Monck

“ He delivered his message, but at the same time told Monck that he meant to share his fortunes. 'You know,' he said, 'I am no statesman ; I am sure you are a lover of your country, and therefore I will join with you in all your actions, and submit to your prudence and judgment in the conduct of them.' Morgan's coming ' was a great accession to Monck's party, and a great encouragement to all the officers and soldiers ”

“ He now gained a considerable practice, and was made physician-in-ordinary to the king. In 1672 appeared the eighth edition of his ‘Advertisement concerning those most famous and safe cathartiques and diuretique Pills ... wherewith was cured the late Lord-general Monck of the Dropsie.’ Sermon denies that Monck eventually died of the dropsy, ‘as many enviously report’ (cf. Gumble, Life of Monck, pp. 246, 254, 476) . ”

“ Of separately published lives of Monck the most important is The Life of General Monck, Duke of Albemarle, with Remarks upon his Actions, by Thomas Grumble, D.D., 8vo, 1671. Gumble was Monck's chaplain during 1659 and part of 1660, and derived much of his information from Monck and his officers. The Life by Thomas Skinner is for the most part a mere compilation, though Skinner was promised the use of original papers by Lord Bath and the second Duke of Albemarle (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 377, 8th ser.iv. 421) . ”

“ In civil affairs he bade him rely upon St. John, Broghill, Thurloe, and similar councillors, and to endeavour to engage to himself 'those of power and interest amongst the people, for which he has a better opportunity than his father, having not the same obligations to so many disquiet spirits.' Monck's distrust of the leaders of the English army is very noticeable. ”

“ Hence, though Montrose, Aberdeen, and other places submitted, and the Marquis of Huntly and other leaders laid down their arms, the conquest of Scotland was not completed till the following year. Lambert was sent to Scotland in November 1651, and eight commissioners, of whom Monck was one, were appointed to effect the civil settlement of the country (25 Oct., Commons' Journals, vii. 30) . Monck left Scotland in February 1652, and proceeded to Bath to recruit his health (Gumble, p. 46 ; Mercurius Politicus, 6-13 Nov. 1650) . ”

“ What made the danger greater was that the pay of the soldiers was many months in arrear. Monck, with his usual promptitude, suppressed the incendiary pamphlets, arrested the conspirators, cashiered the minor offenders, and shipped off the leaders to England. 'My opinion is,' he wrote, 'that unless his highness be very severe with those that are disturbers of the peace, we shall never have any certain settlement' (Thurloe, iii. 45, 76, 179) . During the later years of his government he carefully purged his army of anabaptists and quakers. ”

“ In 1685 he raised the militia of Devonshire and Cornwall against the Duke of Monmouth, when he landed at Lyme in Dorset, but retired on the approach of Monmouth, who wrote to Monck commanding him to lay down his arms and repair to his camp, where he 'should not fail of receiving a very kind receptionm' on pain of being denounced as a rebel and traitor. ”

“ Tanner MS. liv. 14) . In the winter of 1659–60 he was again approached, and Lord Mordaunt obtained through him a knowledge of Monck's conferences with Fairfax (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 651) . When Monck restored the ‘secluded members’ to their seats, Rushworth as ‘the darling agent of the secluded members’ became secretary to the new council of state (February, 1660; ib. iii. 694) . In the Convention parliament of 1660 he again represented Berwick. ”

“ Before the letter was written Sharp had been for some time in London, for in January 1660 he had been despatched thither with five ministers of Edinburgh to represent the views of the resolutioners. On 4 May he was sent by Monck to communicate directly with Charles at Breda, being further recommended through the Earl of Glencairn as a man entirely an episcopalian in principles and the fittest person whom he could trust to give him correct information regarding both church and state in Scotland. ”

“ In the hopes of recovering this, according to Mather, he went to England, and in 1683, by favour of Christopher Monck, second duke of Albemarle [q. v.] , a lord of trade and plantations, obtained command of a frigate, the Algier Rose. ”

“ The king now required all the Irish troops that could be spared for England, and in November, having first extracted from his officers an oath of loyalty to the king and the church, which only two of them, Monck being one, declined to take, Ormonde managed to send over some 5,000 men under Lord Byron, who did good service in Cheshire until routed by Fairfax, at Nantwich, in January 1644. At the same time, in obedience to special instructions, he exerted himself to keep the Scotch army from joining their fellows in Scotland. ”

“ The date fixed was earlier than Hyde's policy had contemplated, but the fear lest some vigorous dictator should seize power, and the hope of restoring the king without foreign help, reconciled him to the attempt. After its failure he went back to his old policy. 'To have a little patience to sit still till they are in blood' was his advice when Monck and Lambert quarrelled; to obstruct a settlement and demand a free parliament his counsel when the Rump was again restored (ib. iii. 436, 530, 534) . ”

“ There was a time when they used to sing in the forest round the old Abbey Himmerode, as they now do in the valley of Honnef.
The pious monks, walking about in the cloister gardens in holy contemplation heard their seductive songs: the penitents in their cells, mortifying the flesh heard them also. Their alluring warble mingled itself with their murmured prayers; and in the heart of many a monk, who had long since renounced the world and its pleasures, the remembrance of them was gently awakened, and sweet sinful things were whispered into the holy brother's ears. ”

“ Opposite me, at the table of the convent refectory, had sat a taciturn monk, whose influence I felt from the first day—a stronger consciousness of his presence, that is to say, than of any one of the other monks—though he did not seem particularly to observe me, and till recently had scarce spoken to me at all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the countenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contemplation—a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread ”

“ Having assumed the profession of a monk when he was a young man of the age of twenty-three years, he was a soldier of the most high King forty-six years, and gave to the world the fruits of his penetrating genius and deep meditations in metrical poems, eloquent epistles, and other works. I will extract from them, and insert' in this book of mine, an account of one miracle which he learnt when he was at Thorney Abbey in England with Abbot Robert, [4] and committed to writing, at the request of the bishop of Ely [5] and the convent of monks. ”

“ Slowly, slowly, its legs labored through the thin sand. At last it stopped some six inches from Monk's face.
It appeared immense, like a lumbering, scaly giant from the planet's billion-year-ago past.
It rubbed its claws together, threateningly. Its black mouth opened, closed, opened, closed. Its needle tongue twisted like a silver snake.
I am hungry, came the thought. So very hungry. But I should call the others.
Combined fear and hope hung over Monk like an omnipresent shower of fire and ice. Sweat dripped into his hot eyes, obscuring his vision. ”

“ They had gone rather more than a league and had begun to descry the first houses of the village, the red-tiled roofs of which stood out from the green trees which surrounded them, when, coming toward them mounted on a mule, they perceived a poor monk, whose large hat and gray worsted dress made them take him for an Augustine brother. ”

“ The true monk is a man, as his name implies, who whether in the city or in the desert, should always strive to be alone with God. In this sense the prophets Elias and Eliseus under the Old Law, like John the Baptist at the threshold of the New Law, were monks in the most perfect sense of the word. Then, again, the monk whether living alone in the desert, or in community with others, must follow those counsels of perfection, which have been set forth by the teaching and example of the Son of God Himself. ”

“ Once a monk, he would be nothing less than a model of monks, and practised with the utmost rigour all the austerities sanctioned by the rule, applying himself specially at the same time to the study of the Holy Scriptures. ”

“ The monks are not half bad old fellows. The Hegoumenos—that’s the abbot—has been trotting me round this morning to show me the church and the library and all the chapels, and at dinner last night he was full of the most infantile questions. Of course, he had to ask them all through Papa Athanasios, who is my particular monk, and what with his French and mine, the abbot must have amassed some wonderful information.”
“It’s all very well their being nice, but will they let us out?” broke in Zoe. ”

“ Monk walked rapidly up and down the room, as if making an effort to wear off the excitement that the last few moments had brought upon him. His features had lost much of the malignant expression, which was by no means habitual. His countenance was not hardened or stamped with the impress of crime like Shiflet’s, who had just parted from him at the door—a countenance in which every trace of conscience had long ago been erased. Monk’s face 152was neither good nor bad, neither bright nor dull; but he was a man easily wrought into a passion, governed by impulse. ”

“ And the monk went forth immediately, even as the head of the monastery told him, and pastured swine, and when those who had known him formerly, and those who had heard about him, saw him pasturing swine, they said, “Ye see the great monk about whom we have heard, behold, his heart hath gone mad, and a devil hath seized him, and he is [now] pasturing swine.” Then God, when He saw his humility, and that he was hearing and bearing the reproach of men, set him free so that he might go back where he had been formerly. ”

“ CLOISTERS OF MONTSERRAT.
All this may still be seen and heard now and then, but with the number of monks sadly curtailed. It is said that they now never exceed twenty. When their day of persecution came they escaped to their mountain fastness, climbing higher and ever higher like hunted deer, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rocks; fear giving them strength to reach parts never yet trodden by the foot of man, whilst many a less active monk slipped and fell into the bottomless abyss, his last resting place, like that of Moses, remaining for ever unknown. ”

“ And doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted himself and in a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every creed, rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very mixed and often very questionable motives; and valuing his shaven crown and his sheepskin cloak, his regular hours of prayer and his implicit obedience to his abbot, more highly than he valued the fear and the love of God. ”

“ Yet, though the monk, who is now in our house, describes his leaving the monastery in a different manner, this may be the work of his own imagination. He may have dreamed all that he tells about his escape; and, in short, I am persuaded that this monk is no other than Brother Medardus, the Capuchin, whom the Prioress educated, and whom the devil enticed to all sorts of crimes, until Heaven at last punished him with the infliction of utter insanity. ”

“ MONACH (Gadhelic) ,
MYNACH (Cym.-Cel.) ,
a monk, from the Greek monos (alone) ; e.g. Monkton, Monkstown, Monkswood, Monkland, named from lands belonging to the monks; Le Mönch (the monk) , one of the highest of the Bernese Alps; Monachty (the monks’ dwelling) , in Wales; Llan-y-mynach (the monks’ church or enclosure) , Co. Salop; Monksilver, in Somerset, corrupt. from Monk-sylva (the monks’ wood) ; Monkleagh (the monks’ meadow) ; Munsley, with the same meaning, in Hereford; Monach-log-ddu (the place of the black monks) , in Wales; Munchberg (monk’s hill) , in Bavaria ”

“ There was then in the abbey a claustral monk, called Friar John of the funnels and gobbets, in French des entoumeures, young, gallant, frisk, lusty, nimble, quick, active, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, lean, wide-mouthed, long-nosed, a fair despatcher of morning prayers, unbridler of masses, and runner over of vigils; and, to conclude summarily in a word, a right monk, if ever there was any, since the monking world monked a monkery: for the rest, a clerk even to the teeth in matter of breviary. ”

“ Soldiering under Captain Monk was found to be a very serious thing. The wildest blades were soon tamed by the impassive stare and rough speech of the captain-lieutenant, young as he still was, and many there were who lived to thank him long afterwards for the severity of the lessons he taught.
Yet he was no mere soldier of the lecture-room and parade-ground either, for all his science and severity.12 Those who followed George Monk had to tread in thorny places, as any one who knew it not before found out at the siege of Breda. ”

“ There is another kind of monk, with the marks of which we seem traditionally familiar: the monk with the rubicund face, sleek poll, good epigastric development, and slightly unsteady gait, with whom, in turn, we have connected a different phase of conventual discipline—fat capon and stubble goose, and midnight convivial chantings growing ever more fast and furious, but finally dying away in a heavy stertorous calm. Poetry, art, the drama, the novel, have each portrayed human nature in orders ”

“ Yet it seemed impossible—at least, it seemed impossible for me—to consider this great vital hulk of a man as a monk of one of the oldest religious orders in the world. Every common, academic conception of such a monk he distinctly negatived. ”