Meantime the Princess Anne and Prince George were acting in concert with the popular party, whom they had long secretly favoured, although the exact mode and time of their proceedings appears not to have been fixed. During the six days that James remained at Salisbury, the unhappy monarch’s mind was every hour fretted and depressed by the news of some fresh defection. The first sea-officer that went over to the Prince of Orange was the brother of Lord Churchill, Captain Churchill, who joined the Dutch fleet with his ship. Humbled and alarmed lest he should be delivered up even by his own troops, James retreated towards London. The night before he commenced his march, Prince George of Denmark and the young Duke of Ormond, who had lately received the order of the garter, supped with him. The King was in deep dejection; the Prince and the Duke were also lost in thought, meditating their own private schemes. On the following morning intelligence was brought to James, that his two guests of the preceding evening had gone over in the night to the Prince of Orange. Prince George thought it his duty to leave a letter of excuses. This royal personage, long a cipher in the court, which he could be said neither to disturb nor to adorn, had been accustomed to say, when he heard of the desertion of any of James’s friends, “_Est-il possible?_” an ingenious mode of avoiding any expected opinion on so awkward a subject. On being acquainted with the Prince’s flight, James recalled to his attendants the notable phrase, by the sarcastic observation, “So _est-il possible_ is gone too!” And with this sole exclamation he allowed his relative to pass from his remembrance. Having left his troops quartered at different places, deserted indeed as he went along by most of his officers, but retaining the common soldiers, whose simple reasoning taught them to follow their sovereign, James re-entered his capital. But here a severer blow than any which he had hitherto experienced, fell upon him: the Princess Anne had fled. At first, to aggravate the distress of James, a mystery was made of her flight, and it was insinuated that the King, by encouraging the Papists, had been instrumental in the death of his child. The Earl of Clarendon, her maternal uncle, and her nurse, ran up and down like distracted persons, declaring that the Papists had murdered the Princess. James, who had fondly loved his daughter, and who had always shown her the utmost tenderness,[112] burst into tears, and in the agonies of parental feeling exclaimed—“God help me, my own children have forsaken me!”