Lord Protector, to be the undoubted Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate,” it was carried by 191 votes to 168 to retain the words “recognise and,” and so to accept Richard’s accession as valid already.  On a proposal to leave out the word “undoubted” Thurloe did not think a division worth while, but made the concession.  He did oppose a resolution, suddenly brought forward, to the effect that the vote just passed should not be binding until the House should have settled the clauses farther defining the powers of the Lord Protector; but that resolution, having caught the fancy of the House, passed with his single dissent.  On the whole, he had succeeded in his first great battle with the Republicans.—­Nor was he less successful in the second.  The Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe’s policy to push next the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector.  On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one.  It involved other questions, some of them apparently independent.  Thus, on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn.  Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England calling itself “The House of Lords,” the Republican speakers had played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm, sneering at the existing “Other House,” with its shabby equipment of old colonels and other originally mean persons.  If there was to be a House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of them honourable men, resume their places?  “Why not?” was the instant retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of many in the House.  Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not fail to take advantage.  “The old Peers,” said Thurloe, “are not excluded by the Petition and Advice:  divers are called,—­others may be”; and the occasion was taken to pass a resolution expressly reserving for such of the old peers as had been faithful the privilege of being summoned to the Other House, should the issue of the debate be in favour of the existence of that institution.  The divisions on this incidental resolution were the largest recorded in the Journals of the House—­the previous question for putting the resolution being carried by 203 to 184, and the resolution itself by 195 to 188.  Though the majority was but small, the gain to the Court Party was precious, because on