All he could hope was that the wretched little Parliament would not prove positively treacherous.
With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk's proceedings and intentions than of those of the Parliament.

Monk's march from Coldstream southwards on the 2nd of January; the vanishing of the residue of Lambert's forces before him; the addresses to him in the English counties all along his route; his answers or supposed answers to these addresses; his wary behaviour to the two Parliamentary Commissioners that had been sent to attach themselves to him and find out his disposition in the matter of the Abjuration Oath; his arrival at St.Alban's on the 28th of January; his message thence to the Parliament to clear all Fleetwood's regiments out of London and Westminster before his own entry; that entry itself on the 3rd of February, when he and his battered columns streamed in through Gray's Inn Lane; finally his first appearance in the House and speech, there:--of all this Milton had exact cognisance through the newspapers of his friend Needham and otherwise.

It was very puzzling and by no means reassuring.

If he had ever thought of Monk as by possibility such a saviour of the Commonwealth as he had been longing for, the study of the actually approaching physiognomy of Old George all the way from Scotland, and still more Old George's first deliverance of himself in the Parliament, must have undeceived him.
The Abjuration Oath, it appeared, was not at all to Monk's mind.

He would not take it himself in order to be qualified for the seat voted him in the Council of State, and he plainly intimated his opinion that the day for such oaths and engagements was past.