represented the loss
of their arrears,

[Footnote 1: Clar. Pap. iii. 704. Ludlow, 364, 365. Price, 773.]

[Footnote 2: Gumble, 270. Two offers of assistance were made to the
general, on the supposition that he might aspire to the supreme power; one
from the republicans, which I have mentioned, another from Bordeaux, the
French ambassador, in the name of Cardinal Mazarin. On one of these offers
he was questioned by Sir Anthony Ashley Copper in the council of state. If
we may believe Clarges, one of his secret advisers, it was respecting the
former which Clarges mentioned to Cooper. With respect to the offer from
Bordeaux, he tells us that it was made through Clarges himself, and
scornfully rejected by Monk, who nevertheless consented to receive a
visit from Bordeaux, on condition that the subject should not be
mentioned.--Philips, 602, 604. Locke, on the contrary, asserts that Monk
accepted the offer of the French minister; that his wife, through loyalty
to the king, betrayed the secret; and that Cooper put to the general such
searching questions that he was confused, and, in proof of his fidelity,
took away the commissions of several officers of whom the council was
jealous.--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