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.