The delay had been useful.

Though Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the mass of the military men, still remained "contrariants," not a few of them had been shaken by Cromwell's arguments, or at least by his judgment.

If _he_, whom it was their habit to trust, was prepared to take the Kingship, and saw reasons for it, why should they stand out?
So, before the vote did come on, Major-Generals Berry, Goffe, and Whalley, with others, had ceased to oppose, and the Kingship clause, reserved to the last, as the keystone of the otherwise completed arch, had been carried, as we have seen, by two-thirds of the House.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV.

349-353; Carlyle, III.

217.] It was on Tuesday, March 31, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, that Speaker Widdrington, attended by the whole House, and by all the high State-officers, formally presented to Cromwell, after a long speech, the _Petition and Advice_, engrossed on vellum.