Being informed that conspiracies were entered into between the members and some malecontent officers, he hastened to the dissolution of so dangerous an assembly.

By the instrument of government, to which he had sworn, no parliament could be dissolved till it had sitten five months; but Cromwell pretended, that a month contained only twenty-eight days, according to the method of computation practised in paying the fleet and army.

The full time, therefore, according to this reckoning, being elapsed, the parliament was ordered to attend the protector, who made them a tedious, confused, angry harangue, and dismissed them.
{1655.} Were we to judge of Cromwell's capacity by this, and indeed by all his other compositions, we should be apt to entertain no very favorable idea of it.

But in the great variety of human geniuses, there are some which, though they see their object clearly and distinctly in general, yet, when they come to unfold its parts by discourse or writing, lose that luminous conception which they had before attained.
All accounts agree in ascribing to Cromwell a tiresome, dark, unintelligible elocution, even when he had no intention to disguise his meaning: yet no man's actions were ever, in such a variety of difficult incidents, more decisive and judicious.
The electing of a discontented parliament is a proof of a discontented nation: the angry and abrupt dissolution of that parliament is always sure to increase the general discontent.

The members of this assembly, returning to their counties, propagated that spirit of mutiny which they had exerted in the house.