At the opening of 1644 Charles had devised a scheme for undermining the authority of the Parliament, namely, by issuing a proclamation for its extinction. Clarendon, who was now the Lord Chancellor, very wisely assured him that the members of Parliament sitting at Westminster would pay no heed to his proclamation, and that a better measure would be to summon Parliament to meet at Oxford. That would give every member of both Houses, who was at all inclined to again recognise the royal authority, the opportunity to join him; and, on the other hand, a Parliament assembling by call and authority of the king at his court, would stamp the other as illegal and rebellious. The advice was adopted, and at the summons forty-three Peers and one hundred and eighteen Commoners assembled at Oxford. These, however, consisted of such as had already seceded from the Parliamentary party, and the king claimed as the full number of his Parliament at Oxford, eighty-three Lords, and one hundred and seventy-five Commons. According to Whitelock, there met at Westminster twenty-two Lords only, and eleven more were excused on different accounts, making thirty-three; of the Commons there were more than two hundred and eighty. The king, in his Parliament, promised all those privileges which he had so pertinaciously denied to all his past Parliaments, and a letter, subscribed by all the members of both Houses, was addressed to the Earl of Essex, requesting him to inform "those by whom he was trusted," that they were desirous to receive commissioners, to endeavour to come to a peaceable accommodation on all matters in dispute. Essex returned the letter, refusing to forward a paper which did not acknowledge the authority of the body addressed. The point was conceded, and Charles himself then forwarded him a letter addressed to the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Westminster in his own name, soliciting, by advice of the Lords and Commons of Parliament assembled at Oxford, the appointment of such commissioners "for settling the rights of the Crown and Parliament, the laws of the land, and the liberties and property of the subject." But there was no probability of agreement, and so the Oxford Parliament proceeded to proclaim the Scots, who had entered England contrary to the pacification, and all who countenanced them guilty of high treason.