Hating monarchy while a subject, despising liberty while a citizen, though he retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the parliament, he was secretly paving the way, by artifice and courage, to his own unlimited authority.
The parliament,--for so we must henceforth call a small and inconsiderable part of the house of commons,--having murdered their sovereign with so many appearing circumstances of solemnity and justice, and so much real violence, and even fury, began to assume more the air of a civil legal power, and to enlarge a little the narrow bottom upon which they stood.

They admitted a few of the excluded and absent members, such as were liable to least exception; but on condition that these members should sign an approbation of whatever had been done in their absence with regard to the king's trial; and some of them were willing to acquire a share of power on such terms: the greater part disdained to lend their authority to such apparent usurpations.

They issued some writs for new elections, in places where they hoped to have interest enough to bring in their own friends and dependents.

They named a council of state, thirty-eight in number, to whom all addresses were made, who gave orders to all generals and admirals, who executed the laws, and who digested all business before it was introduced into parliament.[*] They pretended to employ themselves entirely in adjusting the laws, forms, and plan of a new representative; and as soon as they should have settled the nation, they professed their intention of restoring the power to the people, from whom they acknowledged they had entirely derived it.
* Their names were, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pembroke, Salisbury, Lords Grey and Fairfax, Lisle, Rolles, St.John, Wilde, Bradshaw, Cromwell, Skippon, Pickering, Massam, Haselrig, Harrington, Vane, Jun., Danvers, Armine, Mildmay, Constable, Pennington, Wilson, Whitlocke, Martin, Ludlow, Stapleton, Hevingham, Wallop, Hutchinson, Bond, Popham, Valentine, Walton, Scott, Purefoy, Jones.
The commonwealth found every thing in England composed into a seeming tranquillity by the terror of their arms.

Foreign powers, occupied in wars among themselves, had no leisure or inclination to interpose in the domestic dissensions of this island.