Nor did Monk lack powerful friends. He was a wide-kinned man, so wide that it is impossible to trace the multitudinous ramifications of his family. He had connections in high places, and they began to take him up. Above all Lord Leicester seems to have found a pleasure in pushing his distinguished young kinsman's fortunes, and at this moment there was no better friend a young man could have than Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester. His family was just now rising into high favour. His brother-in-law, the Earl of Northumberland, was Lord Admiral, while for sister-in-law he could claim the lovely Countess of Carlisle herself. This "Erinnys of the North," as Warburton called her, for whom Waller could forget awhile his Sacharissa, who made Davenant sing his sweetest, and wrung from Suckling his most lascivious note, was still the reigning beauty of the Court. As she entered middle age her charms seemed only to ripen. Her eyes were as bright, her wit as keen, her vivacity as sparkling as ever. The only change was in the field of her conquests. Weary of breaking the hearts of fops and poets, she was seeking new excitement in political intrigue and new pleasures in charming tried leaders of men such as Pym and Strafford. At this moment a blunt manly soldier like Captain Monk was just the man to find favour in her capricious eyes. Monk was always soft-hearted with a woman, and his admiration of such a beauty must have been frank and undisguised. Whatever was the cause, he found her willing to support Lord Leicester's request for his advancement. The task was not difficult. Officers of tried worth who could be trusted in the quarrel were in high demand for lieutenant-colonels of the newly-raised regiments. Half the colonels were noblemen of little experience, and the rest were occupied with their duties on the staff. Monk, as a man who despised politics and was without convictions, was in every way fitted for a command, and his fair friend was soon able to hand him his commission as lieutenant-colonel of Lord Newport's regiment of foot. Monk soon found plenty of work to do; but all his efforts to turn his men into soldiers were thrown away. In June, 1639, to his intense disgust a pacification was patched up with the Scots, and the First Bishops' War came to an ignominious end before a blow had been struck. To Monk, whose narrow but enthusiastic patriotism had been only increased by his service abroad, such a fiasco was deeply mortifying. With a stupid constancy, for which it is impossible not to love him, he clung through life to the fixed idea that one Englishman was any day worth two or three of any other nation. To face an army of Scots for months and then come to terms without fighting was a piece of pusillanimity he could not understand, and never forgot.