to join with any insurrection that may be made.  And what is like to come upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood and confusion?  And, if this be so, I do assign it to this cause:  your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your Petition and Advice, as that which might prove the Settlement of the Nation.  And, if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to your sitting.  And I DO DISSOLVE THIS PARLIAMENT.  And let God be judge between you and me!"[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates; and Carlyle, III. 348-353.]

Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end.  Cromwell’s explanation of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate.  Through the first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian conclave.  Fourteen folio pages of the Commons Journals are the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate Session.  Oliver’s Lords can have had little more to do than meet and look at each other.

* * * * *

There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived.  For seven months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say, more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain.

There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of the late Parliament retained the name of “Lords.”  Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (alias “The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord Sydenham, Lord Jones (alias “Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr. Secretary Thurloe:  such would have been the minute of a complete sederunt of the Council when, it resumed duty after the dissolution of the Parliament.  There never was such a complete sederunt: ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance, rising sometimes to twelve.  Occasionally Cromwell came to one of their meetings; but generally they transacted business among themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately.  A few of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest; Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe.  His Highness had, moreover, a private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already for several years.[1]