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Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September, 1658, the anniversary of his triumphs at Dunbar and Worcester. There was no immediate upheaval in the country, and his eldest surviving son, Richard, succeeded quietly to the Protectorate. Richard, although lacking his father’s genius, was not the nonentity he has often been represented, but he was no soldier and this was ultimately to prove his undoing. He summoned a Parliament which met on 27 January, 1659. For this Parliament Okey and Richard Wagstaffe were returned as members for the county, and Samuel Browne and Thomas Margetts as members for the town, of Bedford. Okey took a minor part in the debates of this Parliament on the 2, 3, 5, 9 and 12 February, 7, 9, 16, 17 and 21 March and 2 and 18 April. Although he had not yet been restored to a command he was constantly in touch with military circles, and as early as October, 1658, his former fellow-officers were seeking his restoration. When Pride died in the same month Okey was offered command of his regiment but refused, demanding that he should be restored to the command of his own ^ormer regiment of horse which Tobias Bridge, now a Colonel, commanded: this was apparently not possible at the time.
Early in 1659 the army officers, feeling that all was not well with the country, drew up a statement of grievances in The Humble Representation and Petition of the General Council of the Officers of the Armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Representation, which was not openly hostile to the Protectorate, declared that the army was not a mercenary body but had engaged for civil and religious rights and liberties. It gave a warning that ‘the good old Cause against Tyranny and intolerable Oppression in Matters Civil and Religious, whereupon we first engaged, and unto which the Lord hath, in such a continued Series of Providence, given so signal a Testimony, and for the carrying on whereof there hath been such a plentiful pouring forth of Treasures, Prayers, Tears, and Blood, during the late War (in the Difficulties and Dangers whereof we also, the living Monuments of Patience and Mercy, have had our Shares) is very frequently and publickly derided and reproached.’
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