the longest. Partly no doubt this was due to the
tone of the set apologies published for the Nomi-
nated Parliament and the Protectorate. These
apologies defended the coups d'état of April and
December of 1653 with the argument that Marcha-
mont Nedham had used to cover his apostasy--
the divine right of superior force. The Rump,
they said, for four years had been a mere mask for
the army; now the mask had better be dropped, and
authority rest with the men who had the might to
rule. ² Similarly when Cromwell was installed Lord
Protector, pamphleteers justified his elevation as
an act of divine Providence, using the term in the
Cromwellian sense of a favorable turn of mundane
affairs. They condemned the discarded Bare-
bones' Parliament because it had worked blindly
under divine providences that were not of the
Cromwellian order. Finally, one author announced
that, since it had manifestly been the will of God to
turn the realm from the government of kings to the
government of judges, the people must submit. ³
When the acts of New Model regiments in estab-
lishing and overturning governments were to be
reverenced as the dictates of divine Providence,

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