Acute observers were not deceived. "There have been shouts and bonfires," wrote Barillon, "but at the bottom the people are for the Prince of Orange." Always easily deceived, James for a moment believed in a return of his popularity. He convoked a council, again summoning some not legally qualified, and blaming severely those peers who had dared usurp the authority in London.
The Count of Zulestein arrived with the message of the Prince of Orange; its cold and severe tone disturbed the new-born hopes of the monarch. "I hope, nevertheless, that my nephew will come to St. James," said he, after excusing himself for having left Rochester. "I must plainly tell your Majesty," replied Zulestein, "that his Majesty will not come to London while there are any troops here that are not under his orders." Some hours later a deputation, headed by Halifax, arrived at Whitehall. The English soldiers in the service of the States-General already began to occupy the streets of London; the king was in a bed; the messengers entered his chamber. "The prince will be at Westminster to-morrow morning," said they; "he prays your Majesty to retire to the palace of the Duke of Lauderdale, at Ham." "It is a cold and unfurnished house," said James, who did not appear much troubled; "I would like better to return to Rochester." The permission of William was promptly accorded. The next morning at ten o'clock the royal barge slowly descended the Thames; all eyes were dimmed, all hearts were moved. It was a sad spectacle to see this king, but recently so powerful, compelled to-day, by his own faults as well as by the determined resolution of his subjects, to flee that country from which he had been exiled when a child, and then regained only to lose anew. The joy of deliverance was at the bottom of all hearts, but compassion and respect were in the countenance.
Four days later, on the night of the 22d of December, the king, negligently guarded, pursued by mortal terror, stole out of the house he occupied at Rochester, accompanied by the Duke of Berwick. A small skiff was in waiting; before the break of day he was on board of a smack which was running through the mouth of the Thames. Four kings of the house of Stuart had for many years, and under different titles, oppressed England with an unjust yoke; for the second time and forever, a free people had rejected them. When the Prince of Orange, who had arrived in London, received a deputation of lawyers, headed by the venerable Manard, who, forty-seven years before, had been charged with the accusation of Strafford, "Mr. Serjeant," said the prince, "you must have survived all the lawyers of your standing." "Yes, Sire," said the old man, "and but for your Highness I should have survived the laws too." It is to the eternal honor of the Prince of Orange, as well as of the English nation, that they defended, without violence and without effusion of blood, those civil and religious liberties so recently gained by so much effort and so much crime, worthy of being preserved and defended by the hero and statesman who was at the same time and by the same blow to save the independence of Europe, so seriously menaced by Louis XIV.