GENERAL MONK, FIRST DUKE OF ALBEMARLE (1608–1670)
After an engraving by David Loggan, 1661
If we inquire why a city which before the death of the King seemed Republican and Presbyterian through and through, should in ten years become in the same thorough manner Royalist and Episcopal; or, to put it more exactly, why the Republican majority became so unmistakably a Royalist majority, we shall find that many forces were at work in this direction.
First of all, though the governing body was both Republican and Presbyterian, there were numbers of citizens who had preserved their loyalty to the Crown, and many more who, for divers reasons, hated the Puritan rule. We have seen the petition of the women and that of the apprentices; we have seen the rioting and discontent at the prohibition of the old sports and the closing of the play-houses. There were also other causes; the Londoners were ready to go forth and fight a battle, but not to carry on a long war; further, they distrusted the standing army which had taken the place of the trained bands. Again, trade was depressed; many ships were taken by Prince Rupert off the Nore and in the narrow seas, and the whole City was kept in perpetual controversies and quarrels over points of doctrine. With a decaying trade, a city divided against itself, religious quarrels without religious peace, the young folk longing for the restoration of the old sports, every tavern full of discontented men, every church a brawling place, what wonder if, after ten years and more, the City suddenly turned round and cried for the King and the Church to come back again.
View of Genl Monks House in Grub Street.
Yet the events which followed Cromwell’s death and preceded the Restoration were very closely connected with the City of London. The domination of the City by the army deeply moved the people. The clamour for a Parliament prevailed; on the 29th of December 1659 the old Rump was recalled. It was not a full and a free Parliament. But such as it was, the House viewed with jealousy the repair of the City gates and the restoration of the chains, with the calling out of the City militia. The City, however, which had but one representative in the House, refused absolutely to pay or to levy any tax until there was full representation. Meantime Monk was advancing from the north. He entered London on the 3rd of February 1660, and was quartered at Whitehall. For the moment he either dissembled his real intentions or he was simply waiting.
A REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL BROADSIDE