November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new
and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty
Articles instead of the Forty-two. A Bill for enacting this
Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and
the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for
amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these
amendments and others.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given and of Nov. 7, and
Godwin, IV, 130-132.]

In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting
divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the
House on November 10. In the first the question was whether the
Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200
votes to 60 that it should _not_. This was not strictly an
Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a
hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell's family, many of the undoubted
Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof
that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell. More
distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was
on a question of deep interest to Cromwell: viz. the amount of his
prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on
fundamentals. In his last speech he had himself indicated these
"fundamentals," which ought to be safe against attack even by
Parliament--one of them being Liberty of Conscience, another the
Control of the Militia as belonging to the Protector _in
conjunction with_ the Parliament, and a third the provision, that
every Parliament should sit but for a fixed period. In all other
matters he was content with a negative for twenty days only; but on