The zealous opponents of royalty could not be insensible that they had seen it revive in everything except a title, which was not likely to remain long behind.[452] It was too late however to oppose the first magistrate's personal authority. But there remained one important point of contention, which the new constitution had not fully settled. It was therein provided that the parliament should consist of two houses; namely, the Commons, and what they always termed, with an awkward generality, the other house. This was to consist of not more than seventy, nor less than forty persons, to be nominated by the protector, and, as it stood at first, to be approved by the Commons. But before the close of the session, the court party prevailed so far as to procure the repeal of this last condition;[453] and Cromwell accordingly issued writs of summons to persons of various parties, a few of the ancient peers, a few of his adversaries, whom he hoped to gain over, or at least to exclude from the Commons, and of course a majority of his steady adherents. To all these he gave the title of Lords; and in the next session their assembly denominated itself the Lords' house.[454] This measure encountered considerable difficulty. The republican party, almost as much attached to that vote which had declared the House of Lords useless, as to that which had abolished the monarchy, and well aware of the intimate connection between the two, resisted the assumption of this aristocratic title, instead of that of the other house, which the petition and advice had sanctioned. The real peers feared to compromise their hereditary right by sitting in an assembly where the tenure was only during life; and disdained some of their colleagues, such as Pride and Hewson, low-born and insolent men, whom Cromwell had rather injudiciously bribed with this new nobility; though, with these few exceptions, his House of Lords was respectably composed. Hence, in the short session of January 1658, wherein the late excluded members were permitted to take their seats, so many difficulties were made about acknowledging the Lords' house by that denomination, that the protector hastily and angrily dissolved the parliament.[455]