His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November.
All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match.

And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling.

By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet.

By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle.

For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post?
Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be "warranted in his present actings" by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected.