[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, vii. 99, 100, 144, 295.]

war with Spain, cut off one of the most plentiful sources of profit, the Spanish trade; and the number of prizes made by the enemy, amounting to more than a thousand,[1] had ruined many opulent houses.  The application was eluded by a demand of security on the landed property belonging to country gentlemen.  There remained a third expedient,—­an application to parliament.  But Cromwell, like the first Charles, had learned to dread the very name of a parliament.  Three of these assemblies he had moulded according to his own plan, and yet not one of them could he render obsequious to his will.  Urged, however, by the ceaseless importunities of Thurloe, he appointed[a] nine councillors to inquire into the means of defeating the intrigues of the republicans in a future parliament; the manner of raising a permanent revenue from the estates of the royalists; and the best method of determining the succession to the protectorate.  But among the nine were two who, aware of his increasing infirmities, began to cherish projects of their own aggrandizement, and who, therefore, made it their care to perplex and to prolong the deliberations.  The committee sat three weeks.  On the two first questions they came to no conclusion; with respect to the third, they voted, on a division, that the choice between an elective and an hereditary succession was a matter of indifference.  Suspicious of their motives, Cromwell dissolved[b] the committee.[2] But he substituted no

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, vii. 662.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid. 146, 176, 192, 269.  The committee consisted, in Thurloe’s words, of Lord Fiennes, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Desborow, Lord Chamberlayne, Lord Whalley, Mr. Comptroller, Lord Goffe, Lord Cooper, and himself (p. 192).  On this selection Henry Cromwell observes:  “The wise men were but seven; it seems you have made them nine.  And having heard their names, I think myself better able to guess what they’ll do than a much wiser man; for no very wise man can ever imagine it” (p. 217).]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1658 June 16.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1658 July 8.]

council in its place; things were allowed to take their course; the embarrassment of the treasury increased; and the irresolution of the protector, joined to the dangers which threatened the government, shook the confidence of Thurloe himself.  It was only when he looked up to heaven that he discovered a gleam of hope, in the persuasion that the God who had befriended Cromwell through life, would not desert him at the close of his career.[1][a]