Shelton neither understood the laws of Holland nor advised with those who did; otherwise he would have carried with him an order from the admiralty of Holland, that sat at The Hague, to be made use of as the occasion should require. When he came to Amsterdam, and applied himself to the magistrates there, desiring them to stop and search the ship that he named, they found the ship was already sailed out of their port and their jurisdiction went no further. So he was forced to send to the admiralty at The Hague. But those on board, hearing what he was come for, made all possible haste. And, the wind favoring them, they got out of the Texel before the order desired could be brought from The Hague. After a prosperous course, the Duke landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire (June 11, 1685); and he with his small company came ashore with some order, but with too much daylight, which discovered how few they were. The alarm was brought hot to London, where, upon the general report and belief of the thing, an act of attainder passed both Houses in one day; some small opposition being made by the Earl of Anglesey, because the evidence did not seem clear enough for so severe a sentence, which was grounded on the notoriety of the thing. The sum of five thousand pounds was set on his head. And with that the session of Parliament ended; which was no small happiness to the nation, such a body of men being dismissed with doing so little hurt. The Duke of Monmouth's manifesto was long and ill-penned--full of much black and dull malice. It charged the King with the burning of London, the popish plot, Godfrey's murder, and the Earl of Essex's death; and to crown all, it was pretended that the late King was poisoned by his orders: it was set forth that the King's religion made him incapable of the crown; that three subsequent houses of commons had voted his exclusion: the taking away of the old charters, and all the hard things done in the last reign, were laid to his charge: the elections of the present parliament were also set forth very odiously, with great indecency of style; the nation was also appealed to, when met in a free parliament, to judge of the Duke's own pretensions;[1] and all sort of liberty, both in temporals and spirituals, was promised to persons of all persuasions. [Footnote 1: He asserted that his mother had been the lawful wife of his father.--ED.]