No one questioned Monk regarding his plans, but dissimulation became every day more difficult. Everywhere people eagerly gathered around him. The gentry and the citizens sought interviews with him and opportunities of presenting addresses expressing their regrets and their desires. As a rule these were not Cavaliers--they were Presbyterians; sometimes men who had previously become compromised among the opposition and who had long served Parliament. No mention was made of king or monarchy. Some required the return to Parliament of the members expelled in 1648; others demanded a new and free Parliament. Probably at the instigation of Scott, Monk had already written to some of his friends, who demanded the return of the excluded members, to dissuade them from their design in the name of order and of unity in the government. Now he scarcely replied to the pressing appeals of his visitors, confining himself to receiving them with courtesy, and always intrenching himself behind the civil authority, which the two members of Parliament always at his side were eager to exercise. {319} Scott became angry with the petitions and the petitioners. "I am a very old man," he exclaimed one day, "and I could in any case excuse myself from taking arms; but rather than see the present Parliament hampered and nullified by the return of the excluded members or by new elections, I would draw my sword and myself shut the door against those men!" Amidst these explosions of anger and tokens of haughtiness from his watchful visitors, Monk remained cold and impassive. It suited him to let the public ill-humor fall on them alone, and their presence to appear evidently the cause of his taciturnity. Scott and Robinson meanwhile continued to be anxious and suspicious, and they had good cause. In approaching London, Monk considered that the moment had arrived for acting with authority; and without consulting the two commissioners, he despatched to Parliament a letter prepared long before, which demanded the removal to other quarters of the army of Parliament recently reconstituted under the orders of General Butler. "I must tell you in good truth," he wrote, "that I do not think it good for your service that those soldiers in London, who once revolted against you, should mingle with those who have proved to you their fidelity." He undertook that his troops could easily do the service required. The city was angry, and there was some agitation; but the demand was granted. This movement of the regiments which were compelled to leave London increased the importance of the protection of the general, and when he entered the Strand, on the 3d of February, at the head of his cavalry, the interview between him and Lenthall was as courteous as it was assiduous. Monk repaired to Whitehall, where he established himself in the apartments of the Prince of Wales, which were prepared to receive him. {320}