On Monday the 22nd he continued his march, and before Leicester was reached Scot and Robinson appeared. From that moment he could not call his soul his own. By day they had him to ride in their coach, by night they bored holes in the partitions that separated their room from his. They got up discussions at meals and stood at his elbow while he received the endless deputations and addresses that were showered in his path. All was of no avail. The old soldier stuck to the plain rule that had served him so well through life, and was not to be caught. Finding the situation was getting beyond him, he patiently resumed his unassailable position of the obedient and disinterested soldier of fortune. He received the commissioners as his superior officers. The troops had orders to halt and present arms whenever their coach passed, and in every way they were treated with the ceremony reserved for a commander-in-chief. The commissioners were delighted, and sent glowing accounts to the Speaker. They even accepted the general's excuse for not at once taking the Oath of Abjuration. He had understood, he said, that some members of the Government had refused it, and he felt it was better to wait till he got to London and could hear both sides. The deputations from the city and the counties that met him at every town as he proceeded knew not what to make of it. The general received them with the utmost civility, and the commissioners railed at their petitions. The principal points they variously urged were a full and free Parliament, a dissolution, and the admission of the members secluded in 1648 without any previous oath or engagement. Sometimes the general found himself compelled to answer them. If the Parliament were not yet free, he told them, he would endeavour to remove the restraint that remained. The House had already decided to fill up the vacant places, and then it would be full. It had agreed to dissolve itself of its own accord, and as for admitting members to sit without any engagement to the Government, such a thing was never heard of, and besides, the House had decided not to readmit them. And he politely expressed his surprise that they thought him capable of so far forgetting his duty to his commission as to question the resolution. Thoroughly disheartened the deputations retired to fall into the hands of enthusiastic staff-officers, who filled them with new wonder. Monk seems to have told his friends to do their best to remove any bad impression his reception of the addresses might arouse, and they interpreted their instructions with some freedom. Lavish promises were made in the general's name, and every one was told to proceed actively with the petitioning without paying the slightest attention to what Monk pretended to think of them.