There had been meetings and consultations among them, and secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England under an anti-Oliverian banner.

The Levellers, on the one side, and the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents of Charles II.

It may be a question how far Overton himself was a party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at Aberdeen.

"I bless the Lord," he writes mysteriously from that town, Dec.

26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend--"I bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much remembered) so far as I am able in everything.