But the republicans sought for aid in another direction.  Their emissaries penetrated into the quarters of the military, where they lamented the approaching ruin of the good old cause, regretted that so many sacrifices had been made, so much blood had been shed in vain, and again insinuated to the officers, that they would forfeit the lands which they had purchased, to the privates, that they would be disbanded and lose their arrears.[2] A spirit of discontent began to spread through several corps, and a great number of officers repaired to the metropolis.  But Monk, though he still professed himself a friend to republican government, now ventured to assume a bolder tone.  The militia of the city, amounting to fourteen thousand men, was already embodied under his command; he had in his pocket a commission from Charles, appointing him lord-general over all the military in the three kingdoms; and he had resolved, should circumstances compel him to throw off the mask, to proclaim the king, and to summon every faithful subject to repair to the royal standard.  He first ordered[a] the officers to return to their posts; he then directed the promise of submission to the new parliament to be tendered to

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, vii, 866, 887.  Price, 787.  Carte’s Letters, ii. 326.  Clar.  Pap. iii. 705, 714, 726, 730, 731, 733.  It appears that many of the royalists were much too active.  “When the complaint was made to Monk, he turned it off with a jest, that as there is a fanatic party on the one side, so there is a frantic party on the other” (721, 722).]

[Footnote 2:  Thurloe, vii. 870.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1660.  April 9.]

the privates, and every man who refused to make it was immediately discharged.[1] At the same time, the friends of the commonwealth resolved to oppose Lambert, once the idol of the soldiery, to Monk.  Lambert, indeed, was a prisoner in the Tower, confined by order of the council, because he had refused to give security for his peaceable behaviour; but, with the aid of a rope, he descended[a] from the window of his bed-chamber, was received by eight watermen in a barge, and found a secure asylum in the city.  The citizens, however, were too loyal to listen to the suggestions of the party; he left his concealment, hastened[b] into Warwickshire, solicited, but in vain, the co-operation of Ludlow, collected from the discontented regiments six troops of horse and some companies of foot, and expected in a few days to see himself at the head of a formidable force.  But Ingoldsby, who, of a regicide, was become a royalist, met him[c] near Daventry with an equal number; a troop of Lambert’s men under the command of the younger Hazlerig, passed over to his opponents; and the others, when he gave the word to charge, pointed their pistols to the ground.  The unfortunate commander immediately turned and fled; Ingoldsby followed; the ploughed land gave the advantage to the stronger horse; the fugitive was overtaken, and, after an ineffectual effort to awaken the pity of his former comrade, submitted to his fate.  He was conducted[d] back to the Tower, at the time when the trained bands, the volunteers, and the auxiliaries raised in the city, passed in review before the general in Hyde Park.  The auxiliaries drank the king’s health on their knees; Lambert was at the moment driven under Tyburn