be
parts of its very basis, Harrison had abjured Cromwell for ever.
"Those who had been to me as the apple of my eye," said Harrison
afterwards, "when they had turned aside, said to me, Sit thou on my
right hand; but I loathed it." Through the Protectorate, accordingly,
Harrison, dismissed from the Army, had been living as a suspected
person, with great powers of harm; and, three or four times, when
there were Republican risings, or threatenings of such, it had been
thought necessary to question him, or put him under temporary arrest.
The last occasion had been just before the opening of the present
Parliament, when he was arrested with Vane, Rich, and others, and had
the distinction of being sent as far off as Pendennis Castle in
Cornwall, while Vane was sent only to the Isle of Wight, and Rich
only to Windsor. The imprisonments, however, being merely
precautionary, had been but short; and, at the time of the proposal
of the Kingship to Cromwell, Harrison, as well as the others, was
again at liberty.

That Harrison had ever practically implicated himself in any attempt
to upset the Protectorate by force hardly appears from the evidence.
He was an experienced soldier, and, with all his fervid notions of a
Fifth Monarchy, too massive a man to stir without calculation. All
that can be said is that he was an avowed enemy of Cromwell's rule,
that he was looked up to by all the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans, and
that he held himself free to act should there be fit opportunity. But
there were Harrisonians of a lower grade than Harrison. Especially in
London, since the winter of 1655, there had been a kind of society of
Fifth-Monarchy Men, holding small meetings in five places, only one
man in each meeting knowing who belonged to the others, but the five
connecting links forming a central Committee for management and
propagandism. It must have been from this Committee, I suppose, that
there emanated, in Sept. 1656, a pamphlet called "_The Banner of
Truth displayed, or a Testimony for Christ and against Antichrist:
being the substance of several consultations holden and kept by a
certain number of Christians who are waiting for the visible
appearance of Christ's Kingdom in and over the World, and residing in
and about the City of London_." Probably as yet these humble
Fifth-Monarchy Men had not gone beyond private aspirations. At all
events, Thurloe, though aware of their existence, had not thought
them worth notice. But Sinderc