The Lords ordered Feversham to hasten with a troop of the Life Guards to the place where the King was detained, and to set his Majesty at liberty.
Already Middleton and a few other adherents of the royal cause had set out to assist and comfort their unhappy master.

They found him strictly confined, and were not suffered to enter his presence till they had delivered up their swords.

The concourse of people about him was by this time immense.

Some Whig gentlemen of the neighbourhood had brought a large body of militia to guard him.

They had imagined most erroneously that by detaining him they were ingratiating themselves with his enemies, and were greatly disturbed when they learned that the treatment which the King had undergone was disapproved by the Provisional Government in London, and that a body of cavalry was on the road to release him.