There is good reason to believe that Oliver consented willingly to the vote. He was never one to persist in methods once adopted, if he could obtain his larger aims in some other way. The debates had revealed that the house was divided into two parties, a minority clinging to the army as a political force, and a majority calling for the establishment of the government on a civil basis. The latter was even more devoted to the Protector than the former, and Oliver, who in his heart concurred with their views, was prepared, as indeed he had been prepared in 1654, to submit the Instrument to revision. The difference was that he was assured now--as he had not been assured then--that Parliament would sustain the fundamental principles which he regarded as the most precious part of the constitution. In January, 1657, a fresh attempt to assassinate the Protector--this time by Miles Sindercombe--gave reason, or perhaps excuse, for loyal demonstrations, and a month later the House entered upon the discussion of a proposal for a constitutional revision, ultimately known as _The Humble Petition and Advice_, of which the article which attracted the most general attention was that which reconstituted the Kingship in the person of Oliver, with the power of nominating his own successor. The demand for the revival of the Kingship was no mere work of zealous flatterers. The crown was held in the House to be the symbol of civilian as opposed to military government, but for this reason the offer of it was assailed by the leading officers, headed by Lambert who, in 1653, had offered the crown to the man to whom he now refused it. So far as the officers were concerned, they appear to have been actuated, in part at least, by a dread that a Parliamentary Protectorate would in the end turn out to be other than a Puritan Protectorate. Lambert's own motives were somewhat more difficult to unravel. Possibly he regarded a Kingship by the grace of Parliament less of a boon than a Kingship by the grace of the army. Still more probably was he moved by a personal grievance in seeing Fleetwood, who had now returned from Ireland, higher than himself in the favour of the Protector, perhaps even in the favour of the army. In any case he carried on the campaign with consummate skill, keeping aloof from the constitutional question, and throwing all his strength into the argument--which the rudest soldier could understand--that the army had not rejected one king in order to set up another. When he won over Fleetwood and Desborough, the son-in-law and brother-in-law of the Protector, to his side, he had practically won the game, especially as he was able to back a petition against a revival of the Royal title by the subscription of a hundred officers. Oliver kept up the negotiation with Parliament as long as he could, but in the end he refused the crown offered to him rather than alienate the army. The remaining articles of the Humble Petition and Advice were then agreed