were four to one against it, but they deceived me also.’ Valueless as his apologies may be, his own account of the motives which led him to continue sitting after the king's death is no doubt correct. ‘I make this candid confession, that it was my own baseness, cowardice, and unworthy fear to submit my life and estate to the mercy of those men that murdered the king, that hurried me on against my own conscience to act with them; yet then I thought that I might do some good, and hinder some ill.’
As speaker Lenthall was now theoretically the greatest man in the Commonwealth. When parliament and the council of state were entertained by the city, he took the highest place, and was received with quasi-regal ceremony (Commons' Journals, vi. 226; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649–50, p. 174; Blencowe, Sydney Papers, p. 73). Practically, however, he had very little power. Twice he made use of his casting vote in favour of condemned royalists: in the case of the Earl of Norwich (8 March 1649) and in that of Sir William D'Avenant (3 July 1650; Commons' Journals, vi. 160, 436). According to his own account he wished well to the cause of Charles II and secretly sent him advice, and he claims also to have used his influence in defence of the universities (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 713; Old Parliamentary History, xxiii. 372).
On 20 April 1653 Cromwell violently dissolved the Long parliament. Lenthall refused to vacate his chair until he was compelled. According to one account, Cromwell bade Colonel Harrison fetch him down, and Harrison pulled him by the gown and he came down (Blencowe, Sydney Papers, p. 140). Other contemporary accounts agree that he was treated with greater respect (Burton, Cromwellian Diary, iii. 209; Guizot, Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, i. 492). Harrison's own account was: ‘I went to the Speaker and told him, Sir, seeing things are brought to this pass, it is not requisite for you to stay there; he answered he would not come down unless he was pulled out; Sir, said I, I will lend you my hand, and he putting his hand into mine came down without any pulling, so that I did not pull him’ (Lives and Speeches of those Persons lately Executed, 1661, p. 9, 8vo). After this Lenthall for a time took no part in political life. He was not a member of the council of state established by the officers, nor of the ‘Little parliament.’ But when Cromwell became protector and summoned his first parliament, Lenthall was returned to it both for Gloucester city and Oxford county, electing finally to sit for the latter. ‘My intentions,’ he wrote to the corporation of Gloucester, ‘were not bent to so public an employment, having been thoroughly wearied by what I have already undergone’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. ix. 508; Commons' Journals, vii. 381). When the parliament met he was unanimously voted to the chair, ‘in regard of his great experience and knowledge of the order of that house and dexterity in the guidance of it’ (ib. vii. 365; Burton, Diary, i. xx). After its dissolution Lenthall, as one of the keepers of the great seal, came into collision with the protector. In August 1654 Cromwell had issued an ordinance for regulating and limiting the jurisdiction of the court of chancery. On 23 April 1655 the three commissioners of the seal were summoned before the council and commanded to proceed according to that ordinance. They drew up a summary of their objections to it and finally (1 May) a joint letter refusing obedience. But Lenthall before the letter was actually sent was sworn in as one of the six masters of the chancery appointed under the ordinance, and though he had protested ‘that he would be hanged at the Rolls gate before he would execute it,’ now ‘wheeled about’ and submitted. The other two, Widdrington and Whitelocke, persisted and were turned out (Whitelocke, Memorials, ed. 1853, iv. 192–206).
Lenthall was again returned for Oxford county to the parliament of 1656, but was not again elected speaker. He spoke several times in support of the government, was a member of the committee appointed to explain the reasons which moved parliament to offer Cromwell the crown, and delivered two speeches urging him to accept it. ‘His argument,’ says Ludlow, ‘was very parliamentary and rational, had it been rightly applied’ (Old Parliamentary History, xxi. 73, 91; Ludlow, Memoirs, p. 586). Lenthall was not one of the persons originally summoned to Cromwell's House of Lords, and was ‘very much disturbed’ thereat. ‘He complained that he who had been for some years the first man of the nation, was now denied to be a member of either house of parliament; for he was incapable of sitting in the House of Commons by his place as master of the rolls, whereby he was obliged to sit as assistant in the other house.’ Cromwell hearing of his complaint sent him a writ, at which he was much elevated, thinking that himself and his heirs would be for ever peers of England (ib. p. 596).
On the fall of Richard Cromwell the officers determined to recall the Long parliament, and some members of the parlia-
