On Friday, December 14th, Dartmouth suitably acknowledged the Order of the Lords who had met in council at the Guildhall; and he simultaneously reported to the Secretary the state of the fleet. When the packet left on the 15th instant, it bore a postscript to Pepys which indicated that the Admiral, whose informants at this time were numerous, had been made aware that the King had been stopped in flight. Such news not unnaturally led Dartmouth to express a hope that James would be able somehow to come to “a happy agreement with the P[rince] of Orange”. Letters awaiting despatch to the Lords Feversham and Rochester also received additions voicing the same sentiment. But the unexpected news of James's interception in no way shook the Admiral's newly pledged fidelity to the Prince.

Dartmouth received, on the 14th, overdue and through the common post, a paper which the King, at his “departure from Whitehall in the night” (that is to say, in the early morning of Tuesday the 11th) had sent to the Admiralty, with instructions to the Secretary to forward it to the flagship. Pepys had straightway committed it to “another express”; but that gentleman, it must be supposed, had found an impediment to his duty. In this paper, the King strove, with a shallow reason, to justify his miserable conduct; and, in lieu, no doubt, of those orders which he had intended to confide to the Duke of Berwick for transmission to the Admiral, suggested that any commanders anxious to continue active allegiance to their lawful King should head their ships for Ireland and obtain instructions from the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Tyrconnel.