[Footnote 1:  Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.]

That was not possible.  Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings dissolved.  The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then, to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers still among them.  Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused, the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing Richard’s control of the militia.  Richard was advised by those around him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now notorious.  He hesitated.  He had never done harm to anybody, he said, and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account.  The question now was between a forced dissolution of the Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself.  That, in spite of Richard’s objection to violence, seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the streets of London.  Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a rendezvous in and round St. James’s, by Fleetwood’s order, of all the regiments in town.  A counter-rendezvous, in Richard’s name, was attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of Richard’s guards, having preferred the other rendezvous.  What then happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence.  “About noon,” says the sturdy democrat, “Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself.”  There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part.  Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable.  Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough.  Next day, Friday the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible confusion.  Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o’clock.  The Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation, and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.[1]