Widdrington; and of Army or Navy men, of former Parliamentary experience or not, there were Colonels Whalley, Robert Lilburne, Barkstead, Harvey, Stapley, Purefoy, Admiral Blake, and ex-Major-General Harrison.  Some of these had been returned by two constituencies.  Bradshaw was a member, with two of the Judges, Hale and Thorpe, and ex-Judge Glynne.  Lawyers besides were not wanting; and Dr. Owen, though a divine, represented Oxford University.  One missed chiefly, among old names, those of Sir Henry Vane Junior, Henry Marten, Selden, Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow; but there were many new faces.  Among the thirty members sent from Scotland were the Earl of Linlithgow, Sir Alexander Wedderburn, Colonel William Lockhart, the Laird of Swinton, and the English Colonels Okey and Read.  Ireland had also returned military Englishmen in Major-General Hardress Waller, Colonels Hewson, Sadler, Axtell, Venables, and Jephson, with Lord Broghill, Sir Charles Coote, Sir John Temple, Sir Robert King, and others, describable as Irish or Anglo-Irish.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Complete list gives in Parl.  Hist, III. 1428-1433.]

The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell’s “Fortunate Day,” chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and his opening speech was deferred till next day, On Monday, accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much that he liked.  It was a political sermon, on “Israel’s bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,”—­Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to.  Goodwill seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly “conservative” speech.  Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the three nations, Then he withdrew.  That same day they chose Lenthall for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Cromwell’s Second Speech (Carlyle, III. 16-37); Commons Journals of dates.]

Cromwell’s hopes were blasted.  The political division of the population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last denominations hardly separable by any clear line, Now, in this new Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians together formed a majority.  They needed only to coalesce, and the Parliament called by Oliver’s own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian Parliament.  And this is what happened.