[Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips's information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk's enterprise henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a continuation of Baker's Chronicle, is a contribution of original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted, as he tells us, the use of Monk's papers and those of his agents. This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission executed for Monk.]

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr. Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying they had begun the war, and, if they continued in their course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did, being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.]

Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved"; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty—not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King," repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December 1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each other,—Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about 3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from the one to the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV. 373-377.]

All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659 (i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II. 274-278.]

In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.—One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of The Treaty of the Pyrenees, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.—While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost. Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin. Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each other's paths and were again near neighbours.—Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France, it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup d'etat, there were some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant. When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists, that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the 9th of December.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802; Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I. 211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288, 294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13, 1659.]

In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.]

The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of Parliament? The late Rump reinstated at once with full authority, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself outvoted on that, and go on. Richard's late Parliament had been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard himself. The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump, i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of 1642-1649 restored to their seats, was a third proposal, of more tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. A new Parliament, called by ourselves, was the conclusion in which they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then, whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent? Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch? Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject? Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1]

[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough, some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes, and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions; preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November, while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659, laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:—1. "That the politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be restored; 2. That Harrington's Aphorisms and other political slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with all seriousness. Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus is the title of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles afresh.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason Tract of date, entitled Decrees and Orders, &c.; and Thomason Catalogue.]

Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers, before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named (Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body, intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow, approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless, a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would be ready.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.]

The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised; Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared, to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword, let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under the name of Conservators of Liberty, twenty-one men to be guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three fundamentals having been agreed on—to wit, (1) Commonwealth in perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2) Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements except by the Conservators—the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight on the list,—dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience, and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville, and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe. Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless, his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested, and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.]

Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals. Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were demoralising Lambert's.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.]

For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November. All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be "warranted in his present actings" by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery. Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner, 170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.]

It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become indescribable. "I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew not how to get free of them," is Whitlocke's entry in his diary for Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, "Most of the soldiery about London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most eager for Fleetwood's party became as violent against them, and for the Parliament to sit again." In other words, the soldiers of Fleetwood's own London regiments were tired of being insulted and jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren everywhere else, that Lambert's coup d'etat of Oct. 13 had been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.—In these circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk's design was to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and, if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free Parliament"—not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House "qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling out,—and then either take the field with his forces under that banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood, had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that, Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.—This was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another, suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us, for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in Lincoln's Inn Fields under the command of Okey, Alured, Markham, and Mosse. Fleetwood, applied to for the keys of the Parliament house, willingly gave them up and resigned all charge. On Saturday the 24th the mass of the soldiers were gladly at the appointed rendezvous, and were marched down Chancery Lane, where the Speaker came out to them at the Rolls, and was received with shouts of joy and repentance. On Monday the 26th all the members of the Rump who were at hand met the Speaker in the Council-Chamber at Whitehall, and walked thence to Westminster Hall, the mace carried before them, and the soldiers and populace cheering as they passed. They constituted the House and proceeded at once to business. They had been excluded two months and fourteen days.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 380-384; Phillips, 676; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of Dec. 28, 1659 (English reckoning), Guizot, 318-322.]



CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659—FEB. 21, 1659-60.

THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER CHIEFS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW: NEW ARMY REMODELLING: ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS: DISPERSION OF LAMBERT'S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN'S AND MESSAGE THENCE TO THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION: HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON, FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING HIS MARCH AND ON HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE'S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP: HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK'S RECONCILIATION WITH THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE CITY AND OF THE RUMP TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: BILL OF THE RUMP FOR ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE BY THE RESEATING OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT UNDER MONK'S DICTATORSHIP.

The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7, 1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again refused.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals (Divisions and Committees) from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 21, 1659-60.]

A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to consist, as before, of twenty-one Parliamentaries and ten non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1, 1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a Regicide.

PARLIAMENTARIES.

Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Colonel Herbert Morley Robert Wallop *Colonel Valentine Walton *Thomas Scott Nicholas Love Chief Justice St. John Colonel William White John Weaver Robert Reynolds Sir James Harrington Sir Thomas Widdrington Colonel George Thompson *John Dixwell Henry Neville Colonel John Fagg John Corbet *Thomas Challoner *Henry Marten *William Say Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot).

NON-PARLIAMENTARIES.

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed before his election as M.P.) Josiah Berners General Monk Vice-Admiral Lawson Alderman Love Thomas Tyrrell Lord Fairfax Alderman Foote Robert Rolle Slingsby Bethell.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec. 31, 1659 and Jan. 2, 1659-60.]

The proceeding's of the House for the first month showed no diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed. Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan. 17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for the Protectorate.

A good deal of the first month's business consisted in votes of approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption and votes condemning the Wallingford-House "usurpers" and their acts. Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was resolved to bestow on him and his heirs L1000 a year. But there were thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of Safety was styled "the late pretended Committee of Safety," and all their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was not so complete but that a few of the late chief's might expect some punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield, Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the 18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without punishment. Whitlocke even ventured to appear in the House, but was received so coolly that he soon withdrew into the country, leaving instructions to his wife to burn a quantity of his papers and to deliver the great seal to the Speaker. So far was Fleetwood from being in danger that they were considering whether he might not be retained as Commander-in-chief. Ludlow, much to his surprise, found himself among the accused. This, however, was not because of the middle course he had taken in London through the late interruption, though he had lost some credit by that with his Republican friends. He had unfortunately left London on his way back to Ireland on the very eve of that happy restitution of the Rump which he had despaired of seeing, and it was in Ireland that his enemies were most numerous and violent. He had hardly arrived among them and attempted to resume his command when he received notice from the House that he and Colonel John Jones, with Miles Corbet and Matthew Tomlinson, were required to come over to answer certain charges against them relating to their Irish government (Jan. 5). Ludlow and the others obeyed, and found, on their arrival in London in February, that Sir Charles Coote and other officers in Ireland had lodged an impeachment against them for nothing less than high treason.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 1659-60; Ludlow, 783-806; Whitlocke, IV. 384-392.]

Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too familiar one of "re-modelling." Men not now satisfactory had to be removed from all departments of the public service and more proper men substituted. Whitlocke's great seal was given into new keeping, and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre, Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield, Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is puzzled by the appearance of many persons as "colonels" who had the title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec, 1659 and Jan. 1659-60; Whitlocke as before.]

Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency which had characterized the House in its previous session. The essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed. It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State, before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing "the pretended title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which shall pretend," &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other than sound Commonwealth's men; but that oaths were becoming frightfully frequent, and this one would be "a confining of Providence," &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that, after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax, St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council rather than submit to the qualification made essential in their case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the public "That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers; and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of mal-administration and appeals, &c." Such a declaration was adopted and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic exponents of the "good old cause." The very phrase "the good old cause," one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word "fanatics" as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig, Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the power going from their hands.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 678; Ludlow, 807-809; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 325-839.]

While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting between the House and Monk.

The House having been restored by Monk's agency, but without that march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after all. Lambert's army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to attack Lambert's rear, in accordance with the understanding he had come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk's business at York to reform the wreck of Lambert's forces, incorporating some of them with his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day, at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing farther information for his guidance. On the 22nd, as he was approaching Leicester, Messrs. Scott and Robinson, who had been sent from London as Commissioners from the Rump to attend him in the rest of his march, made their appearance ceremoniously and were duly received. They had come really as anxious spies on Monk's conduct, and were very inquisitive and loquacious; but they relieved him thenceforth of much of the trouble of answering the deputations and addresses by which he was still beset on his route. They were with him at Northampton, where he was on the 24th; at Dunstable, where he was on the 27th; and at St. Alban's, where he arrived on the 28th. Here, twenty miles from London, he rested for five days, to see the issue of a very important message he had been secretly preparing for the Parliament and which he now sent on by Dr. Clarges. It was a request to the House to clear London of all but two of the regiments then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr. Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr. Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people crinkledum cum crankledum." Monk's present march was to be one of the last of the windings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680; Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).]

While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done, they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of 1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or (2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at once. Both these methods implied the restoration of Charles, though mention of that consequence, and by some even the thought of it, was most studiously avoided. A full and free new Parliament meant, in the present mood of the country, a recall of Charles rapidly and unhesitatingly. The filling up of the present Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members, and by new elections for other vacancies, meant the reconstituting of the Long Parliament entire, just as it had been while negotiations with Charles I. were going on, and before the Army, in order to stop these negotiations and bring in the Republic, ejected the Royalist and Presbyterian members. Such a reconstituted Parliament, if time were given it, would also inevitably recall Charles II., though it might do so after a preliminary compact with him on the basis of that Treaty of Newport which had been going on with his father late in 1648, and which might be regarded as still embodying the views of the Presbyterians respecting Royalty and its limits. Of the two methods the Cavaliers or Old Royalists naturally preferred that which would bring in Charles most speedily and with the fewest conditions; but, as they were outnumbered by the Presbyterians or New Royalists, they were willing to accept their method. To the genuine Rumpers, of course, either proposal was dreadful. To retain the power themselves, enlarging their House, if at all, only by new elections permitted by themselves, and not to part with their power unless to a new Parliament the qualifications for which should have been carefully pre-determined by themselves, was the only procedure by which they could hope to preserve the Commonwealth. Hence, on the one hand, their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the Stuarts utterly. It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by Fairfax. But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point. To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or Price, or the physician Dr. Barrow, been always at hand to explain privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was peculiar. Only in one matter was he explicit himself. He would not permit the least insinuation that he designed to bring in Charles. At York he had caned one of his officers for having said something imprudent to that effect.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner and Phillips ut supra; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, of date Jan. 21, in Guizot, II. 336-340.]

On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did comply with Monk's request, by issuing orders for the removal of Fleetwood's regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was a mutiny among Fleetwood's soldiers on account of the disgrace put upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers; and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray's Inn Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration oath.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Skinner, 199-206; Phillips, 680-682.]

On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation among them was only "Commissioner Monk"; for, though he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few other members of the old Council of State during the late interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert's coup d'etat to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker; at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return the speech he had carefully conned. "Sir, I shall not trouble you with large narratives," he said; "only give me leave to acquaint you that, as I marched from Scotland hither, I observed the people in most counties in great and earnest expectations of Settlement, and they made several applications to me, with numerous subscriptions. The chiefest heads of their desires were:—for a free and full Parliament, and that you would determine your sitting; a Gospel Ministry; encouragement of Learning and Universities; and for admittance of the members secluded before 1648, without any previous oath or engagement. To which I commonly answered, That you are now in a free Parliament, and, if there were any force remaining upon you, I would endeavour to remove it; and that you had voted to fill up your House, and then you would be a full Parliament also...; but, as for those gentlemen secluded in 1648, I told them you had given judgment in it and all people ought to acquiesce in that judgment; but to admit any members to sit in Parliament without a previous oath or engagement to secure the Government in being, it was never yet done in England. And, although I said it not to them, I must say it with pardon to you, that the less oaths and engagements are imposed (with respect had to the security of the common cause) your settlement will be the sooner attained to." He was now half through his speech; and the rest consisted of general recommendations of a policy in accordance with "the sober interest," with care that "neither the Cavalier nor Fanatic party" should have a share of the civil or military power. He ended with a glance at Ireland and Scotland, bespeaking particular attention to the Scots, as "a nation deserving much to be cherished," and sure to appreciate the late declaration in favour of a sober and conservative Church policy, inasmuch as no nation more dreaded "to be overrun with fanatic notions." Having thus delivered himself, Monk withdrew, leaving the House wholly mystified, but also a good deal distempered, by his ambiguities. It seems to have been on this occasion that Henry Marten vented that witty description of Monk which is one of the best even of his good sayings. "Monk," he said, "is like a man that, being sent for to make a suit of clothes, should bring with him a budget full of carpenter's tools, and, being told that such things were not at all fit for the work he was desired to do, should answer, 'It matters not; I will do your work well enough, I warrant you.'" Monk was now on the spot with his budget of carpenter's tools, and he meant to make a tolerable suit of clothes with them somehow.[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a hiatus in the Journals at the point of Monk's reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original authority for Henry Marten's witticism is, I believe, Ludlow (810-811).]

There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. The Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth was another of Harrington's, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in London, he was saluted by The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced, also by Harrington. A Coffin for the Good Old Cause was another, in a different strain; and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival at St. Alban's, indeed, he had become the universal target for letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. The Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk was on the book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were watching to see what "Old George" would do. He did not yet know that himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the feeling that now prevailed. "Conscientious, Serious, Theological and Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected, Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto"; "Six Important Queries proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament"; "Seven Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members"; "Case of the Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members"; "Three Seasonable Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose respective citizens have been forcibly excluded," &c.; "Full Declaration": such are the titles of those of Prynne's pamphlets, the last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named of Prynne's pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk was to do anything at all, was not Prynne's way the safest and most popular? Practically, at all events, he could now see that the possible courses had reduced themselves to two,—(1) The Rump's own way, or self-enlargement of the present House by new writs, issued with all Republican precautions; (2) The City's way, or Prynne's way, which proposed to re-insert the secluded members into the present House, so as to make it legally the Long Parliament over again, with its rights and engagements precisely as they had been at the time of the last negotiations with Charles I. in 1648. For which of these two courses he should declare himself was the question Monk had to ponder.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same; Wood's Ath. III. 870-871.]

He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way. On the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, they resolved that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400 members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners, tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of the Rump's obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council "whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government"; influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices. Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant decision for the one or the other was imperative.—On the night of the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders, though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common Council and give the Parliament every satisfaction, he had thought it best not to incense the City by the extreme insult of unhinging the gates and wedging the portcullises. The Rumpers were in ecstasies. Monk had committed himself, and was irredeemably theirs. "All is our own: he will be honest," said Hasilrig to the friends beside him. In their triumph, they rose once more for a moment to the full height of Republican confidence. It happened that a deputation of London citizens, headed by Mr. Praise-God Barebone, had come to the House that day with a petition and address, signed by some thousands of "lovers of the good old cause," who were anxious to disclaim all connexion with the City tumults and with "the promoters of regal interest" in the City or elsewhere. The petitioners demanded nothing less than that the House should at once impose an oath abjuring Charles Stuart upon all clergymen and other persons in public employment; but even this did not prevent the House from thanking them cordially. As for the City generally, now that Monk had brought it to submission, the House would trample it under foot! The Lord Mayor, having behaved discreetly through the tumults, was to be thanked; but it was voted that the present Common Council should be dissolved and a new one elected by such citizens only as the House should deem worthy of the franchise. Nor was Monk to hesitate any longer about the city gates and portcullises. Orders were sent to him, not only to unhinge the gates and wedge the portcullises, as the Council had already ordered, but to break them in pieces. The City was to be overmastered utterly and finally, and Monk was to be the agent.—Not even yet did Monk rebel. The gates and portcullises were broken in pieces by his soldiers, and every other order was punctually carried out. The soldiers were in indignation over their base employment, and the citizens were stupefied. In vain were Clarges, Dr. Barrow, and others of Monk's friends going about and assuring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the General was a man of very peculiar ways and must not be too hastily judged. "Very peculiar ways indeed," thought the citizens, mourning for their honours lost, and their broken gates and portcullises. On the night of Friday, Feb. 10, when Monk returned to Whitehall, after his two days of rough work in the city, it was, as it seemed, with his reputation ruined for ever among the Londoners. A few days before he had been the popular demigod, the man on whom all depended, and who had all in his power. Now what was he but the slave and hireling of the Rump?[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 684-685; Skinner, 211-219; Whitlocke, IV. 394-396.]

It was afterwards represented by Monk's admirers that his City proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment. He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been handling his carpenter's tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that, after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be in the printer's hands before the House had received the original.

Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor, to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less than answer that he would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over, and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about five o'clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to these demands and otherwise, he meant to remain in the City of London with his regiments, making common cause with the faithful citizens! Guildhall rang with acclamations; and, as the news was dispersed thence through the City, confirmed by the printed copies of Monk's letter to the Rump that were by this time in circulation, the dejection of the two last days passed into a phrenzy of joy. Housewives ran out to Monk's soldiers, who had been standing all day under arms, carrying them food and drink without stint; crowds of apprentices danced everywhere like delirious demons; the bells of all the churches were set a-ringing; the houses of several "fanatics" were besieged, and the windows in Barebone's all smashed; and far into the night and into the Sunday morning the streets blazed with long rows of bonfires. Whatever piece of flesh, in butcher's stall or in family-safe, bore resemblance to a rump, or could be carved into something of that shape, was hauled to one of these bonfires to be flung in and burnt; and for many a day afterwards the 11th of February 1659-60 was to be famous in London as The Roasting of the Rump.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 685-687; Skinner, 219-230; Parl. Hist. III. 1578-9; Letter of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 350-351; Pepys's Diary, Feb. 11, 1659-60.]

On receiving Monk's letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two previous days, and to assure him "that, as to the filling up of the House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time." But at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed by that time of Monk's proceedings in the City, had shown their resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always be one of the quorum.—Through the following week, however, efforts were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there, first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers' Hall in Throgmorton Street, holding levees of the citizens and city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other members of the House. Even Ludlow, though one of the complaints in Monk's letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion. He was shy at first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart, "Yea," said he, "we must live and die together for a Commonwealth." The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was that of the Secluded Members. The applications on their behalf by the Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant. Monk even yet had his hesitations. On the one hand, to avert, if possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk's letter. They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided. They had, moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways. They had resolved (Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament should simply be, "I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords"; and they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of State. They had also complied with Monk's demands that there should be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and especially of Vane and Lambert. All this was to induce Monk to accept the proffered Self-Enlargement of the present House, rather than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for the Long Parliament reconstituted. Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk's own mind. If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm. But would it do so? With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts? Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended? Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence? To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the Secluded. Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable. Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement.——Monk then took the matter into his own hands. Having, in the course of the Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st; and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall, to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament House. The incident had been expected; there were soldiers all round the House already; and the procession walked through cheering crowds of spectators. Monk remained at Whitehall himself, to hold a General Council of his officers later in the day.[1]