f any
man that says the King was not married to his mother: though Alsopp
says, it is well known that she was a common whore before the King lay
with her. But it seems, he says, that the King is mighty kind to these
his bastard children; and at this day will go at midnight to my Lady
Castlemaine's nurses, and take the child and dance it in his arms: that
he is not likely to have his tables up again in his house,--[The tables
at which the king dined in public.-B.]--for the crew that are about
him will not have him come to common view again, but keep him obscurely
among themselves. He hath this night, it seems, ordered that the Hall
(which there is a ball to be in to-night before the King) be guarded, as
the Queen-Mother's is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were
by the Lord Chamberlain or Steward, and their people. But it is feared
they will reduce all to the soldiery, and all other places taken away;
and what is worst of all, that he will alter the present militia, and
bring all to a flying army. That my Lord Lauderdale, being Middleton's
enemy, and one that scorns the Chancellor even to open affronts before
the King, hath got the whole power of Scotland into his hand; whereas
the other day he was in a fair way to have had his whole estate, and
honour, and life, voted away from him. That the King hath done himself
all imaginable wrong in the business of my Lord Antrim, in Ireland;
who, though he was the head of rebels, yet he by his letter owns to have
acted by his father's and mother's, and his commissions; but it seems
the truth is, he hath obliged himself, upon the clearing of his estate,
to settle it upon a daughter of the Queene-Mother's (by my Lord Germin,
I suppose,) in marriage, be it to whom the Queene pleases; which is a
sad story. It seems a daughter of the Duke of Lenox's was, by force,
going to be married the other day at Somerset House, to Harry Germin;
but she got away and run to the King, and he says he will protect her.
She is, it seems, very near akin to the King: Such mad doings there are
every day among them! The rape upon a woman at Turnstile the other day,
her husband being bound in his shirt, they both being in bed together,
it being night, by two Frenchmen, who did not only lye with her but
abused her with a linke, is hushed up for L300, being the Queen Mother's
servants. There was a French book in verse, the other day, translated
and presented to the Duke of Monmouth in such a high st