Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet.  By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle.  For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post?  Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk’s associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, “the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations,” to be “warranted in his present actings” by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane’s persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk’s behalf!  Lambert’s own Army was infected.  That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth’s insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless.  In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance.  But it was in London itself, close round the powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious and alarming.  For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery.  Hewson’s regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by the apprentices and pelted with stones.  In the centre of these London tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local management.  Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this time, what to think.  The combination of mild qualities which Milton had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit.