In London, ever since the news of the Prince's landing, considerable agitation had prevailed, and some actual rioting taken place. But the royal authority was still upheld, and it was evident that the action of the capital, reversing the order of revolutionary proceedings to which France has now accustomed us, would await the course of events in the provinces. As for the King, he was, characteristically enough, as much reassured by a week's respite from bad news as he had been disturbed by the tidings of his nephew's landing; but the intelligence of Cornbury's defection threw him into a state of genuine alarm. Having convoked and addressed the principal officers then in London, from whom he received the most earnest professions of loyalty, he prepared to set out to meet the invader at Salisbury, when he was waited upon by a deputation of the Lords, praying him to call a Parliament and to open a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. James, however, to whom no measure ever presented itself as advisable at the proper moment for adopting it, rejected their advice. His reason was an excellent one--for any king in a totally different position from his. He said, and with much truth, that no Parliament could be freely chosen for a country with an invading army encamped on its soil; but the question which a clearer-sighted sovereign would have asked himself was not whether the parliamentary elector would be a free agent, but whether he himself was. It was eminently probable that the convocation of a Parliament would not save his throne, but it was quite certain that nothing else would. Nor had James the excuse of pride for rejecting the Peers' advice; he was to show in a very short time that no such account of his conduct could be sustained. Some monarchs might have preferred to lose a crown rather than be forced into political concession under coercion of an invading army. James was quite willing to pay that or any other price to save his crown, only he was impenetrable to the proof that it was necessary at that moment. He set out for his destined headquarters, and reached them on the 19th of November; but by the time he established himself at Salisbury the real royal court had collected itself at Exeter. William was haranguing the "friends and fellow Protestants" who had gathered to his banner, and continually receiving fresh adhesions, among which that of Lord Bath, the commander of the royal forces at Plymouth, was the most important. Meanwhile, the northern population of the kingdom, among whom William had been expected to present himself first, were up in arms. York and Nottingham were the chief centres of insurrection, and to one or the other of them many of the great peers and landowners of the north were already making their way. Placed thus between two fires, it was evident that immediate action was necessary on James's part to prevent their meeting and engulfing him. As it was no less evidently to William's