Sydney, as instructed in the note from John Pym's private secretary, arrived at Parliament at seven o’clock of a bleak, damp morning. An armored ruffian met him at the porch of St Stephen's Chapel. He was escorted through a baffling series of halls, antechambers and rooms, and deposited in a closet near (as best he could determine) the Painted Chamber, from which issued wall-muffled yet audible bellowed yeas and nays. Sydney assumed important votes were being taken on the business of the Kingdom. The closet was bare but for a table and chair and a piece of paper on which someone had scrawled "Bad uncle, will not pay for drink."