On the 1st of December the Commons met, and as if indifferent to the advance of the army, voted thanks to Holles, Pierpoint, and Lord Wenman, for their care and pains in the good treaty at Newport, and proceeded to read twice the report of the Commissioners. Holles, who, with his accused colleagues, was again in the House, moved that the king's answer should be voted satisfactory; but that question was postponed till the next day, when the House adjourned again till the 4th of December--Fairfax, in defiance of their prohibition, having that day marched into the City, and quartered his troops around Whitehall, York House, St. James's, the Mews, and other places. On the 4th they went into the question of the treaty again, having debated all Friday and Saturday; and on Monday they continued the debate all day until five o'clock the next morning, Tuesday. Such a debate of three days and a night had not hitherto been known, for no subject of such supreme importance had ever yet come before Parliament. Oliver Cromwell arrived in the midst of this memorable debate. Sir Harry Vane the younger said that the treaty had been carried on for months, and that although the king had appeared to concede much at the last moment, yet they had his own declaration that he did not hold himself bound by promises which he might make, and that it was the conviction of himself, and thousands of others, that the king was not to be trusted; that he, therefore, moved that the House should return at once to its vote of non-addresses, which it ought never to have violated, should cease all negotiations, and settle the commonwealth on another model. Sir Henry Mildmay said the king was no more to be trusted than a caged lion set at liberty. This was the conviction of the whole body of the Independents, and no doubt a solid and rational conviction. But the king did not lack defenders: Fiennes, to the astonishment of his party, advocated the adoption of the report, and even Prynne, who had suffered so severely under it, became a pleader for royalty, that he might chastise Independency and the army. On a division it was found that a majority of thirty-six, being one hundred and forty against one hundred and four, had voted the concessions of Charles at Newport satisfactory, and offering sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom. But the army--or, in other words, the Independent and Republican cause--was not going thus to be defeated.