At Westminster, the parliamentary leaders affected a calmness and intrepidity which they did not feel.  Of the insult offered to their authority they took no notice; but, as an admonition to Monk, they brought in a bill[a] to appoint his rival, Fleetwood, commander-in-chief in England and Scotland.  The intervention of the Sunday allowed more sober counsels to prevail.

[Footnote 1:  Price, 765-768.  Clar.  Pap. iii. 681, 692, 714.  Ludlow, 337.  Gumble, 249.  Skinner, 237-243.  Old Parl.  Hist. xxii. 94.  Pepys, i. 24, 25.  “At Strand-bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires; in King-street, seven or eight, and all along burning, and roasting, and drinking for rumps; there being rumps tied upon sticks, and carried up and down.  The butchers at the May-pole in the Strand rang a peal with their knives, when they were going to sacrifice their rump.  On Ludgate-hill there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied to it, and another basting of it.  Indeed it was past imagination.”—­Ibid. 28.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  Feb. 11.]

They solicited the general to return to Whitehall; they completed the bill for the qualifications of candidates and electors; and, on the day fixed by the letter of the officers, ordered[a] writs to be issued for the filling up of the vacancies in the representation.  This measure had been forced upon them; yet they had the ingenuity to make it subservient to their own interest, by inserting a provision in the act, that no man should choose or be chosen, who had not already bound himself to support a republican form of government.  But immediately the members excluded in 1648 brought forward their claim to sit, and Monk assumed the appearance of the most perfect indifference between the parties.  At his invitation, nine of the leaders on each side argued the question before him and his officers; and the result was, that the latter expressed their willingness to support the secluded members, on condition that they should pledge themselves to settle the government of the army, to raise money to pay the arrears, to issue writs for a new parliament to sit on the 20th of April, and to dissolve themselves before that period.  The general returned[b] to Whitehall; the secluded members attended his summons; and, after a long speech, declaratory of his persuasion that a republican form of government and a moderate presbyterian kirk were necessary to secure and perpetuate the tranquillity of the nation, he advised them to go and resume their seats.  Accompanied by a great number of officers, they walked to the house; the guard, under the command of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, opened to let them pass; and no opposition was made by the speaker or the members.[1] Hazlerig, however, and the

[Footnote 1:  Journals, Feb. 11, 13, 15, 17, 21.  Price, 768-773.  Ludlow, ii. 345, 351, 353.  Skinner, 256-264.  Clar.  Pap. 663, 682, 688.  Gumble, 260, 263.  Philips, 600.  The number of secluded members then living was one hundred and ninety-four, of members sitting or allowed to sit by the orders of the house, eighty-nine.—­“A Declaration of the True State of the Matter of Fact,” 57.]