A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up, and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more was the parturition after all.

If Ludlow was in despair because no sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted, Milton's regret can have been no less.

Government after government, but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of Hirelings! So in the middle of December.

Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced.

Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert.