Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and others, would not sign the document offered them, which was a brief engagement “to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth,” and not to propose alteration of the Government as “settled in a single Person and a Parliament.”  The Parliament, therefore, lost these leaders; but within an hour “The Recognition,” as it came to be called, was signed by a hundred members, and the number was raised to 140 before the day was over, and ultimately to about 300.  And so, with this goodly number, the House went on.  But the Anti-Oliverian leaven was still strong in it.  This appeared even in the immediate dealings of the House with the Recognition itself.  They first (Sept, 14) declared that it should not be construed to comprehend the whole Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, but only the main principle of the first Article; and then (Sept. 18) they converted the Recognition into a resolution of their own, requiring all members to sign it, Next, in order to get rid of the stumbling-block of the First Article altogether, they resolved (Sept. 19) that the Supreme Legislative authority was and did reside in “One Person and the People assembled in Parliament,” and also (Sept. 20) that Oliver Cromwell was and should he Lord Protector for life, and that there should be Triennial Parliaments.  Thus free to advance through the rest of the Forty-two Articles at their leisure, they made that thenceforward almost their sole work.  Through the rest of September, the whole of October, and part of November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty Articles instead of the Forty-two.  A Bill for enacting this Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these amendments and others.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates given and of Nov. 7, and Godwin, IV, 130-132.]

In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the House on November 10.  In the first the question was whether the Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200 votes to 60 that it should not.  This was not strictly an Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell’s family, many of the undoubted Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell.  More distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was on a question of deep interest to Cromwell:  viz. the amount of his prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on fundamentals.  In his last speech he had himself indicated these “fundamentals,” which ought to be safe against attack even by Parliament—­one