THE HUMBLE PETITION OF RICHARD CROMWELL, Late LORD PROTECTOR of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to the council of Officers at Walingford House.  
Humbly showeth:  
THAT whereas, after the Addresses of many thousands of these actions, faithfully promising to establish me on my father's usurped Seat, and protesting before God to live and die for me, whom they styled their Joshua, appointed by God to complete that happiness to the Saints which was begun by my Father, whom they called Moses, that had brought them out of Egypt and the wilderness unto the borders of Canaan, of which number you of the Army were not the last, nor least part: Yet notwithstanding you forgetting your Promises and Engagements, were guilty of such insolent and contrary proceedings as to turn me out of my place before I was well warm, under the specious pretence of setting up the Good old C●use, which then you interpreted to be the Refuse, or (as it's commonly called) the Rump of the long Parliament; which piece of a Parliament you had no sooner established, and vowed yourselves by a solemn Oath their faithful and constant Servants, but you turned them to graced before they had leisure to fleece the Commomwealth. Yet for all this, you still prosecute the Good old Cause, which since it hath so many Colours, I know not how to define it otherwise then a mere cheating of the public: But to let that pass, you devised a thing called a Committee of safety, which being a Crew of swordmen, with some others of your own Faction, appointed unto themselves a certain time to produce a model or form of Government, which time being expired, they ended as safely as they began, their pregnant womb being not delivered of so much as a Mouse.  
These things considered, and since you are now at a non plus, not knowing which way to turn yourselves, I humbly beg of you (Gentlemen) to let me appear once more upon the Stage, beseeching you to restore me unto my former dignity of being your Protector: It may be you'll say, I am altogether uncapable of so great a trust: For answer; If you'll believe my Mother, I am the Son of Oliver, and think myself as wise as some of you, and much honester than the best of you. What though I was pictured with an Owls head and a fool's Coat? I'm sure my Brother-in-law Fleetwood (your titular Gener●l) deserves it as well as myself; for although he had so much wit as to depose me, wherein he showed himself more than Fool: yet when he set up the tail of the long Parliament, and afterw●rds suffered them to be cast out by the ambition of Lambert, he savor'd more of the later. But I pray Gentlemen consider what profit and advantage will accrue to yourselves as well as the Nation, in case you readvance me to the Government; for I will call such a Parliament as shall raise money for the satisfying of all Soldiers Arrears, and take a course that they be daily paid for the future, and you yourselves shall be my privy councillors, provided you be more acute in consulting the affairs of Government than you have been lately in forging one. And for the good of the Commonwealth in general, we will countenance and encourage the two main props of a Stat●viz. Magistracy and Ministry: But as for the dull City of London, we may ride it to death if we please; she hath been long sick of a Consumption, but will not go to the charge of a purgation whereby she might be rid of those humours that obstruct her welfare, occasioned by a surfeit she took of too much of the fish called a Lobstar, which diet my Father fed her withal. But to speak of her Lord Mayor, he is the very same to you, as his horse to him, who with all his furred gang of Aldermen are always ready to comply with any power whatever at its first appearance, and will ever be your enchained slaves, for all their daily consultations at Guild-Hall. These are the Golden Calves which the City worships, and will do till it be utterly beggared by their sloth, who had rather live in perpetual bondage then hazard their vast estates to purchase the freedom both of themselves and their posterity; for if the present Lord Mayor had as much wit as friar Bacon's brazen head, and would but say, Time is, the business would be done, and the whole City be freed from that oppression which they have for so many years groaned under; but as long as they are led by the nose by their Lord Mayor, and he by the Officers of the Army, hang but one Red-coat on the top of Paul's steeple, and 'tis enough to keep the City in awe, though there were never a Soldier in it.  
But whilst I was penning this, there came one and told me that you had set out a Proclamation of a Parliament to be called on the 24. of January next, without a single Person, or House of Peers: which thing I suppose you never intend, but only to delude the People with a bare pretence, the very name of a Parliament being a pretty babble to still and quiet the childish rage of the City. However, if you do perform what you say, it will be a Parliament of your own stamp, which will bring more discontent to the People, than what they now suffer: Besides, you will utterly cross the design of your grand Master in politics, Lambert, who when he hath done with monk, will be as new to begin again what he aimed at, as he was before he turned out the Epitome of the long Parliament. Wherefore my Masters I beseech you consider what you go about, and go the safest way to work, which will be by lifting up me again to the Protectorship: and to this end, call to mind the discontented Frogs, who would not have the Log to be their King; but when Jupiter set the Stork to rule over them, which exceedingly devoured them, than they prayed him to restore their King Log. Take heed (Gentlemen) that you do not run the same fortune as did the Frogs, left with them you repent too late; but harken to this seasonable, and (indeed) reasonable advice of your Quondam Master, though now poor Petitioner.  
To conclude, (my Masters) if you will be pleased to suffer me once again to mount into the saddle of Supremacy, I protest unto you that I will not be cast out of it but with the loss of my life. Before I will be so befooled as I was, I'll drive on as furiously as my Father when he turned coachman in Hyde-park, and had like to have broken his neck for his labour: And rather than I will so sneakingly be thrown down from the very pinnacle of honour,  
The fortune of bold Phaeton I'll run,  
Who perished in the Chariot of the Sun.