[Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been prepared:—(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the five months of its sittings—Commons Journals, Vol. VII. pp. 644-797—and collected the names appearing in the lists of Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with a list in Parl. Hist., III. 1547-8. It is much less complete than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have referred to Mr. Carlyle's Revised List of the Long Parliament, appended to Vol. II. of his Cromwell, and to the Lists of the Barebones Parliament, Oliver's two Parliaments, and Richard's Parliament in Vol. III. of the Parl. Hist.—With all my care, I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian name. The Journals often omit that.—I have seen, since writing the above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving what it calls "a perfect list of the Rumpers." It includes 121 names, and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite—containing one or two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more authentic.]

From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval, but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed—e.g. Birch, John Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand, some—e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John, Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke—had merged their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell, and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed, finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to what was going on.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded divisions in the Journals for the whole session.]

A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again denoting Regicides:—

Parliamentary Members (In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot).

*Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Sir Henry Vane Colonel *Lieut.-General Ludlow Lieut.-General Fleetwood Major Richard Salway Colonel Herbert Morley *Thomas Scott Colonel Robert Wallop Sir James Harrington *Colonel Valentine Walton *Colonel John Jones Colonel William Sydenham Algernon Sidney Henry Neville *Thomas Challoner *Colonel John Downes Lord Chief Justice St. John George Thompson Lord Commissioner Whitlocke *Colonel John Dixwell Robert Reynolds Non-Parliamentary Members.

Seven appointed without ballot.

Thomas, Lord Fairfax O^1, R Major-General Lambert O^1, O^2, R Colonel John Desborough O^1, O^2, L Colonel James Berry O^2, L *John Bradshaw O^1, O^2[t], R Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. B, O^1, O^2[t], R Sir Horatio Townshend R

Three chosen, by ballot.

Josiah Berners O^1 Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston L Sir Robert Honeywood R

Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb. 1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected. His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a bona fide Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham's Fairfax, 375; Baillie's Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.]

There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic—to wit, the Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community, but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May 1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament, without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies, and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd theoretically; for, though there were then Republicans—Milton for one—who had adopted the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory. But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought to be nothing in it a priori whatever, were yet believers in the indefeasible and a priori authority of that Republican system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should be no government except by the people themselves through a Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to their senses!

These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed.

The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by their defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went. Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the 16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the Rumpers.[1]

[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French reckoning)—especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402); Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]

Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf here and there, but they died away.—Monk, about whose conduct in the crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense gain.—Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from the new Government.—There had been more uncertainty about Henry Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day, having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace, by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz, that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was present in many of your administrations before you were last interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April 1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died." Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts, as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the understanding that his income should receive such an increase as should raise it to L10,000 a year in all.—Monk, Lockhart, and the Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July 2, 1659.]

The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July, had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath they must strive to keep out the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with the old dynasty?

All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard, Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of. Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course which in him, at all events, would have been infamous; and, though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in their "further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to assist them with advices and information.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.]

Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton, Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the chair.

A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell, and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland; re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions in two departments: (1) Church and Religion, On the 27th of June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition, however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause," and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism, and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few, on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers, contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question, so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in Religion; but the probability is that the question was only adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and, though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was merely continued. (2) Relations with Foreign Powers. In this matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements. No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length, early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone, a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident, there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death; negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and, though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism were but expensive moonshine.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl. Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 165-172.]

In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor. Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill, passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment, consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400 in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,—e.g. Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and Pride,—should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were to be now properly but two Generals, and that the highest officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations, were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and Monk, to rank on one level as merely Colonels. As far as to these Colonels, the result was as follows:

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.

I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. Colonels of Horse Regiments: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert Morley. 2. Colonels of Foot-Regiments: Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert Barrow.—One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,—All these appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood over for consideration.—In the Journals Lambert is styled "Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse.

II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:—Here, probably because of Monk's passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only, by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen), Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.

II. IRELAND.

Commander-in-Chief: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.

Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should be at liberty to return to England on occasion.

Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence, Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell, for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.

In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man, having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.—More a matter of wonder still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties, just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug. 2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour, from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to Ludlow's Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with Monk in Scotland, and Overton's former military experience in high command had been chiefly in Scotland.]

The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.

After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home, had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton, Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists." Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border; and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax, Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller, Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others, were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest," Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others, went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to embark together.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot, 191-204.]

As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31 the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short, whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in several other places those who straggled together dispersed themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey, Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth, the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords, Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire, where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in, and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken the initiative.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips, 649-652 (where Booth's Proclamation is given).]

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.—Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk. He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in it were enjoined to secrecy.—The news was that Sir George Booth's Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August 17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days afterwards.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner's Life of Monk, 90-104; Wood's Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.]

At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth L1000 was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller ("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord Falconbridge (discharged on bail of L10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.—For, in fact, the Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits. Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined L100 each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the House, when fines of L100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington (Rec., O^2), John Carew (*Rec., B), Thomas Mackworth (Rec., O^1, O^2, R), Alexander Popham (O^1, O^2, R), Richard Norton (Rec., B, O^1, O^2, R), and John Stephens (Rec., R). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected. But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines, ranging from L5 to L40, twenty-five members who had been attending of late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John, Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of Major-General Harrison (*Rec., O^1, R). He, of course, had never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of his complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had been fined L5 or L20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely settling all scores together.—In what high spirits Lambert's victory had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 et seq.) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should "have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw, Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton, Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14 (Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734 (about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11 to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2, 1658, the day before Oliver's death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct. 25, 1659, there is again a gap.]

Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the Government of this Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville, Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee! It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic, without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time," he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedaemonian Ephori, who should have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person, touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power finally to resolve and determine—every year a third part to go out and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences, Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous. Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by appointing the present Committee.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.—After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom "that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The basis must be a systematic classification of the community in accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.—Harrington's ideal had been set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled The Commonwealth of Oceana, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues, and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in 1658, had published a second treatise, called The Prerogative of Popular Government, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines of the Oceana, but more in a style of direct dissertation.—The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous. Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament. On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth, was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured, in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300 members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws; the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each House would be entirely changed.—Not content with petitioning Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously through the press. A Discourse showing that the spirit of a Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy, was a pamphlet of Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was entitled Aphorisms Political, and consisted of a series of brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples, through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called The Rota. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house—to which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair: and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those. This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of tentamens; which being not used or known in England before upon this account, the room every evening was very full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire, Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet, Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen. Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London, yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these physical philosophers. What were their occupations over drugs, water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]

[Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126; Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets (for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates. The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration. They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form. Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of "the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants, and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert, once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five (Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562; Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).]

Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers, cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine proposals. The preamble complained generally of the misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade, and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of his decided sympathies with them rather than with the Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost, or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act, calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer, Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken, and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed. Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the Parliament know that he would stand by them against the Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz. Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry, Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of seven,—to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton, Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and, having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night, they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8; Phillips, 656-660; Skinner's Life of Monk, 111-113.]

Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why. "This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army, whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the members from coming to the House and attending their service there." This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about, coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert, perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council, had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed. The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a restored session, of five months.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV. 364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.]



CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT. 13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS COMMITTEE OF SAFETY: BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF BRADSHAW.—ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD, LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.—FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS CHANCES IN ENGLAND.—DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.—MONK AT COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON: VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND TIME.

For about a fortnight after Lambert's coup d'etat, the Council of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the 26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford—House officers, and called The Committee of Safety. It consisted of twenty-three persons, as follows:—

Whitlocke (made also Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Nov. 1).

Colonel Robert Bennett Colonel James Berry Henry Brandreth Colonel John Clerk Desborough Fleetwood Sir James Harrington Colonel Hewson Cornelius Holland Alderman Ireton Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston Lambert Henry Lawrence Colonel Robert Lilburne Ludlow Major Salway William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland) Walter Strickland Colonel William Sydenham Robert Thompson Alderman Tichbourne Sir Henry Vane.

The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent, chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway, and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual, however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee, leaving surely a most troubled world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659; Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368; Phillips, 662.]

Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of nominations was to see that the officers throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the newly-established order.—It was foreseen that in this there would be great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out. There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship, after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.—They had not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's coup d'etat than he repeated his former determination most emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28, when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall, it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades, were in exultation accordingly.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729; Phillips, 663-666; Skinner's Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II. 18-22.]

Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace. They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed within a few days by six other missionaries for the same purpose—Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November, Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there, and gather forces to block the north of England against the possibility of Monk's invasion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131, 140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.]

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to seem to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's, Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's, Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had L70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates." They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1]