In other words, so important was it that there should be no government except by the people themselves through a Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to their senses! These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed.
The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers.

For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by _their_ defection.

While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue.

There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went.
Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming.

Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship.