nditure had grown in a greater proportion;
complaints were made of oppression, waste, embezzlement, and tyranny in the
collection of the excise: the inhumanity of selling obnoxious individuals
for slaves to the West India planters was severely reprobated;[1] instances
of extortion were daily announced to the house by the committee of
grievances; an impeachment was ordered against Boteler, accused of
oppression in his office of major-general; and another threatened against
Thurloe for illegal conduct in his capacity of secretary of state. But,
while these proceedings awakened the hopes and gratified the resentments of
the people, they at the same time spread alarm through the army; every man
conscious of having abused the power of the sword began to tremble for his
own safety; and an unusual ferment, the sure presage of military violence,
was observable at the head-quarters of the several regiments.

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 429, 432. Thurloe, 647. Burton's Diary, iii.
448; iv. 255, 263, 301, 403, 429. One petition stated that seventy persons
who had been apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising, after a year's
imprisonment, had been sold at Barbadoes for "1550 pounds' weight of sugar
a-piece, more or less, according to their working faculties." Among them
were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as "grinding at
the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island,
being bought and sold still from one planter to another, or attached as
horses or beasts for the debts of their masters, being whipped at the
whipping-posts as rogues at their masters' pleasure, and sleeping in sties
worse than hogs in England."--Ibid. 256. See also Thurloe, i. 745.]

Hitherto the general officers had been divided between Whitehall and
Wallingford House, the residences of Richard and of Fleetwood. At
Whitehall, the Lord Falconberg, brother-in-law to the protector, Charles
Howard, whom Oliver had created a viscount,[1] Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe,
and a few others, formed a military council for the purpose of maintaining
the ascendancy of Richard in the army. At Wallingford House, Fleetwood and
his friends consulted how they might deprive him of the command, and reduce
him to the situation of a civil magistrate; but now a third and more
numerous council appeared at St. James's, consisting of most of the
inferior officers, and guided by the secret intrigues of Lambert, who,
holding no commission