The course which events had taken, the complete collapse of a scheme which depended on the co-operation of Parliament, and the continued rule of a power unrecognised by law, afforded in itself a fresh stimulus to all party-efforts.

The Republicans found it intolerable that after twelve years of struggle in behalf of justice and liberty, which had deluged the country with blood, these liberties should lie at the mercy of a usurper. If it were true, as he asserted, that he held by divine right a power the limits of which he alone might fix, then was England but a pensioner on his bounty: it was the duty of every true Englishman to take care that matters should never go so far as to allow any single man to make himself master of the Parliament, and to secure their ancient liberty.

And in a similar way the party of the so-called saints and elect of God complained of the light esteem in which the fruit of their prayers was held, the marvellous works that God had manifested; the country was still to be loaded with the fetters of the Norman law. They denounced Cromwell as the man of sin, who set himself up as the temple of God, even as God himself.