These well-considered suggestions were carried at once into effect. By the end of December many of the gentlemen who had been out in the insurrection had been in London; in their interviews with the king they had been won back to an unreserved allegiance, and had returned to do him loyal service. Lord Darcy and Sir Robert Constable had been invited with the rest; they had declined to present themselves: the former pretended to be ill; Constable, when the king's messenger came to him, "using no reverend behaviour nor making any convenable answer such as might have tended to his Grace's satisfaction," shut himself up in a remote castle on the Yorkshire coast.[202] Of the three leaders who had thrown themselves into the insurrection with a fixed and peremptory purpose, Aske alone, the truest and the bravest, ventured to the king's presence. Henry being especially desirous to see a man who had shaken his throne, paid him the respect of sending his request by the hands of a gentleman of the bedchamber. He took him now, he said, for his faithful subject, he wished to talk with him, and to hear from his own lips the history of the rising.[203] [Sidenote: Who consents to go, and writes a narrative of the insurrection at the king's request.] Aske consulted Lord Darcy. Darcy advised him to go, but to place relays of horses along the road, to carry six servants with him, leaving three at Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Ware, and taking three to London, that in case the king broke faith, and made him prisoner, a swift message might be brought down to Templehurst, and Darcy, though too sick to pay his court to Henry, would be well enough to rescue Aske from the Tower.[204] They would have acted more wisely if they had shown greater confidence. Aske went, however. He saw the king, and wrote out for him a straightforward and manly statement of his conduct--extenuating nothing--boasting of nothing--relating merely the simple and literal truth. Henry repeated his assurance to him that the parliament should meet at York; and Aske returned, hoping perhaps against hope; at all events, exerting himself to make others hope that the promises which they supposed to have been made to them at Doncaster would eventually be realized. To one person only he ventured to use other language. Immediately that he reached Yorkshire, he wrote to the king describing the agitation which still continued, and his own efforts to appease it. He dwelt upon the expectations which had been formed; in relating the expressions which were used by others, he indicated not obscurely his own dissatisfaction. [Sidenote: On his return to the north Aske gives the king notice of the suspicions still entertained by the people.]