ABSTRACT
DICTATORSHIPS GO VERY FAST when they begin to crumble: Cromwell’s was no exception. At his death in 1658, on the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, power passed to his son Richard, possessor of about a quarter of his personality. Richard was too idle to hold together army and Parliament and too gentlemanlike to rule by army alone. Within a few months he had passed into gentlemanlike and idle retirement. In his place the English army leaders broke apart and quarrelled among themselves, and with the ‘Rump’ of the old Long Parliament, which they had brought back, and all forgot that even army rule rested ultimately on acquiescence, if not consent. In Scotland Monck kept aloof from this. He held his own army together, removing the men whose politics he suspected, and waited enigmatically. Much of the enigma remains today. His portrait shows a round face in a full-bottomed wig, confident and uncommunicative. His reputation was for decent dealing and loyalty to those
whose authority he had accepted. Faced with the collapse of any authority to be loyal to, he seems to have decided to declare for basic legality. Legalism in England by 1659 could only mean two things, the old Long Parliament in its entirety, and the king. Monck decided to throw his army into the scale for the Parliament and see what happened. This meant a march south, a slow, considering march, with plenty of time for consultations. But these consultations were with Englishmen, who counted in politics, not with Scots, who did not. All that Monck would say to the Scots, when he called a representative meeting of nobles and townsmen before his departure, was that he would do what he could for a reduction in taxation. Meanwhile the Scots were to keep the peace, and the counties edging the Highland line could have enough arms to keep down cattle stealing. He would not take Scots into his army: the English had grown to dislike Scotch soldiers cruising about their country. In London he used his army to recreate the Long Parliament, to get it to recall the monarchy, and finally to dissolve itself. And so, in May 1660, there was a king in London, a man of thirty, over-worldly-wise, and done with travelling.
