Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:--first, the question of the Protectorate itself or Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House or House of Lords.

On the first they were definitively beaten in February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively, and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of March (ante pp.

432-435).

Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics.

No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage.