The Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe's policy to push next the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector.

On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one.

It involved other questions, some of them apparently independent.

Thus, on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn.
Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England calling itself "The House of Lords," the Republican speakers had played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm, sneering at the existing "Other House," with its shabby equipment of old colonels and other originally mean persons.

If there was to be a House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of them honourable men, resume their places?
"Why not ?" was the instant retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of many in the House.