robbers, freebooters, and bandits; ordering all magistrates to seek out, seize, and disarm them; for a certain king was in league with the king of France for the extirpation of the protestant religion, and London would soon be burned or its inhabitants massacred if the papists were not secured. William afterwards disowned this atrocious manifesto, which indeed bore no resemblance to his temperate and politic proclamations; and it was more than twenty years after claimed by one Hugh Speke, a violent incendiary. For the time, however, it had its effect. The fury of the populace was roused to delirium against the catholics and the king, and from the country still came news of defection on all sides. Lord Lumley had seized Newcastle; the people there had thrown down the king's statue and hurled it into the Tyne; the garrison at Hull had risen against its catholic commander, lord Langdale, and imprisoned him; Norfolk was up under its duke; Worcestershire under lord Herbert of Cherbury and Sir Edward Harlty; Bristol received the prince's forces under the earl of Shrewsbury; Gloucester rose and liberated lord Lovelace; and even the most loyal of cities, Oxford, the seat of the non-resistance doctrine, declared for William, and the university offered him its plate to coin, if necessary.
Meantime William was gradually advancing towards the capital, and, on the 6th of December, the king's commissioners met him at Hungerford, where they found the earls of Clarendon and Oxford already swelling the court of the invader. They were received with much respect, and submitted their master's proposal that all matters in dispute should be referred to the parliament for which the writs were ordered, and that, in the meantime, the Dutch army should not advance nearer than forty miles from London. The whigs in William's court were decidedly averse to reconcilement with the king, whose implacable nature they knew; but William insisted on acceding to the terms, on condition that the royal forces should remove the same distance from the capital, and that the Tower of London and Tilbury Fort should be put into the keeping of the city authorities. If it were necessary for the king and prince to proceed to Westminster during the negotiations, they should go attended only by a small and determinate guard. Nothing could be fairer; but Willam knew well the character of his father-in-law, and felt assured that he would by some means shuffle out of the agreement, and throw the odium of failure on himself; and he was not deceived. Never had James so fair an opportunity for recovering his position and securing his throne, under constitutional restraints, for his life; but he was totally incapable of such wisdom and honesty.
On the very day that the royal commissioners reached William's camp, James received the prince of Wales back from Portsmouth, and prepared to send him off to France by another route. On the night of the 10th of December he sent the queen across the Thames in darkness and tempest, disguised as an Italian lady and attended by two Italian women, one of whom was the child's nurse, and the other carried the boy in her arms. They were guarded by two French refugees of distinction—Antonine, count of Lauzun, and his friend Saint Victor. They arrived safely at Gravesend, where a yacht awaited them, on board of which were lord and lady Powis. Saint Victor returned to inform James that they had got clear off, and in a few hours they were safely in Calais. Scarcely did Saint Victor bring the cheering news of the auspicious sailing of the yacht, when the commissioners arrived with the conditions agreed upon by William. Here was the guarantee for a speedy adjustment of all his difficulties; but the false and distorted-minded James only saw in the circumstance a wretched means of further deceit an contempt of his people and of all honourable negotiation. He pretended to be highly satisfied, summoned for the morrow: meeting of all the peers in town, and of the lord mayor and aldermen, and directed that they should deliberate freely and decide firmly for the good of the country. This done, he retired to rest, ordered Jeffreys to be with him early in the morning, said to lord Mulgrave, as he bade him good night, that the news from William was most satisfactory, and, before morning, had secretly decamped, leaving his capital and kingdom to take care of themselves rather than condescend to a pacification with his son-in-law and his subjects, which should compel him to rule as a constitutional king.
But James was not satisfied with this contemptible conduct; he indulged himself before going with creating all the confusion to the nation that he could. Had the writs which were preparing been left for issue on the 15th of January, a new parliament would be in existence, ready to settle the necessary measures for future government; he therefore collected the writs and threw them into the fire with his own hands, and annulled a number which were already gone out by an instrument for the purpose. He also left a letter for lord Feversham, announcing his departure from the kingdom, and desiring him no longer to expose the lives of himself and his soldiers "by resistance to a foreign army and a poisoned nation;" then, taking the great seal in his hand, he bade the earl of Northumberland, who was the lord of the bed-chamber on duty, and lay on a pallet bed in the king's room, not to unlock the door till the usual hour in the morning, and then, disguised as a country gentleman, disappeared down the back-stairs. He was waited for by Sir Edward Hales, whom he afterwards treated earl of Tenterden, and they proceeded in a hackney-coach to Millbank, where they crossed the river in a boat to Vauxhall. When in mid-stream, he flung the great seal into the water, trusting that it would never be seen any more; but it was afterwards dragged up by a fishing-net. James, attended by Hales and Sheldon, one of the royal equeries, drove at a rapid pace for Emley Ferry, near the isle of Sheppey, having relays of horse ready engaged. They reached that place at ten in the morning, and got on board the custom-house hoy which was waiting for them, and dropped down the river.
In the morning, when the duke of Northumberland opened the king's chamber door, and it was discovered that James had fled, the consternation in the palace may be imagined. The courtiers and the numbers of persons who were waiting to fulfil their morning duties, and the lords who had been summoned to council, spread the exciting tidings, and the capital became a scene of the wildest and most alarming confusion. Feversham obeyed the orders of the king left in his letter, without pausing to ask any advice, or to calculate what might be the consequences. The symptoms of
