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 himself, abstained from sitting among them, and by
the open influence of Desborough, a bold and reckless man, who began to
despise the weak and wavering conduct of Fleetwood. Here originated the
plan of a general council of officers,[a] which was followed by the
adoption of "the humble representation and petition," an instrument
composed in language too moderate to give reasonable cause of offence, but
intended to suggest much more than it was thought prudent to express. It
made no allusion to the disputed claim of the protector, or the subjects of
strife between the two houses; but it complained bitterly of the contempt
into which the good old cause had sunk, of the threats held out, and
the prosecutions instituted, against the patriots who had distinguished
themselves in its support, and of the privations to which the military were
reduced
[Footnote 1: Viscount Howard, of Morpeth, July 20, 1657, afterwards created
Baron Dacre, Viscount Howard of Morpeth and earl of Carlisle, by Charles
II.
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