WILLIAM AND MART.

341

loud and long hum of delight and exultation rose from the chap.benches and the bar.* William had resolved many months ^ —before not to refuse his assent a second time to so populara law.** There were some however who thought that he wouldnot have made so great a concession if he had on that day beenquite himself. It was plain indeed that he was strangelyagitated and unnerved. It had been announced that he woulddine in public at Whitehall. But he disappointed the curiosityof the multitude which on such occasions flocked to the Court,and hurried back to Kensington.***

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, Death ofduring two or three days, been poorly; and on the precedingevening grave symptoms had appeared. Sir Thomas Millington,who was physician in ordinary' to the King, thought that shehad the measles. But lladcliffe, who, with coarse mannersand little book learning, had raised himself to the first practicein London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered themore alarming words, small pox. That disease, over whichscience has since achieved a succession of glorious and bene-ficent victories, was then the most terrible of all the ministersof death. The havoc of the plague had been far more rapid:but the plague had visited our shores only once or twice withinliving memory; and the small pox was always present, fillingthe churchy'ards with corpses, tormenting with constant fearsall whom it had not y'et stricken, leaving on those whose livesit spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe intoa changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making theeyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to

* “The Commons,” says Narcissus Luttrell, “gave a great hum.”

“Le murmure qui est la marque d’applaudissement fut si grand qu'on peut

dire qu’il e«loit universel.” — L’Hermitage, ^ }

** L’Hermitage says this in his despatch of Nov.

l)ec. 25.

*** Burnet, ii. 137.; Van Citters, --—

Jan. 4.