He had also observed that his people everywhere seemed anxious that the Houses should meet.

He had therefore commanded the attendance of his faithful Peers, in order to ask their counsel.
For a time there was silence.

Then Oxford, whose pedigree, unrivalled in antiquity and splendour, gave him a kind of primacy in the meeting, said that in his opinion those Lords who had signed the petition to which His Majesty had referred ought now to explain their views.
These words called up Rochester.

He defended the petition, and declared that he still saw no hope for the throne or the country but in a Parliament.

He would not, he said, venture to affirm that, in so disastrous an extremity, even that remedy would be efficacious: but he had no other remedy to propose.