]
[Footnote 2: Clar. Hist. iii. 720, 721, 723, 724; Papers, ii. 698.]
the tendency of his actions and the purport of his language, we are told by
those whom he admitted to his private counsels, that it was forced upon him
by the necessity of his situation; that, without it, he must have forfeited
the confidence of the army, which believed its safety and interest to be
intimately linked with the existence of the commonwealth. According to
Ludlow, the best soldier and statesman in the opposite party, Monk had
in view an additional object, to deceive the suspicions and divert the
vigilance of his adversaries; and so successfully had he imposed on the
credulity of many (Hazlerig himself was of the number), that, in defiance
of every warning, they blindly trusted to his sincerity, till their eyes
were opened by the introduction of the secluded members.[1]
In parliament the Presbyterian party now ruled without opposition. They
annulled[a] all votes relative to their own expulsion from the house in
1648; they selected a new council of state, in which the most influential
members were royalists; they appointed Monk commander-in-chief of the
forces in the three kingdoms, and joint commander of the fleet with Admiral
Montague; they granted him the sum of twenty thousand pounds in lieu of
the palace at Hampton Court, settled on him by the republican party;
they discharged[b] from confinement, and freed from the penalty of
sequestration, Sir George Booth and his associates, a great number of
Cavaliers, and the Scottish lords taken after the battle at Worcester;
they restored the common council, borrowed sixty thousand pounds for the
immediate pay of the army,
[Footnote 1: Price, 773.
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