itself or Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House or House of Lords.  On the first they were definitively beaten in February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively, and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of March (ante pp. 432-435).  Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics.  No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe’s leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage.  The Court party of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the Army Party, or Wallingford-House Party, represented by Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power.  The differences between the two parties had been smouldering since Richard’s accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in deadly strife, the Republicans looking on.  Through that month the ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in Westminster—­Richard’s regular Parliament, and the irregular Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers—­watching each other and interchanging threats and denunciations.  It was on the 18th of the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous resolutions asserting their supreme authority.  They were that the Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the established power (ante pp. 440-441).  Then it was evident there would be a crash, but in what form was still unknown.

Precisely at this crisis in Richard’s Protectorship comes the last batch of Milton’s official letters for him.  The letters are four in number:[1]—­

[Footnote 1:  These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript, and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers, pp. 12-14.]

(CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 19, 1659:—­Two Letters to this Prince on the same day. (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London merchants, are owners of a ship called The Happy Entrance, which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin.  They can get no account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play the