But this termination was defeated by the combination of some who knew not what they wished, and of some who wished what they could never attain. The general officers who had been well content to make Cromwell the first of themselves, or greater than themselves by their own creation, had never forgiven his manifest design to reign over them as one of a superior order, and owing nothing to their pleasure. They had begun to cabal during his last illness. Though they did not oppose Richard's succession, they continued to hold meetings, not quite public, but exciting intense alarm in his council. As if disdaining the command of a clownish boy, they proposed that the station of lord general should be separated from that of protector, with the power over all commissions in the army, and conferred on Fleetwood; who, though his brother-in-law, was a certain instrument in their hands. The vain ambitious Lambert, aspiring, on the credit of some military reputation, to wield the sceptre of Cromwell, influenced this junto; while the commonwealth's party, some of whom were, or had been, in the army, drew over several of these ignorant and fanatical soldiers. Thurloe describes the posture of affairs in September and October, while all Europe was admiring the peaceable transmission of Oliver's power, as most alarming; and it may almost be said that Richard had already fallen when he was proclaimed the lord protector of England.[465] _A parliament called._--It was necessary to summon a parliament on the usual score of obtaining money. Lord Broghill had advised this measure immediately on Oliver's death,[466] and perhaps the delay might be rather prejudicial to the new establishment. But some of the council feared a parliament almost as much as they did the army. They called one, however, to meet Jan. 27, 1659, issuing writs in the ordinary manner to all boroughs which had been accustomed to send members, and consequently abandoning the reformed model of Cromwell. This Ludlow attributes to their expectation of greater influence among the small boroughs; but it may possibly be ascribed still more to a desire of returning by little and little to the ancient constitution, by eradicating the revolutionary innovations. The new parliament consisted of courtiers, as the Cromwell party were always denominated, of presbyterians, among whom some of cavalier principles crept in, and of republicans; the two latter nearly balancing, with their united weight, the ministerial majority.[467] They began with an oath of allegiance to the protector, as presented by the late parliament, which, as usual in such cases, his enemies generally took without scruple.[468] But upon a bill being offered for the recognition of Richard as the undoubted lord protector and chief magistrate of the commonwealth, they made a stand against the word recognise, which was carried with difficulty, and caused him the mortification of throwing