In the last lecture I followed the course of events to the time when it became clear that a military republic was the only possible alternative for an unconditional triumph of Charles. Whether this republic should be more or less exclusive, depended on the possibility of bringing the English presbyterians to an understanding with the erastian or independent party in parliament, and both to an understanding with the army. During the spring of 1648 we find Cromwell, true to his instinct of comprehension, working for this end, and rewarded by all parties with jealousy for his pains. He had a conference at his house, Ludlow tells us, ‘between those called the grandees of the house and army, and the commonwealth’s men.’ The grandees of the house would probably be the original members of the Long parliament who might be of erastian or independent sympathies, such as St. John, Nathaniel Fiennes, one or two uninteresting lords, and perhaps Vane, who was not a declared republican. The commonwealth’s men, not grandees, would be members elected to fill up vacancies at the end of 1645, such as Ludlow himself, Hutchinson, and Thomas Scott, officers of the army, but not of Cromwell’s training. Marten, though in standing a grandee, headed this republican party. The grandees, according to Ludlow, with Cromwell at their head, ‘kept themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their judgments either for a monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical government, maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or for us, according as providence should direct us. The commonwealth’s men declared that monarchy was neither good in itself, nor for us. That it was not desirable in itself they urged from the eighth chapter of the 1st book of Samuel, where the choice of a king was charged upon the Israelites by God himself as a rejection of him.’ That it was not good ‘for us’ was proved ‘by the infinite mischiefs and oppressions we had suffered under {324} it and by it; that indeed our ancestors had consented to be governed by a single person, but with this proviso, that he should govern according to the direction of the law, which he always bound himself by oath to perform; that the king had broken this oath, and therefore dissolved our allegiance, protection and obedience being reciprocal; that ... it seemed to be a duty incumbent upon the representatives of the people to call him to account for the blood shed in the war ... and then to proceed to the establishment of an equal commonwealth, founded upon the consent of the people, and providing for the rights and liberties of all men.’ So elaborate an utterance of republican formulae did not look like conciliation, and finally, says Ludlow, ‘Cromwell took up a cushion and flung it at my head and then ran downstairs; but I overtook him with another, which made him hasten down faster than he desired.’