When the day fixed upon arrived (November the 6th), all discussion was prohibited. The officers and agitators received orders to return to their regiments. Three partial meetings were appointed in the cantonments of the principal corps. Meanwhile the council of officers was to suspend its sittings, to allow the general and Parliament to act alone. Cromwell had decided on his course. He had determined not to be separated from the army, or to allow it to be destroyed by disunion and want of discipline. The soldiers desired to have no more to do with the king. That man alone could dispose of their obedience and their power, who would accept their common will and make himself its executor. Cromwell was resolved to be that man. {170} Thenceforth the situation of the king underwent a sudden change. The friends who surrounded him received orders to depart. His most trustworthy servants, Ashburnham and Berkeley, were withdrawn from him. The guards were doubled around them, and from all parts arrived sinister warnings of abduction and assassination. Charles was oppressed by a growing anxiety. His susceptible and ardent, though grave imagination, was shaken. Projects of flight began to spring up in his mind; but where was he to take refuge? The Scotch commissioners caused an offer to be made him to facilitate his escape, but the Scots had already delivered him up once to Parliament. Mention was made of the island of Jersey. It was far off, and the king would not quit English soil. Cromwell meanwhile, by all kinds of means, caused it to be insinuated that flight was a necessity. The Isle of Wight was proposed, the governor of which, Colonel Hammond, was the nephew of the chaplain of the king. This proposal pleased Charles, but he continued to hesitate, notwithstanding the anonymous letters which warned him that the danger was urgent. A nocturnal council of the agitators had resolved to get rid of him. At length, on the 11th of November, at nine o'clock in the evening, the king left the palace by a secret staircase, with one single valet-de-chambre, and, crossing the park, reached the forest, where Ashburnham and Berkeley, who had been hurriedly warned, awaited him. {171} The night was dark, and the fugitives lost their way. Not till daybreak did they arrive at the little town of Sutton in Hampshire, where a relay had been got ready. When they reached Southampton, opposite the Isle of Wight, Ashburnham and Berkeley embarked, to go and sound the governor. The king retired to the neighboring castle of Titchfield, inhabited by the mother of Lord Southampton. The two messengers met the governor on horseback upon the road. They informed him of the motive of their coming. Hammond turned pale; the reins of his horse slipped from his grasp. "Gentlemen," he said, "you have undone me by bringing the king into this island, if you have brought him. If he is not here yet, I implore you do not let him come. ..." A long conversation