On the 1st of November the Committee had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his peculiar Scottish point of view.

So far as Milton was cognisant of the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend Vane.

If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those articles as tenets of his private creed so much earlier and so much more tenaciously than any other public man?
Seven years ago Milton had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on whose firm hand she could lean in peace.

Now that he was again in power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a Constitution _de novo_, what might he not accomplish?
That Vane did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane, and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was substantially Whitlocke's.

It was on the 6th of December that this draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved and ratified.