majority of 125
to twenty-nine, to refer the excluded to the Council itself for any
farther satisfaction they wanted, and meanwhile "to proceed with the
great affairs of the nation." The House, _without_ the excluded,
it will be seen, was decidedly Oliverian in the main. The excluded,
or some of them, took their revenge by printing and distributing a
Protest or Remonstrance addressed to the Nation, with the names of
all the ninety-three attached, those of Hasilrig and Scott first. It
was a document of extreme vehemence, denouncing the Protector as an
armed tyrant and all who had abetted him in his last act as capital
enemies to the Commonwealth, and disowning beforehand, as null and
void, all that the truncated Parliament might do. Cromwell took no
notice whatever of this Remonstrance. By one more stroke of
"arbitrariness," bolder than any before, but allowed, he might plead,
by the Instrument of his Protectorate, he had fashioned for himself a
Second Parliament, likely to be more to his mind than his First.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept, 18-22, 1656; Whitlocke, IV.
274-280 (where the Remonstrance of the Excluded is given in full);
Ludlow, 579-580.]

So it proved. Some of the excluded having been admitted after all,
and new elections having been made in cases where members had been
returned by two or more constituencies, the House went on for the
first five months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7) with a pretty steady
working attendance of about 220 at the maximum--which implies that,
besides the excluded, there must have been a large number of
absentees or very lax attenders. During these five months a large
amount of miscellaneous business was done, with occasional divisions,
but no vital disagreement within the House, or between it and the
Protector. There was an Act for renouncing and disavowing Charles II,
over again, and an Act for the safety of the Lord Protector's person
and government, both made law, by Cromwell's assent, Oct. 27. There
was a vote of approbation of the war with Spain, with votes of means
for carrying it on. There were Bills, more formal than before, for
adjusting and completing the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland
with the Commonwealth. There were Committees of all sorts for
maturing these and other Bills. Among the grand Committees was one
for Religion. There were votes of reward to various persons for past
services. The better observance of the Lord's Day was one of the
subjects of d