Cromwell’s death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor.  From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell’s death-bed, “Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery” Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31:  “I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are.  If I may know, I’ll make the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him.”  One might imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally, which he had reported as then going on among the officers.  Certain it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal.  Gradually, in these letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main fact.  It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his adherents and supporters into two parties.  First there was what may be called the Court Party or Dynastic Party, represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague, Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not also of Monk.  What they desired was to make Richard’s Protectorate an avowed continuation of his father’s, with the same forms, the same powers, and the permanence of the Petition and Advice as the instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular.  In opposition to this party was the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost in mass.  While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but the feeble and unmilitary Richard.  In especial, they were for limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the Commonwealth.  It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military co-ordinate with the Protector.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Falconbridge’s Letters (deciphered) in Thurloe, VII. 365-366 et seq., with other Letters in Thurloe and Letters of the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, chiefly to Mazarin, appended to Guizot’s Richard Cromwell and the Restoration, I. 231 et seq.]