Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk's own mind.

If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm.

But would it do so?
With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts?
Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended?
Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence?
To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the Secluded.

Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable.
Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement .-- --Monk then took the matter into his own hands.

Having, in the course of the Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st; and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall, to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament House.