"Having had some occasion to see, together with my brethren and countrymen, a happy period put to our sharp wars and contests with the then common enemy, I hoped, in a private capacity, to have reaped the fruit and benefit, together with my brethren, of our hard labours and hazards: the enjoyment, to wit, of peace and liberty, and the privileges of a Christian and a man, in some equality with others, according as it should please the Lord to dispense unto me. And when I say God had put an end to our wars, or at least brought them to a very hopeful issue, very near an end,--after Worcester fight,--I came up to London to pay my service and duty to the Parliament which then sat, hoping that all minds would have been disposed to answer what seemed to be the mind of God, namely, to give peace and rest to his people, and especially to those who had bled more than others in the carrying on of the military affairs,--I was much disappointed of my expectation. For the issue did not prove so. _Whatever may be boasted or misrepresented, it was not so, not so!_
"I can say in the simplicity of my soul, I love not, I love not,--I declined it in my former speech,--I say, I love not to rake into sores, or to discover nakednesses! The thing I drive at is this: I say to you, I hoped to have had leave to retire to a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my charge; I begged it again and again; and God be judge between me and all men if I lie in this matter! That I lie not in matter of fact, is known to very many; but whether I tell a lie in my heart, as labouring to represent to you what was not upon my heart, I say the Lord be judge. Let uncharitable men, who measure others by themselves, judge as they please. As to the matter of fact, I say it is true. As to the ingenuity and integrity of my heart in that desire--I do appeal, as before, upon the truth of that also. But I could not obtain what my soul longed for. And the plain truth is, I did afterwards apprehend some more of opinion, (such the differences of their judgment from mine,) that it could not well be.
"I confess I am in some strait to say what I could say, and what is true, of what then followed. I pressed the Parliament, as a member, to period themselves; once and again, and again, and ten, nay twenty times over. I told them, for I knew it better than any one man in the parliament could know it, because of my manner of life, which had led me every where up and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men--that the nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could discern, when they _were_ dissolved, _there was not so much as the barking of a dog_, or any general or visible repining at it.