This, however, was established (such is the dominion of the sword) far beyond the control of any national sentiment. Thirty thousand veteran soldiers guaranteed the mock parliament they had permitted to reign. The sectaries, a numerous body, and still more active than numerous, possessed, under the name of committees for various purposes appointed by the House of Commons, the principal local authorities, and restrained by a vigilant scrutiny the murmurs of a disaffected majority. Love, an eminent presbyterian minister, lost his head for a conspiracy, by the sentence of a high court of justice, a tribunal that superseded trial by jury.[395] His death struck horror and consternation into that arrogant priesthood, who had begun to fancy themselves almost beyond the scope of criminal law. The cavaliers were prostrate in the dust; and, anxious to retrieve something from the wreck of their long sequestered estates, had generally little appetite to embark afresh in a hopeless cause; besides that the mutual animosities between their party and the presbyterians were still too irreconcilable to admit of any sincere co-operation. Hence, neither made any considerable effort in behalf of Charles on his march, or rather flight, into England; a measure, indeed, too palpably desperate for prudent men who had learned the strength of their adversaries; and the great victory of Worcester consummated the triumph of the infant commonwealth, or rather of its future master. _Schemes of Cromwell._--A train of favouring events, more than any deep-laid policy, had now brought sovereignty within the reach of Cromwell. His first schemes of ambition may probably have extended no farther than a title and estate, with a great civil and military command in the king's name. Power had fallen into his hands because they alone were fit to wield it; he was taught by every succeeding event his own undeniable superiority over his contemporaries in martial renown, in civil prudence, in decision of character, and in the public esteem, which naturally attached to these qualities. Perhaps it was not till after the battle of Worcester that he began to fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself, St. John, Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley, met Cromwell, at his own request, to consider the settlement of the nation. The four former were in favour of monarchy, Whitelock inclining to Charles, Widdrington and others to the Duke of Glocester; Desborough and Whalley were against a single person's government, and Fleetwood uncertain. Cromwell, who had evidently procured this conference in order to sift the inclinations of so many leading men, and to give some intimation of his own, broke it up with remarking,