The first thing to be done after the compliments were over was to consider how the nation was to be settled. The lawyers were generally of opinion that the Prince ought to declare himself king, as Henry VII had done. This, they said, would put an end to all disputes, which might otherwise grow very perplexing and tedious; and they said he might call a Parliament which would be a legal assembly if summoned by the king in fact, though his title was not yet recognized. This was plainly contrary to his declaration, by which the settlement of the nation was referred to a parliament; such a step would make all that the Prince had hitherto done pass for an aspiring ambition only to raise himself; and it would disgust those who had been hitherto the best affected to his designs, and make them less concerned in the quarrel if, instead of staying till the nation should offer him the crown, he would assume it as a conquest. These reasons determined the Prince against that proposition. He called all the peers and the members of the three last parliaments that were in town, together with some of the citizens of London. When these met it was told them that, in the present distraction, the Prince desired their advice about the best methods of settling the nation. It was agreed in both these Houses, such as they were, to make an address to the Prince, desiring him to take the administration of the Government into his hands in the _interim_. The next proposition passed not so unanimously; for, it being moved that the Prince should be likewise desired to write missive letters to the same effect, and for the same persons to whom writs were issued out for calling a parliament, that so there might be an assembly of men in the form of a parliament, though without writs under the great seal, such as that was that had called home King Charles II. To this the Earl of Nottingham objected that such a convention of the states could be no legal assembly unless summoned by the King's writ. Therefore he moved that an address might be made to the King to order the writs to be issued. Few were of his mind. The matter was carried the other way, and orders were given for those letters to be sent round the nation.