Until the assembling of this Parliament, every step that Oliver had taken could be thoroughly justified. He had not played the part of a usurper. He had been a zealous patriot, working in the interests of the people; and he had only broken up the Long Parliament when the Long Parliament had itself become an utterly unrepresentative body. He had then shown his good faith by promptly summoning a genuinely representative body. It is possible to defend him even for excluding the hundred members who declined to subscribe to his theory of the fundamentals of government. But it is not possible to excuse him for what he now did. Parliament, as it was left after the Extremists had been expelled, stood as the only elective body which it was possible to gather in England that could in any sense be called representative, and yet agree to work with Cromwell. Had Cromwell not become cursed with the love of power; had he not acquired a dictatorial habit of mind, and the fatal incapacity to acknowledge that there might be righteousness in other methods than his own, he could certainly have avoided a break with this Parliament. His splitting with it was absolutely needless. It agreed to confirm his powers for five years, and, as it happened, at the end of that time he was dead. Even had he lived there could be no possible excuse for refusing such a lease of power, on the ground that it was too short; for it was amply long enough to allow him to settle whatever was necessary to settle. [Illustration: The Great Hall, Hampton Court. In this room the state dinners were given under the Protectorate. ] Cromwell, and later his apologists, insisted that, by delay and by refusing to grant supplies until their grievances were considered, the Parliament was encouraging the spirit of revolt. In reality the spirit of revolt was tenfold increased, not by the Parliament’s action, but by Cromwell’s, in seizing arbitrary power. If he had shown a tenth of the forbearance that Washington showed in dealing with the various Continental Congresses, he would have been readily granted far more power than ever Washington was given. He could easily have settled affairs on a constitutional basis, which would have given him all the power he had any right to ask; for his difficulties in this particular crisis were nothing like so great as those which Washington surmounted. The plea that the safety of the people and of the cause of righteousness depended upon his unchecked control, is a plea always made in such cases, and generally, as in this particular case, without any basis in fact. The need was just the other way.