Cromwell was not the man to suffer this. He sent to the Lord Mayor, and ordered him to take measures to preserve the peace of the City, marched three regiments into it, and then summoned Lenthall, and bade him meet him in the Painted Chamber, on Tuesday, the 12th of September, with the Commons. Harrison, who was zealously getting up petitions for the support of the inquiry into the constitution, was clapped into the Tower. When Cromwell met the Commons, he expressed his surprise that a set of men from whom so much healing management had been expected, should immediately attempt to overturn the Government which called them together. The Instrument consisted of incidentals and fundamentals. The incidentals they were at liberty to discuss, but the fundamentals--of which the article that the power resided in one person and a Parliament was one--were out of their range. He very zealously asserted that he had been called to the head of the nation by God and the people, and that none but God and the people should take his office from him. His own wish had been to lead the life of a country gentleman, but necessity had forced him thence, and three several times he had found himself placed by the course of events at the head of the army, and by them at the head of the Government. As to the dismissal of the Long Parliament, he had been forced to that by its endeavouring to perpetuate itself, and by its tyranny and corruption. He said "that poor men, under its arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep, by forty on a morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates, without any man being able to give a reason why two of them had deserved to forfeit a shilling." He had twice resigned the arbitrary power left in his hands, and having established a Government capable of saving the nation, he would sooner lie rotting in his grave and buried with infamy than suffer it to be broken up. They had now peace at home and abroad, and it would be a miserable answer to give to the people, "Oh, we quarrelled for the liberty of England; we contested and went to confusion for that." To prevent any such evil consequences, he informed them that he had caused a stop to be put to their entrance into the Parliament House; he did not turn them out this time, he shut them out--and that none would be readmitted that did not first sign an Engagement to be true and faithful to the Protector and Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, not to propose or consent to alter the Government, as settled in a single person and Parliament. On hearing this, the honourable members looked at one another in amazement, but one hundred and forty thought well to sign the Engagement, which lay in the lobby of the House that day, and within a month three out of the four hundred had signed. Of course all the ultra Republicans refused to sign, and were excluded--Bradshaw, Haselrig, Scott, Wildman, and the rest. [Illustration: JOHN MILTON. (_After the Miniature by Samuel Cooper._)]