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
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
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
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