Witness above, or God’s manifest Providence in leading him to where he was; the Witness within, or his own consciousness of integrity; and the Witnesses without, or testimonies of confidence he had received from the Army, the Judges, the City of London, other cities, counties and boroughs, and public bodies of all sorts.  “I believe,” he said, “that, if the learnedest men in this nation were called to show a precedent, equally clear, of a Government so many ways approved of, they would not in all their search, find it.”  Then, coming to the point, he asked what right the present Parliament had to come after all those witnesses and challenge his authority.  Had they not been elected under writs issued by him, in which writs it was expressly inserted, by regulation of Article XII. of the Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, “That the persons elected shall not have power to alter the Government as it is hereby settled in one Single Person and a Parliament”?  On this point he was very emphatic.  “That your judgments, who are persons sent from all parts of the nation under the notion of approving this Government—­for you to disown or not to own it; for you to act with Parliamentary authority especially in the disowning of it, contrary to the very fundamental things, yea against the very root of this Establishment; to sit and not own the Authority by which you sit:—­is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself.”  A revision of the Constitution of the Protectorate in circumstantials he would not object to, but the fundamentals must be left untouched.  And let those hearing him be under no mistake as to his own resolution.  “The wilful throwing away of this Government, such as it is, so owned of God, so approved by men, so witnessed to in the fundamentals of it as was mentioned above, were a thing which,—­and in reference not to my good, but to the good of these Nations and Posterity,—­I can sooner be willing to be rolled into my grave, and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent unto.”  He had therefore called them now that they might come to an understanding.  There was a written parchment in the lobby of the Parliament House to which he requested the signatures of such as might see fit.  The doors of the Parliament House would then be open for all such, to proceed thenceforth as a free Parliament in all things, subject to the single condition expressed in that parchment.  “You have an absolute Legislative Power in all things that can possibly concern the good and interest of the public; and I think you may make these Nations happy by this settlement.”  With so much great work before them, with the three nations looking on in hope, with foreign nations looking on with wonder or worse feelings, had they not a great responsibility?[1]

[Footnote 1:  Carlyle’s Cromwell, III. 37-61.]