If the supreme authority
resided any where, it was with Fleetwood, who now held the nominal command
of the army; but he and his associates were controlled both by the meeting
of officers at St. James's, and by the consultations of the republican
party in the city; and therefore contented themselves with depriving the
friends of Richard of their commissions, and with giving their regiments
to the men who had been cashiered by his father.[1] Unable to agree on
any form of government among themselves, they sought to come to an
understanding with the republican leaders. These demanded the restoration
of the long parliament, on the ground that, as its interruption by Cromwell
had been illegal, it was still the supreme authority in the nation; and
the officers, unwilling to forfeit the privileges of their new peerage,
insisted on the reproduction of the other house, as a co-ordinate
authority, under the less objectionable name of a senate. But the country
was now in a state of anarchy; the intentions of the armies in Scotland
and Ireland remained uncertain; and the royalists, both Presbyterians and
Cavaliers, were exerting themselves to improve the general confusion to
the advantage of the exiled king. As a last resource, the officers, by
an instrument in which they regretted their past errors and backsliding,
invited[a] the members of the long parliament to resume the trust of
[Footnote 1: See the Humble Remonstrance from four hundred Non-commissioned
Officers and Privates of Major-general Goffe's Regiment (so called) of
Foot.
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