Hence, on the one hand, their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the Stuarts utterly.

It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him.

He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity.

Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by Fairfax.

But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point.
To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or Price, or the physician Dr.Barrow, been always at hand to explain privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was peculiar.