Hollis, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Annesley,
Lewis, were determined to atone for past transgressions by their present
zeal for the royal interests; and from former merits, successes, and
sufferings, they had acquired with their party the highest credit and
authority.

The affairs of Ireland were in a condition no less favorable to the
king. As soon as Monk declared against the English army, he despatched
emissaries into Ireland, and engaged the officers in that kingdom
to concur with him in the same measures. Lord Broghill, president of
Munster, and Sir Charles Coote, president of Connaught, went so far
as to enter into a correspondence with the king, and to promise their
assistance for his restoration. In conjunction with Sir Theophilus Jones
and other officers, they took possession of the government, and
excluded Ludlow, who was zealous for the rump parliament, but whom they,
pretended to be in a confederacy with the committee of safety. They kept
themselves in readiness to serve the king; but made no declarations,
till they should see the turn which affairs took in England.

But all these promising views had almost been blasted by an untoward
accident. Upon the admission of the secluded members, the republican
party, particularly the late king's judges, were seized with the justest
despair, and endeavored to infuse the same sentiment into the army. By
themselves or their emissaries, they represented to the soldiers, that
all those brave actions which had been performed during the war, and
which were so meritorious in the eyes of the parliament, would, no
doubt, be regarded as the deepest crimes by the royalists, and would
expose the army to the severest vengeance: that in vain did that
party make professions of moderation and lenity; the king's death, the
execution of so many of the nobility and gentry, the sequestration
and imprisonment of the rest, were in their eyes crimes so deep, and
offences so personal, as must be prosecuted with the most implacable
resentment: that the loss of all arrears, and the cashiering of
every officer and soldier, were the lightest punishment which must
be expected; after the dispersion of the army, no further protection
remained to them, either for life or property, but the clemency of
enraged victors: and that, even if the most perfect security could be
obtained, it were inglorious to be reduced by treachery and deceit to
subjection under a foe, who, in the open field, had so often