would have been sheer insanity. Accordingly, they made the best bargain they could both for him and themselves; and, taking their wages, they left him with his English subjects, who conducted him to Holdenby House, in Northamptonshire, on the 6th of February, 1647." _J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 13._ ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, The First two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 7, section 4._ _S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapter 3845 (volume 2)._ _W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, book 1, chapters 24-27, and book 2, chapter 1-6 (volume 2)._ _Earl of Clarendon, History of chapter Rebellion, book 9, section 161-178, and book 10 (volume 3)._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST). The Army takes things in hand. The King was surrendered to Parliament, and all now looking toward peace, the Presbyterians were uppermost, discredit falling upon the Army and its favorers. Many of the Recruiters [i. e., the new members, elected to fill vacancies in the Parliament], who at first had acted with the Independents, inclined now to their opponents. The Presbyterians, feeling that none would dare to question the authority of Parliament, pushed energetically their policy as regards the Army, of sending to Ireland, disbanding, neglecting the payment of arrears, and displacing the old officers. But suddenly there came for them a rude awakening. On April 30, 1647, Skippon, whom all liked, whom the Presbyterians indeed claimed, but who at the same time kept on good terms with the Army and Independents, rose in his place in St. Stephens and produced a letter, brought to him the day before by three private soldiers, in which eight regiments of horse expressly refused to serve in Ireland, declaring that it was a perfidious design to separate the soldiers from the officers whom they loved,--framed by men who, having tasted of power, were degenerating into tyrants. Holles and the Presbyterians were thunder-struck, and laying aside all other business summoned the three soldiers to appear at once. ... {878} A violent tumult arose in the House. The Presbyterians declared that the three sturdy Ironsides standing there, with their buff stained from their corselets, ought to be at once committed; to which it was answered, that if there were to be commitment, it should be to the best London tavern, and sack and sugar provided. Cromwell, leaning over toward Ludlow, who sat next to him, and pointing to the Presbyterians, said that those fellows would never leave till the Army pulled them out by the ears. That day it became known that there existed an organization, a sort of Parliament, in the Army, the officers forming an upper council and the representatives of the rank and file a lower council.