o the manner and extent of their adhesion to
Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 387-388.]

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