others were variously under guard. Nor did
leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament,
a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John
Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still
there. All this new "arbitrariness" for the moment was for the
purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books through July, Aug. and Sept. 1656;
Godwin, IV. 261-277; Ludlow, 568-573; Catalogue of Thomason
Pamphlets.]

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