though one of the complaints in Monk’s letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion.  He was shy at first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart, “Yea,” said he, “we must live and die together for a Commonwealth.”  The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was that of the Secluded Members.  The applications on their behalf by the Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant.  Monk even yet had his hesitations.  On the one hand, to avert, if possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk’s letter.  They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided.  They had, moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways.  They had resolved (Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament should simply be, “I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords”; and they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of State.  They had also complied with Monk’s demands that there should be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and especially of Vane and Lambert.  All this was to induce Monk to accept the proffered Self-Enlargement of the present House, rather than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for the Long Parliament reconstituted.  Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk’s own mind.  If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm.  But would it do so?  With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts?  Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended?  Would Monk’s own officers risk such a consequence?  To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk’s invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of