chair, followed by another with drawn curtains, seeming to contain a friend. When the king stepped out his friend was found to be a change of clothes. He had come to make his enemies tremble. At the last moment an accident nearly wrecked the scheme. The wrong robes had been brought. Hastily the chair was sent back for the robes of state, while Charles held an unwilling peer in conversation that he might not give the alarm. Then, when all was ready, he swiftly took his seat on the throne and, without giving the Lords time to robe, summoned the Commons to attend. As Sir William Jones was in the act of appealing to Magna Carta as the safeguard of the subject’s right, the Black Rod knocked at the door. The Commons thronged eagerly through the narrow passages to the king’s presence, the Speaker leading with Russell and Cavendish at either hand. They thought they had come to receive Charles’ surrender. When the tumult was calmed the king spoke; “My lords and gentlemen, that all the world may see to what a point we are come, that we are not like to have a good end, when the divisions at the beginning are such, therefore, my Lord Chancellor, do as I have commanded you.” Finch thereupon declared Parliament, which had lived for exactly one week, to be dissolved, and Charles immediately left the throne. As he reached his dressing-room he turned to a friend, his eyes gleaming, with the remark that it was better to have one king than five hundred. He made a short dinner and, leaving by the back stairs, drove off in Sir Edward Seymour’s coach to where his own was waiting. That night he was in Windsor.[450]