Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the introduction of Sir Christopher Pack's paper and the conversion of the same into the _Petition and Advice_, with the distinct offer of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate. Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals, and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It had been some of the Oliverian Army-men in Parliament, at all events, that had first resisted Pack's motion. Ludlow's story is that they very nearly laid violent hands on Pack when he produced his paper; and the divisions in the Commons Journals exhibit Lambert and various Colonels, with Strickland, as among the chief obstructors of the _Petition and Advice_ in its passage through the House. Strickland, it will be remembered, was an eminent member of the Protector's own Council; and, as far as one can gather, several others of that body, besides Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and Strickland--perhaps half of the whole number of those now habitually attending the Council--were opposed to the Kingship. On the other hand, the more enthusiastic Oliverians of the Council, those most attached to Cromwell personally, e.g. Sir Charles Wolseley, appear to have been acquiescent, or even zealous for the Kingship; and there were at least some military Oliverians, out of the Council, of the same mind. In the final vote of March 25, carrying the offer of Kingship, the tellers for the majority were Sir John Reynolds (Tipperary and Waterford), and Major-General Charles Howard (Cumberland), while those for the minority were Major-General Butler (Northamptonshire), and Colonel Salmon (Dumfries Burghs). Undoubtedly, however, the chief managers of the _Petition and Advice_ in the House from the first had been Whitlocke, Glynne, and others of the lawyers, with Lord Broghill. The lawyers had been long anxious for a constitutional Kingship: nothing else, they thought, could restore the proper machinery of Law and State, and make things safe. Accordingly, out of doors, in the whole civilian class, and largely also among the more conservative citizens, the