At this critical moment, amidst the confusion which reigned at Whitehall, and as selfish courtiers were waiting to see how they could promote their own interests, the misguided Sovereign commanded his army to march towards Salisbury. The night before he himself started for that city, a few noblemen and Bishops waited upon him with a proposal to assemble Parliament, and treat with the Prince of Orange; when, according to his own account, he told the Prelates that it would much better become men of their calling to instruct the people in their duty to God and the King, rather than foment a rebellions temper, by presenting such petitions at the very moment the enemy stood at the door. He says he regarded them as making religion a cloak of rebellion, and was at last convinced that the Church’s doctrine of passive obedience formed too sandy a foundation for a Prince’s hope.[57] His answer to the request for a Parliament, according to the report of the Bishop of Rochester, ran in these words: “What you ask of me, I most passionately desire, and I promise you upon the faith of a king, that I will have a Parliament, and such an one as you ask for, as soon as ever the Prince of Orange has quitted this realm. For how is it possible a Parliament should be free in all its circumstances, as you petition for, whilst an enemy is in the kingdom, and can make return of near a hundred voices?”[58] [Sidenote: 1688.] James reached Salisbury on the 19th of November, and took up his abode in the Episcopal Palace,--under the shadow of the noble spire which rises so gracefully out of the midst of a pleasant landscape of quaint-looking houses, near the confluence of two rivers, bordered by gardens and orchards, by green meadows and brown fields. There he had reason enough to be alarmed by the progress of events, and to reflect on the instability of worldly greatness; yet he did not despair. He was wonderfully slow in giving up all hope of help from Bishops. To the last he seemed to cling to that order with the tenacity of a sailor who has seized on a plank from a foundered vessel. From Salisbury he sent for the Bishop of Winchester, who had cautiously remained at his princely castle during these troublous times. The Bishop wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury the following account of this fruitless visit:-- [Sidenote: THE CRISIS.] “May it please your Grace,