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._] For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at Whitehall round poor Richard.

Naturally, all his own sympathies were with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent.

He had proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke, into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and Cooper, proposed by that party in preference.

In the matter of the limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of the Army he had been even more firm.