He had taken all but the chief part in the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the Government of the Second?
His Oliverianism, it appears, had evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new constitution.

Certain it is that he did not present himself at the first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental colonelcies, his major-generalship, and L10 a day which he had for the last, and withdrew into private life.

Still called "Lord Lambert," and with a pension of L2000 a year granted him by Cromwell, he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the cultivation of tulips.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward; Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV.

446-447.] The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan.

20, 1657-8.