As a member of the council of state, he was summoned to abjure the house of Stuart, according to the late order of parliament.  He demurred.  Seven of the counsellors, he observed, had not yet abjured, and he wished to know their reasons, for the satisfaction of his own conscience.  Experience had shown that such oaths were violated as easily as they were taken, and to him it appeared an offence against Providence to swear never to acquiesce in that which Providence might possibly ordain.  He had given the strongest proofs of his devotion to parliament:  if these were not sufficient, let them try him again; he was ready to give more.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Journals, Feb. 6.  New Parl.  Hist. iii. 1575.  Philips, 597.  Price, 759.  The Lord-general Monk, his Speech.  Printed by J. Macock, 1660.]

[Footnote 2:  Gumble, 228.  Price, 759, 760.  Philips, 595.  About this time, a parcel of letters to the king, written by different persons in different ciphers, and intrusted to the care of a Mr. Leonard, was intercepted by Lockhart at Dunkirk, and sent by him to the council.  When the writers were first told that the letters had been deciphered, they laughed at the information as of a thing impracticable; but were soon undeceived by the decipherer, who sent to them by the son of the bishop of Ely copies of their letters in cipher, with a correct interlineary explanation of each.  They were astonished and alarmed; and, to save themselves from the consequences of the discovery, purchased of him two of the original letters at the price of three hundred pounds.—­Compare Barwick’s Life, 171, and App. 402, 412, 415, 422, with the correspondence on the subject in the Clarendon Papers, iii. 668, 681, 696, 700, 715.  After this, all letters of importance were conveyed through the hands of Mrs. Mary Knatchbull, the abbess of the English convent in Gand.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  Feb. 6.]

The sincerity of this declaration was soon put to the test.  The loyal party in the city, especially among the moderate Presbyterians, had long been on the increase.  At the last elections the common council had been filled with members of a new character; and the declaration which they issued demanded “a full and free parliament, according to the ancient and fundamental laws of the land.”  Of the assembly sitting in Westminster, as it contained no representative from the city, no notice was taken; the taxes which it had imposed were not paid; and the common council, as if it had been an independent authority, received and answered addresses from the neighbouring counties.  This contumacy, in the opinion of the parliamentary leaders, called for prompt and exemplary punishment; and it was artfully suggested that, by making Monk the minister of their vengeance, they would open a wide breach between him and their opponents.  Two hours after midnight he received[a] an order to march into the city, to arrest eleven of the principal citizens, to remove the posts and