on political grounds.  On the 3rd of March particular orders were given for the discharge of the Earl of Lauderdale, the Earl of Crawford, and Lord Sinclair, from their imprisonment in Windsor Castle; and thus the last of the Scottish prisoners from Worcester Battle found themselves free men once more.  Twelve days afterwards the House went to the extreme of the merciful process by ordering the release of poor Dr. Matthew Wren, the Laudian ex-Bishop, who had been committed by the Long Parliament early in 1641 along with Laud and Strafford, and who had been lying in the Tower, all but forgotten, through the intervening nineteen years.  At the same time discretionary powers were given to the Council of State to discharge any political prisoners that might be still left.—­In the article of punishments the House was very temperate indeed.  Notorious Rumpers were removed, of course, from military and civil offices, and there were sharper inquiries after Colonel Cobbet, Colonel Ashfield, Major Creed, and others too suspiciously at large; but, with one exception, there seemed to be no thought of the serious prosecution of any for what had been done either under the Rump Government or during the Wallingford-House interruption.  The exception was Lambert.  Brought before the Council, and unable or unwilling to find the vast bail of L20,000 which they demanded for his liberty, he was committed by them to the Tower; and the House, on the 6th of March, confirmed the act, and ordered his detention for future trial.  While Lambert was thus treated as the chief criminal, the rewards and honours went still, of course, mainly to Monk.  To his Commandership-in-chief of all the Armies there was added the Generalship of the whole Fleet, though in this command, to Monk’s disappointment, Montague was conjoined with him (March 2).  He was also made Keeper of Hampton Court; and the L1000 a year in lands which the Rump had voted him was changed by a special Bill into L20,000 to be paid at once (March 16), As the Bill was first drafted, the reward was said to be “for his signal services”; but by a vote on the third reading the word “signal” was changed into “eminent.”  Perhaps Annesley, Sir William Waller, and the other new chiefs at Whitehall were becoming a little tired of the praises of so peculiar an Aristides.  But he was still a god among the Londoners.  From St. James’s, which was now his quarters, he would go into the City every other day, to attend one of a series of dinners which they had arranged for him in the halls of the great companies, and at which he found himself so much at ease in his morose way that he would hardly ever leave the table “till he was as drunk as a beast.”  Ludlow, who tells us so, would not have told an untruth even about Monk; and Ludlow was then in London, knowing well what went on.  Let us suppose, however, that he exaggerated a little, and that old George was the victim of circumstances.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21 to March 16; Ludlow, 855-856.]