In vain the Levellers exclaimed, in 1648, “We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by a General, Court Martial, and Commons: and, we pray you, what is the difference?” Cromwell, at all costs, was determined to preserve the discipline of the army, and to suppress mutiny with an iron hand. For him the army which had beaten the cavaliers was the one safeguard against the return of the old order in Church and State. Lilburne and the Levellers, with the “Fifth Monarchy” men, had been the strength, the very life of the army that had conquered at Marston Moor and Naseby. The petition of the Fifth Monarchy men for the reign of Christ and His saints (which, according to prophecy, was to supersede the four monarchies of the ancient world) had no terrors for Cromwell; in other words, they demanded government exclusively by the godly, Independents and Presbyterians combining to elect all representatives, “and to determine all things by the Word.” “Such a proposal might attract fanatics; it could not attract the multitude. The Levellers who stood up for an exaggeration of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy were likely to be far more numerous.”[115] To Cromwell the immediate thing was the royalist danger; it was no season for embarking on democratic experiments with which he had no sympathy. The breach between Cromwell and the Levellers widened, and as Cromwell became more and more impatient of their agitation, distrust and suspicion of Cromwell and of the newly-appointed Council of State ripened, in 1649, into revolt.[116] It is the perennial misunderstanding between the statesman and the agitator. The one weighted by responsibility can rarely travel at the pace of the other, untrammelled by office, and as the distance between the two lengthens, it seems they are not even pursuing the same course--as, indeed, very often they are not. Lilburne had none of Cromwell’s anxieties as to a possible royalist reaction; for him the danger could not come from the dethroned king and his defeated cavaliers, but from a parliamentary oligarchy or a military dictatorship. But he overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the army. With the presentation of the “Agreement of the People” the bulk of the discontent in the army diminished, and while the Levellers who remained became in several regiments openly mutinous, the movement generally died down, so that when the revolt came, it was suppressed without difficulty.[117] Lilburne was out of prison at the beginning of 1649. He took no part in the trial of Charles I., and let it be known that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.