The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not, for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing of the declared supporters of Richard's Protectorship, and their chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed; and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for the "good Old Cause"? How well-founded was this calculation will appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill, Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland, Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears that they saw endangered, but that Army privilege of debating and theorizing which had been asserted by Cromwell in the Civil War, and which Cromwell afterwards, while regulating and checking it, had never abolished. Were they to meet no more, agitate no more? Was the great Army of the Commonwealth to be degraded, for the benefit of this new Protector, into a mere collection of men paid for bestriding horses and handling pikes and ramrods? So reasoned the rank and file and the subalterns; but the chiefs, while sharing the general feeling, had additional alarms of their own. They had left actions behind them, done in their major-generalcies or other commands for Cromwell, for which they might be called to account under a civilian Protectorate, or other merely constitutional Government. There had actually been signs in the present Parliament of a tendency to the re-investigation of cases of military oppression and the impeachment of selected culprits. Were the Army-men to consent, in such circumstances, to give up their powers of self-defence and corporate action? No! Oliver's son might deserve consideration; but Oliver's Army had prior claims.
Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of Richard's in one of these conferences had been widely reported and had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing wrong in appointing any but "godly" officers, he had said, "Here is Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust him before ye all." As nothing was to be made of Richard in this private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament. Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill, Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and Desborough, he had given the permission, without even consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659, there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House, Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe, representing the other, while among the general body there were no one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and that therefore he would propose that every officer should be cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was lawful and just." Amid the cheers that followed, Lords Howard and Falconbridge (two of the denounced "sons of Belial"?) left in disgust; but Broghill remained and opposed bravely. He disliked all tests; but, if there was to be a test, he would propose that it should be simply an oath "to defend the Government as it is now established under the Protector and Parliament." If the present meeting insisted on a test, and did not adopt that one, he would see that it should be moved in Parliament. This, supported by Whalley and Goffe, calmed the meeting somewhat; and, after much more speaking, in which the necessity of a separation of the military power from the civil was a prominent topic, the result was "A Humble Representation and Petition of the Officers of the Armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland," expressed in general and not unrespectful terms, but conveying sufficiently the Army's demands. Presented to Richard in Whitehall on the 6th of April, this petition was forwarded by him to the Commons on the 8th, with a letter to the Speaker. For more than a week no notice was taken by the House; but, the petition having been circulated in print, with other petitions and documents more fierce for "the good old cause," and the general council of officers still continuing the meetings at Wallingford House, with the excitement of sermons and prayers added to that of their debates, the House was driven at last into that attitude of direct antagonism to the Army in the name of the Protectorate on which both Royalists and Republicans had calculated. Thurloe would fain have avoided this, and had almost longed for some Cavalier outbreak to occupy the two conflicting Protectoral parties and reunite them. But the numerous Cavaliers in London had been well instructed and lay provokingly still; and the management of the crisis for Richard had passed from Thurloe to the House itself. On Monday the 18th of April, in a House of 250, with shut doors to prevent any from leaving, it was resolved, by 163 votes to 87, "That, during the sitting of the Parliament there shall be no general council or meeting of the officers of the Army without the direction, leave, and authority of his Highness the Lord Protector and both Houses of Parliament"; and it was also resolved, "That no person shall have or continue any command or trust in any of the Armies or Navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the Dominions or Territories thereto belonging, who shall refuse to subscribe, That he will not disturb nor interrupt the free meetings in Parliament of any of the members of either House of Parliament, or their freedom in their debates and counsels." The concurrence of the Other House was desired in these votes; and the Commons, who had noted with surprise that Hasilrig, Ludlow, Scott, and Vane, rather took part with the Army in the debate, proceeded to the serious consideration of the arrears of pay due to the officers and soldiers, and of other real military grievances, in order to reconcile the Army, if possible, to their strong Resolutions.1
1: Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.
That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then, to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused, the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing Richard's control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said, and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The question now was between a forced dissolution of the Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard's objection to violence, seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a rendezvous in and round St. James's, by Fleetwood's order, of all the regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard's name, was attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of Richard's guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. "About noon," says the sturdy democrat, "Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o'clock. The Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation, and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.1
1: Ludlow, 639-641; Whitlocke under date April 21, 1659; Commons Journals of April 22; Phillips, 641-642; Guizot, I. 120-128, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin appended at pp. 366-375.
A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a total of £2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in Flanders. Of this sum £1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears, £393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and £80,623 was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this last item. The annual income from England was £1,517,275, and the annual expenses in England £1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England of £30,513; the annual income from Scotland was £143,652, but the outlay £307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for Scotland of £163,619; the annual income from Ireland was £207,790, and the outlay £346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of £138,690. This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary administration, civil and military, of the three nations, £332,823; but, as £252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real deficit was £80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the £393,883 running on for the Navy, and the arrears of £1,747,584 besides, and the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.1
1: Commons Journals, April 16, 1659.
The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of officers continued, or a more select Council of their number associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have satisfied or beguiled for the moment the so-called Republicanism now again rampant among the inferior Army-men. But there was no money; Government in any form was at a deadlock until money could be raised; and how was that to be effected? The Wallingford-House magnates did meditate for an instant whether they should not try to raise money by their own authority, but concluded that the experiment would be too desperate, and that, for this reason, if for no other, some kind of Parliament must be at once set up.—But what Parliament? Here they had not far to seek. For the last month or more, placards on all the walls of London, the very cries of news-boys in the streets, had been telling them what Parliament. We have several times quoted the phrase "The Good Old Cause," as coming gradually into use after Oliver's death, and passing to and fro in documents and speeches. But no one can describe now the force and frequency of that phrase in London and throughout England in April 1659 and for months afterwards. If two men passed you in the street, you heard the words "the good old cause" from one of them; every second or third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. One might have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the Government.—With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane, Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered. They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour, moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between 1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a Select Senate or Other House. To these demands for a continuation of the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield, though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a temporary Senate for definite purposes. The differences had not been adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when there was drawn up for the purpose "A Declaration of the Officers of the Army," signed by the Army Secretary "by the direction of the Lord Fleetwood and the Council of Officers," and when two deputations, one of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house in Covent Garden. It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.1
1: Ludlow, 644-649; Parl. Hist. III. 1546-7; Thomason Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.
Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still very uneasy. "He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late King had not put an end to the Parliament." That objection having been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet him next morning and form a House, "he replied that he could by no means do as we desired, having appointed a business of far greater importance to himself, which he would not omit on any account, because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. We then pressed him to inform us what it might be: to which he answered that he was preparing himself to participate of the Lord's supper, which he was resolved to take on the next Lord's day. Upon this it was replied that mercy is more acceptable to God than sacrifice, and that he could not better prepare himself for the aforesaid duty than by contributing to the public good." As he was still obdurate, the deputations told him they would do without him. The list of members was divided among such clerks as were at hand, and the circulars were duly sent out.1