The Protestant declaration was unanimously voted. The King of England, head of the Anglican Church, should naturally belong to that Church. In regard to the vacancy of the throne, the Tories insisted on previously debating the question of a regency, proposed some time before by Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and now advocated by Lord Rochester and Lord Nottingham. Divided between their conviction of the dangers that King James caused the country to incur, and their sentiments of loyalty, the members of this fraction of the Tory party hoped to remain faithful to their oath of allegiance by treating the truant monarch like an invalid incapable of governing, and hence obliged to delegate his powers to the Prince of Orange. This course having been rejected, Lord Danby admitted the throne to be vacant, and demanded that the Princess Mary be declared queen, according to the principle that the throne could not remain unoccupied. The Whigs, with Halifax at their head, loudly maintained the right of the nation to choose its monarch. King James was alive, and the princess could not then be his heiress; the throne became elective, and the Prince of Orange alone was worthy of being called to it. The discussion between the two houses, as well as that inside the House of Lords, was waxing hot; the crowd was pressing to the gates of the palace. Lord Lovelace informed the peers that he was charged with a petition demanding the immediate proclamation of the Prince and Princess of Orange as King and Queen of England. "By whom has the petition been signed?" was asked. "No man has yet put his hand to it," answered the bold nobleman, the first to meet the Prince of Orange when he landed; "but when I shall bring it here, there will be signers enough." {13} The same threats were made to the House of Commons. The princess was detained in Holland by the state of the sea, encumbered by ice. Danby was zealously pleading her cause before the Lords, without William, who remained faithful to his promise of committing to the Convention all grave political questions, interfering in any way in the debate. One of his friends, a Dutchman, probably Dykvelt, accidentally was present at the debate; he was pressed to say what he might know of the prince's sentiments. The Dutchman held out for a long time. "I can only guess his Highness's state of mind," he said at last; "but since you want to know what I fancy, I think he would scarcely care to be his wife's gentleman of the bedchamber; but I actually know nothing at all." "I know enough, and even a little too much," retorted Danby.