[Footnote 1:  Harrington’s Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland’s Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood’s Ath., III. 1115-1126; Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets (for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of Harrington’s Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel.  More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates.  The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults.  What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes?  Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration.  They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself.  But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert’s brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army’s real feelings.  Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority?  Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs?  Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert’s brigade?  These were the questions asked in Lambert’s brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert’s brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert’s brigade.  At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form.  Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers.  The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of “the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition.”  The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel