The writer of this description was Robert Baillie, and he, in company with two other distinguished clergymen, Alexander Henderson and Robert Blair, visited London just as the "Root and Branch" petition was being prepared. They came with a commission from Scotland, under the broad seal of the Northern Parliament, to settle the quarrel which had led to the encampment of the covenant army--a quarrel in which the Puritans and the Long Parliament took part with the Scotch against the King and his Bishops. Three noblemen, three barons and three burgesses were commissioned for the same purpose. With the treaty of peace there was to be the payment of the Scotch troops by the English nation. The clerical commissioners hoped that there would follow the inauguration of goodly presbyteries throughout the fair land of the South, an object which was dearer to them than any political alliance, or than any amount of money. [Sidenote: 1640, November.] On Monday morning, November 16th, long before dawn, after spending their Sabbath in the little town of Ware, the three clergymen started for London. They had travelled from Edinburgh on horseback, surprised at the inns, seeming to them "like palaces," which they thought accounted for exorbitant charges for coarse meals. In the dark they trotted forth from Ware, all well, "horse and men, with divers merchants, and their servants on little nags," the road "extremely foul and deep;" and by sunrise that cold morning,--as the light woke up the slumbering city, as the smoke rose through the quaint chimneys from ten thousand hearths,--the three presbyters entered the metropolis.[135] They lodged in the city close to London Stone,[136] in a house which was wont to be inhabited by the Lord Mayor, or by one of the Sheriffs. St. Antholin's (or St. Anthony's) Church, connected with the mansion by a gallery, became their place of worship. There they soon had throngs as great as at their own communions, and daily the crowds increased to hear Mr. Henderson, so that "from the first appearance of day to the shutting in the light, the church was never empty." The lodgings by London Stone became the scene of many an earnest conference, and there Baillie wrote the letters and journals which afford us such an insight into public proceedings and religious life in London during that eventful winter.