By the dissolution of the Long Parliament Cromwell as commander-in-chief was left the sole authority in the state. He determined immediately to summon another parliament. This was the "Little" or "Barebones Parliament," consisting of one hundred and forty persons selected by the council of officers from among those nominated by the congregations in each county, which met on the 4th of July 1653. This assembly, however, soon showed itself impracticable and incapable, and on the 12th of December the speaker, followed by the more moderate members, marched to Whitehall and returned their powers to Cromwell, while the rest were expelled by the army.
Cromwell, who had no desire to exercise arbitrary power and whose main object therefore was to devise some constitutional limit to the authority which circumstances had placed in his hands, now accepted the written constitution drawn up by some of the officers, called the _Instrument of Government_, the earliest example of a "fixed government" based on "fundamentals," or constitutional guarantees, and the only example of it in English history. Its authors had wished Oliver to assume the title of king, but this he repeatedly refused; and in the instrument he was named Protector, a parliament was established, limited in powers but whose measures were not restricted by the Protector's veto unless they contravened the constitution, the Protector's executive power being also limited by the council. The Protector and the council together were given a life tenure of office, with a large army and a settled revenue sufficient for public needs in time of peace; while the clauses relating to religion "are remarkable as laying down for the first time with authority a principle of toleration,"[3] though this toleration did not apply to Roman Catholics and Anglicans. On the 16th of December 1653 Cromwell was installed in his new office, dressed as a civilian in a plain black coat instead of in scarlet as a general, in order to demonstrate that military government had given place to civil; for he approached his task in the same spirit that had prompted his declaration to the Little Parliament of his wish "to divest the sword of all power in the Civil administration."