Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are the productions of Milton's pen we have hitherto registered as belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have yet to be noticed before we leave the period.

Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"Dissertationis ad quoedam loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Præsids Dn. Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Güntzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Güntzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657"). Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with a publication of his in 1653, also entitled Dissertatio ad loca quædam Miltoni, and appended then to certain Exercitationes concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject by a Christopher Güntzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young Güntzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already; for this is but the "second part" of his performance. The "first part" I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The "second part" is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalæcians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalæcians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:—

Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their eminent Professor Schaller's Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now young Güntzer, the accomplished young Güntzer, has placed himself by the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable torch of truth.¹—In all probability, Milton never heard of such a trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the publication of his Defensio Prima, but which, as Aubrey tells us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. "He was mightily importuned," says Aubrey, "to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign preferment of which Aubrey speaks.

In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this title-page: "The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations. By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton Esq.-Quis Martem tunicâ tectum Adamantinâ digne scripserit?-London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end, 1658." Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into twenty-six chapters, is a note "To the Reader," as follows: "Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."¹

By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,—his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,—Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled Paradise Lost, the noblest," &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information (1680), originally derived from Phillips himself, is that Paradise Lost was begun "about two years before the King came in," i.e. about May 1658. This would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately following the death-of Milton's second wife. In such a matter exact certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that the resumption of Paradise Lost was an event of the latter part of Cromwell's Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster, while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched from the house into St. James's Park across part of what is now the ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took distinct shape in Milton's mind, and here he began the great dictation.

Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title Paradise Lost, and another with the title Adam Unparadised (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present Paradise Lost. He had imagined, for the opening of his tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:—

And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with the resolution, made natural by Milton's literary observations and experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of the Epic.¹ With our present Paradise Lost before us, we can see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming point, was the great EMPYREAN or HEAVEN of HEAVENS, the abode of Angels and of Eternal Godhead. Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined, representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might bear on the terrestrial story. It must dare also into those infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge, through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World, upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme.

Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it

It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems somehow all a mistake, and the household is not desolate. A radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him. He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts; but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream, however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the last of all his Sonnets:—

BOOK III.

SEPTEMBER 1660—MAY 1660.

HISTORY:—THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION.

RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.

THE ANARCHY:—

STAGE I.:—THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659—OCT. 13, 1659.

STAGE II.:—THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659—DEC. 26, 1659.

STAGE III.:—SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.

MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE RESTORATION.

BIOGRAPHY:—MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

CHAPTER I.

First Section.

THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL: SEPT. 3, 1658—MAY 25, 1659.

PROCLAMATION OF RICHARD: HEARTY RESPONSE FROM THE COUNTRY AND FROM FOREIGN POWERS: FUNERAL OF THE LATE PROTECTOR: RESOLUTION FOR A NEW PARLIAMENT.—DIFFICULTIES IN PROSPECT: LIST OF THE MOST CONSPICUOUS PROPS AND ASSESSORS OF THE NEW PROTECTORATE: MONK'S ADVICES TO RICHARD: UNION OF THE CROMWELLIANS AGAINST CHARLES STUART: THEIR SPLIT AMONG THEMSELVES INTO THE COURT OR DYNASTIC PARTY AND THE ARMY OR WALLINGFORD-HOUSE PARTY: CHIEFS OF THE TWO PARTIES: RICHARD'S PREFERENCE FOR THE COURT PARTY, AND HIS SPEECH TO THE ARMY OFFICERS: BACKING OF THE ARMY PARTY TOWARDS REPUBLICANISM OR ANTI-OLIVERIANISM: HENRY CROMWELL'S LETTER OF REBUKE TO FLEETWOOD: DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO PARTIES AS TO FOREIGN POLICY: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND THE WAR WITH SPAIN: RELATIONS TO THE KING OF SWEDEN.—MEETING OF RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT (JAN. 27, 1658-9): THE TWO HOUSES: EMINENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS: RICHARD'S OPENING SPEECH: THURLOE THE LEADER FOR GOVERNMENT IN THE COMMONS: RECOGNITION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP AND OF THE OTHER HOUSE, AND GENERAL TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT PARTY: MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT.—DISSATISFACTION OF THE ARMY PARTY: THEIR CLOSER CONNEXION WITH THE REPUBLICANS: NEW CONVENTION OF OFFICERS AT WALLINGFORD-HOUSE: DESBOROUGH'S SPEECH: THE CONTENTION FORBIDDEN BY THE PARLIAMENT AND DISSOLVED BY RICHARD: WHITEHALL SURROUNDED BY THE ARMY, AND RICHARD COMPELLED TO DISSOLVE THE PARLIAMENT.—RESPONSIBLE POSITION OF FLEETWOOD, DESBOROUGH, LAMBERT, AND THE OTHER ARMY CHIEFS: BANKRUPT STATE OF THE FINANCES: NECESSITY FOR SOME KIND OF PARLIAMENT: PHRENZY FOR "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" AND DEMAND FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RUMP: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE ARMY CHIEFS: LENTHALL'S OBJECTIONS: FIRST FORTNIGHT OF THE RESTORED RUMP; LINGERING OF RICHARD IN WHITEHALL: HIS ENFORCED ABDICATION.

OLIVER was dead, and Richard was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood himself included, to accept the death-bed nomination. That having been settled through the night following Oliver's death, Richard was proclaimed in various places in London and Westminster on the morning of September 4, amid great concourses, with firing of cannon, and acclamations of "God save His Highness Richard Lord Protector!" It was at once intimated that the Government was to proceed without interruption, and that all holding his late Highness's commissions, civil or military, were to continue in their appointments.

Over the country generally, and through the Continent, the news of Oliver's death and the news that Richard had succeeded him ran simultaneously. For some time there was much anxiety at Whitehall as to the response. From all quarters, however, it was reassuring. Addresses of loyal adhesion to the new Protector poured in from towns, counties, regiments, and churches of all denominations; the proclamations in London and Westminster were repeated in Edinburgh, Dublin, and everywhere else; the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland were alike satisfied; the Navy was cordial; from Lockhart, as Governor of Dunkirk, and from the English Army in Flanders, there were votes of confidence; and, in return for the formal intimation made to all foreign diplomatists in London of the death of the late Protector and the accession of his son, there came mingled condolences on the one event and congratulations on the other from all the friendly powers. Richard himself, hitherto regarded as a mere country-gentleman of simple and jolly tastes, seemed to suit his new position better than had been expected. In audiences with deputations and with foreign ambassadors he acquitted himself modestly and respectably; and, as he had his father's Council still about him, with Thurloe keeping all business in hand in spite of an inopportune illness, affairs went on apparently in a satisfactory course.—A matter which interested the public for some time was the funeral of the late Protector. His body had been embalmed, and conveyed to Somerset House, there to lie in open state, amid banners, escutcheons, black velvet draperies and all the sombre gorgeousness that could be devised from a study of the greatest royal funerals on record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple, ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself had already been privately interred.—A week after this disappearance of the last remains of Oliver (Nov. 29, 1658) it was resolved in Council to call a Parliament. This, in fact, was but carrying out the intention formed in the late Protectorate; but, while the cause that had mainly made another Parliament desirable to Oliver was still excruciatingly in force,—to wit, the exhaustion of funds,—it was considered fitting moreover that Richard's accession should as soon as possible pass the ordeal of Parliamentary approval. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, was the day fixed for the meeting of the Parliament. Through the intervening weeks, while all the constituencies were busy with the canvassing and the elections, the procedure of Richard and his Council at Whitehall seemed still regular and judicious. There was due correspondence with foreign powers, and there was no interruption of the home-administration. The Protector kept court as his father had done, and conferred knighthoods and other honours, which were thankfully accepted. Sermons were dedicated to him as "the thrice illustrious Richard, Lord Protector." In short, nearly five months of his Protectorship passed away without any tumult or manifest opposition.¹

Appearances, however, were very deceptive. The death of Cromwell had, of course, agitated the whole world of exiled Royalism, raising sunk hopes, and stimulating Charles himself, the Queen-Mother, Hyde, Ormond, Colepepper, and the other refugees over the Continent, to doubled activity of intrigue and correspondence. And, though that immediate excitement had passed, and had even been succeeded by a kind of wondering disappointment among the exiles at the perfect calm attending Richard's accession, it was evident that the chances of Charles were immensely greater under Richard than they had been while Oliver lived. For one thing, would the relations of Louis XIV. and Mazarin to Richard's Government remain the same as they had been to Oliver's? There was no disturbance of these relations as yet. The English auxiliaries in Flanders were still shoulder to shoulder with Turenne and his Frenchmen, sharing with them such new successes as the capture of Ypres, accomplished mainly by the valour of the brave Morgan. But who knew what might be passing in the mind of the crafty Cardinal? Then what of the Dutch? In the streets of Amsterdam the populace, on receipt of the news of Cromwell's death, had gone about shouting "The Devil is dead"; the alliance between the English Commonwealth and the United Provinces had recently been on strain almost to snapping; what if, on the new opportunity, the policy of the States-General should veer openly towards the Stuart interest? All this was in the calculations of Hyde and his fellow-exiles, and it was their main disappointment that the quiet acceptance and seeming stability of the new Protectorate at home prevented the spring against it of such foreign possibilities. "I hope this young man will not inherit his father's fortune," wrote Hyde in the fifth month after Richard's accession, "but that some confusion will fall out which must make open a door for us." The speculation was more likely than even Hyde then knew. Underneath the great apparent calm at home the beginnings of a confusion at the very centre were already at work.¹

It will be well at this point to have before us a list of the most conspicuous props and assessors of the new Protectorate. The name Oliverians being out of date now, they may be called The Cromwellians. We shall arrange them in groups:—

I. THE COUNCIL.

• Lord President Lawrence.
• Lord Lieutenant-General Fleetwood (his Highness's brother-in-law).
• Lord Major-General Desborough (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
• Lord Sydenham (Colonel).
• Lord Pickering (Chamberlain of the Household).
• Lord Strickland.
• Lord Skippon.
• Lord Fiennes (one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal).
• Lord Viscount Lisle.
• Lord Admiral Montague.
• Lord Wolseley.
• Lord Philip Jones (Comptroller of the Household).
• Mr. Secretary Thurloe.¹

II. NEAR ADVISERS, NOT OF THE COUNCIL.

• Lord Viscount Falconbridge (his Highness's brother-in-law).
• Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel).
• Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel).
• Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected Cromwellian, and conjoined with Fiennes and Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal, Jan. 22, 1658-9).
• Lord Commissioner John Lisle.
• Lord Chief Justice Glynne.
• Lord Chief Justice St. John.
• William Pierrepoint.
• Sir Edmund Prideaux (Attorney General).
• Sir William Bills (Solicitor General).
• Sir Oliver Fleming (Master of the Ceremonies).
• Sir Richard Chiverton (Lord Mayor of London).
• Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
• Dr. John Owen.
• Dr. Thomas Goodwin.

III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:—Fleetwood and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too, with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their military capacity, as merely Colonels; but the first eight had been among Cromwell's "Major-Generals," three of the thirteen had their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe, Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been among his Parliamentary "Lords."—We have mentioned but the chiefs of the Army, called "the Army Grandees;" but, since Richard's accession, and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of 200 or more, in Fleetwood's residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the smaller meetings of "the Army Grandees" in the same place, all matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There were also more secret meetings in Desborongh's house.

IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland; with whom may be associated such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton. (2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, Lord Deputy of Ireland hitherto, but now, by his brother's commission, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, Lord Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk; with whom may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces, and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658.

These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it mainly depended, in the first months of Richard's Protectorate, whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form, and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This, however, is quite a misconstruction.—Monk, who is chiefly suspected, and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration." Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure him "There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of place." On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and many of the ships re-officered¹—Such were Monk's advices; and, whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences, the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible, on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.

Cromwell's death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed, "Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery" Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I'll make the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him." One might imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally, which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may be called the Court Party or Dynastic Party, represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague, Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard's Protectorate an avowed continuation of his father's, with the same forms, the same powers, and the permanence of the Petition and Advice as the instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In opposition to this party was the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military co-ordinate with the Protector.¹

For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke, into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town (Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully. The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the main subject. "I am sure it may be said of me," said Richard, "that not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though they may be better men than myself." He then instanced the two things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. "For instance," he said, "if I should trust it to any one person or more to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the Petition and Advice—which directs that the commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only to my disposal—I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the Council, in the Lords' House, and all other magistracies. I leave it to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the Petition and Advice, which I must make my rule in my government, and shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not obliged to make any Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own liberty, as it was in my father's; only, if I will make any, it must be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief can be meant no other than the person who under me commands the whole Army, call him what you will—'Field-Marshal,' 'Commander-in-chief,' 'Major-General,' or 'Lieutenant-General.' ... Commander-in-chief is the genus; the others are the species. And, though I am not obliged to have any such person besides myself to command all the forces, yet I have made one: that is, I have made my brother Fleetwood Lieutenant-General of all the Army, and so by consequence commander-in-chief [under me]; and I am sure I can do nothing that will give him more influence in the Army than that title will give him, unless I should make him General [instead of me]; and I have told you the reasons why I cannot do that." Altogether, the speech, and the modesty with which it was delivered, produced very considerable effect for the moment upon the officers. Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and others are understood to have shown more sympathy with Richard in consequence; there was respect for his firmness among people generally when it came to be known; and, though the meetings at Wallingford House and Desborough's house were continued, action was deferred. One effect, however, had been to rouse the dormant Anti-Cromwellianism of the Army-men, and to bring out, more than Fleetwood and Desborough intended, that leaven of pure Republicanism, or affection for the "good old cause" of 1648-1653, which had not ceased, through all the submission to the Protectorate, to lurk in the regiments in combination with Anabaptistry, Fifth-Monarchism, and other extreme forms of religious Independency. In the meetings round Fleetwood and Desborough there had been reflections on the late Protector's memory far from respectful. Henry Cromwell in Ireland had heard of this; and among many interesting letters of his to various correspondents on the difficulties of his brother's opening Protectorate, all showing a proud and fine sensitiveness, with some flash of his father's intellect, there is one (Oct. 20) of rebuke to his brother-in-law Fleetwood on account of his conjunction with the malcontents, "Pray give me leave to expostulate with you. How came those 200 or 300 officers together? ... If they were called, was it with his Highness's privity? If they met without leave in so great a number, were they told their error? I shall not meddle with the matter of their petition, though some things in it do unhandsomely reflect not only on this present, but his late, Highness, I wish with all my heart you were Commander-in-chief of all the forces in the three nations; but I had rather have it done by his Highness's especial grace and mere motion than put upon you in a tumultuary soldierly way. But, dear brother, I must tell you (and I cannot do it without tears) I hear that dirt was thrown upon his late Highness at that great meeting. They were exhorted to stand up for that 'good old cause which had long lain asleep,' &c. I thought my dear father had pursued it to the last. He died like a servant of God, and prayed for those that desired to trample upon his dust, for they also were God's people. O dear brother! ... whither do these things tend? Surely God hath a controversy with us. What a hurly-burly is there made! A hundred Independent ministers called together" [the Savoy Synod of the Congregationalists, with Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Caryl, and others, at their head, convoked Sept. 29, 1658, for framing a Confession of Faith, by permission from the late Protector: see ante p. 844]. "a Council, as you call it, of 200 or 300 officers of a judgment! Remember what has always befallen imposing spirits. Will not the loins of an imposing Independent or Anabaptist be as heavy as the loins of an imposing Prelate or Presbyter? And is it a dangerous error that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy? ... O dear brother, my spirit is sorely oppressed with the consideration of the miserable estate of the innocent people of these three poor nations. What have these sheep done that their blood should be the price of our lust and ambition? Let me beg of you to remember how his late Highness loved you, how he honoured you with the highest trust in the world by leaving the sword in your hand which must defend or destroy us; and his declaring his Highness his successor shows that he left it there to preserve him and his reputation. O brother, use it to curb extravagant spirits and busybodies; but let not the nations be governed by it. Let us take heed of arbitrary power. Let us be governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. And truly, brother, you must pardon me if I say God and man may require this duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the Army, in point of discipline, at your door." Fleetwood could answer this (Nov. 9) but very lamely: "I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a severe letter from you," &c. Fleetwood was really a good-hearted gentleman, meaning no desperate harm to Richard or his Protectorate, though desiring the Commandership-in-chief for himself, and perhaps (who knows domestic secrets?) a co-equality of public status for his wife, Lady Bridget, with the Lady-Protectress Dorothy. In fact, however, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood and Major-General Desborough between them had let loose forces that were to defy their own management. Meanwhile, the phenomenon observable in the weeks preceding the meeting of the Parliament which Richard had called was that of a violent division already among the councillors and assessors of the Protectorate. There was the Court Party or Dynastic Party, taking their stand on the Petition and Advice, and advocating a strictly conservative and constitutional procedure, in the terms of that document, on the lines laid down by Oliver. There was also the Army Party or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with an immediate retinue of Cromwellian ex-Major-Generals and Colonels purposely in London, and a more shadowy tail of majors, captains, and inferior officers, coiled away among the regiments.¹