[Footnote 1:  Carlyle, III. 320-326; Commons Journals Jan. 21 and Jan. 25, 1657-8.  Fiennes’s speech is given in full under the last date, and must have much talked of.  Whitlocke also prints it, IV. 315-329.]

Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes’s own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable Manasseh.  The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the Petition and Advice generally, would be to question the powers of the new House as defined in the constituting document.  The definition had been rather vague.  The meaning had certainly been that the new House should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty affairs.  This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution.  They had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general “Clerk of the Parliament,” to the possession of certain documents; but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting (Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that “some gentlemen were at the door with a message from the Lords.”  The message was merely a request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the three nations; but, purporting to be from “the Lords,” it cut very deep.  By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved “That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own,” i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject.  Two more days passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo!  Sir Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on being sworn and admitted to his seat.  He had disdained the summons to the Other House, and his proper place was here! With some hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House.  He, Thomas Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors.  Outside there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the Protector.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 479-495; Carlyle, III. 328.]