It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon from Dr. Owen.  Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales were the Protector’s eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon, Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry, Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne).  Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,—­this last long an absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were Englishmen:  e.g.  President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk’s brother-in-law) for Ross, Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews, &c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart, Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay.  Ireland had returned, among her thirty (who were nearly all Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles Coote, and several Colonels.[1]—­Not a few of the chief members had been returned by more than one constituency:  e.g.  Lord Broghill, for Cork as well as for Edinburgh.  Several of those returned cannot have been expected to give attendance, at least at first.  Thus, Admirals Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and Portugal.  But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge.  Ambassador Lockhart also had come over, or was coming.

[Footnote 1:  List of the members returned for the Second Parliament of the Protectorate in Part.  Hist. III. 1479-1484.]

There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen’s opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to business.

One was the Lord Protector’s opening speech in the Painted Chamber, now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series.  It was very long, of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter.  The pervading topic was the war with Spain.  This was justified, with approving references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the subject, entitled Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c. (Milton’s?),