The army's allies in Parliament had first approached the generals to stop any negotiations by their fellow MPs at the end of the second civil war, and about one month before the beginning of the Newport Treaty negotiations. It appears that Ireton hoped that the inevitable failure of the treaty negotiation would turn more MPs against the King. He felt some direct action by the army against Parliament would, at some point, also be necessary. The Remonstrance informed the Commons that the army wanted them to ‘forbear any further proceeding in this evil and most dangerous treaty, and to return to your former grounds in the vote of non-addresses, and thereupon to proceed to the settling and securing of the kingdom without, and against, the King’. Almost identical terminology had been used in other documents linked to Ireton: a petition presented to the Army Council at St Albans on 11 November 1648 and much earlier in Ireton's Declaration of January 1648. The army's Heads of the Charge of December 1648 repeated calls for ‘a speedy settlement of the Kingdome either against the King, or without him’. At the beginning of November 1648 Ireton was prepared to wait, encouraged, no doubt, by Cromwell, to allow the current negotiations between the King and Parliament to strengthen any subsequent action by the army. Some probably believed that these negotiations were progressing. Ireton had decided, from past experience, that settlement with Charles was not possible.