671-672.] The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them.

The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected.

The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's.

There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland.

In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's.