--Memoirs of Shaftesbury, in Kennet's Register, 86. Locke, ix, 279.
See note (K).]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1660. March 10.]
and of the property which they had acquired, as the infallible consequences
of the restoration of the royal exile; and they so far wrought on the fears
of the officers, that an engagement to oppose all attempts to set up a
single person was presented[a] to Monk for his signature, with a request
that he would solicit the concurrence of the parliament. A second
council of officers was held the next morning;[b] the general urged the
inexpediency of troubling the house with new questions, when it was on
the point of dissolving itself; and by the address and influence of his
friends, though with considerable difficulty, he procured the suppression
of the obnoxious paper. In a short time he ordered the several officers
to join their respective regiments, appointed a commission to inspect and
reform the different corps, expelled all the officers whose sentiments he
had reason to distrust, and then demanded and obtained from the army an
engagement to abstain from all interference in matters of state, and to
submit all things to the authority of the new parliament.[1]
Nineteen years and a half had now elapsed since the long parliament first
assembled--years of revolution and bloodshed, during which the nation had
made the trial of almost every form of government, to return at last to
that form from which it had previously departed.
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