These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it mainly depended, in the first months of Richard’s Protectorate, whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder.  It has been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form, and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts.  This, however, is quite a misconstruction.—­Monk, who is chiefly suspected, and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind imagined.  He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real desire to assist him at the outset.  He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy.  He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness “too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration.”  Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords.  For retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure him “There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of place.”  On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and many of the ships re-officered[1]—­Such were Monk’s advices; and, whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in good faith.  And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent conduct, similar suspicions have been attached.  At our present date there was no ground for these suspicions.  To some in the list, either ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences, the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible, on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause.  The dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.

[Footnote 1:  Thurloe, VII. 387-388.]