Infected with the duplicity and unredeemed by the bravery of Charles I., the close of his reign is naturally less romantic than his father's. Kings who fail in business undoubtedly owe it to their historical reputation to perish on the scaffold or the battlefield. A royal martyr is a much more impressive object than a royal levanter. It is better to "ascend to Heaven" as "the son of St. Louis" than to take ship for Dover as "Mr. Smith." The last three weeks of James's reign are weeks of painful ignominy. His plan of spiriting away the infant Prince of Wales was defeated by Dartmouth, the admiral on whom he had relied to execute it, but who steadfastly refused to lend a hand to the project. William's army advanced from Exeter to Salisbury, and from Salisbury to Hungerford, where it had been arranged that the royal commissioners should meet the Prince. The result of the negotiation was favourable beyond anything James had a right to expect. The Prince accepted his father-in-law's offer to refer all questions in dispute to the Parliament about to be assembled, stipulating only that the capital should be relieved from military pressure on either side; that James should, as a security against his inviting French aid, place Portsmouth under the command of an officer in whom both sides had confidence; and that, while London was denuded of troops, the Tower--as also Tilbury Fort--should be garrisoned by the city of London. It is by no means impossible that James might have saved a crown, however shorn of its prerogatives, had he accepted these terms. But he was bent on attempting to regain by foreign arms that full despotic authority which he could not retain by his own. He contrived, with the assistance of the chivalrous and eccentric Frenchman Lauzun, to get the Queen and Prince of Wales conveyed safely to France; and twenty-four hours afterwards, on the night of the 11th of December, he endeavoured to follow them, but he was recognised at the Isle of Sheppey, whence he was about to embark, and his flight arrested. In London, where the royal forces had, in obedience to James's parting orders, been disbanded by their commander-in-chief, some forty-eight hours of very dangerous panic ensued upon the King's departure; but a provisional government was hastily formed by a committee of temporal and spiritual peers, and measures promptly taken by them for the maintenance of order. On hearing of the capture of James, they immediately despatched Feversham with a troop of Life Guards to escort him back to London. Here he was received with some marks of popular commiseration, which he mistook for reviving popular favour, and, regaining confidence, he sent Feversham to Windsor as the bearer of a letter to the Prince of Orange, expressing a desire for a personal conference with him at St. James's Palace, which he offered to fit up for the Prince's accommodation. William, however, as one may now see plainly, was bent on creating a vacancy of the throne.