In the meantime Spain was helping Charles with money which was spent in plots to assassinate the Protector. The effect of this underhand, contemptible warfare was several petitions and addresses offered in Parliament begging Cromwell to assume the ancient office of King, if only for the settlement of the nation. He was quite strong enough to have taken it, and there was nothing unmanly either in his desire for the crown or in his refusal of it. His conscience, not his reason, decided the question. He waited many a long, anxious night on his knees for some sign or token of God’s approbation of the kingship, but it did not come; and Cromwell was never greater than when, steadily, and with dignity, he put the glittering bauble aside—"Because for it, he would not lose a friend, or even a servant." He told the Parliamentary committee offering him the title that he "held it as a feather in a man’s cap;" then burst into an inspired strain, and quoting Luther’s psalm, "that rare psalm for a Christian," he added, "if Pope and Spaniard and devil set themselves against us, yet the Lord of Hosts is with us, and the God of Jacob is our refuge." One thing he knew well, that the title of King would take all meaning out of the Puritan revolution, and he could not so break with his own past, with his own spiritual life, and with the godly men who had so faithfully followed and so fully trusted him. Why should he fret himself about a mere word? All real power was in his hands: the army and the navy, the churches and the universities, the reform and administration of the law, the government of Scotland and of Ireland. Abroad, the war with all its details, the alliance with Sweden, with France, with the Protestant princes of Germany, the Protestant Protectorate extending as far as Transylvania, the "planting" of the West Indies, the settlement of the American Colonies, and their defense against their rivals, the French,—all these subjects were Cromwell’s daily cares. He was responsible for everything, and his burden would have been lightened, if he could have conscientiously taken on him the "divinity which doth hedge a king." The English people love what they know, and they knew nothing of an armed Protector making laws by ordinance, and disposing of events by rules not followed by their ancestors. But Oliver knew that he would cross Destiny if he made himself King, and that this "crossing" always means crucifixion of some kind. "To be a king is not in my commission," he said to Doctor Verity. "It squares not with my call or my conscience. I will not fadge with the question again; no, not for an hour."