The contest between the army and the Parliament was evidently growing every day more active. The Commons had no desire to lay down their authority and, to retain their existence, even showed a leaning towards introducing a number of Presbyterians under the name of "Neuters." To such a project the army was never likely to assent, and Cromwell proposed, in the council at Whitehall, that Parliament should be at once dissolved, and a national council of forty persons, with himself at their head, should conduct affairs till a new Parliament could be called on established principles. The opinion, however, was that such a proceeding would be dangerous, and the authority of the council be looked upon as unwarrantable.
Whilst these matters were in agitation, Whitelock says that Cromwell, on the 8th of November, 1652, desired a private interview with him, and in this urged the necessity of taking prompt and efficient measures for securing the great objects for which they had fought, and which he termed the mercies and successes which God had conferred on the nation. He inveighed warmly against the Parliament, and declared that the army began to entertain a strange distaste to it; adding that he wished there were not too much reason for it. "And really," he continued, "their pride, their self-seeking, their engrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends; their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions; their delays of business, and designs to perpetuate themselves, and to continue the power in their own hands; their meddling in private matters between party and party, contrary to the institution of Parliament; their injustice and partiality in these matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them, do give much ground for people to open their mouths against them, and to dislike them." He concluded by insisting on the necessity of some controlling power over them to check these extravagances, or else nothing could prevent the ruin of the Commonwealth.
Whitelock admitted the truth of most of this, but defended the Parliament generally, and reminded Cromwell that it was the Parliament which had granted them their authority, and to Cromwell even his commission, and that it would be hard for them, under those circumstances, to curb their power.