THE PARLIAMENT'S COMMISSION
While Monk lay thus honour-bound in the Tower the New Model had done
its work. The war was practically over, and Parliament turned its
attention to clearing the prisons. On April 9th, 1646, a return was
ordered of all soldiers of fortune then prisoners to the Parliament who
were desirous of going abroad, with the intention that on taking the
negative oath they should be permitted to do so. Under this order Monk
must have applied, and on July 1st he got leave to go beyond the seas.
Besides the oath there was a further condition that he was to leave
the country within a month of his release, but his friends seem to
have had influence enough to get the time extended. With the close
of the war Parliament was able to devote its energies to Ireland,
and each party was scheming to appoint the Lord Lieutenant, in order
to secure for itself the prestige of avenging the Protestant blood
that had been shed. During Monk's imprisonment the situation there
had changed considerably. Ormonde still held Dublin and the greater
part of Leinster for the King, but Lord Inchiquin in a fit of pique
had gone over to the Parliament, and from Cork was administering
Munster as president in its name. The Scotch in the Ulster garrisons
and plantations were also on the side of the Parliament. The rest of
the island was in the hands of the Papal Nuncio, and recognised no
authority either of King or Parliament. He had succeeded in uniting the
Anglo-Irish under Preston and the native Irish under Owen O'Neill into
one ultra-Catholic party, with vague aims at an independent state under
the protectorate of Spain or the Pope.
Parliament saw something must be done to keep Inchiquin from returning
to his allegiance and joining Ormonde; and being still unable to agree
upon a definite appointment, they determined to send out Lord Lisle for
a year. He immediately offered the command of his regiment to Monk.
There was now no reason why he should not accept it. The war for which
he had engaged was at an end, and the new service that was offered to
him was one which he had been bred to think as noble as a crusade. It
was against an enemy in open rebellion against England and in secret
league with Spain.
But though perfectly willing to accept the negative oath, to which as a
merely military precaution he had no objection, he utterly refused to
take the Covenant. Till he did he was not qualified for a parliamentary
commission.
By the end of September, however, Ormonde found it was impossible to
hold out much longer, and rather than let Dublin fall into the hands
of the Catholics, he offered to surrender it to the Parliament. At the
same time he urged them to send out Monk and the Irish officers to take
command of the army of occupation. The difficulties about the recusant
colonel's appointment began to vanish like magic. The Presbyterians,
who, it must be remembered, were in theory Royalist, and practically
becoming so every day in a greater degree, naturally were only too glad
to accept a nomination of Ormonde's. Monk was sent for by the Irish
committee of the Council of State sitting at Derby House. There he
pledged his honour that he would faithfully serve the Parliament in the
Irish war, and announced himself ready to start at a day's notice. What
was said about the Covenant is a mystery, but the committee reported
to the House that he was ready to take it. That he did not take it
is certain, for this was the chief ground on which the Ulster-Scotch
quarrelled with him three years afterwards. It is difficult even to
believe that honest George said he was ready to do so. The ambiguous
expression looks strangely like an ingenious piece of jockeying on the
part of Lisle, who was a member of the Derby House committee, to make
it easy for the Presbyterians to consent to Monk's appointment. At all
events it had the desired effect, and with only one dissentient voice
it was voted that Colonel Monk should be employed as the committee
directed.
Lord Lisle was less successful in his own case. Not till Christmas did
he get his route, and still there were obstacles which prevented him
sailing till the middle of February. Even then he did not go to Dublin.
Ormonde and the parliamentary commissioners had not been able to agree
on the details of the surrender, and Lisle had to land in Cork. It was
the 21st of the month before he reached his command, and his commission
would expire on April 15th. Barely two months remained of his term of
office, and that time was spent in incessant wrangling between Lord
Inchiquin and the newly arrived officers. It is needless to say that
the expedition was an entire failure, and on the first of May Monk and
his friends found themselves once more back in London.
It shows plainly how Monk had kept himself clear of any political
taint that he did not share in his chief's fall. The force which had
been sent to occupy Dublin on the first overtures of Ormonde had been
ordered on to Ulster pending the completion of the negotiations. On
the eventual signing of the treaty of rendition, as a strong force
was on its way from England, only a small part of the original army
of occupation had been ordered to Dublin, and an officer was required
to command the regiments which remained in Ulster. Everything pointed
to Monk as the man. His appointment was strongly urged by his friends
in the House, and probably by Cromwell himself, and in July he was
gratified with a commission as Major-General over all the forces both
Scotch and English, in the counties of Down and Antrim and all those
parts of Ulster which were not in the command of Sir Charles Coote.
Michael Jones was supreme in Dublin, and with a man like Monk to second
him he soon set the tide running back. Early in August he inflicted
a crushing defeat on Preston, and O'Neill alone remained to be dealt
with. But that was different. He was a wary old Low Country officer who
had been long in the Spanish service. He knew his power lay in guerilla
warfare, and nothing would entrap him into an engagement. He was a
foe worthy of the new commanders' steel, but they knew the game as
well as he. All through August and the two following months Monk and
Jones were raiding up and down, sometimes in concert, sometimes apart,
burning, ravaging, plundering, and collecting provisions.
Such work was all that Monk could do with the forces at his command,
and he did it well. To hold his ground till the great expedition, which
was in contemplation for the conquest of Ireland, could start was all
he could hope; and till one party or the other got the upper hand in
the English Parliament that would never be. So while politicians at
home were scheming as to who should set the King on his throne again
and the sterner voices were beginning to mutter darkly that it was
not there he must find his rest, honest George in his matter-of-fact
business-like way was quietly busy with the duty of his place. For him
the growing dissensions amongst his paymasters were nothing, except in
so far as they found them too absorbing to make time to send him money
and supplies.
Till the questions of the King and the command of the army were settled
things were at a deadlock, and Monk was thrown on his own resources.
It was now that he began to show how great these resources were, and
how to the reckless courage and strategic sagacity of the soldier he
added all the qualities that go to make the successful proconsul. In
his province he was an autocrat. He had a commission to execute martial
law, an extraordinary mark of confidence in those days, and governed
despotically in a state of siege. Yet no administration had ever been
more generally popular. So just or judicious were his decisions on
every point that came before him that long after he was gone they were
quoted as unassailable precedents. The Protestants began to feel the
colony had got a new start in life.
Nor in the duties of judge and governor did he relax the unsleeping
vigilance of the general. Time after time O'Neill attempted a raid, but
it was only to fall into the midst of a force that scattered his troops
like chaff; and when he succeeded in regaining the desolate fastnesses
from which he had issued, it was but to hear how Monk's soldiers had
swept down in his absence on some distant spot and carried off a
precious booty of cattle and provender. For honest practical George was
far too much of a soldier not to know the value of spies, and he used
them unscrupulously. O'Neill could not move hand or foot before an iron
grip was on him. Splendid soldier as he was he had met his match, and
never could he get within striking distance of his enemy's magazines.
Nor was this all. For while the Irish were kept at a distance in a
state of starvation the English soldiers were digging pay and provision
out of the desolation, where once the wretched partisans of O'Neill had
had their homes. And so by a happy combination of the patient industry
of the ploughman and the daring activity of the mosstrooper Monk made
the war support itself, a thing as strange as it was palatable to the
authorities at home; and while he thus delighted his masters he no
less attached his troops to him by his judicious distribution of loot,
as well as by keeping an open house to which every officer had at all
times a hearty welcome. His maxim was to "mingle love with the severity
of his discipline," believing that "they that cannot be induced to
serve for love will never be forced to serve for fear."
But troubles were at hand. The province was no bed of roses, or if it
were, the thorns grew faster than the flowers as the breath of party
strife began to reach it in fitful gusts. Ever since Ormonde had left
Dublin he had been busily engaged with the King's friends, who were
taking advantage of the growing royalism of the Presbyterians to form
a new combination against the Parliament. In Scotland and Munster lay
their chief hopes of backing a rising in England, and so well did
Ormonde play his part that in April, 1648, the Independent officers
under Inchiquin found it necessary to make a desperate attempt to save
the province by seizing Cork and Youghal. The plot failed, Inchiquin
at once showed his hand for the King, and Munster was lost to the
Parliament. This was followed at the end of the month by a declaration
from Scotland in favour of Charles, and the mobilisation of the forces
of the Northern Kingdom.
The second Civil War had begun, and Inchiquin sought to improve his
position by concluding a cessation and alliance with Clanrickarde
and his Irish party, and by secretly negotiating with the Scots in
Ulster. Already Monk had had sufficient trouble with them. At the
outbreak of the Rebellion in 1641 Munroe had sailed from Scotland to
the assistance of the old Scotch settlers. Since then he and his New
Scotch, as they were called, had succeeded by their overbearing conduct
in making themselves extremely unpopular with the Old Scotch, and Monk
had plenty to do to hold the balance between them. Now there was a new
complication. The Old Scotch party was as yet decidedly anti-Royalist.
They had never forgiven Charles for his attempted alliance with O'Neill
and the execrated authors of the Ulster massacres. It was then with
Munroe and the New Scotch that Inchiquin sought to deal, and not in
vain. Munroe adhered to the coalition, but his adhesion was kept a
profound secret till the time came for action. The idea seems to have
been that so soon as Ormonde arrived from France to take command in
Ireland Monk should be seized. No attempt appears to have been made to
tamper with him. Though Ormonde tempted Coote and Jones, he knew Monk
too well to be ignorant that his sting could only be drawn by violence.
The danger was extreme, and the fate of the cause hung in a balance.
Besides the three English officers, O'Neill and his Nationalists
were all in Ireland that were not in arms for the King. Across St.
George's Channel the Scots were already over the border with a force
so formidable that none could foresee the issue when they and Cromwell
met. Munroe held Carrickfergus and Belfast. Ormonde was on his way
from France, and if ever Charles had a chance it was now. The fate of
Ireland hung for the moment on Monk. With Ulster in Ormonde's hands
O'Neill's last chance was gone, and Coote and Jones single-handed could
never hold out.
But from Monk's vigilance the danger could not be concealed, and for
him to know was to act. He saw his duty, he saw his chance, and sharp
and sudden he struck his blow. One day in the middle of September
Munroe was in his quarters ready for the moment of action, when
suddenly there was a confused alarm, and before the Scotchman well knew
what it meant he found himself a prisoner in the hands of Monk, and the
towns of Belfast and Carrickfergus in possession of the English and the
Old Scotch.
The bells were ringing for Cromwell's overwhelming victory at Preston
when the news came that Ulster was safe as yet and Ireland reprieved.
In an outburst of gratitude the Houses ordered a public thanksgiving,
voted the hero of the hour a letter of thanks, appointed him Governor
of Belfast, gave him the disposal of Carrickfergus and a gratuity of
£500, and resolved to try and pay all his men's arrears. From that
moment his fortune was made. The Independents were now supreme. For
them his blow had been struck, and people began to forget he had ever
drawn sword for the King.
Still in spite of his success his position in Ireland was anything but
enviable. The Parliament was triumphant in England, but the account was
still open between the Independents and the Presbyterians, and until it
was closed little could be done for the relief of Ireland. Even when
Cromwell had settled it with a squad of musketeers, and the execution
of Charles had removed the great obstacle to a permanent settlement,
much remained to be done before the great Irish Expedition could start.
For the moment history turned on the race for Ireland, and a close
race it was. The execution of Charles was followed by the Scots of
Ulster declaring unanimously against the Republic. Coote was shut up
in Derry, and Monk with the greatest difficulty escaped a surprise,
and took refuge in Dundalk.[4] The situation was growing desperate
indeed. The Royalists held the whole country with the exception of the
ground which was covered by the guns of the garrisons, or occupied by
O'Neill's Nationalists. The English Expedition was far from ready,
and Ormonde was leaving no stone unturned to make the whole island
his own before it could sail. Again he was tempting Jones and Coote,
though again he did not waste time on Monk. He was offering baits to
O'Neill. He was urging the new King to come over and complete the
work with his presence. So well was he working that in February the
Papal Nuncio fled, leaving him in possession of the field. O'Neill's
supporters began to desert. Every day the country which the Ulster
chief could call his own grew less and less. The fall of Dublin and the
other English garrisons began to stare the English Council in the face.
Something must be done to stave off the end yet a little while, and the
strangest and most obscure of all that time is the story of the means
the Council employed for the work.