Wallingford House party

The Wallingford House party were a group of senior officers (Grandees) of the New Model Army who met at Wallingford House, the London home of Charles Fleetwood.^[1] They overthrew the Protectorate of the Lord Protector Richard Cromwell.^[2]

On 23 April 1659 the Wallingford House party ended the Third Protectorate Parliament by locking the doors of the assembly rooms. On 6 May the Council of Officers meeting in Wallingford House, invited the Rump Parliament to reassemble which it did the next day appointing a Committee of Safety to form the executive until a new Council of State was appointed on 19 May.^[2]

Notes

1. Cokayne notes that: Wallingford House stood at the end of the Tilt-yard, in Whitehall, on the site of the present Admiralty, and was so called after Sir William Knollys, Treasurer of the Household, who was created Viscount Wallingford in 1616. He sold it to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in 1621, who resided there. It was the official residence Fleetwood. At the Restoration it reverted to the George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (Cokayne 1910, p. 604).
2. Keeble, pp. 8–10

References

• Cokayne, George E. (1910). Gibbs, Vicary, ed. The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdomextant, extinct, or dormant 4. London: The St. Catherine press, ltd. p. 604.
• Keeble, N. H (2002). The Restoration: England in the 1660s. History of Early Modern England Series. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0-631-23617-7.