JAMES THE SECOND.

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excitement. It had been announced that the Queen did not chap-expect to be delivered till July. But, on the day after the 16a8 ' "Bishops had appeared before the Council, it was observedthat the King seemed to be anxious about her state. In theevening, however, she sate playing cards at Whitehall tillnear midnight. Then she was carried in a sedan to SaintJames’s Palace, where apartments had been very hastilyfitted tip for her reception. Soon messengers were runningabout in all directions to summon physicians and priests,

Lords of the Council, and Ladies of the Bedchamber. In afew hours many public functionaries and women of rank wereassembled in the Queen’s room. There, on the morning ofSunday, the tenth of June, a day long kept sacred by the toofaithful adherents of a bad cause, was born the most unfor-tunate of princes, destined to seventy-seven years of exileand wandering, of vain projects, of honours more gallingthan insults, and of hopes such as make the heart sick.

The calamities of the poor child had begun before his He isbirth. The nation over which, according to the ordinary believedcourse of succession, he would have reigned, was fully per- ‘° pp e osi _suaded that his mother was not really pregnant. By whatever tious.evidence the fact of his birth had been proved, a considerablenumber of people would probably have persistod in maintain-ing that the Jesuits had practised some skilful sleight of hand:and the evidence, partly from accident, partly from grossmismanagement, was open to some objections. Many per-sons of both sexes were in the royal bedchamber when thechild first saw the light; but none of them enjoyed any largemeasure of public confidence. Of the Privy Councillors pre-sent half were Roman Catholics; and those who called them-selves Protestants were generally regarded as traitors to theircountry and their God. Many of the women in attendancewere French, Italian, and Portuguese. Of the English ladiessome were Papists, and some were the wives of Papists. Somepersons who were peculiarly entitled to be present, and whosetestimony would have satisfied all minds accessible to reason,were absent; and for their absence the King was held re-sponsible. The Princess Anne was, of all the inhabitants of

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