The Queen, meanwhile, saw only too clearly whither these events tended. Terrified at Richard's successful blow, seeing that her own faction was utterly undone, and fearing for the lives of herself and her children, she flew again to her well-known refuge. She left the Palace of Westminster at midnight with her youngest son, Richard Duke of York, and her five daughters, and lodged in the Abbot's Place.
It was in one of the great chambers of the house, probably the Dining-hall (now the College Hall) that she was received by Abbot Esteney.[35]
The Queen sate alow on the rushes all desolate and dismayed, and all about her much heaviness, rumble, haste and business; carriage and conveyance of her stuff into Sanctuary; chests, coffers, packers, fardels, trussed all on men's backs; no man unoccupied--some lading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down the walls to bring in the next (nearest) way.[36]
In the midst of all this dismay and confusion the Archbishop of York, Thomas Rotheram, Chancellor of England, brought the Queen the Great Seal, trying to comfort and encourage her with a message from the Lord Chamberlain Hastings, who thought matters were not so hopeless as she imagined. But she mistrusted Hastings as "one of those that laboreth to destroy me and my blood." The Archbishop left the Great Seal with her,
and departed home again, yet in the dawning of the day. By which time, he might in his chamber window (his palace was on the site of the present Whitehall) see all the Thames full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester's servants, watching that no man should go to Sanctuary; nor none could pass unsearched.
The Queen seems to have withdrawn into her old quarters in the fortress of the Sanctuary itself, where she had before found safety; and the Protector, determined to get possession of both his nephews, proposed at his council in the Star Chamber, that if she would not give up the Duke of York to keep his brother company he should be taken from thence by force. But this proposition only served to show in what respect the privilege of Sanctuary was held. The archbishops and spiritual lords promptly refused their consent to such a sacrilegious measure. Said the Archbishop of Canterbury,