Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament.  The articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be cashiered “without a due proceeding at a court-martial.”  The debate on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October.  The House was still in a most resolute mood.  They had received assurances from Monk of his decided sympathies with them rather than with the Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert and Desborough to extremities.  Accordingly, taking up the proposals of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in a strain of high Parliamentary authority.  At this point, however, the House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture.  It was a Bill annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of April 1653 (the day before Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump) and the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost, or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might have been done before Nov. 3, 1640.  This comprehensive Act, calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice.  Not only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same immediately to Wallingford House.  One such letter, signed by Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer, Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to Hasilrig.  The letter itself was one on which action might be taken, and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed.  Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from Scotland,