Thus a second time the supreme authority devolved on the meeting of officers at Wallingford House.  They immediately established their favourite plan for the government of the army.  The office of commander-in-chief, in its plenitude of power, was restored to Fleetwood; the rank of major-general of the forces in Great Britain was given to Lambert; and all those officers who refused to subscribe a new engagement, were removed from their commands.  At the same time they annulled by their supreme authority all proceedings in parliament on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of October, vindicated their own conduct in a publication with the title of “The Army’s Plea,"[1] vested the provisional exercise of the civil authority in a committee of safety of twenty-three members, and denounced the penalties of treason against all who should refuse to obey its orders, or should venture to levy forces without its permission.  An attempt was even made to replace Richard Cromwell in the protectorial dignity;[a] for this purpose he came from Hampshire to London, escorted by three troops of horse; but his supporters in the meeting were out-voted by a small majority, and he retired to Hampton Court.[2]

[Footnote 1:  See Declaration of the General Council of Officers, 17.  The Army’s Plea for its Present Practice, printed by Henry Hills, printer to the army, 1659, is in many parts powerfully written.  The principal argument is, that as the parliament, though bound by the solemn league and covenant to defend the king’s person, honour, and dignity, did not afterwards scruple to arraign, condemn, and execute him because he had broken his trust; so the army, though they had engaged to be true and faithful to the parliament, might lawfully rise against it, when they found that it did not preserve the just rights and liberties of the people.  This condition was implied in the engagement; otherwise the making of the engagement would have been a sin, and the keeping thereof would have been a sin also, and so an adding of sin to sin.]

[Footnote 2:  Whitelock, 685, 686.  Ludlow, ii. 250, 286, 287.  Clar.  Pap. 591.  At the restoration, Richard, to escape from his creditors, fled to the continent; and, after an expatriation of almost twenty years, returned to England to the neighbourhood of Cheshunt, where he died in 1713, at the age of eighty-six.—­Noble, i. 228.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1659.  Oct 26.]

Of all the changes which had surprised and perplexed the nation since the death of the last king, none had been received with such general disapprobation as the present.  It was not that men lamented the removal of the Rump; but they feared the capricious and arbitrary rule of the army; and, when they contrasted their unsettled state with the tranquillity formerly enjoyed under the monarchy, many were not backward in the expression of their wishes for the restoration of the ancient line of their princes.  The royalists laboured to improve this favourable disposition; yet