He was humoured in this; and, three fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2) Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements except by the Conservators--the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of Conservators.

All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight on the list,--dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two could hardly in decency be blackballed.

But then the order of voting was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man of the Parliamentarian party was let in.

Actually, the Laird of Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience, and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville, and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe.
Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland.

Nevertheless, his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December.