be the second man), unless in the attempt he found better hope, than yet he had, to make himself the first man, by dispossessing the King.
B. What assistance against the Parliament and the city could Cromwell expect from the King?
A. By declaring directly for him, he might have had all the King’s party, which were many more now since his misfortune, than ever they were before. For in the Parliament itself, there were many that had discovered the hypocrisy, and private aims of their fellows: many were converted to their duty by their own natural reason; and their compassion for the King’s sufferings had begot generally an indignation against the Parliament: so that if they had been, by the protection of the present army, brought together and embodied, Cromwell might have done what he had pleased, in the first place for the King, and in the second for himself. But it seems he meant first to try what he could do without the King; and if that proved enough, to rid his hands of him.
B. What did the Parliament and city do to oppose the army?
A. First, the Parliament sent to the general to re-deliver the King to their commissioners. Instead of an answer to this, the army sent articles to the Parliament, and with them a charge against eleven of their members, all of them active Presbyterians: of which articles these are some: 1. That the House may be purged of those, who, by the self-denying ordinance, ought not to be there; 2. That such as abused and endangered the kingdom, might be disabled to do the like hereafter; 3. That a day might be appointed to determine this Parliament; 4. That they would make an account to the kingdom of the vast sums of money they had received; 5. That the eleven members might presently be suspended sitting in the House. These were the articles that put them to their trumps; and they answered none of them, but that of the suspension of the eleven members, which they said they could not do by law till the particulars of the charge
