s popularity, was the perpetrator; and it was whispered
that _this_ was the secret which King James was so afraid his
favourite Somerset might tell if prosecuted to death. In a work called
_Truth brought to Light_, a copy was given of an alleged medical
report on a dissection of the body, calculated to confirm these
suspicions: it may be found in the _State Trials_, ii. 1002. Arthur
Wilson, who published his life and reign of King James during the
Commonwealth, said: 'Strange rumours are raised upon this sudden
expiration of our prince, the disease being so violent that the combat
of nature in the strength of youth (being almost nineteen years of
age) lasted not above five days. Some say he was poisoned with a bunch
of grapes; others attribute it to the venomous scent of a pair of
gloves presented to him (the distemper lying for the most part in the
head.) They that knew neither of these are stricken with fear and
amazement, as if they had tasted or felt the effects of those
violences. Private whisperings and suspicions of some new designs
afoot broaching prophetical terrors that a black Christmas would
produce a bloody Lent, &c.' Kennet, in his notes on Wilson's work,
says that he possesses a rare copy of a sermon preached while the
public mind was thus excited, 'wherein the preacher, who had been his
domestic chaplain, made such broad hints about the manner of his
(Prince Henry's) death, that melted the auditory into a flood of
tears, and occasioned his being dismissed the court.'

But suspicion did not stop here. When King James himself died in much
pain, his body shewing the unsightly symptoms consequent on his gross
habits, poison was again suspected; and as it had been said on the
former occasion, that the father had connived at the death of his son,
it was now whispered that the remaining son, anxious to commence his
ill-starred reign, was accessory to hurrying his father from the
world. The moral character of Charles I. is sufficient to acquit him
of such a charge. But historians even of late date have not entirely
acquitted his favourite, Buckingham, who, it was said, finding that
the king was tired of him, resolved to make him give place to the
prince, in whose good graces he felt secure. The authors of the
scandalous histories published during the Commonwealth, said that the
duke's mother administered the poison externally in the form of a
plaster.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _State Trials_, ii. 932.

[5] _State