ring the nine years of the English military occupation of Scotland
everything was merely provisional; nothing decisive could occur. In the
first place (October 1651), eight English Commissioners, including three
soldiers, Monk, Lambert, and Deane, undertook the administration of the
conquered country. They announced tolerance in religion (except for
Catholicism and Anglicanism, of course), and during their occupation the
English never wavered on a point so odious to the Kirk. The English
rulers also, as much as they could, protected the women and men whom the
lairds and preachers smelled out and tortured and burned for witchcraft.
By way of compensation for the expenses of war all the estates of men who
had sided with Charles were confiscated. Taxation also was heavy. On
four several occasions attempts were made to establish the Union of the
two countries; Scotland, finally, was to return thirty members to sit in
the English Parliament. But as that Parliament, under Cromwell, was
subject to strange and sudden changes, and as the Scottish
representatives were usually men sold to the English side, the experiment
was not promising. In its first stage it collapsed with Cromwell's
dismissal of the Long Parliament on April 20, 1653. Argyll meanwhile had
submitted, retaining his estates (August 1652); but of five garrisons in
his country three were recaptured, not without his goodwill, by the
Highlanders; and in these events began Monk's aversion, finally fatal, to
the Marquis as a man whom none could trust, and in whom finally nobody
trusted.

An English Commission of Justice, established in May 1652, was
confessedly more fair and impartial than any Scotland had known, which
was explained by the fact that the English judges "were kinless loons."
Northern cavaliers were relieved by Monk's forbidding civil magistrates
to outlaw and plunder persons lying under Presbyterian excommunication,
and sanitary measures did something to remove from Edinburgh the ancient
reproach of filth, for the time. While the Protesters and Resolutioners
kept up their quarrel, the Protesters claiming to be the only genuine
representatives of Kirk and Covenant, the General Assembly of the
Resolutioners was broken up (July 21, 1653) by Lilburne, with a few
soldiers, and henceforth the Kirk, having no General Assembly, was less
capable of promoting civil broils. Lilburne suspected that the Assembly
was in touch with new stirrings towards a risin