It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth.

It involved, therefore, a very exact answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now pondering.

A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be than the Rump restored?
Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the Government .-- With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane, Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered.
They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour, moreover, to the present Richard.

They pleaded that it was impossible to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from that body to make a House.

Hereupon Dr.Owen, who seems to have been extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had been duly qualified (i.e.non-secluded) members of the Rump between 1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive.