It is a remark profoundly true. His finest work goes unrecorded. To suppose that the whole nation acquiesced at once in the Restoration is almost as great an error as to think that it was conquered by William at Hastings. As yet Monk had but stolen a march on the Irreconcilables. Numbers of ardent spirits belonging to the Anabaptists, the Fifth Monarchy men, and the fighting section of the Quakers, together with a large body of extreme Independents and Presbyterians, were only waiting for an opportunity to tear the arch-malignant from his throne again. They comprised all the fiery earnestness of the nation, they breathed the exaggerated spirit of all that has made us what we are; and when we see Mrs. Hutchinson at her heroic colonel's side as he lay rotting in a living grave; when we think of Harrison's wife buying his blood-stained clothes of the executioner, and, unable to believe that God had suffered her saint to die with his work unended, watching over them till he should come again,—the heart of Monk's profoundest admirer must bleed that they fell under such a hand as his.
And the kindly heart of the old general bled for them, too. Of all the libels that pursued him from the mouths of those who envied him the royal favour, or suffered from the success of his patriotic policy, none is greater than that which accused him of betraying his friends and persecuting his enemies. Neither one nor the other is true. From the moment his victory was assured he busied himself unflinchingly in saving the vanquished from the hands of those who mistook animosity for zeal. It was he who cried "Hold!" when the Convention tried to enlarge the list of exceptions to the amnesty; it was he who stayed the vengeance of the Cavalier Parliament by coming down to the House with the words of the King in his mouth. Privately he worked as nobly. Numbers of men were preserved upon some evidence the general had in their favour. Lambert, Fleetwood, Lenthal, Milton, and the Cromwells all found in him a friend at Court. Haslerig's fears he had laughed away with a promise to save him for twopence. His persistent opponent got off scot free, and the letter is still extant in which the twopence was sent.[11] Most wanton of all are those who accuse him of indecency in sitting on the Regicide Commission, forgetting that the man who knew enough to hang half the kingdom could only escape from the witness-box by a seat on the bench. It were better to remember that he sat there with seven other adherents of the Revolution of every shade of opinion, and to credit the King with a desire to make the commission a representative one, and Monk with the intention of seeing fair play to the men who were down.
The darkest cloud upon his memory is his alleged conduct in reference to Argyle's trial. The charge against him is that, when the evidence proved inconclusive, Monk produced some private correspondence upon which the marquis was immediately convicted. The story has hitherto rested on the testimony of Burnet, a notorious libeller of the general's, and Baillie, who, like the rest of the Presbyterians, could never forgive him for foiling their attempt to force upon the country a covenanted King. No evidence could be more tainted, and it is not surprising that the story has always been doubted, seeing how inconsistent it is with the character of a man "who could not hate an enemy beyond the necessity of war." Injudicious advocates have even denied the fact altogether, but a bundle of Argyle's letters, including some to Monk and one to his secretary, was certainly produced at the last moment, and at once sealed the prisoner's fate. In consequence of Charles's resolution not to go behind the Scotch amnesty of 1651, the chief point in Argyle's indictment was that he had adhered to the King's enemies, or, in other words, that he had opposed the last Highland insurrection. The leaders of it were at once his judges and his prosecutors, and they were determined to have their revenge. The case closed and still there was no real evidence, when just as the Court was deliberating its judgment a messenger thundered at the door with the fatal packet from London. Regardless of all law the case was reopened, the letters read, and Argyle condemned.
The question of Monk's share in the infamous proceeding rests on the contents of those letters. They have now been found, and they acquit him for ever. Only two are to him, and they contain no evidence whatever beyond what had been already obtained in abundance. They are confined to little more than civilities. The one to Clarke, Monk's secretary, encloses a letter from Glencairn, and expresses Argyle's intention of keeping his own country neutral. The other three are to Lilburne, and they prove in the clearest manner that Argyle was not only giving the English general information of the Royalist movements, but was doing his best to prevent assistance going to the insurgents.[12] These three letters are not endorsed as having been "admitted" by the prisoner, and could any doubt remain that it was these on which he was convicted, it would be removed by the subsequent petition of Archibald the tenth Earl. For in that document he recites that the fatal letters bore no "signature" that the marquis "had owned them." The letters to Monk and Clarke are all endorsed with Argyle's admission.[13]
Thus we may finally dismiss this wholly uncorroborated libel about deliberately producing confidential letters. The compromising documents are State Papers. That Monk knew enough to cost Argyle his life ten times over is certain. It is equally certain that he did not tell what he knew. The tardy production of the documents and the official nature of their contents point to the natural explanation of their appearance—a last despairing search in the archives of the Council of State by the men who were thirsting for the great Covenanter's blood, and hungering for his estates.
The libel has not even the excuse of provocation. Monk did not desert the Presbyterians. He never, indeed, belonged to their party. He professed their ecclesiastical opinions, but never embraced their political creed. Nor did he fail to stand by them in the hour of need. For not only did he give the leaders certificates of their services to the Restoration, but when it was found impossible to prevent the passing of the Bill of Uniformity, the "man that was all made of mercy" joined with his old political opponent Lord Manchester in urging the King not to enforce it in all its rigour. Nor did Charles finally make surrender to the persecuting spirit of the Anglican majority in Parliament till Monk was lying in state.
Still it is not to be wondered at that such stories pursued him. The very loftiness of his station was enough to breed them in men less fortunate. Besides his Garter, his Mastership of the Horse, and his exalted commission, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Duke of Albemarle, Earl of Torrington, and Baron Monk of Potheridge, Beauchamp, and Tees. For a while he was also Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was made a gentleman of the Bedchamber, and as though that did not place him near enough to the person of the grateful King, by his patent as Captain-General he was granted the extraordinary privilege of entering the presence at any hour unannounced, and remaining there till he was told to go. The King never ceased to treat him as a father. Indeed Charles's unswerving devotion to his deliverer is enough to redeem his character from the sweeping charge of baseness that is sometimes made against it. As a member of the inner committee of the Privy Council, the parent of all cabinets, Monk must have constantly had to lecture and thwart his master, but never once did he give a sign that the old duke's favour was declining.
By the King he was regarded as a father, and by the country as no less. "The body of the people," said the Bishop of Exeter in his funeral sermon, "loved and honoured him, nay (God forgive them), they believed and trusted in him." There was never an awkward job to be done, or failure to be rectified, or panic to be allayed, but the Duke of Albemarle was sent for like an old family doctor. Was there a powerful minister to be dismissed, the Duke had to break the news to him; the Treasury accounts got into confusion, and the Duke was put on to the commission to set them straight; the plague drove Court and Parliament from the capital, and he was left behind sitting in Whitehall with his life in his hand, seeing every one who presented himself day after day at a time when brother would hardly speak to brother, or husband to wife, and through the whole of that terrible period he managed in his own person army, navy, treasury, and police. The Duke of York failed as an admiral, and "old George" was asked if he would mind taking command. The great fire destroyed half London, and threw the country into a panic, and the King, in terror of a new revolution, had to beg "the sole pillar of the state" to come up from the fleet and restore confidence. The people openly said it never would have happened if the general had been there; and when the Dutch sailed into the Thames men seemed to think he had only to go down to Chatham for the enemy to scatter like chaff.
As the country recovered from its fever of royalism, and began to look back first without disgust, then with regret to the days of Oliver, it saw in the Protector's old general the personification of all the glories of the Commonwealth. He stood out in startling contrast to the butterfly throng amongst whom he had his place, and the courtiers felt it. Every one laughed at the stupid old soldier for his homeliness, his mean establishment, his vulgar wife, and the dulness and lethargy which grew on him with his disease. But every one feared him also. Every request he pressed was granted as a matter of course. Even the King did not dare or care to give him a command, but always sounded him through Morice to ascertain whether he were willing to do what was wanted.
To detail his endless services is here impossible. His greatest work was undoubtedly the disbanding of the great revolutionary army. Some sixty thousand men had to be loosed upon a country seething with the fanatical opinions which the army had made its own, and of which, in spite of Monk's purging, it still was full. Statesmen knew it was the great danger the restored monarchy had to face. To Monk the task was committed; and he did it not only peaceably, but so well that the disbanded soldiers, instead of being so many germs of disaffection, earned themselves, through the facilities the general was careful to provide for their employment, the reputation of being the best citizens in the State.