For two days the House had been considering the new petition from the army, determined not to grant and afraid to reject it. The debate stood adjourned till the morrow without hope of a solution to the problem. It was late in the evening when Nicholas Monk reached Clarges. In the first hours of the morning the commissary roused the Speaker and Haslerig with his news. The whole situation was changed as if by magic. No sooner was the House met than the tidings flew from mouth to mouth, and in rapid succession a series of votes were passed bidding defiance to Lambert and the army. "Resolved that if they must leave their soft seats they would first empty out the feathers," they made it high treason to collect taxes without their consent, cashiered Lambert, Desborough, and the seven other colonels who were concerned in the movement, deprived Fleetwood of the command of the army, and vested it in a commission in which he was associated with Monk, Haslerig, Ludlow, Morley, Walton, and Overton, all staunch Parliament men. The following morning Lambert had seized the approaches of the House. Once more the Rump was the victim of a _coup d'état_, and a military committee of safety reigned in its stead. Monk had foretold the quarrel months ago. On the morning of the 17th the news for which he had been waiting reached him at Dalkeith, and with startling rapidity he set about backing his words. Never had soldier a more difficult and dangerous task. In any one of lesser calibre the attempt would be called madness. He was face to face at last with his old rival. He was about to defy the most brilliant of Cromwell's generals, and before he could call his strength his own he had to tear from it its toughest fibres. The London officers had succeeded in making his army a hotbed of the very opinions he had determined to crush with it. On the whole Scotch establishment there was hardly a colonel who was above suspicion. Every garrison and every company were full of the veteran fanatics who had taught the world the art of revolution, and every man of them in his heart rejoiced at Lambert's success. With this element free, his army was Lambert's army. At all cost it must be made powerless, though it was the very soul of his force. But Monk did not hesitate. Not a moment was to be lost. In a few hours the news would be all over Scotland and the chance gone. All the principal garrisons, with the exception of Stirling and Aberdeen, were in the hands of Lambert's nominees, and the whole venture turned upon the rapidity with which they could be secured.