Monk, at the time, was far from being reputed a Royalist. He, with his officers, had in the month of June, 1659, expressed Republican opinions. In the following November the same person corresponding with Dr. Owen, and other representatives of the Independents in London, promised that their interests should ever be dear to his heart; and gave it as his opinion that the laws and rights for which they had been struggling through eighteen years might be "reduced to a Parliamentary Government, and the people's consenting to the laws."[54] The General reached St. Albans on the 28th of January, when Hugh Peters preached before him a characteristic sermon, little thinking of what the chief person in the audience was about to accomplish. "As for his sermon," says one who heard it, "he managed it with some dexterity at the first (allowing the cantings of his expressions.) His text was Psalm cvii. 7. 'He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt.'[55] With his fingers on the cushion he measured the right way from the Red Sea through the wilderness to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through the wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people _crinkledom cum crankledom_; and he particularly descended into the lives of the patriarchs, how they journeyed up and down though there were promises of blessing and rest to them. Then he reviewed our civil wars, our intervals of peace and fresh distractions, and hopes of rest; but though the Lord's people (he said) were not yet come to the City of Habitation, He was still leading them on in the right way, how dark soever His dispensations might appear to us."[56] As I am writing an Ecclesiastical, and not a Political History, I leave untouched the tangled web of incidents occurring in the City in the councils of the Republicans; and in the relations of Monk to the conflicting parties, between the 6th and 11th of February. I can only state, that on the last of these days the martial chief appeared at Guildhall, and said, "What I have to tell you is this: I have this morning sent to the Parliament to issue out writs within seven days, for the filling up of their House, and when filled to sit no longer than the 6th of May, but then to give place to a full and free Parliament."[57] [Sidenote: MONK.]