182

HISTOET OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

VIII.

1688 .

eluded. Anne tad been tricked into visiting Batli. ThePrimate had, on the very day preceding that which had beenfixed for the villany, been sent to prison in defiance of therules of law and of the privileges of peerage. Not a singleman or woman who had the smallest interest in detecting thefraud had been suffered to be present. The Queen had beenremoved suddenly and at the dead of night to St. James’sPalace, because that building, less commodious for honestpurposes than Whitehall, had some rooms and passages wellsuited for the purpose of the Jesuits. There, amidst a circleof zealots who thought nothing a crime that tended to promotethe interests of their Church, and of courtiers who thoughtnothing a crime that tended to enrich and aggrandise them-selves, a new born child had been introduced into the royalbed, and then handed round in triumph, as heir of the threekingdoms. Heated by such suspicions, suspicions unjust, itis true, but not altogether unnatural, men thronged moreeagerly than ever to pay their homage to the saintly victims ofthe tyrant who, having long foully injured his people, hadnow filled up the measure of his iniquities by more foully in-juring his children.*

The Prince of Orange, not himself suspecting any trick,and not aware of the state of public feeling in England,ordered praj'ers to be said under his own roof for his littlebrother-in-law, and sent Zulestein to London with a formalmessage of congratulation. Zulestein, to his amazement,found all the people whom he met open mouthed about theinfamous fraud just committed by the Jesuits, and saw everyhour some fresh pasquinade on the pregnancy and the deli-very. He soon wrote to the Hague that not one person in tenbelieved the child to have been born of the Queen.**

* Johnstone gives in a very few words an excellent summary of thecase against the King. “The generality of people conclude all is atrick; because they say the reckoning is changed, the Princess sentaway, none of the Clarendon family nor the Dutch Ambassador sent for,the suddenness of the thing, the sermons, the confidence of the priests,the hurry.” June 13. 1688.

* Honquillo, Ronquillo adds, that what Zulestein said of the

state of public opinion was strictly true.

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