Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of the method of Two Houses.  The experiment, however, had been, of his own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own broad notion of religious toleration.  At all events, the time had now come when the difficulty must be faced.

On Wednesday.  Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places.  Those of the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath prescribed in the Petition and Advice, They were the forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list of those summoned.  When it is considered that from seven to ten of those not asterisked there (e.g.  Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele, Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House mast be called, so far, a very successful one.  It had failed most conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed ingredients.  Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele, Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent.  More ominous still was the absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he would take if he did come.  Would he regard himself as still member for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House?  Meanwhile for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the prescribed oath of the Petition and Advice, by which they, as well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other things, “to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector,” &c., and not to “contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or lawful authority.”  It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in.  As many