During the remainder of this year and the beginning of the next Monk was busily engaged in maintaining the blockade of the Dutch coast, and attending to the routine business of his place at Whitehall and Chatham. Indeed he had little time for anything else. In June, while he was in search of Tromp's fleet, he had been called by the Protector to the Little Parliament, but his legislative duties sat lightly upon him. No doubt he was reconciled to the new form of government by the express declaration of the Council, which almost seems to have been put in for his especial benefit, that the sword ought to have no share in the civil power. Still he appears to have attended the sittings but seldom. Once only are we sure he was there, and that was to receive the thanks of Parliament. His visionary colleagues were for him contemptible. The war and his magnificent new flagship, the _Swiftsure_, were much more to his mind, and he can only have rejoiced when he saw the power of Parliament suddenly surrendered into Cromwell's hands. The new rule had his entire approval. A single person, as we have seen, was his ideal of government, and especially when that single person was one well able to apply the "principal and able remedy against civil wars." The crisis had resolved itself into a situation after his own heart. In the despotic Protector he saw a warlike prince; in the Dutch war a physic for him to minister to his country's disease. But he was doomed to disappointment. The Protector's statecraft was less crude than his lieutenant's, and in spite of Monk's energetic and even angry protests peace on comparatively easy terms was signed with Holland on April 5th, 1654. CHAPTER VIII GOVERNOR OF SCOTLAND Cromwell had now other work for his most trusted officer. General Middleton had landed in Scotland to fan the flame which Lord Glencairn had kindled for the King, and which Morgan had nearly smothered. The Highlands were in a blaze, the Lowlands were seething in the heat, and Lilburne showed himself incapable of coping with the growing danger in spite of the fiery little dragoon's assistance.