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76 to Charles the Independent propositions—the "Heads of the Proposals," which the King readily declared were more to his mind than the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years, which the Newcastle propositions involved.

Excited debates in Parliament revealed only the very different views held by many small parties, with the determination of the majority to put before the King the most unpalatable demands—the command of the militia, the abolition of episcopacy, and the sale of the bishops' lands. Cromwell was playing a difficult part, which not even his closest friends could understand. Was he, as was said of him at one time, "led by the nose by a couple of vain and covetous earthworms," or planning the absolute surrender of all power into his own hands through the proved failure of every other body and person to carry on the government, or merely, with an honest and true heart, trying to find the best way out of very pressing difficulties, by a union between the army and the King? He wrote himself of the circumstances in his usual style: "Though it may be for the present a cloud may lie over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity and innocence from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the public good." However this may be, the negotiations came to nothing. Cromwell may