[Footnote 1:  Price, 773.  Ludlow, 349, 355.  Clar.  Pap. iii. 678, 697, 703, 711.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  Feb. 21.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1660.  March.]

declared the Presbyterian confession of faith to be that of the church of England, ordered copies of the solemn league and covenant to be hung up in all churches, offered rewards for the apprehension of Catholic priests, urged the execution of the laws against Catholic recusants, and fixed the 15th of March for their own dissolution, the 25th of April for the meeting of a new parliament.[1]

Here, however, a serious difficulty arose.  The House of Commons (according to the doctrine of the secluded members, it could be nothing more) was but a single branch of the legislature.  By what right could it pretend to summon a parliament?  Ought not the House of Lords, the peers who had been excluded in 1649, to concur?  Or rather, to proceed according to law, ought not the king either to appoint a commission to hold a parliament, as was usually done in Ireland, or to name a guardian invested with such power, as was the practice formerly, when our monarchs occasionally resided in France?  But, on this point, Monk was inflexible.  He placed guards at the door of the House of Lords to prevent the entrance of the peers; and he refused to listen to any expedient which might imply an acknowledgment of the royal authority.  To the arguments urged by others, he replied,[a] that the parliament according to law determined by the death of Charles I.; that the present house could justify its sitting on no other ground but that of necessity, which did not apply to the House of Lords; and that it was in vain to expect the submission of the army to a parliament called by royal authority.  The military had, with reluctance, consented to the restoration of

[Footnote 1:  Journals, passim.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  March 3.]

the secluded members; and to ask more of them at present was to hazard all the advantages which had hitherto been obtained.[1]

Encouraged by the downfall of the republicans, the royalists throughout the country expressed their sentiments without restraint.  In some places Charles was proclaimed by the populace; several ministers openly prayed for him in the churches:  the common council, in their address, declared themselves not averse to his restoration; and the house itself was induced to repeal[a] the celebrated engagement in favour of a commonwealth, without a single person or a house of peers, and to embody under trusty officers the militia of the city and the counties, as a counterpoise to the republican interest in the army.  The judges of the late king, and the purchasers of forfeited property, began to tremble.  They first tempted the ambition of the lord-general with the offer of the sovereign authority.[2] Rejected by him, they appealed to the military; they represented the loss of their arrears,