Nor did the conduct of the Second Bishops' War mend his opinion of the King. His regiment was amongst the first that were ready to take the field. It was present at the rout at Newburn Ford, where its lieutenant-colonel distinguished himself by saving the English guns. But with that disgraceful action the campaign ended. Monk and a few other officers at the Council of War urged every argument which the pedantic strategy of the day could suggest in order to induce the King to attack the Scots with the concentrated army which was now strengthened with the Yorkshire and Durham trained-bands. But all was in vain, and an armistice preliminary to peace was concluded at Ripon, by which the two northern counties were left in possession of the Scots as security for a war-indemnity. For these two miserable failures Monk never forgave the King. To the end of his life he used to harp on the fatal mistake Charles made in not following the advice he gave, and to the last maintained, with characteristic ignorance of the real questions at issue, that all the blood which flowed in the following years was to be imputed to the folly of sparing it then. While the Scots were eating up the fat of the land and Monk was fretting at the part he had to play, the plot was thickening fast. The Long Parliament had met and Strafford was brought to bay. The breach between King and Parliament was widening daily, and Charles was foolish enough to listen to schemes which the most hairbrained of his courtiers devised for dragging the army into the quarrel. Men ready to coerce the Houses were to be placed in command, and the army was to be brought up to London and the Tower snatched from the hands of Lord Newport, who was now constable. But there was a difficulty in the way. The Low Country officers, true to their principles, refused to have anything to do with the plot, and the conspirators fell out before the question of command could be settled. Goring, who had been promised the post of Lieutenant-General, in a fit of spite betrayed the plot to Lord Newport. Newport told Pym, and at the critical moment when Strafford's fate hung in the balance Pym played the information as a trump-card. The effect was electrical, and its sequel of no little consequence to Monk. The revelation produced a revulsion of feeling which brought Strafford's head to the block, and Lord Leicester, as a favourite with both King and Parliament, was hastily summoned from Paris to succeed him as Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland.