do nothing, was to incur a grave responsibility. Halifax, wishing
probably to obtain time for communication with the Prince, would have
adjourned the meeting; but Mulgrave begged the Lords to keep their
seats, and introduced the messenger. The man told his story with many
tears, and produced a letter written in the King's hand, and addressed
to no particular person, but imploring the aid of all good Englishmen.
[591]

Such an appeal it was hardly possible to disregard. The Lords ordered
Feversham to hasten with a troop of the Life Guards to the place where
the King was detained, and to set his Majesty at liberty.

Already Middleton and a few other adherents of the royal cause had set
out to assist and comfort their unhappy master. They found him strictly
confined, and were not suffered to enter his presence till they had
delivered up their swords. The concourse of people about him was by this
time immense. Some Whig gentlemen of the neighbourhood had brought a
large body of militia to guard him. They had imagined most erroneously
that by detaining him they were ingratiating themselves with his
enemies, and were greatly disturbed when they learned that the treatment
which the King had undergone was disapproved by the Provisional
Government in London, and that a body of cavalry was on the road
to release him. Feversham soon arrived. He had left his troop at
Sittingbourne; but there was no occasion to use force. The King was
suffered to depart without opposition, and was removed by his friends to
Rochester, where he took some rest, which he greatly needed. He was in
a pitiable state. Not only was his understanding, which had never been
very clear, altogether bewildered: but the personal courage which, when
a young man, he had shown in several battles, both by sea and by land,
had forsaken him. The rough corporal usage which he had now, for the
first time, undergone, seems to have discomposed him more than any
other event of his chequered life. The desertion of his army, of his
favourites, of his family, affected him less than the indignities
which he suffered when his hoy was boarded. The remembrance of those
indignities continued long to rankle in his heart, and on one occasion
showed itself in a way which moved all Europe to contemptuous mirth. In
the fourth year of his exile he attempted to lure back his subjects by
offering them an amnesty. The amnesty was accompanied by a long list
of exceptions; and in this list th