to clear London of all but two of the regiments
then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood
and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to
be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the
House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his
march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting
at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of
his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had
come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr.
Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The
text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that
they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on
this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the
Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr.
Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the
Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God
led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came
thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people
_crinkledum cum crankledum_." Monk's present march was to be one
of the last of the windings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680;
Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).]

While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real
intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those
addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not
only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of
the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at
Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the
City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the
borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners
from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses
had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done,
they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen
either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted
into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of
1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or
(2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at
once. Both these methods implied the restoration o