During the last forty-eight hours, great exertions had been made in various quarters to avert a complete rupture between the Houses.

The statesmen of the junto were far too wise not to see that it would be madness to continue the struggle longer.

It was indeed necessary, unless the King and the Lords were to be of as little weight in the State as in 1648, unless the House of Commons was not merely to exercise a general control over the government, but to be, as in the days of the Rump, itself the whole government, the sole legislative chamber, the fountain from which were to flow all those favours which had hitherto been in the gift of the Crown, that a determined stand should be made.

But, in order that such a stand might be successful, the ground must be carefully selected; for a defeat might be fatal.

The Lords must wait for some occasion on which their privileges would be bound up with the privileges of all Englishmen, for some occasion on which the constituent bodies would, if an appeal were made to them, disavow the acts of the representative body; and this was not such an occasion.