There is better evidence of a final interview with James after his return to London. Besides Dundee himself, Colin Earl of Balcarres was also present at it. The Earl had come for the purpose of making a last attempt to move the King to active resistance, promising that if he would but give the word, an army of twenty thousand men would be ready to receive his orders. The King, however, had rejected the proposal; and, as it was a fine morning, expressed a wish to take a walk. Balcarres and Dundee accompanied him, ‘When he was in the Mall, he stopped and looked at them, and asked how they could be with him, when all the world had forsaken him, and gone to the Prince of Orange. Colin said, their fidelity to so good a master would ever be the same, they had nothing to do with the Prince of Orange. Lord Dundee made the strongest professions of duty. “Will you two, as gentlemen, say you have still attachment to me?” “Sir, we do.” “Will you give me your hands upon it, as men of honour?” They did so. “Well, I see you are the men I always took you to be; you shall know all my intentions. I can no longer remain here but as a cypher, or be a prisoner to the Prince of Orange, and you know there is but a small distance between the prisons and the graves of Kings. Therefore, I go to France immediately; when there, you shall have my instructions. You, Lord Balcarres, shall have a commission to manage my civil affairs, and you, Lord Dundee, to command my troops in Scotland.”’ After the departure of James, both the noblemen remained in London for a time. It is stated by Dalrymple that both of them were asked by William to enter his service. ‘Dundee,’ he says, ‘refused without ceremony. Balcarres confessed the trust which had been put in him, and asked the King if, after that, he could enter the service of another. William generously answered, ‘I cannot say that you can;’ but added, ‘Take care that you fall not within the law, for otherwise I shall be forced, against my will, to let the law overtake you.’ Bishop Burnet puts a different complexion on the matter as regards Dundee; and it is his account that has led Macaulay to accuse the latter of having been less ingenuous than his friend Balcarres. The Bishop distinctly states that he himself had been employed by Dundee to carry messages from him to the King, to know what security he might expect, if he should go and live in Scotland without owning his government. ‘The King said, if he would live peaceably and at home, he would protect him: to this he answered that, unless he was forced to it, he would live quietly.’