25, 1657-8.

Fiennes's speech is given in full under the last date, and must have much talked of.

Whitlocke also prints it, IV.
315-329.] Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes's own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable Manasseh.

The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the _Petition and Advice_ generally, would be to question the powers of the new House as defined in the constituting document.

The definition had been rather vague.