s had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more
ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the
Protector's Government and the Opposition, and had become one between
the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the
farther use of Thurloe's victories.

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,
Hen