"Ah, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane," retorted Cromwell, bitterly, "you might have prevented all this; but you are a juggler, and have no common honesty. The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" The retort was a just one. Vane had attempted to usurp the government. Cromwell turned to the speaker, who obstinately clung to his seat, declaring that he would not yield it except to force. "Fetch him down!" roared the general. "Sir, I will lend you a hand," said Harrison. Speaker Lenthall left the chair. One man could not resist an army. Through the door glided, silent as ghosts, the members of Parliament. "It is you that have forced me to this," said Cromwell, with a shade of regret in his voice. "I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather slay me than put upon me the doing of this work." He had, doubtless; he was a man of deep piety and intense bigotry; but the Lord's answer, it is to be feared, came out of the depths of his own consciousness. Men like Cromwell call upon God, but answer for Him themselves. "What shall be done with this bauble?" said the general, lifting the sacred mace, the sign-manual of government by the representatives of the people. "Take it away!" he finished, handing it to a musketeer. His flashing eyes followed the retiring members until they all had left the House. Then the musketeers filed out, followed by Cromwell and Harrison. The door was locked, and the key and mace carried away by Colonel Otley. A few hours afterwards the Council of State, the executive committee of Parliament, was similarly dissolved by the lord-general, who, in person, bade its members to depart. "We have heard," cried John Bradshaw, one of its members, "what you have done this morning at the House, and in some hours all England will hear it. But you mistake, sir, if you think the Parliament dissolved. No power on earth can dissolve the Parliament but itself, be sure of that." The people did hear it,--and sustained Cromwell in his action. Of the two sets of usurpers, the army and a non-representative Parliament, they preferred the former. "We did not hear a dog bark at their going," said Cromwell, afterwards.