A perfectly regular statute provided that the Long Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent, and the usurping House of Commons, which had killed the King and abolished the monarchy and House of Lords, was thus able to make some pretence of legality. In the Parliament elected under the Instrument of Government thirty members were assigned to Ireland, and Cromwell left it to those on the spot to decide whether elections were possible in the state of the country. Fleetwood, Jones, and Corbet replied that several counties were waste and others very unsettled, and that they did not see how the business was to be done. The writs were, however, sent over, and Ludlow persuaded them that even the shadow of representation would be better than nothing. He says the influence of the clergy secured a few results not pleasing to the Government; but all the chief officers were chosen, Broghill being returned for the county of Cork, and Gookin, whose interests also lay there, for Bandon and Kinsale. Henry Cromwell was chosen for Cambridge University, and Fleetwood both for Oxfordshire and for Marlborough. The new Parliament met on Cromwell's lucky September 3, but before that day he had given Fleetwood and his Council power to 'dispense with the orders and instructions made and given by the late Parliament or Council of State for the transplantation of the Irish,' and also with the penalties upon those who neglected or refused to go. A clause to the same effect had been rejected when the Act of Satisfaction was passed twelve months before.[267] [Sidenote: Declaration as to transplantation, Nov. 30, 1654.] [Sidenote: Vincent Gookin's pamphlet against transplantation.] [Sidenote: Divisions among Protestants.] [Sidenote: The earth-tillers indispensable]