In expectation of her husband's desertion, Anne had made arrangements for her own flight; and no sooner did the news reach her that he had gone than she followed. It was Sunday night, and the princess retired to her room at the usual hour. Mrs. Danvers, the lady-in-waiting, was not in the secret, and went to bed as usual in the ante-chamber. Ladies Fitzharding and Churchill had entered Princess Anne's room early in the evening, and hidden themselves by agreement in her dressing-room. At midnight, accompanied by these two women, the princess stole out of the palace, and met Lord Dorset in St. James's Park. A coach stood in waiting a little distance off; but the rain poured in torrents, and the mud was so deep that Anne lost one of her shoes in a puddle, from which there was neither time nor inclination to extricate it. This little accident was treated as a joke by the adventurers, who laughed heartily, while Lord Dorset gallantly stuck the princess's foot into one of the kid gauntlets he had pulled off; and assisted her to hop forward to the carriage. The party drove to the Bishop of London's house, where they were refreshed and the princess supplied with shoes, and started by daybreak for Lord Dorset's castle in Waltham Forest. After a few hours' rest they proceeded to Nottingham, where the Earl of Northampton, attired in military uniform, raised a purple standard in the name of the laws and liberties of England, and invited the people to gather around the Protestant heiress to the throne. Afterwards Anne went on to Warwick, where there was a project on foot for the extermination of all the papists in England. Although the princess knew that her father's head would be the first to {366}fall should such a plan be carried into effect, she was so unnatural as to favor it.