coaches and horses for the conveyance of the councillors themselves to Westminster. For an hour or so, Sir Robert walked about in the palace chagrined and disconcerted. He had got in with difficulty; but his exit seemed impossible. Bethinking himself at last, he went to the private chamber of his brother, Lord Hunsdon. His lordship, overpowered with the fatigues of the preceding days, was asleep, but was soon roused, and willing to assist. The two went together to the porter’s gate, where the Council’s servants were just making their egress to bring the horses and coaches. The porter could not prevent a great officer like Lord Hunsdon from going out with them; but he stopped Sir Robert. It needed some exertion and some angry words from Lord Hunsdon to cow the man; but this was accomplished, and Sir Robert, to his great relief, found himself outside the gate in the raw air of the dim March morning. Not even yet were his difficulties over. Speeding from Richmond as fast as he could, he was in Westminster by himself, and in a friend’s house there, some time before the Lords of Council arrived in their coaches. Learning, however, after they had arrived, that they were holding a meeting in Whitehall Gardens to make final arrangements for the proclamations of the new sovereign both in Westminster and in the City, he thought it might be as well to try again whether they would employ him for the service on which he had set his heart. He sent them word, therefore, that he was in town, and was waiting their pleasure. It was now past nine o’clock, and the proclamations were to be at ten. The answer of the Council was a request to Sir Robert to come to them immediately; and, as it was conveyed with a kind of intimation that he would find them perfectly agreeable now to his proposal, he hastened to attend them. He was actually between the outer and the inner gate of Whitehall for this purpose, when a word sent out to him by a friendly councillor made him aware that the Council were deceiving him, and that, if he appeared among them, he would be laid fast. Then he hesitated no longer. Giving the Council the slip, and not staying for the proclamations or for anything else, he took horse at once, somewhere near Charing Cross, and was off for his tremendous ride northwards. He himself tells us the successive stages of his ride. He was at Doncaster that night, a distance of 155 miles from London; next night he reached a house of his own at Witherington in Northumberland, about 130 miles from Doncaster; leaving Witherington on Saturday morning, he accomplished some 50 miles more before noon that day, bringing him to Norham, close to the Tweed; after which there were still about 65 miles of that Scottish portion of his ride which lay between Norham and Edinburgh. He had hoped to be at Holyrood House before supper-time; but his dizziness and loss of blood from the fall from his horse in this last portion of