Mary was at Whitehall and Westminster Palace, during the whole time of the horrible panic, the only calm and self-possessed figure, amid the confusion and dire distress of her friends. She could easily pass from one palace to the other by means of the inside galleries which connected the Holbein Gate at Whitehall, with the Old Palace at Westminster, on the site of the present Houses of Parliament. When her ministers urged her to seek safety in flight, she as usual consulted Renard, who advised her to remain, if she would not lose her crown.[401] A meeting of the citizens to discuss measures for the defence of London, was convened at the Guildhall, on the 1st February. Mary’s coming to the city and her address to the people are thus described by Wriothesley:— “The same day in the afternoon, being Candlemas Even, all the Commons of the City were assembled in their liveries at the Guildhall. The Queen’s Majesty, with her lords and ladies, riding from Westminster to the said Guildhall, came thither by 3 of the clock the same afternoon. First she went up to the Council Chamber, where the aldermen use to sit, and there paused a little, the Lord Mayor and aldermen receiving her Majesty at the steps going up to the Lord Mayor’s Court. Then her Majesty came down into the great hall, up into the place of the hustings, where was hanged a rich cloth of estate, she standing under it, with her own mouth declared to the audience there assembled, the wicked pretence of the traitor Wyatt, which was utterly to deprive her of her crown and to spoil the City; which was so nobly and with so good spirit declared, and with so loud a voice, that all the people might hear her Majesty, and comforting their hearts with so sweet words, that made them weep for joy to hear her Majesty speak. This done, she came down, and went up again into the Council Chamber, and drank, and then departed, and rode through Bucklersbury to the Crane in the Vinetree, and there took her barge, and so to Westminster by water.”[402]