Whether the consequences of this measure, so fatal to the interests of Richard, were foreseen by his advisers, may be doubted.  It appears that Thurloe had for several days been negotiating both with the republican and the military leaders.  He had tempted some of the former with the offer of place and emolument, to strengthen the party of the protector; to the latter he had proposed that Richard, in imitation of his father on one occasion, should raise money for the payment of the army by the power of the sword, and without the aid of parliament.[2] But these intrigues were now at an end; by the dissolution Richard had signed his own deposition; though he continued to reside at Whitehall, the government fell into abeyance; even the officers, who had hitherto frequented

[Footnote 1:  Whitelock, 677.  England’s Confusion, 9.  Clarendon Papers, 451, 456.  Ludlow, ii. 174.  Merc.  Pol. 564.]

[Footnote 2:  Thurloe, 659, 661.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1659.  April 22.]

his court, abandoned him, some to appease, by their attendance at Wallingford House, the resentment of their adversaries, the others, to provide, by their absence, for their own safety.  If the supreme authority resided any where, it was with Fleetwood, who now held the nominal command of the army; but he and his associates were controlled both by the meeting of officers at St. James’s, and by the consultations of the republican party in the city; and therefore contented themselves with depriving the friends of Richard of their commissions, and with giving their regiments to the men who had been cashiered by his father.[1] Unable to agree on any form of government among themselves, they sought to come to an understanding with the republican leaders.  These demanded the restoration of the long parliament, on the ground that, as its interruption by Cromwell had been illegal, it was still the supreme authority in the nation; and the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage, insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate.  But the country was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and Cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to the advantage of the exiled king.  As a last resource, the officers, by an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding, invited[a] the members of the long parliament to resume the trust of

[Footnote 1:  See the Humble Remonstrance from four hundred Non-commissioned Officers and Privates of Major-general Goffe’s Regiment (so called) of Foot.  London, 1659.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1659.  May 6.]

which they had been unrighteously deprived.  With some difficulty, two-and-forty were privately collected in the Painted Chamber; Lenthall, the former speaker, after much entreaty, put himself at their head,[a] and the whole body passed into the house through two lines of officers, some of whom were the very individuals by whom, six years before, they had been ignominiously expelled.[1]