Such work was all that Monk could do with the forces at his command, and he did it well. To hold his ground till the great expedition, which was in contemplation for the conquest of Ireland, could start was all he could hope; and till one party or the other got the upper hand in the English Parliament that would never be. So while politicians at home were scheming as to who should set the King on his throne again and the sterner voices were beginning to mutter darkly that it was not there he must find his rest, honest George in his matter-of-fact business-like way was quietly busy with the duty of his place. For him the growing dissensions amongst his paymasters were nothing, except in so far as they found them too absorbing to make time to send him money and supplies. Till the questions of the King and the command of the army were settled things were at a deadlock, and Monk was thrown on his own resources. It was now that he began to show how great these resources were, and how to the reckless courage and strategic sagacity of the soldier he added all the qualities that go to make the successful proconsul. In his province he was an autocrat. He had a commission to execute martial law, an extraordinary mark of confidence in those days, and governed despotically in a state of siege. Yet no administration had ever been more generally popular. So just or judicious were his decisions on every point that came before him that long after he was gone they were quoted as unassailable precedents. The Protestants began to feel the colony had got a new start in life. Nor in the duties of judge and governor did he relax the unsleeping vigilance of the general. Time after time O'Neill attempted a raid, but it was only to fall into the midst of a force that scattered his troops like chaff; and when he succeeded in regaining the desolate fastnesses from which he had issued, it was but to hear how Monk's soldiers had swept down in his absence on some distant spot and carried off a precious booty of cattle and provender. For honest practical George was far too much of a soldier not to know the value of spies, and he used them unscrupulously. O'Neill could not move hand or foot before an iron grip was on him. Splendid soldier as he was he had met his match, and never could he get within striking distance of his enemy's magazines.