heard to maintain that, to set up monarchy again was to pronounce condemnation on themselves, to acknowledge themselves guilty of all the blood which had been shed to put it down.  But nowhere did the proposal excite more cordial abhorrence than in the conventicles of the Fifth-monarchy-men.  In their creed the protectorate was an impiety, kingship a sacrilegious assumption of the authority belonging to the only King, the Lord Jesus.  They were his witnesses foretold in the Apocalypse; they had now slept their sleep of three years and a half; the time was come when it was their duty to rise and avenge the cause of the Lord.  In the conventicles of the capital the lion of Judah was chosen for their military device; arms were prepared, and the day of rising was fixed.  They amounted, indeed, to no more

[Footnote 1:  For this extraordinary speech we are indebted to the industry of Mr. Rutt.—­Burton’s Diary, i. 382.] than eighty men; but they were the champions of Him who, “though they might be as a worm, would enable them to thrash mountains.”  The projects of these fanatics did not escape the penetrating eye of Thurloe, who, for more than a year, had watched all their motions, and was in possession of all their secrets.  Their proceedings were regulated by five persons, each of whom presided in a separate conventicle, and kept his followers in ignorance of the names of the brethren associated under the four remaining leaders.  A fruitless attempt was made to unite them with the Levellers.  But the Levellers trusted too much to worldly wisdom; the fanatics wished to begin the strife, and to leave the issue to their Heavenly King.  The appointed day[a] came:  as they proceeded to the place of rendezvous, the soldiers of the Lord were met by the soldiers of the protector; twenty were made prisoners; the rest escaped, with the loss of their horses and arms, which were seized in the depot.[1]