called George Monk, who lies in wait there to serve Charles Stuart; pray use your diligence to take him and send him up to me."[1] After the fall of the protector Richard, he became an object of greater distrust.  To undermine his power, Fleetwood ordered two regiments of horse attached to the Scottish army to return to England; and the republicans, when the military commissions were issued by the speaker, removed a great number of his officers, and supplied their places with creatures of their own.  Monk felt these affronts:  discontent urged him to seek revenge; and, when he understood that Booth was at the head of a considerable force, he dictated a letter to the speaker, complaining of the proceedings of parliament, and declaring that, as they had abandoned the real principles of the old cause, they must not expect the support of his army.  His object was to animate the insurgents and embarrass their adversaries; but, on the very morning on which the letter was to be submitted for signature to his principal officers, the news of Lambert’s victory arrived;[a] the dangerous instrument was instantly destroyed, and the secret most religiously kept by the few who had been privy to the intention of the general.[2]

To this abortive attempt Monk, notwithstanding his wariness, had been stimulated by his brother, a clergyman of Cornwall, who visited him with a message from Sir John Grenville by commission from Charles Stuart.  After the failure of Booth, the general dismissed him with a letter of congratulation to the parliament, but without any answer to Grenville, and under an oath to keep secret whatever he had learnt

[Footnote 1:  Price, 712.]

[Footnote 2:  Id. 711, 716, 721.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1659.  August 23.]

respecting the past, or the intended projects of his brother.[1] But the moment that Monk heard of the expulsion of the members,[a] and of the superior rank conferred on Lambert, he determined to appear openly as the patron of the vanquished, under the alluring, though ambiguous, title of “asserter of the ancient laws and liberties of the country.”  Accordingly, he secured with trusty garrisons the castle of Edinburgh and the citadel of Leith,[b] sent a strong detachment to occupy Berwick, and took the necessary measures to raise and discipline a numerous force of cavalry.  At Leith was held a general council of officers; they approved of his object, engaged to stand by him, and announced their determination, by letters directed to Lenthall, the speaker, to the council at Wallingford House, and to the commanders of the fleet in the Downs, and of the army in Ireland.  It excited, however, no small surprise, that the general, while he thus professed to espouse the defence of the parliament, cashiered all the officers introduced by the parliament into his army, and restored all those who had been expelled.  The more discerning began to suspect his real intentions;[2] but Hazlerig and his party were too