to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and,
if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of
all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's
mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be
the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of
two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to
fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free
Parliament"--not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing
writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House
"qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling
out,--and then either take the field with his forces under that
banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut
himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect
were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at
once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally
willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to
Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood,
had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of
him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they
found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At
Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and
Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an
hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I
cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had
just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no
such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that,
Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only
instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his
friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.--This
was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke
had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another,
suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to
the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us,
for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in
the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of
the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued
orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in