By the beginning of the year 1653, Sir Henry Vane, who had hitherto been organising victory for Blake, had become alive to the danger of military domination, which he specially dreaded, and was pressing forward a bill for a new parliament. It was upon this bill that the final rupture with Cromwell took place. In its chief features it corresponded with the petitions of the army and levellers which had been rife in the agitation of 1647-8. There was to be a parliament of four hundred members, who should be distributed among the counties according to wealth and population. In the boroughs there was to be a uniform rental qualification of householders; in the counties such a property qualification {358} as should exclude tenants subject to control. There was to be a freehold qualification of 40_s_., a copyhold of 5_l_., and a leasehold of 20_l_. annual value. This system of distribution and qualification was afterwards adopted by Cromwell, except that he substituted for the property qualifications the uniform, and very high, one of 200_l_. of real or personal estate. Cromwell’s objection to the bill was that it gave the existing members the right both of sitting in the new house without re-election and of deciding on the admissibility of new members. In other words it constituted the Rump a many-headed dictatorship, to regulate the work of reconstruction. To this he opposed a plan of his own for delegating the re-settlement to an assembly of notables, to be specially summoned for the purpose; a plan which we may readily admit was merely meant as such a screen for his own dictatorship as would satisfy the demands of the ‘fifth monarchy’ or republican officers. As usual he behaved with, perfect explicitness. On April 19 he had a conference of members of parliament and officers of the army at his lodgings, and urged the importance of an immediate dissolution and a convocation of notables. St. John was the only civilian who supported him, but according to his own account the meeting closed with an understanding that Vane’s bill should not be pressed. Next morning the conference was renewed, but in the presence of only a few ‘parliament men,’ of whom Whitelock was one. The sequel is best described in his words. [1]