"[140] On the 5th of February, 1654, Captain John Mason,
of Pequot memory, writes "a word or twoe of newes as it comes from Mr
Eaton, viz: that the Parliament sate in September last; they chose their
old Speaker & Clarke. The Protectour told them they were a free
Parliament, & soe left them that day. They, considering where the
legislative power resided, concluded to vote it on the morrow, & to take
charge of the militia. The Protectour hereing of it, sent for some
numbers of horse, went to the Parliament House, nayld up the doores, sent
for them to the Painted Chamber, told them they should attend the lawes
established, & that he would wallow in his blood before he would part
with what was conferd upon him, tendering them an oath: 140 engaged." Now
it is curious that Mr. Eaton himself, from whom Mason got his news,
wrote, only two days before, an account, differing, in some particulars,
and especially in tone, from Mason's. Of the speech he says, that it
"gave such satisfaction that about 200 have since ingaged to owne the
present Government." Yet Carlyle gives the same number of signers (140)
as Mason, and there is a sentence in Cromwell's speech, as reported by
Carlyle, of precisely the same purport as that quoted by Mason.
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