He died erect, turning his head to breathe in silence his last sigh. "A man capable of great things, though he had no grandeur in his soul; born at once to command and to obey; sensible, patient, and brave; attached to his own interest, and yet devoted in every great position to his duty as a soldier and an Englishman; without political ambition and not aspiring to govern his country--he knew how to acknowledge his country's rights, and to restore to her the government which had become indispensable." Charles II. had not forgotten the services rendered to him by Monk; he was neither shocked by his pecuniary greed nor by the grossness of his manners. He had loaded him with wealth and honors, and he followed him to the tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster. The general had never played any political part, and his death left no void in the direction of affairs, which were becoming every day more complicated and more violently conflicting. The court party and the country party divided the two Houses. Out of doors the country party was strikingly superior. {367} The conviction of this fact alone prolonged the existence of the Royalist Long Parliament. The time had now gone by when courtiers, probably with the assent of the king, dared to set miserable hirelings to mutilate the face of Sir John Coventry, a prominent member of the opposition in the Commons. From this time forth the country party took the measure of the royal authority, and raised its pretensions even to the question of the succession to the throne. The enthusiasm and the confidence which marked the first days of the Restoration had given way to sombre disquietude. It was not with his ordinary exaggeration that Lord Shaftesbury said, "If the king had had the happiness to be born a simple gentleman, he might have passed for a man of sense, good breeding, and good disposition. As a king he has brought his affairs to such a point that there is not a creature in the world, man or woman, who can feel the least confidence in his word or his attachment."