To summon what was called a new full and free Parliament was, all but certainly, to bring back Royalty by a more hurried process still.

Only by the third method, the Rump's own method, did there seem a chance of preserving the Republican constitution; and yet Monk's assent to it had been but hesitating and uncertain.

More ominous still had been his few words intimating his wishes in the matter of ecclesiastical policy.

He could conceive nothing so good, on the whole, as the Scottish Presbyterianism he had been living amidst for the last few years, and he thought that the 'sober interest' in England, steering between the 'Cavalier party' on the one side and the 'Fanatic party' on the other, would be most secure by keeping to a moderate Presbytery in the State-Church.

That Milton's views as to the merits of Scottish Presbytery were not Monk's is an old story, needing no repetition here.