not want.  Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available.  But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith.  Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk’s own approved officers of all ranks.  To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least.  Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready.  His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot’s, Wilkes’s, Read’s, Daniel’s, Fairfax’s, and those now called Overton’s, Cobbet’s, Sawrey’s, and Smith’s), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton’s) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England).  By recent careful economy, he had L70,000 in the bank:  his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard.  He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly.  Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk’s officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty.  They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself “invented matter to confound their debates.”  They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136.  Phillips’s information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk’s enterprise henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a continuation of Baker’s Chronicle, is a contribution of original history rather than a mere compilation.  He was permitted, as he tells us, the use of Monk’s papers and those of his agents.  This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission executed for Monk.]

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk’s intentions, and he but in part.  When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening,