George Monk, Duke of Albemarle:

GENERAL AND ADMIRAL.

A.D. 1608-1670.

"Among the men who have played a part upon the great stage of history, the fate of Monk has been remarkable. At once celebrated and obscure, he has connected his name with the Restoration of the Stuarts, but has left us almost no other memorial of himself. He is one of those men whose lives contain only a single day upon which their character and faculties, their virtues or vices, can display themselves in their full energy and imperiousness; yet these are men whom it is important to study closely, for it is only when we know them thoroughly that we can rightly understand the rapid drama in which they performed the leading part, and the event which they alone were able to accomplish."- GUIZOT.

Commands in Ireland on the side of the Commonwealth,

1646

""Twas Monk, whom Providence designed to loose
Those real bonds false Freedom did impose...

How hard was then his task!"

DRYDEN.

CHAPTER I.-EARLY YEARS OF A BUSY LIFE.

Monk's birthplace-His Interference on his Father's behalf-Leaves EnglandA Military Career-A Captain in Goring's Regiment-The Bishop's WarMonk's service in Ireland-Declares himself a Royalist-Goes over to the Commonwealth-Marries a Woman of low Extraction-His Government of Ulster-Receives the thanks of the Parliament.

EORGE MONK, the king-maker of the seventeenth century, was the second son of Sir Thomas Monk, and born at the hereditary mansion of Potheridge (or 'Pon-the-ridge), in Devonshire, on the 6th of November 1608.

His family had settled there as early as the reign of Henry III., but its patrimony was not equal to its antiquity, and George Monk's father was reduced to miserable shifts in his anxious attempts to keep up the old splendour of the estate. The first notorious incident in

his son's career arose from this very circumstance. It was in 1625 that Charles I. visited Plymouth, when preparing an expedition against Spain, and the squires of Devonshire hastened there to welcome him in a style befitting their wealth and dignity. Among these loyal cavaliers, Sir Thomas Monk was naturally anxious to present himself, but had reason to fear an arrest at the suit of an unfriendly creditor. George, therefore, was sent to the under-sheriff to induce him, on payment of a small fee, to delay the execution of the writ. The official consented, and received his money. But probably the creditor tempted him with a larger fee, for a few days afterwards he apprehended Sir Thomas in the very presence of the Devonshire magnates. Enraged at this breach of faith, George Monk sped away to Exeter, and soundly cudgelled the treacherous under-sheriff, who was rescued from his violent hands with difficulty. To escape the consequences of this illegal but not unnatural action, he was constrained to fly from home, and his kinsman, Sir Richard Grenville, having the command of a squadron destined for the Spanish seas, received him on board his ship as a volunteer. Monk, from his boyhood, had longed to embrace a military career, and therefore welcomed with joy the singular opportunity which fortune had afforded him.

Sir Richard Grenville was not an able commander, and the Cadiz expedition was not a successful enterprise, yet to George Monk his service under his kinsman proved of infinite value. On board the fleet were many young gentlemen of good family, who spent lavishly and lived riotously, and their example was accepted by the grave and discreet stripling of Devon as an awful warning. "He did not," says one of his biographers, "like a young

FIRST STEPS TO GREATNESS.

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captain, retain his commission as a warrant for luxury and extravagance; but in earnest minded the business of a soldier, and informing himself duly in all the methods and arts of war." He displayed a resolute detestation of vice; was accurate in his performance of his religious duties; temperate, moral, and even-tempered; distinguished by his gravity, love of order, and moderation.

In 1626 the young soldier enlisted as an ensign in the ill-conceived and grossly mismanaged expedition which the Duke of Buckingham undertook against the Isle of Rhé. He viewed the misconduct of this would-be general with disgust, and retained to the end of his life a painful recollection of the disgrace which was then inflicted upon

our arms.

Notwithstanding his extraordinary discretion and gravity, Monk was of too adventurous a temperament long to remain contented with a life of inaction; and a year after the defeat at the Isle of Rhé, we find him seeking "the bubble reputation" in Holland, under the command of the Earl of Oxford. Long and sedulous service eventually procured him a company in Lord Goring's regiment, whose high-born volunteers-gay, glittering cavaliers, gallant as Englishmen must be, but undisciplined, and impatient of control-laughed, at first, at the grave, severe Monk, but soon learned to respect his military knowledge, to fear his rigid sense of duty, and to admire his cool intrepid courage. A dispute with the magistrates of Dordrecht, in the winter of 1638, induced him to retire from the Dutch service. He returned to England, to find it broken up into two hostile camps -Royalists and Parliamentarians-although civil war as yet had not burst into flame. "Where there is smoke,"