At Windsor the king received intelligence of the step Clarence had taken; and the affair being reported to him in the worst light, he appears to have been seized with something like temporary insanity, and to have regarded Clarence's destruction as essential to his own safety and that of his children. No sooner, in any case, was news conveyed to him that Clarence was "flying in the face of all justice," than he hastened to Westminster, summoned the duke to the palace, and ordered him to be committed to the Tower. Having pushed matters to this crisis, the Woodvilles did not allow Edward's passion to cool. It was in vain that the lord chancellor attempted to reconcile the king and the captive. A Parliament was summoned to meet about the middle of January; and when, on the appointed day, the English senators assembled at Westminster, the judges were summoned to the House of Lords, and Clarence was brought to the bar to be tried by his peers--the young Duke of Buckingham, who had married the queen's sister, presiding as lord high steward, and Edward appearing personally as accuser. Absurd as some of the charges were, Clarence had no chance of escape. He was charged with having dealt with the devil through necromancers; represented Edward as illegitimate and without right to the throne; plotted to dethrone the king and disinherit the king's children; retained possession of an act of Parliament, whereby, in the reign of Henry, he had been declared heir to the crown after Edward of Lancaster; purchased the support of the Lancastrians by promising to restore their confiscated estates; and warned his own retainers to be ready to take up arms at an hour's notice. Clarence indignantly denied every charge; but his protestations of innocence were as vain as those of Burdet had been. Edward appeared bent on a conviction, and the peers had not the courage to resist such a pleader. The royal brothers, indeed, would seem to have had all the talk to themselves--"no one denying Clarence but the king, and no one answering the king but Clarence." Even the self-sufficient Buckingham contented himself with asking the judges "whether the matters proved against Clarence amounted in law to high treason." The opinion of the judges was altogether unfavorable to the duke. The legal functionaries answered the lord high steward's question in the affirmative, and the peers returned a unanimous verdict of "Guilty." On the 7th of February Buckingham pronounced sentence of death. When matters reached this alarming stage, the Duchess of York interfered; and the king, in a somewhat relenting mood, delayed sending his brother to the block. The Woodvilles, however, were not to be baffled of their prey; and the House of Commons, acting under their influence, petitioned for the duke's immediate execution. But the son-in-law of Warwick, with all his failings, was still the idol of the populace; and the policy of having him beheaded on Tower Hill was more than doubtful.