Now the King took out of the Tower Sir Bevil Skelton, late ambassador to Versailles, cast there for the move he had concerted with M. D’Avaux, which if truly followed had saved the King, as he now came to say, and so made Sir Bevil governor of the Tower and Master of the Keys of the Kingdom. After which he went to Hungerford in great despair of mind, where, advised by the Queen and the Jesuits, he sent overtures to the Prince, offering to defer all grievances to the calling of a free parliament, the writs for which the Lord Chancellor Jefferies had already been bid to issue. The Lords Halifax, Nottingham, and Godolphin, having taken this message, brought back an answer which was the best the King could have hoped for, since it made only those demands which were reasonable, such as that the Papists should be removed from office and that Tilbury Fort and the Tower of London should be put into the hands of the Capital. But when they returned with these terms to Whitehall, the commissioners found that the King, either through fearfulness or weakness, or wrought on by the advices of M. Barillon, had taken the extraordinary resolutions—first, of sending his wife and son to France, and secondly, of flying London himself, leaving the government in chaos. Upon which these three lords, perceiving they had been sent on a mock embassy, became for ever incensed against His Majesty. He left a letter for the commander of the army, a Frenchman, Lord Feversham, which that general took to be an order for the disbanding of the forces, which finally put everything into the greatest disorder. The next letters that came to The Hague were full of the Prince’s success against the Irish Guards at Twyford Bridge, outside the town of Reading, and the behaviour of the multitude in London, who, as soon as they heard of the departure of the King and the Jesuits, and the near approach of the Prince of Orange, got together and demolished all the new mass chapels and convents; among which was the great monastery of St. John, which had been two years building at a great expense, but was now burnt down and the goods seized as the monks were hurriedly removing, besides all the timber stored in Smithfield for the finishing, which was stacked into a bonfire and burnt at Holborn by the river fleet. Likewise the chapels in Lime Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the lodgings of the resident of the Duke of Florence, and Nild House, which was the mansion of the Spanish Ambassador, were spoiled and defaced; yet to the great credit of the English people, in all this heat and excitement, there was not one slain or even hurt.