ss definitively,
and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of
March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an
independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the
Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under
Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal
straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten
Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The _Court party_
of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to
preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the
Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper
place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the
_Army Party_, or _Wallingford-House Party_, represented by
Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the
civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power. The
differences between the two parties had been smouldering since
Richard's accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting
of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint
victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in
deadly strife, the Republicans looking on. Through that month the
ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in
Westminster--Richard's regular Parliament, and the irregular
Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers--watching each other
and interchanging threats and denunciations. It was on the 18th of
the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous
resolutions asserting their supreme authority. They were that the
Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and
no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of
the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the
established power (ante pp. 440-441). Then it was evident there would
be a crash, but in what form was still unknown.

Precisely at this crisis in Richard's Protectorship comes the last
batch of Milton's official letters for him. The letters are four in
number:[1]--

[Footnote 1: These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed
Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript,
and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton
Papers_, pp. 12-14.]

(CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY,
_April_ 19, 1659:--Two Letters to this Prince on the same da