Haslerig and his friends had won an incalculable victory. On Monk hung the hopes of the country, and they had deliberately struck him a fatal blow where they knew his spotless sense of honour exposed him without defence to their attack. His position was indeed desperate, and no sooner was he alone at Whitehall than Clarges came in to point out the extremity of his danger. The wanton insult he had put upon the liberties of the great municipal corporation must turn against him not only every town in the kingdom, but the whole influence of finance and commerce. It was the deliberate intention of the Council that it should. Nothing could now save him but to return immediately to the city and declare for a free Parliament. Monk would not listen. Clarges in desperation began to urge the folly of being true to men who did not keep their side of the engagement. He showed the general how through the whole affair he had been treated with contempt. Ever since his entry into London the Government had habitually called him "Commissioner" Monk. They had denied him the very rank they themselves had conferred upon him, and violated the commission on which he based his obedience. The general began to waver. He felt the injustice keenly, and confessed at last that something must be done to regain the country's esteem. With that he dismissed his kinsman, saying that he would take till Tuesday to consider what course he should adopt.
It was Friday. By Tuesday the news would be all over the kingdom and he a ruined man. It was absolutely necessary to do something at once. Presently Clarges returned with Dr. Barrow, the general's private physician and judge-advocate, a man who had been of great service throughout. Two or three officers accompanied them, with whom they had privately agreed to brave the general's displeasure in one more effort to save him from his rigid integrity. With the vehemence of despair they poured out proof after proof of the Rump's iniquitous intentions. Haslerig was in correspondence with Lambert. Ludlow, whom Monk had accused of treason on Coote's information, still sat in his place. A tumultuous petition in favour of strict abjuration had been fomented and received by the House at the hands of Praise-God Barebones himself, the ringleader of those very fanatics against whom he had come to act. The Council was even then, it was said, considering whether they should cashier him on the ground that in leaving the city he had disobeyed its orders. After all his devotion it was more than the honest soldier could endure, and reluctantly he consented to march into the city next day. Having issued his orders accordingly, he told his little council to prepare some excuse to the Parliament. No excuse could be found. The general was worn out; for the last two nights he had had no sleep; unable to resist any longer, he at last allowed a letter to be prepared, setting out the real reasons of the movement and demanding the House to keep its word. With that he went to bed, and all through the night the four councillors that remained were busy with the manifesto.
Early next morning the members came down to the House in the ordinary course. The guards were all on duty as usual, and the Speaker proceeded to take the chair. No sooner, however, was business begun than two of Monk's colonels came in with a long letter signed by the general and fourteen of his field-officers. In respectful but unequivocal language it charged them with deliberately seeking to undo all the good that had been effected by their restoration. It desired them, therefore, to show their good intentions by settling the qualification of members and issuing writs for the vacant seats by the next Friday. It reminded them that the date fixed for their dissolution was at hand, and finally informed them that with the intention of waiting for their "full and free concurrence to these just desires of the nation," and of preserving order till it was obtained, the army had retired into the city.
The House was thrown immediately into a tumult of consternation. At the very moment when their terrible slave seemed safely bound he had risen up and snapped his chains like threads. Every kind of proposition was made to recall him, but eventually Scot and Robinson were ordered to carry a soft answer into the city. They found Monk with the Lord Mayor, and in the lowest spirits. His reception had been more than cold; the city had lost faith in him; he had broken the guiding rule of his life and had lost faith in himself. His friends urged him to declare at once for a free Parliament, but hoping against hope that he still might not be forced to use the military power against the civil, he refused to give a hint of his intended revolt till he heard the answer of the House. When it came, shifty and meaningless, he doubted no longer. Without heat he dismissed the messengers, but his officers insulted them, and the mob hooted them out of the city. Once more himself, blunt and determined, he stood up in the Guildhall to address the Council which the Lord Mayor had consented to call at five o'clock. With manly frankness he told them how he detested the work he had had to do. If laying down his commission would have stopped it, he would gladly have done so, but it would only have been put into unkinder hands. "But what I have to tell you," he concluded, "is that this morning I have sent to the Parliament to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of their House, and when filled to sit no longer than till May 6th, that they may give place to a full and free Parliament."
The enthusiasm with which his words were received was indescribable. As the news spread through the city the people gave way to the wildest demonstrations of joy. Late as it was the bells were set a-ringing; the soldiers, who had been shivering all day in their ranks on Finsbury Fields, were brought in to be fed and fêted like kings. Bonfires were soon blazing in every street, and anything that could do duty for an effigy of the Rump was cast into them. To such a pitiable decrepitude had the glorious Long Parliament lived.
As its doom was cried from end to end of England the same extravagant scenes were enacted. Associations were everywhere formed to refuse the payment of taxes till Monk's demands were complied with. Everywhere men were worshipping the executioner of their doting liberator. His guards kept watch at the Parliament's gates; from the city his sword was stretched over it. In spite of himself, in spite of every effort to set a lawful authority above him, George Monk was uncrowned King of England.
But the sternest of those who had made the renown of the greatest of Parliaments were still in their places, and it was soon clear that they meant to leave no stone unturned to dethrone their enemy. Persuasion having failed they tried what force could do. A new commission for the army was appointed, so arranged that Monk must always be in the minority. They distributed arms to the Fanatics; they tampered with his troops; they industriously spread reports amongst Fleetwood's army that Monk and the city were in league to restore the King. Monk's complete reply was to seize the arms of Cavaliers and Fanatics alike and to refuse to allow the city to mobilise its militia. Then they fell to coaxing again, with no more success. For Monk began to see a better way of ridding himself of the power which had fallen on him than by surrendering it on any terms to those who had so misused it.
Ever since he had established himself at Draper's Hall addresses and petitions of all kinds had flowed in upon him. It soon appeared that the great majority of them were in favour of escaping from the deadlock by the restoration of the secluded members. To this the general had always been averse. They were pronounced Royalists, who wished to go back to the Isle of Wight treaty and the status quo of 1648, regardless of the vested interests that had arisen meanwhile. It meant the resumption of the land-grants which had been made for the services of those who had shed their blood for the good old cause, and that in Monk's eyes meant a new civil war. Already the suspicions which his understanding with the city had aroused were once more driving the Republicans into the extended arms of Lambert's militarism, and he seems to have at this time regarded the objections to the King's return as insuperable. Milton with all his eloquence, and Haslerig with all the ardour of his democratic faith, were blinding him to everything but the "good old cause." "From my soul I desire a Commonwealth," he wrote to Haslerig, and so long as the secluded members showed themselves irreconcilable to the Republic he would have nothing to do with them. Now, however, it was suggested to him that they were willing to come to terms with the sitting members, and he permitted a conference between the victims and the instigators of Pride's Purge.
The conference was so far satisfactory that the general entered into direct negotiations with the secluded members on behalf of the army. The chief points on which he insisted were a clear understanding that nothing was to be done to change the form of government from a Commonwealth; that the House should dissolve immediately it had provided for the interim administration of the country; and that the land-grants should be confirmed. On the first two points their answer was satisfactory. The last they rejected on the ground that they had no authority to pass such an act. Were any proof wanted of the disinterestedness of Monk's conduct at this time, it is that in spite of his undeniable love of money he gave up the point on which hung the hard-earned savings of a lifetime. Yet even this risk he was prepared to run for the good of the country he loved so well. Early on February 21st all the secluded members who were in town assembled at Whitehall. There the general met them and made them a speech setting forth his view of the situation. He told them that monarchy was not to be thought of. The old foundations were so broken that they could not be restored. If the nation found their long struggle was only to end in a restoration they would never again be induced to rise for the liberties of Parliament, and the cause of freedom would be lost for ever. Besides a King meant bishops, and that the country would never endure again. So he dismissed them to Westminster under the escort of his own lifeguard.
Almost the first act of the reinvigorated Parliament was to name Monk "Captain-General under Parliament of all the land forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland." By virtue of this exalted rank he became as fully as the sovereign of to-day the constitutional head of the nation in arms. Added to this he was made jointly with Montague general of the fleet, and when the list of the new Council of State came out his name appeared in large type across the top like a king's. Haslerig at once saw his opportunity for a new departure. To destroy Monk's power directly was no longer possible, but so exalted was his position that could it be forced a little higher it would become insecure; or if the worst came to the worst, a protectorate, or even a King George, was better than the accursed Stuart.