The next meeting of the Army Council was held under discouraging circumstances. Charles, who had for some time been established at Hampton Court, had refused to renew the parole which he had given, and it had been found necessary to strengthen his guards. Though there was no accurate knowledge at Putney of his intrigue with the Scots, enough had leaked out to raise grave suspicion, and when, on November 1, Cromwell again took the chair, he called on those present to 'speak their experiences as the issue of what God had given in answer to their prayers'. The result was distinctly unfavourable to the King. One said that the negative voice of the King and Lords must be taken away; another that he could no longer pray for the King; a third that their liberties must be recovered by the sword. Cromwell did his best to stem the tide. Pointing out, just as a modern historian might do, that there had been faults on both sides, he called on 'him that was without sin amongst them to cast the first stone'. He then turned to the more practical question of the difficulty of maintaining discipline in the army, if the authority of Parliament were shut off. "If there be no Parliament," he argued, "they are nothing, and we are nothing likewise." Though Cromwell was not yet prepared to strike at the King, he no longer regarded his comprehension in the new constitution as absolutely essential. He was even ready to accept the new democratic basis of _The Agreement of the People_, if there should be a wide demand for it. He must look, he said, for 'a visible presence of the people, either by subscriptions or numbers--for in the government of nations that which is to be looked after is the affections of the people'. For the present, however, he seemed most inclined to trust in Parliament as the source of authority. On one thing he was clear, that the discipline of the army must not be ruined by such an appeal to the general body of the soldiers in support of the Agreement as Rainsborough had contemplated. "I must confess," he said, "that I have a commission from the General, and I understand what I am to do by it. I shall conform to him according to the rules and discipline of war ... and therefore I conceive it is not in the power of any particular men, or any particular man in the army, to call a rendezvous of a troop, or regiment, or in the least to disoblige the army from the commands of the General.... Therefore I shall move what we shall centre upon. If it have but the face of authority, if it be but a hare swimming over the Thames I will take hold of it rather than let it go."