"My counsel will be that the king should mount with what knights he may have, and a couple of score of men-at-arms, and should ride to Oxford, send out summonses to his nobles to gather there with their vassals, and then come and talk with these rebels, and in such fashion as they could best understand. They may have grievances, but this is not the way to urge them, by gathering in arms, murdering numbers of honourable men, insulting the king's mother, burning deeds and records, and now demanding that the king himself should wait on their scurvy majesties. Yet I know that there will be some of these time-servers round the king who will advise him to intrust himself to these rascals who have insulted his mother. "By my faith, were there but a couple of score of my old companions here, we would don our armour, mount our warhorses, and ride at them. It may be that we should be slain, but before that came about we would make such slaughter of them that they would think twice before they took another step towards London." "It was as I expected," the knight said, when he returned from the council. "The majority were in favour of the king yielding to these knaves and placing himself in their power, but the archbishop of Canterbury, and Hales the treasurer, and I, withstood them so hotly that the king yielded to us, but not until I had charged them with treachery, and with wishing to imperil the king's life for the safety of their own skins. De Vere and I might have come to blows had it not been for the king's presence." "Then what was the final decision of the council, Sir Ralph?" his wife asked. "It was a sort of compromise," the knight said. "One which pleased me not, but which at any rate will save the king from insult. He will send a messenger to-day to them saying that he will proceed to-morrow in his barge to Rotherhithe, and will there hold converse with them. He intends not to disembark, but to parley with them from the boat, and he will, at least in that way, be safe from assault. I hear that another great body of the Essex, Herts, Norfolk, and Suffolk rebels have arrived on the bank opposite Greenwich, and that it is their purpose, while those of Blackheath enter the city from Southwark, to march straight hitherwards, so that we shall be altogether encompassed by them." "But the citizens will surely never let them cross the bridge?"