Both were confined to their chambers for a long time;
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, ii. 606. Whitelock, 605. Journals, Sept. 5-18.
Fleetwood, from Dublin, asks Thurloe, "How cam it to passe, that this
last teste was not at the first sitting of the house?" (ii. 620). See in
Archaeol. xxiv. 39, a letter showing that several, who refused to subscribe
at first through motives of conscience, did so later. This was in
consequence of a declaration that the recognition did not comprehend all
the forty-two articles in "the instrument," but only what concerned the
government by a single person and successive parliaments.--See Journals,
Sept. 14.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1654. Sept. 24.]
but by many, their confinement was attributed as much to policy as to
indisposition. The Cavaliers diverted themselves by prophesying that, as
his first fall had been from a coach, the next would be from a cart: to
the public, the explosion of the pistol revealed the secret terrors which
haunted his mind, that sense of insecurity, those fears of assassination,
which are the usual meed of inordinate and successful ambition.[1]
The force so lately put on the parliament, and the occasion of that
force, had opened the eyes of the most devoted among his adherents.
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