There were sixteen commissioners on either side, and for three weeks they argued without coming to any settlement. Neither side would give way, for either was convinced of its ability to finally crush the other by force of arms. Much blood had already been shed, indecisively, and passions ran high. Uxbridge was selected as a kind of half-way house between London, held strongly by the Parliament, and Oxford, as strongly held for the King; and when the empty verbiage was done, the propositions put forth scouted, and the pretensions disallowed, the parties separated, falling back respectively to London and to Oxford, to recommence those hostilities for which they were spoiling. Treaty, therefore, there was not: only an ominous truce between Right Divine and People’s Will. The Earl of Clarendon, in his _History of the Rebellion_, gives an interesting account of these fruitless meetings: “There was,” he says, “a good house at the end of the town which was provided for the Treaty. Above was a fair room in the middle of the house, handsomely dressed up for the Commissioners to sit in; a large square table being placed in the middle with seats for the Commissioners; one side being sufficient for those of either party: and a rail for those who should be thought necessary to be present, which went round. There were many other rooms on either side of this great room for the Commissioners to retire to, when they thought fit to consult by themselves, and there being good stairs at either end of the house they never went through each other’s quarters, nor met, but in the great room.” Neither side used the house, except for these meetings, the Royalists being appropriately accommodated at the “Crown,” which then stood in the middle of the High Street, in the centre of the town, opposite the still-existing “White Horse,” and the Parliament people at the “George.” [Illustration: THE “CROWN AND TREATY,” UXBRIDGE.]