that the Houses should meet. He had therefore commanded the attendance
of his faithful Peers, in order to ask their counsel.

For a time there was silence. Then Oxford, whose pedigree, unrivalled in
antiquity and splendour, gave him a kind of primacy in the meeting, said
that in his opinion those Lords who had signed the petition to which His
Majesty had referred ought now to explain their views.

These words called up Rochester. He defended the petition, and declared
that he still saw no hope for the throne or the country but in a
Parliament. He would not, he said, venture to affirm that, in so
disastrous an extremity, even that remedy would be efficacious: but he
had no other remedy to propose. He added that it might be advisable to
open a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. Jeffreys and Godolphin
followed; and both declared that they agreed with Rochester.

Then Clarendon rose, and, to the astonishment of all who remembered
his loud professions of loyalty, and the agony of shame and sorrow into
which he had been thrown, only a few days before, by the news of his
son's defection, broke forth into a vehement invective against tyranny
and Popery. "Even now," he said, "His Majesty is raising in London a
regiment into which no Protestant is admitted." "That is not true,"
cried James, in great agitation, from the head of the board. Clarendon
persisted, and left this offensive topic only to pass to a topic still
more offensive. He accused the unfortunate King of pusillanimity. Why
retreat from Salisbury? Why not try the event of a battle? Could people
be blamed for submitting to the invader when they saw their sovereign
run away at the head of his army? James felt these insults keenly,
and remembered them long. Indeed even Whigs thought the language of
Clarendon indecent and ungenerous. Halifax spoke in a very different
tone. During several years of peril he had defended with admirable
ability the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of his country against
the prerogative. But his serene intellect, singularly unsusceptible of
enthusiasm, and singularly averse to extremes, began to lean towards the
cause of royalty at the very moment at which those noisy Royalists who
had lately execrated the Trimmers as little bettor than rebels were
everywhere rising in rebellion. It was his ambition to be, at this
conjuncture, the peacemaker between the throne and the nation. His
talents and character fitted him for that office; an