OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE
SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES:  ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS:  THEIR
OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE:  CROMWELL’S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE: 
PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION:  CROMWELL’S LAST
SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.—­STATE OF
THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION:  THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL’S
DEALINGS WITH THEM:  HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED
COMMONWEALTH’S MEN:  THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND
RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME:  ARRESTS OF
ROYALISTS.  AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT:  THE CONSPIRACY
CRUSHED:  DEATH OF ROBERT RICH:  THE EARL OF WARWICK’S LETTER TO
CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH:  MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS:  SIEGE AND
CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK:  SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN
CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.:  NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE
PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL DE
PROPAGANDA FIDE; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT:  DESIRE OF
THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH:  ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES: 
CROMWELL’S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK:  HIS DESIGN FOR
THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS:  HIS GRANTS TO
THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND: 
MONK AT DALKEITH:  CROMWELL’S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND
JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS:  FIRMNESS
AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658:  CROMWELL’S BARONETCIES
AND KNIGHTHOODS:  WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT:  DEATH OF
LADY CLAYPOLE:  CROMWELL’S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS
AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP.

Whether Cromwell’s Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted.  He had accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith.  If, on the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with more of grandeur and dignity.  Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship.  When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert.  He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold.  In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.