250 POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, 1658-60
out on the same side. Finally Dublin Castle was surprised and
the Irish army in the main induced to join the parliamentarians
and Monck.
Amid these accumulating signs of approaching ruin, Lambert
in the north, and Fleetwood and the others in London, could
do nothing. They and their sympathizers had wasted several
months in the harmless game of making paper constitutions.
They did not really agree on any point. To many of the army
leaders the very name of parliament was anathema. As one
prominent officer said, ehe hoped never a true Englishman
would name the parliament again, and that he would have
the house pulled down where they sat, for fear it should be
infectious5.1 On the other hand the few civilians present de-
manded the recall of the Rump and were disgusted that the
general council of the army preferred to summon a new parlia-
ment, 'according to such qualifications and limitations, as are
or shall be agreed upon'.2 There were to be seven efounda-
mentals' and twenty-one 'conservators of liberty', to see they
were not violated; but the civilian republicans were alienated
when the officers named a majority from among themselves.
The old vexed question as to whether a senate should be created
to act as a check on the house of representatives was answered
by the compromise that there should be two elective houses.3
In all this turmoil political theorists had the time of their lives.
James Harrington and his disciples used to meet every evening
in a coffee-house to devise the perfect constitution. One who
was present remarks that their discourses were the most in-
genious and smart that ever he had heard or expected to hear
and that parliamentary debates were flat compared with them.4
Finally the council of officers made up their minds to summon
parliament just when events made it evident that the end of
their day of power was immediately at hand.
Even Fleetwood could read the signs of the times, and, with
the characteristic phrase that God had spit in their faces, once
again had recourse to the remnant of the Long Parliament.
The soldiers hastened to the residence of Lenthall, the Speaker,
and proclaimed their submission. When members reassembled
1 State Papers,Domestic, 1659-60 (1886), p. 295.
2 Ludlow Memoirs, ii. 171; Bulstrode Whitelock, Memorials of English Affairs, (1853),
iv. 379. 3 Ludlow Memoirs, ii. 172-4.
4 John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark (1898)* i. 289.