No longer now was it merely a rat here and there of the inferior sort, like Downing and Morland,[1] that was leaving the sinking ship.

So many were leaving, and of so many sorts and degrees, that Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles had ceased to count, on their side, the deserters as they clambered up.

He received now, Hyde tells us, "the addresses of many men who had never before applied themselves to him, and many sent to him for his Majesty's approbation and leave to sit in the next Parliament." Between London and Flanders messengers were passing to and fro daily, with perfect freedom and hardly any disguise of their business.

Annesley, the President of the Council of State, was in correspondence with the King; Thurloe, now back in the Secretaryship to the Council, was in correspondence with him, and by no means dishonourably; and in the meetings of the Council of State itself, though it was bound to be corporately neutral till the Parliament should assemble, the drift of the deliberations was obvious.

The only two men whose resistance even now could have compelled a pause were Monk and Montague.