The House was thrown immediately into a tumult of consternation. At the very moment when their terrible slave seemed safely bound he had risen up and snapped his chains like threads. Every kind of proposition was made to recall him, but eventually Scot and Robinson were ordered to carry a soft answer into the city. They found Monk with the Lord Mayor, and in the lowest spirits. His reception had been more than cold; the city had lost faith in him; he had broken the guiding rule of his life and had lost faith in himself. His friends urged him to declare at once for a free Parliament, but hoping against hope that he still might not be forced to use the military power against the civil, he refused to give a hint of his intended revolt till he heard the answer of the House. When it came, shifty and meaningless, he doubted no longer. Without heat he dismissed the messengers, but his officers insulted them, and the mob hooted them out of the city. Once more himself, blunt and determined, he stood up in the Guildhall to address the Council which the Lord Mayor had consented to call at five o'clock. With manly frankness he told them how he detested the work he had had to do. If laying down his commission would have stopped it, he would gladly have done so, but it would only have been put into unkinder hands. "But what I have to tell you," he concluded, "is that this morning I have sent to the Parliament to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of their House, and when filled to sit no longer than till May 6th, that they may give place to a full and free Parliament." The enthusiasm with which his words were received was indescribable. As the news spread through the city the people gave way to the wildest demonstrations of joy. Late as it was the bells were set a-ringing; the soldiers, who had been shivering all day in their ranks on Finsbury Fields, were brought in to be fed and fêted like kings. Bonfires were soon blazing in every street, and anything that could do duty for an effigy of the Rump was cast into them. To such a pitiable decrepitude had the glorious Long Parliament lived. As its doom was cried from end to end of England the same extravagant scenes were enacted. Associations were everywhere formed to refuse the payment of taxes till Monk's demands were complied with. Everywhere men were worshipping the executioner of their doting liberator. His guards kept watch at the Parliament's gates; from the city his sword was stretched over it. In spite of himself, in spite of every effort to set a lawful authority above him, George Monk was uncrowned King of England.