ry 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