Meanwhile by every argument Haslerig and his friends were pressing Monk to take upon himself the civil authority as well as the military. It was clear, they said, from the late vote that a restoration was intended, and a restoration meant his death, for like Stanley, who enthroned the Tudors, he was too great to live. Monk told them to fear nothing. The House merely wanted to leave its successor entirely free, and as for taking upon himself the civil authority, the fate of Cromwell's family was a warning to which he could not be deaf. Haslerig urged that Cromwell was a usurper, while Monk would be acclaimed by the nation. He himself was prepared to bring a petition with a hundred thousand signatures. But the lord-general was obdurate, and dismissing the conspirators he repaired to his place at the Council. The moment he appeared Ashley Cooper got up and moved that the room be cleared and the doors locked. Then he charged Monk with having received some indecent overtures from seditious persons, and demanded a full disclosure of their nature that the Council might take steps accordingly. But the kindly old general had no mind to see proscriptions begin. He had no idea of letting one party shed the blood of another, and being fully determined to hold the balance true till the nation's wishes could be weighed, he was not averse to letting the Council see what volcanic forces he could explode upon them at a word. "There is not so much danger in agitation as you apprehend," he said when Ashley Cooper had done. "It is true some have been with me to be resolved in scruples concerning the present transactions in Parliament, but they went away from me well satisfied." And the Council had to tamely receive the rebuke of the fearless look and laconic address which their consciences were too guilty to resent. So the incident ended, but not without one important result. As Gumble had lost the general's ear from being suspected probably of too close an understanding with his old patron Scot, so now Clarges, who had succeeded him, was superseded by a new councillor. By the advice of his brother Nicholas the general invited his kinsman Morice, the secluded member for Plymouth, to come up and take his seat, and from this time forward the slow-witted soldier had at his elbow the political sagacity of this scholarly recluse.