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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to seem to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's, Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's, Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had £70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates." They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.1

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.