To this petition Pride had obtained the signatures of two Colonels, seven Lieutenant-Colonels, eight Majors, and sixteen Captains, not members of the House; and Cromwell, learning what was in progress, had sent for Fleetwood, and scolded him for allowing such a thing, the rather as Fleetwood must know “his resolution not to accept the crown without the consent of the Army.”  The appointment with the House in the Painted Chamber for the 7th was changed, however, into that in the Banqueting House on the 8th, the latter place, as the more familiar, being fitter for the negative answer he now meant to give.—­Ludlow’s story, though he cites Desborough as his chief informant, is not perfectly credible in all its details; but the Commons Journals do show that the meeting originally appointed by Cromwell on the 6th for the Painted Chamber on the 7th was put off to the 8th, and then held in the Banqueting House, and also 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