Still Middleton had won the round. He had avoided an action, and but for the new scheme of which his head was full Monk was as far from his end as ever. His new idea was to send Morgan by sea to destroy the Royalist winter-quarters in Caithness, while he himself covered Inverness. It was a stroke which Middleton would clearly be compelled to parry by an offensive movement to the south or a march into Caithness. Either would suit Monk's disposition, and Morgan prepared to embark. The effect was immediate. Two days later Middleton was seen by the garrison at Blair Athol, and in two more Morgan was lying in wait at Braemar and Monk in hot pursuit over the Grampians on the Royalist track. Through the Drumouchter Pass and Badenoch his recruited column swept, and on into Athol, ravaging as it went, till Athol was as black and desert as Lochaber and Kintail. From Breadalbane the chase turned westward, and now so close did Monk dog the enemy's steps that not a levy could be held, and their forces began rapidly to shrink from exhaustion.
From Loch Tay through Glen Dochart, from Glen Lochy through Strathfillan, the pursuit continued to the head of Loch Awe. The Cavalier chiefs were resolved to force Argyle to take one side or the other, and here they had caught him in Glenorchy's castle. But the siege was not two days old when Monk was upon them and raised it. Foiled in their great scheme on Argyle they doubled back into Perthshire, but still there was no rest. While he ravaged Glenorchy and Glenstrea Monk detached a brigade to keep them moving, and Middleton began to see the end was near. What his enemy's activity left undone the wrangling of his friends was completing, and harassed past bearing with their bickerings and jealousies, he resolved to return to the north. Monk knew his intention, as he knew everything; and Morgan was rapidly shifted to the headwaters of the Spey, with orders to feel his way through Badenoch and the Drumouchter Pass on the look-out for Middleton, towards Loch Rannoch, while down Glen Lyon the general pushed him blindly to his fate. To avoid him, as Monk expected, Middleton struggled over the hills into Glen Rannoch, and thence, persuaded by false intelligence that the two English generals were together, made a rapid move up the Perthshire Glengarry for the Drumouchter Pass. Beside the little Loch at its foot was a hamlet, where he intended to halt for the night. Weary and half starved his vanguard reached the spot towards evening, but only to be received with a volley from Morgan's pickets. Descending the pass that very day on his way to Glen Rannoch, the little dragoon had occupied the identical quarters Middleton had intended for himself. The surprise was complete. Morgan was expecting Middleton, though not quite so soon. Middleton was only looking behind him where he believed Morgan to be with Monk. The smart dragoon, always prepared for anything, immediately hurled his fresh and well-armed troops upon the weary Scots as they lay helpless between the Loch and the hills, and scattered them to the four winds.
To rally them in the face of Monk's forces proved impossible. Middleton fled to Caithness, whither Morgan pursued him, while Monk occupied himself with Athol and Glencairn. Driving them before him towards the trap he had so cleverly prepared in the Ben Lomond hills, he compelled them to disband and leave him to complete his work. Then one after another he destroyed their winter-quarters in the remote fastnesses about the loch which Rob Roy was to make so famous, and which had been hitherto considered entirely inaccessible to Southrons. By the end of August the work was done, and the general was able to return to Dalkeith. The back of the insurrection was broken. The Highlands were bound in chains of fortified posts. The garrisons gave those who stirred not a moment's peace. Unable to combine, unable even to feed their followers, one after another the chiefs came in, till at last the Highlands were so quiet that there was hardly a man left with heart to lift a cow, and he who would find a stray, it used to be said, need only send a crier round.
To enter into the details of Monk's subsequent administration is impossible here. Indeed it hardly belongs to his career as a man of action. The art of governing a conquered country he had always held to be part of a soldier's education, and he now applied to his province the principles which he had long ago laid down during his solitude in the Tower. The most important thing he considered to assure the conquest of a free people was to take away the desire of revolting, "and to do this," he wrote, "you must not take away their hopes of recovering their liberties by their good obedience, ... and therefore you must always begin in a fair way." And well he did it. On easy terms the chiefs were admitted to make their peace, and security for good behaviour was taken from them. Every facility was afforded them of entering foreign services, and those who remained at home were disarmed. "Assist the weak inhabitants," he said, "and weaken the mighty." Never perhaps in the history of Scotland had the weak been so strong. They began to look on the soldiers under Monk's strict discipline as the best friends they had. The feuds and brigandage which had so long distracted the country became entirely unknown. Trade began to revive: taxes came in plentifully; and Monk began to lay the foundation of the rich public treasure without which he considered no Government was safe.
There being a difficulty about engaging the people in a foreign war, Monk encouraged the Cavalier chiefs to raise troops for service as mercenaries abroad. But the King was shrewd enough to privately forbid it, and Monk had to fall back upon his other rules for the prevention of civil strife. The first was the perfection of the fortresses, the other the attainment so far as possible of uniformity of religion. The restrictions which Lilburne had placed upon the Presbyterians were gradually removed, and the Kirkmen encouraged at the expense of the sectaries. But while he gave them complete religious freedom, he was careful to strip the clergy of all temporal power by forbidding them the use of excommunication and by suspending the assemblies of the Kirk.
From Dalkeith Monk governed the country in peace, attending to almost every detail himself. At first it is true that occasional plots disturbed his serenity, but his method of dealing with conspirators was as successful as it was original. It is, moreover, replete with a grim humour which gives us a new insight into his character. Such chiefs as fell under suspicion were arrested and placed under rigorous confinement. In noisome dungeons they were visited by Monk's roughest officers, and sometimes by the terrible general himself. There they were urged to confess, and even threatened with the torture. Those who yielded were at once released with a caution and never troubled again. Those who held out firmly were asked to dinner at Dalkeith, where the sound sense and excellent claret of their good-natured host soon brought them to reason. By this happy treatment the shrewd general found out at once whom he could safely ignore and who were dangerous. The first he knew he had frightened into good behaviour; of the others he made friends.
Most notable of these was young Cameron of Lochiel, the Ulysses of the Highlands, the wolf-slayer, the man who had saved his life by tearing out the throat of one of Brayne's soldiers with his teeth. Evan Dhu was, in fact, the ideal hero of the clansmen, and though his action had been paralysed by the Inverlochy garrison, he had been the most dangerous and indefatigable figure in the late rising. He had been almost the last to come in, but from the day of his surrender the idol of the clans became Monk's devoted personal friend. These two men, so utterly different and yet in much so alike, seem to have conceived for each other an unbounded admiration. Monk gave the Prince of Robbers, as Charles the Second used to call him, a share in the administration of Lochaber, and supported him in his law-feuds, while at the crisis of Monk's career Lochiel attached himself to his staff and rode with him to London.
There was but one event which seriously broke the harmony of the tranquil life at Dalkeith, and that was the widespread Republican conspiracy of 1654. As Cromwell's most trusted officer Monk was one of its principal objects. In Morgan's absence the appointment of major-general on the governor's staff was held by Milton's friend, sweet-mannered Colonel Overton. The general shared the poet's high opinion of his honour, and had persuaded the Protector that his politics, radical as they were, would never make him forget his duty. This man accepted the management of the plot in Scotland. The idea was to assassinate Monk, seize the Government, and march with the Scotch army to the support of the English Republicans. To this end the army was widely tampered with, and as a matter of course the proceedings of the conspirators came to the vigilant general's ears. Quietly he allowed the plot to mature as if he suspected nothing, and then on the eve of its execution suddenly changed his guards, pounced upon the conspirators, and sent them all up to London under arrest.
"I am convinced," he wrote to Cromwell in forwarding some papers of Overton's which he had subsequently discovered, "if your Highness do but weigh the letters well, you will find Colonel Overton had a design to promote the Scots king's business." Whatever was the part which the Cavaliers played in the plot, these letters certainly contain no evidence of their complicity. But Monk would believe anything of a soldier who had been false to his colours, and his comment is amusingly characteristic. It would seem that he had so little troubled himself with politics as to have entirely failed to grasp the situation. At this time he had probably got little beyond the original question of Parliament and King. Of the endless factions into which his own party was splitting he appears to have had but little understanding, except in so far as they led to insubordination in the army. Against a Royalist enemy he had been sent to Scotland, and he saw a Royalist enemy at the bottom of every trouble.
Indeed it was at this time that he seems to have been first getting into that nervous and irritable state with regard to the King and his affairs from which he was never safe till Charles was on his throne. He was perfectly contented where he was. As the military governor of a conquered kingdom, he had reached the highest ambition of a soldier of fortune. He was now getting on for fifty, and desired nothing so much as to quietly enjoy his position with his wife and children, to whom he was devoted. Indeed, the death of George, the baby, about this time seems to have upset him more than all the difficulties of his office together. But his friends would not leave him in peace.