[Footnote 1:  Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips, 649-652 (where Booth’s Proclamation is given).]

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert.  He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders.  Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day.  Such incessant communication was very necessary.  Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth’s Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances.  Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.—­Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh.  He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England.  But he had come on a little piece of business besides.  His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King’s interest.  He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk’s brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk.  He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5.  He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King’s letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart.  And so, having first sounded Monk’s domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter.  He told him of the King’s commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King’s letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth’s rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength.  This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves.  “The thinking silent General,” we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent.  Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow,