still faltered.  They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour, moreover, to the present Richard.  They pleaded that it was impossible to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from that body to make a House.  Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between 1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive.  There were then meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane’s house, with farther differences over some demands of the Army-magnates.  They demanded the payment of Richard’s debts, ample provision for his subsistence and dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a Select Senate or Other House.  To these demands for a continuation of the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield, though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a temporary Senate for definite purposes.  The differences had not been adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in restoring the Rump.  This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when there was drawn up for the purpose “A Declaration of the Officers of the Army,” signed by the Army Secretary “by the direction of the Lord Fleetwood and the Council of Officers,” and when two deputations, one of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house in Covent Garden.  It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ludlow, 644-649; Parl.  Hist.  III. 1546-7; Thomason Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.]

Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall.  To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, “he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long,” the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver’s and Richard’s courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic.  When the military deputation arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still very uneasy.  “He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late King had not put an end to the Parliament.”  That objection having been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet him next morning